Blueeyedboy Read online

Posted at: 03:56 on Tuesday, January 29

  Status: public

  Mood: sick

  Listening to: Nick Lowe: ‘The Beast In Me’

  Most accidents occur in the home. He knows this only too well; has spent much of his childhood avoiding those things that might potentially do him harm. The playground with its swings and roundabouts, and the litter of needles along the edge. The fishpond with its muddy banks on which a small boy might so easily slip, to be dragged to his death in the weedy depths. Bikes that might spill him on to the tarmac to skin his knees and hands — or worse, under the wheels of a bus, to be skinned all over like an orange and left in segments on the road. Other children, who might not understand how special he is, how susceptible — nasty boys who might bloody his nose, nasty girls who might break his heart —

  Accidents happen so easily.

  That’s why, if there’s anything he should know by now, it’s how to create an accident. Maybe a car accident, he thinks, or a fall down a flight of stairs, or a simple, homely electrical fire. But how do you cause an accident — a fatal accident, of course — to happen to someone who doesn’t drive, who doesn’t indulge in dangerous sports, and whose idea of a wild night out is popping into town with her friends (they always pop, they never just go), for gossip and a glass of wine?

  It isn’t that he fears the act. What he fears are the consequences. He knows the police will call him in. He knows he will be a suspect, however accidental the deed, and he will have to answer to them, to plead his innocence, to convince them that it isn’t his fault —

  That’s why he has to choose his time. There can be no margin of error. He knows that murder is a lot like sex: some people know how to take their time; to enjoy the rituals of seduction, rejection, reconciliation; the joy of suspense; the thrill of the chase. But most of them just need to see it done; to get the need of it out of themselves as quickly as they possibly can; to distance themselves from the horrors of that intimacy; to know release above all things.

  Great lovers know it’s not about that.

  Great murderers know it, too.

  Not that he is a great murderer. Just an aspiring amateur. With no established modus operandi, he feels like an unknown artist who yet has to find a style of his own. That’s one of the hardest things to do — for an artist or for a murderer. Murder, like all acts of self-affirmation, requires a tremendous self-confidence. And he still feels like a novice: shy; uncertain; protective of his talents and hesitant to make himself known. In spite of it all, he is vulnerable; fearing not just the act itself, but also the reception it may have to endure; those people who will, inevitably, judge, condemn and misunderstand —

  And of course, he hates her. He would never have planned it otherwise; he is no Dostoyevskian killer, acting at random and thoughtlessly. He hates her with a passion that he has never felt for anything else; a passion that blooms within him like blood; that sweeps him away on a bitter blue wave —

  He wonders what it would be like. To be free of her for once and for all; free of the presence that envelops him. To be free of her voice, of her face, of her ways. But he is afraid, and untested; and so he plans the act with care, selecting his subject (he refuses to use the word victim) according to the rules, preparing it all with the neatness and precision that he extends to all things —

  An accident. That’s all it was.

  A most unfortunate accident.

  To challenge the boundaries, he understands, you first have to learn to follow the rules. To approach such an act, one has to train, to hone one’s art on some baser element, just as a sculptor works in clay — discarding anything that is not perfect, repeating the experiment until the desired result is achieved — before creating the masterpiece. It would be naïve, he tells himself, to expect great things of his first attempt. Like sex, like art, the first time is often inelegant, clumsy and embarrassing. He has prepared himself for this. His aim is merely not to be caught. It has to be an accident — and his relationship with the subject must, though real, be distant enough to defy those who will come looking for him.

  You see, he thinks like a murderer. He feels its glamour in his heart. He would never harm someone who does not already deserve to die. He may be bad, but he is not unfair. Nor is he degenerate. He will not be a commonplace, bludgeoning, thoughtless, messy, remorse-sodden killer. So many people die futile deaths — but in her case, at least, there will be reason, order and — yes, a kind of justice. One less parasite on the world, making it a better place.

  A strident call from downstairs intrudes upon the fantasy. He feels an annoying tremor of guilt. She hardly ever comes into his room. Besides, why should she climb the stairs when she knows that a call will bring him down?

  ‘Who’s there?’ she says.

  ‘No one, Ma.’

  ‘I heard a noise.’

  ‘I’m working online.’

  ‘Talking to your imaginary friends?’

  Imaginary friends. That’s good, Ma.

  Ma. The sound a baby makes, the sound of sickness, of lying in bed; a feeble, milky, helpless sound that makes him feel like screaming.

  ‘Well, come on down. It’s time for your drink.’

  ‘Hang on. I’ll be right there.’

  Murder. Mother. Such similar words. Matriarch. Matricide. Parasite. Parricide, something used to get rid of parasites. All of them coloured in shades of blue, like the blue of the blanket she tucked around his bed every night when he was a boy, and smelling of ether and hot milk —

  Night night. Sleep tight.

  Every boy loves his mother, he thinks. And his mother loves him so much. So much I could swallow you up, B.B. And maybe she has, because that’s how it feels, as if something has swallowed him, something slow but relentless, something inescapable, sucking him down into the belly of the beast —

  Swallow. There’s a blue word. Flying south, into the blue. And it smells of the sea and tastes like tears, and it makes him think of that bucket again, and the poor, trapped, scuttling things dying slowly in the sun —

  She’s so proud of him, she says; of his job; of his intellect; of his gift. Gift means poison in German, you know. Beware of Germans bearing gifts. Beware of swallows flying south. South to the islands of his dreams: to the blue Azores, the Galapagos, Tahiti and Hawaii —

  Hawaii. Awayyy. The southernmost edge of his mental map, scented with distant spices. Not that he’s ever been there, of course. But he likes the lullaby lilt of the word, a name that sounds like laughter. White sands and palm beaches and blue skies fat with fair-weather clouds. The scent of plumeria. Pretty girls in coloured sarongs with flowers in their long hair —

  But really, he knows he’ll never fly south. His mother, for all her ambitions, has never been a traveller. She likes her small world, her fantasy, the life she has carved for them piece by piece into the rock of suburbia. She will never leave, he knows; clinging to him, the last of her sons, like a barnacle, a parasite —

  ‘Hey!’ She calls to him from downstairs: ‘Are you coming down, or what? I thought you said you were coming down.’

  ‘Yes, I’m coming down, Ma.’

  Of course I am. I always do. Would I ever lie to you?

  And the plunge of despair as he goes downstairs into the parlour that smells of some kind of cheap fruit-flavoured air-freshener — grapefruit, maybe, or tangerine — is like going down into the belly of some huge, fetid, dying animal: a dinosaur or a beached blue whale. And the smell of synthetic citrus makes him almost want to gag —

  ‘Come in here. I’ve got your drink.’

  She’s sitting in the kitchenette, arms folded across her chest, feet camel-backed in her high heels. For a moment he is surprised, as always, at how very small she is. He always imagines her larger, somehow; but she is smaller than he is by far, except for her hands, which are surprisingly large compared to the bird-bony rest of her, the knuckles misshapen, not just with arthritis, but with the rings she has collected over the years — a sovereign, a
diamond cluster, a Campari-coloured tourmaline, a piece of polished malachite and a flat blue sapphire gated with gold.

  Her voice is at the same time both brittle and oddly penetrating. ‘You look terrible, B.B.,’ she says. ‘You’re not coming down with something, are you?’ She says coming down with a certain suspicion, as if he has brought it on himself.

  ‘I didn’t sleep too well,’ he says.

  ‘You need to take your vitamin drink.’

  ‘Ma, I’m fine.’

  ‘It’ll do you good. Go on — take it,’ she says. ‘You know what happens when you don’t.’

  And take it he does, as he always does, and its taste is a murky, rotten mess, like fruit and shit in equal parts. And she looks at him with that terrible look of tenderness in her dark eyes, and kisses him gently on the cheek. The scent of her perfume — L’Heure Bleue — envelops him like a blanket.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to bed for a while? Get some sleep before tonight? They work you so hard at that hospital, it’s a crime they get away with it—’

  And now he’s really feeling sick, and he thinks that maybe he will lie down, go back to bed and lie down with the blanket pulled around his head, because nothing could be worse than this; this feeling of drowning in tenderness —

  ‘See?’ she says. ‘Ma knows best.’

  Ma-ternal. Ma-stiff. Ma-stodon. The words swim around inside his head like piranhas scenting blood. It hurts, but he already knows that it will hurt much more later; already the edges of things are garlanded with rainbows that in the next minutes will blossom and swell, driving a spike into his skull just behind his left eye —

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ his mother says. ‘Shall I sit beside you?’

  ‘No.’ The pain is bad enough, he thinks, but her presence would be so much worse. He forces a smile. ‘I just need to sleep. I’ll be fine in an hour or two.’

  And then he turns and goes upstairs, holding on to the banisters, the filthy taste of the vitamin drink lost in a sudden surge of pain, and he almost falls, but does not, knowing that if he falls, she will come, and she will stay at his bedside for hours or days, for as long as the terrible headache lasts —

  He collapses on to his unmade bed. There is no escape, he tells himself. This is the verdict. Guilty as charged. And now he must take his medicine, as he has done every day of his life; medicine to purge him of bad thoughts, a cure for what’s hidden inside him —

  Night night. Sleep tight.

  Sweet dreams, blueeyedboy. 34

  Post comment:

  chrysalisbaby: wow this is awesome

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  ClairDeLune: This is quite intriguing, blueeyedboy. Would you say it represents your true inner dialogue, or is it a character portrait you’re planning to develop at some later stage? In any case, I’d love to read more!

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  6

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.

  Posted at: 22.40 on Tuesday, January 29

  Status: restricted

  Mood: vitriolic

  Listening to: Voltaire: ‘When You’re Evil’

  The perfect crime comes in four separate stages. Stage One: identification of the subject. Stage Two: observation of the subject’s daily routine. Stage Three: infiltration. Stage Four: action.

  So far there’s no hurry, of course. She is barely a Stage Two. Walking past the house each day, the collar of her bright red coat turned up against the cold.

  Red isn’t her colour, of course — but I don’t expect her to know that. She doesn’t know how I like to watch: noting the details of her dress; the way the wind catches her hair; the way she walks with such precision, marking her passage with almost imperceptible touches. A hand against this wall, here; brushing against this yew hedge; pausing to lift her face to the sound of schoolchildren playing in the yard. Winter has stripped the leaves from the trees, and on dry days their percussion underfoot still smells dimly of fireworks. I know she thinks that too; I know how she likes to walk in the park with its alleys and walled gardens and listen to the sound of the naked trees shushing to themselves in the wind. I know how she turns her face to the sky, mouth open to catch the droplets of rain. I know the unguarded look of her; the way her mouth twists when she is upset; the turn of her head when she listens; the way her face tilts towards a scent.

  She notices scents especially: lingers in front of the bakery. Eyes closed, she likes to stand by the door and catch the aroma of warm bread. I wish I could talk to her openly, but Ma’s spies are everywhere; watching; reporting; examining . . .

  One of these is Eleanor Vine, who called round early this evening. Ostensibly to check on Ma, but really to enquire after me, to search for signs of grief or guilt in the wake of my brother’s death; to sniff out what was happening at home, and to collect any news that was going.

  Every village has one. The local do-gooder. The busybody. The one to whom everyone applies when in need of information. Eleanor Vine is Malbry’s: a poisonous toady who currently forms part of the toxic triumvirate that makes up my mother’s retinue. I suppose I ought to feel privileged. Mrs Vine rarely leaves her house, viewing the world through net curtains, occasionally condescending to welcome others into her immaculate sanctum for biscuits, tea and vitriol. She has a niece called Terri, who goes to my writing-as-therapy class. Mrs Vine thinks that Terri and I would make a charming couple. I think that Mrs Vine would make an even more charming corpse.

  Today she was all sweetness. ‘You look exhausted, B.B.,’ she said, greeting me in the hushed voice of one addressing an invalid. ‘I hope you’re taking care of yourself.’

  It is common knowledge in the Village that Eleanor Vine is something of a hypochondriac, taking twenty kinds of pills and disinfecting incessantly. Over twenty years ago, Ma used to clean her house, though now Eleanor reserves that privilege for herself, and can often be seen through her kitchen window, Marigolds on standby, polishing the fruit in the cut-glass dish that stands on the kitchen table, a mixture of joy and anxiety on her thin, discoloured face.

  My iPod was playing a song from one of my current playlists. Through the earpiece, Voltaire’s darkly satirical voice expounded the various virtues of vice to the melancholy counterpoint of a gypsy violin.

  And it’s so easy when you’re evil.

  This is the life, you see,

  The Devil tips his hat to me —

  ‘I’m quite all right, Mrs Vine,’ I said.

  ‘Not sickening for anything?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not even a cold.’

  ‘Because bereavement can do that, you know,’ she said. ‘Old Mr Marshall got pneumonia four weeks after his poor wife passed on. Dead before the headstone went up. The Examiner called it a double tragedy.’

  I had to smile at the thought of myself pining away for Nigel.

  ‘I hear they’re missing you at your class.’

  That killed the smile. ‘Oh yes? Who says?’

  ‘People talk,’ said Eleanor.

  I’ll bet they do. Toxic old cow. Spying on me for Ma, I don’t doubt. And now, thanks to Terri, a spy for my writing-as-therapy class, that little circle of parasites and headcases with whom I share — in supposed confidence — the details of my troubled life.

  ‘I’ve been preoccupied,’ I said.

  She gave me a look of sympathy. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It must be hard. And what about Gloria? Is she all right?’ She glanced around the parlour, alert for any telltale sign — a smear of dust on the mantelpiece, a speck on any one of Ma’s collection of china dogs — to suggest that Ma might be cracking up.

  ‘Oh, you know. She manages.’

  ‘I brought her a little something,’ she said, handing me a paper bag. ‘It’s a supplement I sometimes use when I’m feeling under the weather.’ She gave her vinegary smile. ‘Looks like you could do with some yourself. Have you been in a fight, or something?’

  ‘Who, me?’ I shook my head
.

  ‘No. Of course,’ said Eleanor.

  No, of course. As if I would. As if Gloria Winter’s boy could ever be involved in a fight. Everyone thinks they know me. Everyone’s an authority. And it always irks me a little to think that she, like Ma, would never believe the tenth of what I am capable —

  ‘Oh, Eleanor, love, you should have come through!’ That was Ma, emerging from the kitchen with a tea-towel in one hand and a vegetable peeler in the other. ‘I was just making him his vitamin drink. D’you want some tea while you’re here?’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘I just popped in to see how you were.’

  ‘Holding up all right,’ said Ma. ‘B.B.’s looking after me.’

  Ouch. That was below the belt. But Ma is very proud of me. A taste like that of rotten fruit slowly crept into my mouth. Rotten fruit mixed with salt, like a cocktail of juice and sea water. From my iPod, Voltaire declaimed with murderous exuberance:

  I do it all because I’m evil.

  And I do it all for free —

  Eleanor gave me a sidelong glance. ‘He must be such a comfort, love.’ She turned once more to look at me. ‘I don’t know how you can hear a word we’re saying with that thing in your ear. Don’t you ever take it out?’

  If I could have killed her then, right then, without risk, I would have snapped her neck like a stick of Blackpool rock without so much as a tremor of guilt — but as it was I had to smile so hard it made my fillings ache, and to take out one of my iPod plugs, and to promise to go back to my class next week, where everyone is missing me —

  ‘What did she mean, go back to your class? Have you been skipping sessions again?’

  ‘No, Ma. Just the one.’ I did not quite dare meet her eyes.

  ‘Those classes are for your own good. I don’t want to hear you’re skipping them.’

  Of course, I should have known that sooner or later she would find out. With friends like Eleanor Vine, her net covers all of Malbry. Besides, I quite enjoy my class, which gives me the chance to disseminate all kinds of misinformation —