Blueeyedboy

by Joanne Harris

  ‘That’s what you get, Gray,’ she said, ‘trying to play Pygmalion. Don’t expect gratitude from the boy – in fact, you’re doing him a disservice, leading him to believe that he can sponge off you instead of getting a proper job. He could even end up being dangerous. Give money to these people, and what do they do? They buy drink and drugs. Things get out of hand. It wouldn’t be the first time that some poor benevolent soul has been murdered in his bed by the very people he’s trying to help—’

  And so on. Finally, following heated discussions between Dr Peacock and Catherine, Boy X ceased his visits to the Fireplace House, never to return.

  Catherine was magnanimous in victory. Boy X had been a mistake, she said. Paid handsomely for his cooperation in Dr Peacock’s experiments, it was only natural that a person of his type should try to exploit the situation. But now here was the real thing, that rarest of phenomena: a blind-from-birth true synaesthete, reborn to sight again through music. It was a fabulous story, and deserved to stand alone. There was to be no one to undermine the uniqueness of the Emily White Phenomenon. 215

  Post comment:

  blueeyedboy: Ouch! That was rather below the belt –

  Albertine: I’ll stop whenever you’ve had enough . . .

  blueeyedboy: Do you really think you can?

  Albertine: I don’t know, blueeyedboy . The question is: can you?

  12

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:

  badguysrock@webjournal.com

  Posted at: 01.56 on Tuesday, February 12

  Status: public

  Mood: sorry

  Listening to: Mark Knopfler: ‘The Last Laugh’

  That marked the end for Benjamin. He’d sensed it almost immediately, that subtle shift in emphasis, and though it took some time to die, like a flower in a vase, he knew that something had ended for him that night in St Oswald’s Chapel. The shadow of little Emily White had eclipsed him almost from the start: from her story, which was sensational, to the undeniable media appeal of the blind girl, whose super-sense was to make her a national superstar.

  Now Ben’s long days at the Mansion dwindled to an hourly session; time that he shared with Emily, sitting quietly on the couch while Dr Peacock showed her off as if she were some collector’s piece – a moth, perhaps, or a figurine – expecting Ben to admire her, to share in his enthusiasm. Worse still, Brendan was there again (to keep an eye on him, Ma said, while she went to work at the market); his gawping, grinning brother in brown with his greasy hair and hangdog look, who rarely spoke, but sat and stared, filling Ben with such hate and shame that sometimes he wanted nothing more than to run away and to leave Bren alone – awkward, boorish, out of place – in that house of delicate things.

  Catherine White put a stop to that. It wasn’t right for those boys to be there, not without supervision. There were too many valuable things in that house; too many temptations. Benjamin’s visits dwindled once again, so that now he dropped by just once a month, and waited with Bren on the front steps until Mrs White was ready to leave, hearing piano music drift out across the lawn, laden with the scent of paint, so that every time blueeyedboy hears that sound – be it a Rachmaninoff prelude or the intro to ‘Hey Jude’ – it brings back the memory of those days and the sorry little lurch of the heart that he felt when he glanced through the parlour window and saw Emily sitting on the swing, pendulum-ing back and forth like a happy little bird –

  At first, all he did was watch her. Like everyone else, he was dazzled by her, content to simply admire her ascent, much as Dr Peacock must have watched the Luna moth as she struggled out of the chrysalis, in awe and admiration, coloured, perhaps, with a little regret. She was so pretty, even then. So effortlessly lovable. There was something about the trusting way in which she held her father’s hand, face turned up towards him like a flower to the sun; or the monkeyish way in which she would scramble on to the piano stool, one leg tucked in, a sock at half-mast, half-eerie, half-enchanting. She was like a doll that had come to life, all porcelain and ivory, so that Mrs White, who had always liked dolls, could dress her daughter all year round in bright little outfits and matching shoes right out of an old-fashioned storybook.

  As for our hero, blueeyedboy –

  Puberty had hit him hard, with pimples on his back and face, and a half-broken voice that, even now, retains a slightly uneven tone. His childhood stammer had got worse. He lost it later, but that year it got so bad that on some days he could hardly speak. Smells and colours intensified, bringing with them migraines that the doctor promised would fade with time. They never did. He has them still, although his coping strategies have become somewhat more sophisticated.

  After the Christmas concert, Emily seemed to spend most of her time at the Mansion. But with so many other people there, blueeyedboy rarely spoke to her; besides which, his stammer made him self-conscious, and he preferred to remain in the background, unregarded and unheard. Sometimes he would sit on the porch outside with a comic or a Western, content to be in her orbit, quietly, without fuss. Besides, reading was a pleasure seldom allowed Yours Truly at home, where Ma was always in need of help, and his brothers never left him alone. Reading was for sissies, they said, and whatever he chose – be it Superman, Judge Dredd or even just the Beano – would always incur the ridicule of blueeyedboy’s brother in black, who would pester him relentlessly – Look at the pretty pictures! Aww! So what’s your super-power, then? – until blueeyedboy was by turns shamed and coerced into doing something different.

  Midweek, between visits to the Mansion, he would sometimes walk past Emily’s house in the hope of seeing her playing outside. Occasionally, he saw her in town, but always with her mother: standing to attention like a good little soldier, sometimes flanked by Dr Peacock, who had become her protector, her mentor, her second father. As if she needed another one, as if she didn’t already have everything.

  It probably sounds like he envied her. That isn’t altogether true. But somehow he couldn’t stop thinking about her, studying her, watching her. His interest gathered momentum. He stole a camera from a second-hand shop, and taught himself to take pictures. He stole a long lens from the same shop, almost getting caught that time, but managing to get away with his trophy before the fat man at the counter – surprisingly speedy for all his bulk – finally gave up the pursuit.

  When his mother told him at last that he was no longer welcome at the Mansion, he didn’t quite believe her. He’d become so accustomed to his routine – sitting quietly on the couch, reading books, drinking Earl Grey tea, listening to Emily’s music – that to be dismissed after all this time felt like an unfair punishment. It wasn’t his fault – he’d done nothing wrong. It was surely a misunderstanding. Dr Peacock had always been so kind; why would he turn against him now?

  Later, blueeyedboy understood. Dr Peacock, for all his kindness, had been just another version of his mother’s ladies, who’d been so friendly when he was four, but who had so quickly lost interest. Friendless, starved of affection at home, he’d read too much into those affable ways: the walks around the rose garden; the cups of tea; the sympathy. In short, he’d fallen into the trap of mistaking compassion for caring.

  Calling round that evening in the hope of finding out the truth, Yours Truly was met, not by Dr Peacock, but by Mrs White, in a black satin dress with a string of pearls round her long neck, who told him that he shouldn’t be there; that he was to leave and never come back, that he was trouble, that she knew his type –

  ‘Is that what Dr Peacock says?’

  Well, that was what he meant to say. But his stammer was worse than ever that day, closing his mouth with clumsy stitches, and he found he could hardly say a word.

  ‘B-but why?’ he asked her.

  ‘Don’t try to pretend. Don’t think you can get away with it.’

  For a moment, shame overwhelmed him. He didn’t know what he had done, but Mrs White seemed so sure of his guilt, and his eyes began to sting with te
ars, and the stink of Ma’s vitamin drink in his throat was almost enough to make him gag –

  Please don’t cry, he told himself. Not in front of Mrs White.

  She gave him a look of burning contempt. ‘Don’t think you can get around me like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  Blueeyedboy was. Ashamed and suddenly angry; and if he could have killed her then, he would have done it without hesitation or remorse. But he was only a schoolboy, and she was from a different sphere, a different class, to be obeyed, no matter what – his mother had trained her sons well – and the sound of her words was like a spike being driven into the side of his head –

  ‘Please,’ he said, without stammering.

  ‘Go away,’ said Mrs White.

  ‘Please. Mrs White. C-can’t we be friends?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Friends?’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother was my cleaner, that’s all. Not even a very good one. And if you think that gives you the right to harass me and my daughter, then think again.’

  ‘I wasn’t ha-ha—’ he began.

  ‘And what do you call those photographs?’ she said, looking him straight in the face.

  The shock of it dried his tears at once.

  ‘Ph-photographs?’ he said shakily.

  Turns out Feather had a friend who worked in the local photo shop. The friend had told Feather, who’d told Mrs White, who’d demanded to see the relevant prints and had taken them straight to the Mansion, where she’d used them to prove her argument that befriending the Winters had been a mistake, one from which Dr Peacock should distance himself without delay –

  ‘Don’t think you haven’t been seen,’ she said. ‘Creeping around after Emily. Taking pictures of us both—’

  That wasn’t true. He never shot her. He only ever shot Emily. But he couldn’t say that to Mrs White. Nor could he beg her not to tell Ma –

  And so he left, dry-eyed with rage, tongue stapled to the roof of his mouth. And as he looked over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the Mansion, he saw a movement in one of the upper windows. He moved away almost at once; but blueeyedboy had had time to see Dr Peacock, watching him, warding him off with a sheepish smile –

  That was where it really began. That’s where blueeyedboy was born. Later that night he crept back to the house, armed with a can of peacock-blue paint, and, almost paralysed with fear and guilt, he scrawled his rage on the big front door, the door that had been cruelly shut in his face, and then, alone in his room again, he took out the battered Blue Book to draw up another murder. 220

  Post comment:

  Albertine: Oh please, not another murder. I really thought we were getting somewhere.

  blueeyedboy: All right, but – you owe me one . . .

  13

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:

  badguysrock@webjournal.com

  Posted at: 02.05 on Tuesday, February 12

  Status: public

  Mood: crushed

  Listening to: Don Henley: ‘The Boys Of Summer’

  It only started out as that. A journal of his fictional life. There is a kind of innocence in those early entries, hidden away between the lines of cramped, obsessive handwriting. Sometimes he remembers the truth: the daily disappointments; the rage; the hurt; the cruelty. The rest of the time he can almost believe that he was really blueeyedboy – that what was in the Blue Book was real, and Benjamin Winter and Emily White just figments of some other person’s imagination. The Blue Book helped him stay sane; in it he wrote his fantasies; his secret vengeance against all those who hurt and humiliated him.

  As for little Emily –

  He watched her more than ever now. In secret, in envy, in longing, in love. Over the months that followed his expulsion from the Peacock house, he followed Emily’s career, her life. He took hundreds of photographs. He collected newspaper clippings of her. He even befriended the little girl who lived next door to Mrs White, giving her sweets and calling on her in the hope of a glimpse of Emily.

  For some time Dr Peacock had worked to keep Emily’s identity secret. In his papers she was simply Girl Y – a fitting replacement to Boy X – until such time as he and her parents chose to launch her into the world. But blueeyedboy knew the truth. Blueeyedboy knew what she was. A Luna moth in a glass case, just waiting to fly from the chrysalis straight into the killing jar –

  He went on taking photographs, though he learnt to do it with greater stealth. He got two after-school jobs – a newspaper round, a couple of nights washing dishes at a local café – and with his wages he bought himself a second-hand enlarger, a stack of photographic paper and some trays and chemicals. Using books from the library, he learnt to develop the photographs himself, eventually converting the cellar, which his mother never used, into a little darkroom.

  He felt like someone who had missed the winning lottery number by a single digit – and it didn’t help that Ma never failed to make him feel that somehow it had all been his fault, that if he’d been smarter, quicker, better, then it could have been one of her boys scooping up the attention, the praise.

  That year, Ma made it clear to her sons that all of them had let her down. Nigel, for failing so miserably to keep the other two in line; Brendan, for his stupidity; but most especially Benjamin, on whom so many hopes had been placed, but who had failed his Ma in every way. At the Mansion; at home; but most of all at St Oswald’s. Ben’s schooling at that exclusive establishment had proved the greatest setback of all, confounding Ma’s expectations that her son was destined for great things. In fact, he’d hated it from the start, and only his relationship with Dr Peacock had prevented him from saying so.

  But now everything about it was inimical to him: from the boys, who, just like the ones from the estate, called him freak and loser and queer (albeit in more refined accents), to the pretentious names of the buildings themselves – names like Rotunda and Porte-Cochère – names that tasted of rotten fruit, plummy with self-satisfaction and ripe with the odour of sanctity.

  Like the vitamin drink, St Oswald’s was meant to be good for his health; to help him achieve his potential. But after three miserable years there, where to some extent he had tried to fit in, he still wanted Dr Peacock’s house, with the fireplace and the smell of old books. He missed the Earth globes with their magical names; and most of all he missed the way Dr Peacock used to talk to him, as if he really cared –

  No one at St Oswald’s cared. It was true that no one bullied him – well, not the way his brother did – but all the same he could always feel that undercurrent of contempt. Even the Masters had it, although some were better than others at concealing it.

  They called him by his surname, Winter, like an Army cadet. They drilled him with tables and irregular verbs. They gave huge, dramatic sighs at his displays of ignorance. They set him to copying lines.

  I will keep my schoolbooks in immaculate condition. (Nigel always found them, however well he hid them away.) My uniform represents the school. I will wear it always with pride. (This was when Nigel had scissored his tie, leaving nothing but a stub.) I will at least pretend to pay attention when a senior Master enters the room. (This from the ever-sarcastic Dr Devine, who came into his form-room one morning to find him asleep at his desk.)

  The worst of it was that he really tried. He tried to excel at his schoolwork. He wanted his teachers to be proud of him. Whereas some boys failed through laziness, he was acutely aware of the hated privilege of attending St Oswald’s Grammar School, and he tried very hard to deserve it. But Dr Peacock, with his fine disregard for the curriculum, had coached him in only the subjects he himself valued – art, history, music, English literature – neglecting maths and the sciences, with the result that Ben had lagged behind ever since his first term at school and, in spite of all his efforts, had never recovered the deficit.

  When Dr Peacock withdrew from their lives, Benjamin had expected Ma to withdraw him from the grammar sch
ool. In fact he prayed for it fervently, but the one time he dared mention the matter to her, she whacked him with the length of electrical cord.

  ‘I’ve already put too much into you,’ she said, as she folded the cord away. ‘Far too much, in any case, to let you drop out at this stage.’

  After that, he knew better than to complain. He sensed another shift in things as adolescence claimed him. His brothers were growing up fast, and Ma, like an October wasp sensing the coming of winter, had turned vicious overnight, making her sons the target of her frustrations. Suddenly they were all under fire, from the way they spoke to the length of their hair, and blueeyedboy realized with growing dismay that Ma’s devotion to her sons had been part of a long-term investment plan that now was expected to bear fruit.

  Nigel had left school some three months ago, and the urge to make Ben suffer had begun to take second place to finding a flat, a girl, a job, an escape – from Ma, from his brothers, from Malbry.

  Now he seemed suddenly older, more distant, more given to dark moods and silences. He’d always been moody and withdrawn. Now he became almost a recluse. He’d bought himself a telescope, and on cloudless nights he took to the moors, coming home in the early hours, which was no bad thing as far as Ben was concerned, but which made Ma anxious and irritable.

  If Nigel’s escape was in the stars, Brendan had found another route. At sixteen he already outweighed Ben by fifty pounds, and, far from losing his puppy fat, now supplemented his confectionary habit with alarming amounts of junk food. He too had a part-time job, at a fried-chicken place in Malbry town centre, where he could snack all day if he liked, and from which he returned on weekday nights with the Bargain Bucket Meal Deal, which, if he wasn’t hungry then, he would have cold for breakfast the following morning, along with a quart of Pepsi, before setting off for Sunnybank Park, where he was in his final year. Ma had hoped that he would at least stay on until his A-levels, but nothing Ma could say or do had any effect on Ben’s voracious brother, who seemed to have made it his mission in life to eat his way out of her custody. Ben reckoned it was only a matter of time before Brendan failed his exams and dropped out, then moved away altogether.