by Джоан Харрис
‘Nigel did this?’ Her voice was small.
‘What do you think?’
Now her eyes were open again. God, but they were beautiful. No grief in them now, nor anger, nor love. Just beauty, blank and blameless.
‘Nigel was always unstable,’ I said. ‘I suppose he must have told you that. That he was prone to acts of violence? That he murdered his brother, no less?’
She winced. ‘Of course he told me. He said it was an accident.’
‘But he told you all about it, right?’
‘He got in a fight over twenty years ago. That doesn’t make him a murderer.’
‘Oh, please,’ I interrupted. ‘What does it matter how long ago? No one changes. It’s a myth. There’s no road to Damascus. No path to redemption. Not even the love of a good woman — assuming such a thing exists — can wash the blood from a killer’s hands.’
‘Stop it!’ Her own hands were shaking. ‘Can’t we just leave this alone?’ she said. ‘Can’t it just stay in the past, for once?’
The past? Don’t give me that, Albertine. You, of all people, should understand that the past is never over. We drag it behind us everywhere, like a can tied to a stray dog’s tail. Try to outrun it, it just makes more noise. Until it drives you crazy.
‘He never told you, did he?’ I said. ‘He never said what happened that day?’
‘Don’t. Please. Leave me alone.’
I could tell from the tone of her voice that she’d given me all she could today. Better than I’d expected, in fact; and besides, the essential part of a game is always knowing when to fold. I paid my bill with a twenty-pound note, leaving it tucked under my plate. She did not respond, or even look up, as I said goodbye to her and left. The last I saw of her as I opened the door and stepped out into the darkness was the fleeting flash of colour as she reached for her red duffel coat hanging behind the counter, and the crescent moon of her profile eclipsed behind the screen of her open hands —
Truth hurts, doesn’t it, Albertine? Lies are so much safer. But murderers run in our family, and Nigel was no exception. And who would have thought that nice young man could have ever done such a terrible thing? And who would have thought that a little white lie could snowball into murder?
2
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 23.25 on Wednesday, February 13
Status: restricted
Mood: rueful
Listening to: Freddie Mercury: ‘The Great Pretender’
It was an accident, they said. A cracked skull, the result of a fall downstairs. Not even the main stairs, as it turned out, but the six stone steps at the front door. Somehow he’d come off the ramp that I’d built, or maybe he had tried to stand, as sometimes he did occasionally; to stand up miraculously and walk across the misty white lawn like Jesus on the water.
That was over three weeks ago. Lots of things have happened since then. My brother’s death; the loss of my job; my dialogue with Albertine. But don’t think I ever forgot. Dr Peacock was always on my mind. Old enough to have been forgotten by almost everyone he’d known; old enough to have outlived his fame, even his notoriety. A pathetic old man, half-blind and confused, who told the same stories again and again and barely recognized my face —
He wrote me into his will, you know. How ironic is that? You’ll find me at the end of the list, under miscellaneous other. I guess a man who can leave thirty thousand pounds to the animal shelter that supplied his dogs can well afford a couple of grand for the guy who used to clean up for him, and cook his mushy old-man’s meals, and wheel him around the garden.
A couple of grand. Less, with tax. Not nearly enough to qualify as a motive. But it’s rather nice to be, if not exactly recognized, then at least given some acknowledgement for all the work I did for him, for my tireless good cheer, for my honesty —
Did he recall my tenth birthday? The candle on the iced bun? I don’t suppose so — why should he care? I was nobody; nothing to him. If that day still survived within his damaged memory, it would have been as the day he buried poor old Rover, or Bowser, or Jock, or whatever the hell the dog’s name was. To pretend to myself that he might have cared for me, for blueeyedboy, is ludicrous. I was simply a project to him, not even the main act of the show. Still, I can’t help wondering —
Did he know his murderer? Did he try to call for help? Or was it all just a blur to him, a heap of broken images? Personally, I like to think that, right at the end, he understood. That as he died, his senses returned for just long enough for him to know just how he was dying, and why. Not everyone gets to know those things. Not everyone gets that privilege. But I like to think that maybe he did, and that the last thing he ever saw, the picture that followed him into eternity, was a familiar face, a more-than-familiar pair of eyes —
The police came round to the house, of course. Eleanor Vine directed them there, though I still have no idea how she found out I was working at the Mansion. For a woman who spent most of her time shut up in her house, cleaning the floors, she seemed to have an uncanny knack for revealing embarrassing secrets. In this case, however, I realized, with some relief, that my cover was only partially blown: she knew I was working for Dr Peacock, but not about my hospital job, though she may have had her suspicions by then, and exposure might have been just a matter of time.
Did she believe I was involved? If so, she was disappointed. There were no handcuffs, there was no interrogation, no trip to the police station. Even the questions they asked me had a tired quality. After all, there was no sign of violence. The victim had merely suffered a fall. The death — the accidental death — of one old man (even if he had been famous once) was hardly a matter for much concern.
My mother took it badly, though. It wasn’t the thought that I might have killed Dr Peacock, but just the fact that I’d been in the house, had worked in that house for eighteen months without her even suspecting it — and worse, that Eleanor had known —
‘How could you?’ she said, when they had gone. ‘How could you set foot in that house again, after everything that’s happened?’
There was no point my denying what I’d done. But as any seasoned liar knows, a half-truth can screen a thousand lies. And so I confessed. I’d had no choice. I’d had to take on extra work. It was part of the hospital’s outpatient scheme. The fact that I’d got that particular case was nothing but coincidence.
‘You could have talked your way out of it. You could talk your way out of a locked room—’
‘It isn’t as easy as that, Ma—’
She slapped me then, across the mouth. One of her rings cut my lip. Probably the tourmaline. Its taste was Campari soda with an aluminium chaser of blood.
Tourmaline. Tour. Malign. It sounds like a place of imprisonment, an evil tower from a Perrault fairy tale, and its smell is the same as St Oswald’s, a reek of disinfectant and dust and polish and cabbage and chalk and boys.
‘Don’t you dare patronize me. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.’
My mother has a sixth sense. She always knows when I’ve done something wrong; when I’m thinking of doing something wrong.
‘You wanted to see him, didn’t you? After everything he’s done to us. You wanted his fucking approval.’ Her camelbacked foot in its sling-back heel began to tap a quick, irregular rhythm against the leg of the sofa. The sound of it made my throat go dry, and the vegetable stink of it was enough to make me want to gag.
‘Please, Ma.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Please, Ma, it’s not my fault—’
She is surprisingly quick with her hands. I was expecting the second blow, and still it caught me by surprise, knocking me sideways into the wall. The cabinet with the china dogs shivered once, but nothing fell.
‘Then whose fault is it, you little shit?’
I put a hand to my cut lip. I knew she hadn’t even begun; her face was almost expressionless, but her voice was charged like a battery. I took a s
tep closer to the cabinet. I figured she wouldn’t risk anything so close to her china dogs.
When she’s dead, I thought to myself, I’m going to take every single one of those fucking dogs out into the back yard and stamp on them with my engineer boots.
She saw me looking. ‘B.B., come here!’
Just as I thought, I told myself. She wanted me clear of that cabinet. She’d acquired a new ornament, I saw; an Oriental specimen. I put out my hand and rested it very gently against the pane.
‘Don’t do that,’ my mother snapped. ‘You’ll leave fingerprints on the glass.’
I could tell she wanted to hit me again. But she didn’t — not then — because of those dogs. Still, I couldn’t stay there all day. I turned towards the parlour door, hoping to make it upstairs to my room, but Ma grabbed hold of the door-handle and, with one hand in the small of my back, yanked the door open into my face —
After that, it was easy. Once I was down, her feet did the rest, her feet in those fucking sling-backed heels. By the time she was done I was snivelling, and my face was laddered with scratches and cuts.
‘Now look at you,’ Ma said — the violent outburst over now, but still with a trace of impatience, as if this were something I’d brought on myself, some unrelated accident. ‘You’re a mess. What on earth were you playing at?’
I knew there was no point in trying to explain. Experience has taught me that when Ma gets like this, it’s better to stay quiet and hope for the best. Later, she’ll fill in the gaps with some kind of plausible story; a fall down the stairs, an accident. Or maybe this time I was mugged, or beaten up on my way from work. I should know. It’s happened before. And those sharp little breaks in her memory are getting increasingly frequent, more so since my brother’s death.
I tested my ribs. None seemed broken. But my back hurt where she’d kicked me, and there was a deep cut across my eyebrow where the edge of the door had struck. Blood drenched the front of my shirt, and I could already feel one of my headaches coming, arpeggios of coloured light troubling my vision.
‘I suppose you’ll need stitches now,’ said Ma. ‘As if I didn’t already have enough to do today. Oh, well.’ She sighed. ‘Boys will be boys. Always up to something. Lucky I was here, eh? I’ll come with you to the hospital.’
OK, so I lied. I’m not proud of the fact. It was Ma, and not Nigel, who messed up my face. Gloria Green; five foot four in her shoes, sixty-nine and built like a bird —
You’ll be fine in no time, love, said the pink-haired nurse as she fixed me up. Stupid bitch. As if she cared. I was just a patient to her. Patient. Penitent. Words that smell of citrus green and sting like a mouthful of needles. And I have been so patient, Ma, patient for so very long.
I had to quit my job after that. Too many questions; too many lies; too many snares in which to be caught. Having discovered one subterfuge, Ma could so easily have checked me out and exposed the pretence of the past twenty years —
Still, it’s a short-term setback. My long-term plan remains unchanged. Enjoy your china dogs, Ma. Enjoy them while you still can.
I suppose I ought to feel pleased with myself. I’m getting away with murder. A smile, a kiss, and — Whoops! All gone! — like a malignant conjuring trick. You don’t believe me? Check it out. Search me from all angles. Look for hidden mirrors, for secret compartments, for cards up my sleeve. I promise you I’m totally clean. And yet, it’s going to happen, Ma. Just you watch it blow up in your face.
These were my thoughts as I lay there on the hospital trolley, thinking about those china dogs and how I was going to stomp them into powder the minute — the second — Ma was dead. And as soon as I let the thought take shape without the comforting blanket of fic, it was almost as if a nuke had gone off inside my skull, tearing into me, wringing me like a wet rag and cramping my jaw in a silent scream —
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Did that hurt?’ The pink-haired nurse, all three of her, swam briefly across my consciousness like a shoal of tropical fish.
‘He gets these headaches,’ said Ma. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only stress.’
‘I can get the doctor to prescribe something—’
‘No. Don’t bother. It’ll pass.’
That was nearly three weeks ago. Forgotten, if not quite forgiven, perhaps, the stitches removed, the bruises now veering from purple and blue to an oil-slick palette of yellows and greens. The headache took three days to subside, during which time Ma fed me home-made soup and watched by my bed as I shivered and moaned. I don’t think I said anything aloud. Even in my delirium, I think I was cleverer than that. In any case, by the end of the week, things were back to normal again, and blueeyedboy was, if not quite off the hook, then at least back in the net for another spell.
Meanwhile, on the bright side —
Eleanor Vine is most unwell. Taken ill last Saturday, she remains in hospital, on a respirator. Toxic shock, so Terri says, or maybe some kind of allergy. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised — with the number of pills Eleanor takes, apparently at random, something like this had to happen some day. Still, it’s an odd coincidence that a fic posted in my WeJay should have taken on such a life of its own. It’s not the first time this has happened, either; it’s almost as if, by some voodoo, I have acquired the ability to delete from the world all those who hurt or threaten me. A stroke of the keys — and pfft! Delete.
If only it were as easy as that. If this were simply a matter of wishful thinking, then my troubles would have been over more than twenty years ago. It began with the Blue Book — that catalogue of my hopes and dreams — and followed on into cyberspace, on to my WeJay, and badguysrock. But of course it’s only fiction. And although it may have been Catherine White in my fic — or Eleanor Vine, or Graham Peacock, or any of those parasites — there was only ever one face in my mind: battered and bleeding, bludgeoned to death, strangled with piano wire; electrocuted in the bath; poisoned; drowned; decapitated, dead in a hundred different ways.
One face. One name.
I know. It’s unforgivable. To wish for my mother’s death in this way — to long for it, as one might long for a cool drink on a hot day, to wait with racing heart for the sound of her key in the front door, to hope that today might be the one —
Accidents happen so easily. A hit-and-run; a fall down the stairs; a random act of violence. Then there are the health issues. At sixty-nine, she is already old. Her hands are thick with arthritis; her blood pressure is sky-high. Cancer runs in the family: her own mother died at fifty-five. And the house itself is filled with potential hazards: overloaded electrical sockets; loose carpet runners; plant pots balanced precariously on bedroom window-ledges. Accidents happen all the time; but never, it seems, to Gloria Green. It’s enough to drive a boy to despair.
And yet I continue to live in hope. Hope, the most spiteful of all the demons in Pandora’s little box of tricks —
3
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 09.55 on Thursday, February 14
Status: restricted
Mood: romantic
Listening to: Boomtown Rats: ‘I Never Loved Eva Braun’
It’s February the 14th, Valentine’s Day, and love, true love, is in the air. That’s why I’ve left that envelope on the corner of the china cabinet next to the chocolates and flowers. Not roses, thank God, nor even orchids, but a nice arrangement nonetheless, lavish enough to be expensive, though not enough to be vulgar.
The card itself is selected with care: no jokey cartoons, no sexual innuendo, no promises of undying affection. Ma knows me better than that. It’s the gesture that matters; the triumph that she will feel on her next outing with — for instance — Maureen, Eleanor, or Adèle, whose son lives in London and who rarely even telephones.
We do not fool ourselves, Ma and I. But still the game goes on. We’ve played the game a long, long time; this game of stealth and strategy. Each of us has had our share of victories and defeats. But now comes the
chance to own the field — which is why right now I can’t afford to take unnecessary risks. She’s suspicious enough of me as it is. Unstable, too, and growing worse. It was bad enough when my brothers were here, but now I am the only one, the last, and she keeps me like one of her china dogs, on display from all angles —
She expresses surprise at the gifts and the card. This, too, is part of the game. If there had been no Valentine, she would have made no comment, but in a few days there would have been consequences. And so it pays to observe the conventions, to play along, to remember the stakes. That’s why I’ve made it this far, of course. By always giving the devil his due.
Online, my friends remember me, too. There are six virtual Valentine’s cards, innumerable pictures and banners, including one from Clair, hoping to see me soon, she says, and hoping I find love this year —
Why, how sweet of you, ClairDeLune. As it happens I hope so, too. But you have other concerns today — not least, the e-mail you sent from your hotmail account to Angel Blue, bearing a message of undying love, as well as the extra little surprise delivered to his New York address.
I knew that password would come in useful. And, as it happens, I’ve changed it now, from clairlovesangel to clairhatesangie, Angie being Mrs Angel Blue. It’s cruel, I know. It may cause grief. But as we enter this new phase together, I have become increasingly impatient of time spent away from my main focus. I no longer need my army of mice. Their squeaking has become tiresome. They were a pleasant diversion once. And I needed them to build up this place, to bait my virtual bottle trap, my own private pitcher plant.
But now that Albertine and I are entering the final phase of the game, the last thing I want is her wasting her time. Time to concentrate on what really matters; to move in for the tête-à-tête —
And so, of today, all of badguysrock has become our private battleground. Site under construction, it says, which ought to keep most of our visitors out, while I send out my personal Valentines to deal with the more persistent ones.