When she was four, Daddy suggested that Emily might go to school. Maybe in Kirby Edge, he said, where there was a facility. Catherine refused to discuss it, of course. With Feather’s help, she said, her teaching had already worked a near-miracle. She had always known Emily was an exceptional child; she was not to waste her gifts in a school for blind children where she would be taught rug-making and self-pity, nor in a mainstream school where she would always be second-rate. No, Emily was to continue to receive tuition from home, so that when she eventually regained her sight – and there was no doubt at all in Catherine’s mind that this would happen some day – she would be ready to face whatever the world chanced to offer her.
Daddy protested as strenuously as he could. It was not nearly enough; Feather and Catherine barely heard him. Feather believed in past lives, and thought that if the correct parts of Emily’s brain were stimulated, then she would regain her visual memory; and Catherine believed . . .
Well, you know what Catherine believed. She could have lived with an ugly child; even a deformed child. But a blind child? A child with no understanding of colours?
Colours, colours, colours. Green, pink, gold, orange, purple, scarlet, blue. Blue alone has a thousand variations: cerulean, sapphire, cobalt, azure; from sky-blue to deepest midnight, passing through indigo and navy, powder-blue to electric-blue, forget-me-not, turquoise and aqua and Saxe. You see, Emily could understand the notation of colours. She knew their terms and their cadences; she learnt to repeat the notes and arpeggios of their seven-tone scale. And yet the nature of colours still eluded her. She was like a tone-deaf person who has learnt to play the piano, knowing that what he hears is nothing like music. But she could perform; oh yes; she could.
‘See the daffodils, Emily.’
‘Pretty daffodils. Sunny yellow-golden daffodils.’ As a matter of fact, they felt ugly to the touch; cold and somehow meaty, like slices of ham. Emily much preferred the fat silky leaves of the lamb’s tongue, or the lavenders with their nubbly flower-heads and sleepy smell.
‘Shall we paint the daffodils, sweetheart? Would you like Cathy to help you?’
The easel was set up in the studio. There was a big paintbox on the left, with the colours labelled in Braille. Three pots of water stood to the right, and a selection of brushes. Emily liked the sable brushes best. They were the best quality, and soft as the end of a cat’s tail. She liked to run them along the place just underneath her lower lip, a place of such sensitivity that she could feel every hair on a paintbrush, and where the nap of a piece of velvet ribbon was the most exquisitely discerned. The paper – thick, glossy art paper with its new, clean-bedclothes smell – was fastened to the easel with bulldog clips, and was sectioned into squares like a chessboard, by means of wires stretched across the paper. That way, Emily could be sure of not straying outside the picture, or confusing sky with trees.
‘Now for the trees, Emily. Good. That’s good.’
Trees are tall, Emily thinks. Taller than my father. Catherine lets her touch them, puts her face to their rough sides, like hugging a beardy man. There’s a smell, too, and a hint of movement, far away but still connected, still touching somehow. ‘It’s windy,’ Emily suggests, trying hard. ‘The tree’s moving in the wind.’
‘Good, darling! Very good!’
Splosh, splash. Now the white, no-colour paper is green. She knows this because her mother hugs her. Emily feels her trembling. There is a note in her voice, too – not F sharp this time, but something less shrill and teary – and something in Emily swells with pride and happiness, because she loves her mother; she loves the smell of turpentine because it is the smell of her mother; she loves the painting lessons because they make her mother proud – although later, when it is over and she creeps back to the studio and tries in vain to understand why it makes her so happy, Emily can feel only the tiniest roughening and crinkling of the paper, like hands after washing-up. That’s all she can feel, even with her lower lip. She tries not to feel too disappointed. There must be something there, she thinks. Her mother says so.
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blueeyedboy: That was beautiful, Albertine.
Albertine: Glad you liked it,
blueeyedboy . . .
3
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Posted at: 04.16 on Friday, February 8
Status: public
Mood: creative
Listening to: The Moody Blues: ‘The Story In Your Eyes’
Poor Emily. Poor Mrs White. So close and yet so far apart. What had started with Mr White and our hero’s abortive quest for his father had broadened into a kind of obsession with the whole of the household: with Mrs White, her husband, and most of all, with Emily, the little sister he might have had if things had turned out differently.
And so, all through that summer, the summer of his eleventh year, blueeyedboy followed them in secret, ritually noting their comings and goings; their clothes; the things they liked to do; their haunts, in the cloth-backed Blue Book that served him as a journal.
He followed them to the sculpture park where little Emily liked to play; to the open farm with its piglets and lambs; to the pottery workshop café in town, where for the price of a cup of tea you could buy and shape a lump of clay, to be baked in the oven the same day, then painted and taken home to take pride of place on some mantelpiece, in some cabinet.
The Saturday of the blue clay, Emily was four years old. Blueeyedboy had spotted her with Mrs White, walking slowly down the hill into Malbry, Emily in a little red coat that made her look like an unseasonal Christmas bauble, her little dark head bobbing up and down, Mrs White in boots and a blue print dress, her long blonde hair trailing down her back. He followed them all the way into town, keeping close to the hedges that lined the road. Mrs White never noticed him, not even when he ventured close, shadowing her blue silhouette with the doggedness of a junior spy.
Blueeyedboy, junior spy. He liked the stealthy sound of the phrase, its pearly string of sibilants, its secret hint of gunsmoke. He followed them into Malbry town centre, and into the pottery workshop, where Feather was waiting at a table for four, a cup of coffee in front of her, a half-smoked cigarette between her elegant fingers.
Blueeyedboy would have liked to have joined them there, but Feather’s presence daunted him. Since that first day at the market, he had sensed that she didn’t like him somehow, that she thought he wasn’t good enough for Mrs White or Emily. So he sat at a table behind them, trying to look casual, as if he had money to spend there and business of his own to conduct.
Feather eyed him suspiciously. She was wearing a brown ethnic-print dress and a lot of tortoiseshell bangles that clattered as she moved the hand holding the half-smoked cigarette.
Blueeyedboy avoided her gaze and pretended to look out of the window. When he dared to look back again, Feather was talking quite loudly to Mrs White, elbows on the table, occasionally tapping a little cone of cigarette ash into her empty teacup.
The pretty waitress came up to him. ‘Are you all together?’ she said. Blueeyedboy realized that she had assumed that he had come in with Mrs White, and before he could stop himself, he’d said yes. Against the sound of Feather’s voice, his small deception went unnoticed, and in a few moments the waitress had brought him a Pepsi and a lump of clay, with the kindly instruction to call for her if ever he needed anything more.
He was not sure what he’d intended to make. A dog for Ma’s collection, perhaps; something to put on the mantelpiece. Something – anything – to draw her away, even for an instant, from the Mansion, Dr Peacock’s work, and aspects of synaesthesia.
He watched them over his Pepsi, looking askance at Emily with her starfish hands splayed around her lump of blue clay. Feather was encouraging her, saying: Make something, darling. Make a shape. Mrs White was leaning forward, tensed with hope and expectancy, her long hair hanging so close to the clay that it looked as if
it might stick there.
‘What’s it going to be? A face?’
There came a sound from Emily that might have been acquiescence.
‘And those are the eyes, and there’s the nose—’ said Feather, sounding ecstatic, though blueeyedboy couldn’t see anything much to provoke such rapt excitement.
Emily’s hands moved on the clay, gouging a hole here and there, exploring with her fingertips, scraping her nails around the back to form the semblance of hair. Now he could see it was a head, though primitive and misshapen, with bat’s ears and a ludicrous pseudo-scientist’s brow that dwarfed the other features. The eyes were shallow thumbprints; barely even visible.
But Feather and Mrs White crowed in delight, and blueeyedboy drew closer to them, trying to see what it was in their eyes that made it so remarkable.
Feather gave him a dirty look. He pulled away from the table at once. But Mrs White had noticed him, and instead of pleased recognition, he saw a look of alarm in her eyes, as if she thought he might hurt Emily, as if he could be dangerous –
‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
He gave a shrug. ‘N-nothing.’
‘Where are your brothers? Your mother?’
He shrugged. Faced with his long-pursued quarry at last, he found that speech had abandoned him, leaving nothing but broken syllables and a stammer that rendered him helpless.
‘You’re following me,’ said Mrs White. ‘What do you want?’
Again, he shrugged. He couldn’t have explained it to her even if they had been alone, and Feather’s presence by her side made it even less possible. He twisted on the seat of his chair, feeling trapped and foolish, with the taste of the vitamin drink in his throat, and his forehead like a squeezed balloon –
Feather narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You know this counts as harassment,’ she said. ‘Catherine could call the police.’
‘He’s only a boy,’ said Mrs White.
‘Boys grow up,’ said Feather darkly.
‘What do you want?’ said Mrs White again.
‘I-I just w-wanted to s-see E-Emily,’ said blueeyedboy, feeling nauseous. He looked at the lump of untouched clay and the half-drunk Pepsi at his side. He hadn’t intended to order them. He had no money to pay for them. And now here was Mrs White’s friend talking about calling the police –
He really meant to tell her the truth. But now he hardly knew what that was. He had thought that when he spoke to her he would know what it was that he wanted to say. But now, as the vegetable stink increased and the ache in his head intensified, he knew that what he wanted from her was something far closer to the bone; a word that came clothed in shades of blue . . .
Late that night, alone in his room, he took out the Blue Book from under his bed and, instead of his journal, began to write a story.
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ClairDeLune: Interesting, how this fic explores the evolution of the creative process. If you don’t mind, I’d like to circulate this to some of my other students – or maybe we could discuss it here?
4
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Posted at: 22.40 on Friday, February 8
Status: restricted
Mood: ominous
Listening to: Jarvis Cocker: ‘I Will Kill Again’
Eleanor Vine called round early tonight while Ma was getting ready to go out, and took the opportunity to take Yours Truly to task again. It seems that my continuing absence from our writing-as-therapy group has been noted and commented upon. She doesn’t attend herself, of course – too many people; too much dirt – but I guess Terri must have talked.
People talk to Eleanor. She seems to invite confidences, somehow. And I can see how it’s killing her that she has known me all this time and still has no more knowledge of me than when I was four years old –
‘You really should go back, you know,’ she says. ‘You need to get out more. Make new friends. Besides, you owe it to your Ma—’
Owe it to Ma? Don’t make me laugh.
I adjusted my iPod earpiece. It’s the only way I can deal with her. Through it, in his rasping voice, Jarvis Cocker confided to me what, if given half a chance, he would do to someone like Eleanor –
She gave me a look of fish-eyed reproach. ‘I hear there’s someone who’s missing you.’
‘Really?’ I feigned innocence.
‘Don’t be coy. She likes you.’ She gave me a nudge. ‘You could do worse.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, Mrs Vine.’
Interfering old trout. As if that collection of fucktards and losers could ever throw up a live one. I know who she means; I’m not interested. In my earpiece Cocker’s voice shifted registers, now soaring plaintively towards the octave:
And don’t believe me if I claim to be your friend
‘Cos given half the chance I know that I will kill again . . .
But Eleanor Vine is persistent as glue. ‘You could be a nice-looking young man, once those bruises have disappeared. You don’t want to be selling yourself short. I’ve seen you hanging around that girl, and you know as well as I do that if your Ma knew, there’d be hell to pay.’
I flinched at that. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘That girl in the Pink Zebra. The one with all the tattoos,’ she said.
‘Who, Bethan?’ I said. ‘She hates me.’
Eleanor raised an eyebrow that was mostly skin and wire. ‘On first-name terms, then, are we?’ she said.
‘I hardly ever speak to her, except to order Earl Grey.’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ said Eleanor.
That’ll be Terri, I told myself. She sometimes goes into the Zebra. In fact, I think she follows me. It’s getting quite hard to avoid her.
‘Bethan’s not my type,’ I said.
Eleanor seemed to calm down after that, the roguish expression returning to her sharp and avid features. ‘So – you’ll think about what I said, then? A girl like our Terri won’t wait around for ever. You’re going to have to do something soon—’
I gave a sigh. ‘All right,’ I said.
She gave me an approving look. ‘I knew you’d see sense. Now – I have to go. I know your Ma’s got her salsa class. But keep me up to date, won’t you? And remember what they always say—’
I wondered what cliché she would use this time. Faint heart never won fair lady? Or: Best strike while the iron’s hot?
As it was, she didn’t have the chance, because Ma came in just at that moment, all in black, with sequins. Her dancing shoes had six-inch heels. I didn’t envy her partner.
‘Eleanor! What a surprise!’
‘Just having a chat with B.B.,’ she said.
‘That’s nice.’ I thought Ma’s eyes narrowed a little.
‘I’m surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend,’ said Eleanor, with a sideways glance. ‘If I were twenty years younger,’ she said, addressing her words to my mother now, ‘I swear I’d marry him myself.’
I considered Mrs Vine in blue. It suited her.
‘Really,’ said Ma.
I suppose she means well, I told myself, even though she has no idea what she’s dealing with. She’s only trying to do what’s best, as Ma always tries to do what’s best for me. But Our Terri, as she calls her, is hardly the stuff of fantasy. Besides, I have no time for romance. I have other fish to fry.
Mrs Vine gave me something that I guessed was meant to be a smile. ‘Can you drop me off at home? I’d walk, but I know you’ll be driving your ma, and—’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have to go.’
5
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Posted at: 23.49 on Saturday, February 9
Status: public
Mood: clean
Listening to: Genesis: ‘One For The Vine’
He calls her Mrs Chemical Blue. Hygiene and neatness are her concern; something that, in fifteen years, has gone beyond rea
son – or even a joke. Biscuits eaten over the sink; windows washed daily; dusting ten, twenty times a day; ornaments on the mantelpiece rearranged every quarter of an hour. She was always house-proud – and what an odd word, he thinks to himself, recalling what he knows of that house, and the way she used to watch his Ma at work, thin hands clenched in fearful distress, her face rigid with anxiety that a dishtowel might be left disastrously unaligned, or a mat slightly askew to the door, or a speck of dust left on a rug, or even a knick-knack out of place.
Mr Chemical Blue has long gone, taking their teenage son with him. Perhaps she regrets it a little, sometimes; but children are so messy, she thinks, and she never could make him understand how hiring a cleaner only complicated things; caused her, not less, but more work; meant something else to supervise, another person in the house, another set of fingerprints – and although she knew no one was to blame, she found their presence unbearable – yes, even that sweet little boy – until finally they had to go –
Since then, of course, it has worsened. With no one to keep her under control, obsession has taken over her life. No longer content with her spotless house, she has progressed to compulsive handwashing and near-toxic doses of Listerine. Always slightly neurotic, fifteen years of alcohol and antidepressants have taken their toll on her personality so that now, at fifty-nine years old, she is nothing but twitches and tics, a nervous system out of control, thinly upholstered in wan flesh.
No one would miss her, he tells himself. In fact, it would probably be a relief. An anonymous gift to her family: to her son, who visits twice a year and who can hardly bear to see her like this; to her husband, who has moved on, and whose guilt has grown like a tumour; to her niece, who lives in despair of her perpetual interference and her well-meant but disastrous attempts to fix her up with a nice young man.
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