Blueeyedboy

by Джоан Харрис

  9

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.

  Posted at: 23.49 on Saturday, February 16

  Status: restricted

  Mood: trapped

  Listening to: Boomtown Rats: ‘Rat Trap’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  I’d assumed at first that she meant school. In fact, school was only a part of it. My mother’s plans ran deeper than that. It began just after my illness, and hers, in the last days of September, and I remember it all in greys and blues, with a thundery light that hurt my eyes, and a heat that pressed down on to my head, giving me a penitent’s slouch, a habit that I never quite lost.

  When the police called round for the first time, I assumed it was because of something I’d done. The camera I’d stolen, perhaps; the graffiti on Dr Peacock’s door; or maybe finally someone had guessed how I’d disposed of my brother.

  But I was not arrested. Instead I sweated it out of doors while Ma entertained in the parlour, bringing out the good biscuits, and the visitors’ teacups that usually took pride of place in the cabinet under the china dogs. Then, after what seemed like an interminable wait, the two officers — a man and a woman — came out looking very serious, and the woman said: ‘We need to talk.’ And I could have passed out with terror and guilt, except that Ma was watching me with that look of expectant pride, and I knew that it wasn’t something I’d done, but something she expected of me —

  Of course, you know what that was. Ma never lets anything go. And what I’d revealed about Emily the day Ma hit me with the plate had festered and borne fruit in her mind, so that now, at last, it was ready for use.

  She fixed me with her berry-black eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to tell them,’ she said in a voice like a razor blade hidden inside a toffee apple. ‘But I’ve brought you up to respect the law, and everyone knows it’s not your fault—’

  For a moment I didn’t understand. I must have looked scared, because the policewoman put her arm around me and whispered. ‘That’s right, son. It’s not your fault—’ And then I remembered what I’d written that night on Dr Peacock’s door, and all the components fell in place like the pieces of a Mouse Trap game, and I understood what my mother had meant —

  You’ve got a lot of work to do.

  ‘Oh, please,’ I whispered. ‘Please, no.’

  ‘I know you’re afraid,’ my mother said — in that voice that sounded sweet, but was not. ‘But everybody’s on your side. No one’s going to blame you.’ Her eyes, as she spoke, were like steel pins. Her hand on my arm looked gentle, but the next day there would be bruises. ‘All we want is the truth, B.B. Just the truth. How hard can that be?’

  Well, what could I do? I was alone. Alone with Ma, trapped and afraid. I knew that if I called her bluff, if I disgraced her publicly, she’d find a way to make me pay. So I played the game, telling myself that it was just a white lie; that their lies had been much worse than mine; that in any case, I had no choice —

  The policewoman’s name was Lucy, she said. I guessed her to be very young, maybe just out of training school, still fired with hopeful ideals and convinced that children have no reason to lie. The man was older, more cautious; less likely to show sympathy; but even so, he was gentle enough, allowing her to question me, making notes in his notepad.

  ‘Your mother says you’ve been ill,’ she said.

  I nodded, not daring to say it aloud. Beside me, Ma, like a granite cliff face, one arm around my shoulders.

  ‘She says you were delirious. Talking and shouting in your sleep.’

  ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t too bad.’

  I felt my mother’s bony fingers tighten on my upper arm. ‘You say that now you’re better,’ she said. ‘But you don’t know the half of it. Until you’ve got children of your own, you can’t imagine how it feels,’ she said, without releasing my arm. ‘To see my boy in such a bad way, crying like a baby.’ She flashed me a brief, unsettling smile. ‘You know I lost my other boy,’ she said, with a glance at Lucy. ‘If anything happened to B.B. now, I think I might go crazy.’

  I saw the two officers exchange glances.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Winter. I know. It must have been a terrible time.’

  Ma frowned. ‘How could you know? You’re not much older than my son. Do you have any children?’

  Lucy shook her head.

  ‘Then don’t presume to empathize.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Winter.’

  For a moment, Ma was silent, staring vacantly into space. She looked like an unplugged fruit machine; for a second I wondered if she’d had a stroke. Then she went on in a normal voice — at least what passes for normal with her.

  ‘A mother knows these things,’ she said. ‘A mother senses everything. I knew there was something wrong with him. He started to talk and cry in his sleep. And that’s when I began to suspect that something funny was going on.’

  Oh, she was clever. She fed them the line. Fed it to them like poisoned bait, watching as I wriggled and squirmed. And the facts were indisputable. Between the ages of seven and thirteen, Ma’s youngest son Benjamin had enjoyed a special relationship with Dr Graham Peacock. As payment for helping in his research, the doctor had befriended him, had taken charge of his schooling, had even offered financial aid to Ma, a single parent —

  Then suddenly, without warning, Ben had ceased to cooperate. He had become introverted and secretive; had started doing badly at school; had begun to misbehave; above all, he had flatly refused to go back to the Mansion, giving no good reason for his behaviour, so that Dr Peacock had withdrawn his support, leaving Ma to fend alone.

  She should have suspected there and then that something had gone seriously wrong, but anger had blinded her to her son’s needs, and when, later, graffiti had been scrawled on the door of the Mansion, she had simply seen it as another proof of his growing delinquency. Ben had denied the vandalism. Ma had not believed him. It was only now that she realized what that gesture had really been; a cry for help; a warning —

  ‘What did you write on the door, B.B.?’ Her voice was chequered with menace and love.

  I looked away. ‘Please, M-ma. It was so long ago. I d-don’t really think—’

  ‘B.B.’ Only I could hear the change in her voice: the vinegary, sour-vegetable tone that brought back the reek of the vitamin drink. Already my head was beginning to throb. I reached for the word that would drive it away. A word that sounds vaguely French, somehow, that makes me think of green summer lawns and the scent of cut grass in the meadows —

  ‘Pervert,’ I whispered.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  I said it again, and she smiled at me.

  ‘And why did you write that, B.B.?’ she said.

  ‘Because he is.’ I was still feeling trapped, but behind the fear and the guilt of it all there was something almost pleasurable: a sense of perilous ownership.

  I thought of Mrs White, and of the way she had looked that day on the steps of the Mansion. I thought of the pity on Mr White’s face, that day in St Oswald’s schoolyard. I thought of Dr Peacock’s face peering through the curtains, and his sheepish smile as I crept away. I thought of the ladies who had spoiled and petted me as a child, only to scorn me when I grew up. I thought of my teachers at school, and my brothers, who’d treated me with such contempt. Then I thought of Emily —

  And I saw how easy it would be to take revenge on all those people, to make them pay attention to me, to make them suffer as I had. And for the first time since my earliest childhood, I was conscious of an exhilarating sensation. A feeling of power; an energy rush; a force; a current; a surge; a charge.

  Charge. Such an ambivalent word, with its implications of power and blame, attack and detention, payment and cost. And it smells of burnt wiring and solder, and its colour is like a summer’s sky, thundery and luminous.

  Don’t think I’m trying to absolve myself. I told you I was a bad guy. No one forced me to do what I did. I made a conscio
us decision that day. I could have done the right thing. I could have pulled the plug on it all. Told the truth. Confessed the lie. I had the choice. I could have left home. I could have escaped the pitcher plant.

  But Ma was watching, and I knew that I would never do those things. It wasn’t that I was afraid of her — although I was, most terribly. It was simply the lure of being in charge — of being the one to whom eyes turned —

  I know. Don’t think I’m proud of this. It’s not exactly my greatest moment. Most crimes are annoyingly petty, and I’m afraid mine was no exception. But I was young, too young in any case to see how cleverly she had handled me, guiding me through a series of hoops to a reward that would ultimately reveal itself to be the worst kind of punishment.

  And now she was smiling — a genuine smile, radiating approval. And, at that moment, I wanted it, wanted to hear her say: well done, even though I hated her —

  ‘Tell them, B.B.,’ she said, pinning me with that brilliant smile. ‘Tell them what he did to you.’

  10

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.

  Posted at: 03.58 on Sunday, February 17

  Status: restricted

  Mood: perverse

  Listening to: 10cc: ‘I’m Not In Love’

  The first thing that happened after that was that Emily was taken into protective care. Just as a precaution, they said; just to ensure her safety. Her reluctance to incriminate Dr Peacock was seen as proof of long-term abuse rather than simple innocence, and Catherine’s rage and bewilderment when faced with the accusations was seen as further evidence of some kind of collusion. Something had clearly been going on. At best, a cynical fraud. At worst, a large-scale conspiracy.

  And now came Yours Truly’s testimony. It had started so harmlessly, I said. Dr Peacock had been very kind. Private lessons, cash now and then — that was how he’d reeled us in. And that was how he’d approached Catherine White, a woman with a history of depression, ambitious and easily flattered, so eager to believe that her child was special that she’d managed to blind herself to the truth.

  The books in Dr Peacock’s library did much to support my claim, of course. Biographies of literature’s most notorious synaesthetes. Nabokov; Rimbaud; Baudelaire; De Quincey — self-confessed drug-users, homosexuals, paedophiles. Men whose pursuit of the sublime took precedence to the petty morality of their day. The material seized as evidence was not directly incriminating, but the police are no great connoisseurs of art, and the sheer volume of material in Dr Peacock’s collection was enough to convince them that they had the right man. Class photographs of St Oswald’s boys taken whilst he was a governor. Volumes of Greek and Roman art; engravings of statues of naked young men. A first edition of Beardsley’s Yellow Book; a collection of Ovenden prints from Lolita; a pencil drawing of a young male nude (attributed to Caravaggio); a lavishly illustrated copy of The Perfumed Garden; books of erotic poetry by Verlaine, Swinburne, Rimbaud and the Marquis de Sade —

  ‘You showed this stuff to a seven-year-old?’

  Dr Peacock tried to explain. It was part of the boy’s education, he said. And Benjamin was interested; he wanted to know what he was —

  ‘And what was he, according to you?’

  Once more, Dr Peacock struggled to enlighten his audience. But while Boy X had been fascinated by case studies of synaesthetes, of music and migraines and orgasms that manifested themselves in trails of colour, the police seemed far more interested in finding out precisely what he and Boy X had talked about during all those private lessons. Whether he’d ever been tempted to touch Benjamin; whether he’d ever given him drugs; whether he’d ever spent time alone with him — or his brothers.

  And when Dr Peacock finally broke, and vented his rage and frustration, the officers looked at each other and said: ‘That’s a nasty temper you’ve got. Did you ever strike the boy? Slap him, correct him in any way?’

  Numbly, the doctor shook his head.

  ‘And what about the little girl? It must have been frustrating, having to work with such a young child. Especially when you’ve been used to teaching boys. Was she ever uncooperative?’

  ‘Never, said Dr Peacock. ‘Emily’s a sweet little girl.’

  ‘Eager to please?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Eager enough to fake a result?’

  The doctor denied it vehemently. But the damage was already done. I had painted a more than plausible picture. And if Emily failed to confirm his tale, then that was simply because she was young, confused, and in denial of the way in which she had been used —

  They tried to keep it from the Press. Might as well try to stop the tide. The wave of speculation broke just in the wake of the film’s release. By the end of that year Emily White was national news; and then, just as suddenly, infamous.

  The tabloid headlines came out in force. The Mail: ABUSE CLAIMS IN SUPER-SENSE CASE. The Sun: SEE EMILY PLAY! Best of all, from the Mirror: EMILY — WAS SHE A FAKE?

  Jeffrey Stuarts, the journalist who had followed Emily’s case throughout, living with the family, attending sessions at the Mansion, answering the sceptics with the keenness of a true fanatic, saw what was coming and quickly changed course, hastily rewriting his book — to be entitled The Emily Experiment — to include, not only rumours of sleaze at the Mansion, but strong hints of a darker truth behind the Emily Phenomenon.

  The hard, ambitious mother; the weak, ineffectual father; the influential New Age friend; the child-victim, trained to perform; the predatory old man, consumed by his obsessions. And, of course, Boy X. Redeemed by what he’d had to endure, he was in it to the hilt. The guileless victim. The innocent. Once again, the blue-eyed boy.

  Of course, it never went to court. It never even made it to the magistrate. Whilst still under investigation, Dr Peacock suffered a heart attack that landed him in intensive care. The case was postponed indefinitely.

  But just the faintest whiff of smoke was enough to convince the public. Trial by tabloid is swift and sure. Within three months, it was over. The Emily Experiment went straight to the top of the best-seller lists. Patrick and Catherine White agreed to a trial separation. Investors withdrew their money; galleries ceased to display Emily’s work. Feather moved in with Catherine, while Patrick removed himself to a hostel just outside Malbry.

  It wasn’t a permanent move, he said. It was simply to give them a little space. A twenty-four-hour police guard was stationed outside the Mansion in the wake of several arson attempts. And the papers were all over Catherine. A row of photographers flanked the house, snapping up anyone who crossed the threshold.

  Graffiti appeared on the front door. Hate mail came by the sackful. The News of the World ran a picture of Catherine, in tears, with a story (confirmed by Feather, to whom they paid five thousand pounds) that she had suffered a mental breakdown.

  Christmas brought little improvement, though Emily was allowed home for the day. Before that the child had remained in the custody of the Social Services, who, failing to detect any signs of abuse, interrogated her kindly but relentlessly until even she began to wonder if she, too, wasn’t losing her mind.

  Try to remember, Emily.

  I know the technique. I know it well. Kindness is a weapon, too, a padded cartoon goofy-stick that batters away at the memory, turning it all into candyfloss.

  It’s all right. It’s not your fault.

  Just tell us the truth, Emily.

  Imagine what it was like for her. Everything was going wrong. Dr Peacock was under investigation. Her parents were suddenly living apart. People kept asking her questions, and although they kept saying it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t help thinking that somehow it was. That somehow, that little snow-white lie had turned into an avalanche —

  Listen to the colours.

  She wanted to say it was all a mistake, but of course, it was far too late for that. They wanted a demonstration: a once-and-for-all display of her gift, well away from the influence of Dr Peacock or her mother
, a performance to confirm or refute for ever the claim that she was a fake, a pawn in their game of deception and greed.

  And that was how, in January, on a snowy morning in Manchester, she found herself with her easel and paints, on a sound stage surrounded by cameras, with hot lights battening down on her head and the sound of the Symphonie fantastique pouring out of the speakers. And right at that moment the miracle happens and Emily hears the colours —

  It is by far her most famous work. Symphonie fantastique in Twenty-four Conflicting Colours looks something like a Jackson Pollock and something like a Mondrian, with that huge, grey shadow in the far corner reaching into the illuminated canvas like the hand of Death in a field of bright flowers . . .

  So says Jeffrey Stuarts, at least, in the follow-up to his best-selling book: The Emily Enigma. That, too, raced to the top of the charts, although it was clearly a rehash of the previous one, with an afterword to include the events that followed its publication. After that, of course, the experts pursued the story, with professionals in every associated field from art to child psychology warring with each other to prove their conflicting theories.

  Each camp had its adherents, be they cynics or believers. The child psychologists saw Emily’s work as a symbolic expression of her fear; the paranormal camp as a harbinger of death; the art experts saw in the change of style a confirmation of what many had already secretly suspected: that Emily’s synaesthesia had been a pretence from the start and that Catherine White, and not Emily, had been the creative influence behind such works as Nocturne in Scarlet Ochre and Starry Moonlight Sonata.

  Symphonie fantastique is altogether different. Created in front of an audience on a piece of canvas eight feet square, it almost writhes with energy, so that even a dullard like Jeffrey Stuarts was able to feel its ominous presence. If fear has a colour, then this is it: menacing strings of red, brown and black overlaid with occasional violent patches of light, and that clanging square of blue-grey like the trapdoor to an oubliette —