by Джоан Харрис
It begins with a little girl crying in the row just in front of me. That was Emily White, of course. Two years younger than I was, and already stealing the limelight. Dr Peacock was there, as well — a large, kind-looking, bearded man with an affable voice like a French horn, whilst elsewhere — another small drama played out, unseen by the major protagonists.
It wasn’t much of a drama. Just a blue-eyed boy in the choir pitching forward on to his face. But there was a minor commotion; the music wavered, but did not stop, and a woman — the boy’s mother, I assumed — rushed forward into the stalls, her high shoes skidding on the polished floor, her face a lipstick blur of dismay.
My own mother looked disapproving. She wouldn’t have rushed forward. She would never have made such a fuss — especially not here, in chapel, with everyone so ready to judge and to spread those hateful rumours.
‘Gloria Winter. I should have known—’
It was a name I’d heard before. She’d told me the boy had caused trouble at school. In fact, the whole family was bad news: godless, wicked and profane.
Irredeemable, she’d said. It was the word Mother reserved for the worst kind of sinners: rapists, blasphemers, matricides.
Gloria was holding her son. He had cut his head on the side of the pew. Blood — a surprising amount of it — spattered his chorister’s surplice. Behind her, two boys, one in black, one in brown, stood by like extras in a game. The black one looked sullen; even bored. The one in brown — a clumsy-looking boy with long, lank hair over his eyes and an oversized sweatshirt that emphasized, rather than hid, his gut — looked distressed, almost dazed.
He put a shaking hand to his head. I wondered if he’d fallen, too.
‘What do you think you’re playing at? Can’t you see I need help?’ Gloria Winter’s voice was sharp. ‘B.B., get a towel, or something. Nigel, call an ambulance.’
Nigel, at sixteen; an innocent. I wish I could say I remembered him. But frankly, I never noticed him; my attention was all on Bren. Perhaps because of the look in his eyes: that trapped and helpless expression. Perhaps because I sensed, even then, a kind of bond between us. First impressions matter so much; they shape us for what comes later.
He raised his hand to his head again. I saw his expression, a rictus of pain as if he’d been hit by something falling from the sky, and then he stumbled against the step and fell to his knees almost at my feet.
My mother had already moved to help, guiding Gloria through the crowd.
I looked down at the boy in brown. ‘Are you all right?’
He stared at me in open surprise. To tell the truth, I’d surprised myself. He was so much older than I. I rarely spoke to strangers. But there was something about him that moved me, somehow: an almost childlike quality.
‘Are you all right?’ I repeated.
He had no time to answer me. Gloria turned impatiently, one arm still supporting Benjamin. It struck me then how tiny she was: wasp-waisted in her pencil skirt, stiletto heels barely grazing the floor. My mother disliked stiletto heels — which she called slutilloes — and which, she claimed, were responsible for a variety of conditions ranging from chronic back pain to hammer toes and arthritis. But Gloria moved like a dancer, and her voice was as sharp as those six-inch heels as she snapped at her ungainly son:
‘Brendan, get over here right now, or, God help me, I’ll wring your fucking neck—’
I saw my own mother flinch at that. The F-word was strictly outlawed in our house. And coming from the boy’s mother, too — I couldn’t help but feel sympathy. He scrambled clumsily to his feet, his face now flushing a dull red. And I could see how troubled he was, how scared and self-conscious and filled with hate.
He wishes she were dead, I thought, with sudden, luminous certainty.
It was a dangerous, powerful thought. It lit up my mind like a beacon. That this boy should wish his mother dead was almost beyond imagining. Surely this was a mortal sin. It meant that he would burn in hell; that he was damned for eternity. And yet, I was drawn to him somehow. He looked so lost and unhappy. Maybe I could save him, I thought. Maybe he was redeemable . . .
11
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 02.04 on Thursday, February 21
Status: restricted
Mood: anxious
Let me explain. It’s not easy. As a child I was very shy. I was bullied at school. I had no friends. My mother was religious, and her disapproval weighed upon every aspect of my life. She showed me little affection, making it clear to me from the start that only Jesus deserved her love. I was my mother’s gift to Him; a soul for His collection, and though I was far from perfect, she said, with His grace and my efforts I might one day be good enough to meet the Saviour’s exacting standards.
I don’t remember my father at all. Mother never spoke of him, though she wore a wedding ring, and I was left with the vague impression that he had disappointed her, and that she had sent him away, as I too would be sent away if I failed to be good enough.
Well, I tried. I said my prayers. I did my chores. I went to Confession. I never spoke to strangers, or raised my voice, or read comic-books, or took a second slice of cake if Mother invited a friend to tea. But even so, it was never enough. I always fell short of perfection, somehow. There was always a fault in my stubborn clay. Sometimes it was my carelessness; a tear in the hem of my school skirt; a smear of mud on my white socks. Sometimes it was bad thoughts. Sometimes, a song on the radio — Mother detested rock music and called it Satan’s flatulence — or a passage from a book I’d read. There were so many dangers, Mother said; so many pits on the road to hell. But she tried, in her fashion; she always tried. It wasn’t her fault I turned out this way.
There were no toys or dolls in my room, just a blue-eyed Jesus on the cross and a plaster angel (slightly cracked) that was meant to drive away bad thoughts and make me feel safe at night.
In fact, it made me nervous. Its face, neither male nor female, looked like a dead child’s. And as for the blue-eyed Jesus, with his head thrown back and his bleeding ribs, he looked neither kind nor compassionate, but angry, tortured and frightening — and why not, I asked myself? If Jesus died to save us all, why wouldn’t He be angry? Wouldn’t He be furious at what He’d had to endure for our sakes? Wouldn’t He want vengeance somehow — for the nails, and the spear, and the crown of thorns?
If I die before I wake, I pray, dear Lord, my soul to take —
And so at night I would lie sleepless for hours, terrified to close my eyes in case the angels took my soul, or, worse still, that Jesus Himself would rise from the dead and come for me, ice-cold and smelling of the grave, and hiss in my ear:
It should have been you.
Bren was dismissive of my fears, and indignant that Mother encouraged them.
‘I thought my Ma was bad enough. But yours is a fucking fruitcake.’
I sniggered at that. The F-word again. I’d never dared to use it. But Bren was so much older than I; so very much more daring. Those stories he told me about himself — stories of cunning and secret revenge — far from being horrified, I felt a sneaking admiration. My mother believed in humility, Bren in getting even. This was an entirely new concept to me — accustomed as I was to one kind of creed, I was secretly both thrilled and appalled to hear the Gospel of Brendan.
The Gospel of Brendan was simple. Hit back as hard and as low as you can. Forget about turning the other cheek; just get the first punch in and run away. If in doubt, blame someone else. And never confess to anything.
Of course I admired him. How could I not? His words made a great deal of sense to me. I was slightly anxious for his soul, but secretly it seemed to me that if Our Saviour had adopted some of Brendan’s attitude instead of being quite so meek, it might have been better for everyone. Brendan Winter kicked ass. Bren would never let himself be bullied or intimidated. Bren never lay awake in bed, paralysed by fear. Bren hit back at his enemies with the force of angels.
/> Well, none of that was strictly true. I realized that soon enough. Bren told me things as they ought to have been, and not precisely as they were. Still, I liked him better that way. It made him — if not quite innocent, then at least redeemable. And that’s what I wanted — or thought I did. To save him. To fix what was broken inside. To shape him like a piece of clay into the face of innocence.
And I liked to listen. I liked his voice. When he was reading his stories to me, he never used to stutter. Even his tone was different — quiet and cynically humorous, like a woody cor anglais. The violence never troubled me; besides, it was fiction. What harm could it do? The Brothers Grimm had written far worse: babies devoured by ogres, by wolves; mothers deserting their children; sons sent into exile or killed, or cursed by wicked witches.
The moment I first saw him I knew that Bren had a problem with his mother. I’d seen Gloria in the Village, though we didn’t have much to do with her. But I knew her through Bren, and hated her — not for my own sake, but for his.
Slowly, I came to know her more: the vitamin drink, and the china dogs, and the piece of electrical cord. Sometimes Bren showed me the marks she had left: the scratches, welts and bruises. He was so much older than I was, and yet on these occasions I felt as if I were the grown-up. I comforted him. I listened to him. I gave him unconditional love, sympathy and admiration. And it never once occurred to me that while I thought I was shaping him, he was really shaping me . . .
12
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 13.57 on Thursday, February 21
Status: restricted
Mood: melancholy
Brendan Winter and I became friends five months after the concert. I was going through a difficult time; Mother was always busy at work, and at school I was bullied more than ever. I didn’t really understand why. There were other fatherless children in Malbry. Why was I so different? Perhaps it was my fault, I thought, that my Dad had gone away. Perhaps he’d never wanted me in the first place. Maybe neither of my parents had.
That was when Brendan turned up again. I recognized him immediately. Mother was busy, as always. I was alone in the garden. And Emily was in her house, playing the piano — something by Rachmaninov, something sweet and melancholy. I could hear her through the window, which was open, and around which a tangle of roses were in bloom. It looked like a fairy-tale window to me, in which a princess ought to appear: Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, or maybe the Lady of Shalott.
Brendan was no Lancelot. He was wearing brown cords, and a beige canvas jacket that made him look like a padded envelope. He was carrying a satchel. His hair was longer than before, almost covering his face. He passed by the house, heard the music and stopped, not ten feet away from the garden gate. He hadn’t seen me; I was on my swing under the weeping willow tree. But I saw his face as he heard her play, the little smile that touched his mouth. He took out a camera from his satchel, a camera with a long lens; and with a deftness that looked out of place, he clicked off a dozen shots of the house — clickclickclick, like dominoes falling — before slipping the camera back into his satchel almost without breaking step.
I left my place on the swing. ‘Hey.’
He turned, looking hunted; then seemed to relax when he saw who I was.
‘Hey, I’m Bethan,’ I said.
‘B-Brendan.’
I leaned my elbows on the gate. ‘Brendan, why were you taking pictures of the Whites’ house?’
He looked alarmed at that. ‘Please. If you t-tell anyone, I’ll get into trouble. I — just like taking pictures, that’s all.’
‘Take a picture of me,’ I said, showing my teeth like the Cheshire Cat.
Bren looked round, then grinned. ‘OK. Just as long as you promise, B-Bethan. Not a word to anyone.’
‘Not even Mother?’
‘Especially not Mother.’
‘All right, I promise,’ I told him. ‘But why do you like taking pictures so much?’
He looked at me and smiled. Behind that graceless curtain of hair his eyes were really quite beautiful, with lashes as long and thick as a girl’s. ‘This isn’t an ordinary camera,’ he said, this time, I noticed, without stuttering. ‘Through this, I can see right into your heart. I can see what you’re hiding from me. I can tell if you’re good or bad, if you’ve said your prayers, if you love your mother—’
My own eyes opened wide at this.
‘You can see all that?’
‘Of course I can.’
And at that he gave an enormous grin.
And that’s how I was collected.
Of course, I didn’t see it that way. Not until much later. But that was when I decided that Brendan Winter would be my friend: Bren, whom nobody wanted; Bren, who had asked me to lie for him to keep him out of trouble.
It began like that; with a little white lie. Then, with my curiosity about someone so unlike myself. Then came the wary affection that a child may feel for a dangerous dog. Then, a sense of affinity, in spite of our many differences; and lastly a feeling that blossomed at length into something like infatuation.
I never believed he cared much for me. I knew from the start where his interest lay. But Mrs White was protective. Emily was never alone, never allowed to talk to strangers. A glimpse over the garden wall; a photograph; a vicarious touch was all that Bren could hope for. As far as he was concerned, Emily might as well have been on Mars.
The rest of the time, Brendan was mine; and that was quite enough for me. He didn’t even like her, I thought. In fact, I believed he hated her. I was naïve. I was very young. And I believed in him — in his gift. I’d failed to meet my mother’s standards; but maybe, with Bren, I could succeed. I was his guardian angel, he said. Watching him. Protecting him. And so, stepping through the looking glass, I entered the world of blueeyedboy, where everything exists in reverse and every sense is twisted and turned, and nothing ever really begins, and nothing ever comes to an end . . .
I was three months shy of twelve years old the summer Brendan’s brother died. No one told me what happened, although rumours of varying wildness had been circulating around Malbry for weeks. But the Village has always considered itself above events in White City. Brendan was ill, and at first I assumed that Ben had died of the same sickness. After that, the Emily affair swallowed up most of the details. The scandal, the public breakdown — all of that kept the Press in business for more than long enough to eclipse one dirty little domestic.
Meanwhile, the Fireplace House had become the focus of everything. Emily White’s brief moment of fame would have fizzled out long ago, but for the blast of oxygen delivered to it that autumn by Brendan Winter. Those allegations of fraud and abuse did more to raise Emily’s profile than Catherine White ever did. Not that Catherine cared by then — her family was breaking apart. She hadn’t seen her daughter for weeks, not since the Social Services had decided that the child was at risk. Instead, Emily had been sent to live with Mr White, at a B & B in the Village, with twice-weekly visits from a counsellor, until such time as the business could be properly concluded. Left at home, Catherine was self-medicating with a mixture of alcohol and antidepressants, which Feather — never a stabilizing influence — supplemented with a variety of herbal remedies, both legal and illegal.
Someone should have noticed the signs. Amazingly, nobody did. And when the thing exploded at last, we were all of us caught by the shrapnel.
Although we were next-door neighbours, I didn’t know much about Mr White. I knew he was a quiet man who only played music when Mrs White wasn’t around; who sometimes smoked a pipe (again, when his wife wasn’t there to nag him); who wore little steel-rimmed glasses and a coat that made him look like a spy. I’d heard him play the organ in church and conduct the choir at St Oswald’s. I’d often watched him from over the wall, as he sat in the garden with Emily. She liked him to read aloud to her, and, knowing I liked to listen, Mr White would project his voice so that I could hear the story as well —
but for some reason Mrs White disapproved, and always used to call them indoors if ever she noticed me listening, so I never really got the chance to get to know either of them.
After he’d moved, I’d seen him once, in the autumn that followed Benjamin’s death. A season, not of mists, but of winds, that stripped the trees of their leaves and made gritty work of the pavements. I was walking home from school through the park that separates Malbry from the Village; the weather was half a degree away from snow, and even in my warmest coat I was already shivering.
I’d heard he’d given up his job to care full-time for Emily. This decision had met with a mixed response: some praised his devotion; others (for instance, Eleanor Vine) felt it wasn’t appropriate for a man to be left alone with a girl of Emily’s age.
‘He’ll be having to bathe her, and everything,’ she said, with clear disapproval. ‘The thought of it! No wonder there’s talk.’
Well, if there was, you can bet that Mrs Vine was behind it somehow. Even then, she was poisonous: spreading slime wherever she went. My mother had always blamed her for spreading rumours about my dad; and when once or twice I played truant from school, it was Eleanor Vine who informed the school, rather than telling my mother.
Perhaps that was why I felt a link between myself and Mr White; and when I saw him in the park, Mr White in his Russian-spy coat pushing Emily on the swing, I stopped for a moment to watch them both, thinking how very happy they looked, as if there were no one else in the world.
That’s what I remember most. Both of them looking so happy.
I stood on the path for a minute or so. Emily was wearing a red coat, with mittens and a knitted cap. Dead leaves crackled under her feet each time the swing reached its lowest arc. Mr White was laughing, his profile slightly averted so that I had time to look at him; to see him with his defences down.