Blueeyedboy

by Joanne Harris

  I’d been getting better. I’d lost pounds in weight; I was weak, but at last the pain had gone, and I was able to eat simple food in small quantities. A cup of noodle soup; some bread; a tablespoonful of plain rice; soldiers dipped in egg yolk.

  She must have been worried by then, of course. Ma was no doctor; she had no concept of dosage, and the violence of my reaction must have been alarming. Waking up a few nights before from a sleep that was part delirium, I’d heard her talking to herself, arguing fiercely with someone not there:

  It serves him right. He needs to learn.

  But he’s in pain. He’s sick –

  He’ll live. Besides, he should have listened to me –

  What had she put in those lavish meals? Ground glass? Rat poison? Whatever it had been, it had worked fast. And the day I was finally able to sit up in bed, even to stand, Ma came in, not with a tray, but with an application form – a form from Malbry College, which she had already filled in for me.

  ‘I hope you’ve had time to think,’ she said in a suspiciously cheery voice. ‘Lying in bed doing nothing all day, letting me fetch and carry for you. I hope you’ve had time to think about everything I’ve done for you. Everything you owe me—’

  ‘Please. Not now. My stomach hurts—’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said. ‘In a day or two you’ll be good as new, eating me out of house and home, like the ungrateful little bastard you are. Now, have a look at these papers.’ Her expression, which had begun to darken, once more took on that look of relentless cheeriness. ‘I’ve been looking at those courses again, and I think you should do the same.’

  I looked at her. She was smiling at me, and I felt a pang of guilt in my stomach for letting the thought even cross my mind –

  ‘What was wrong with me?’ I said.

  I thought her eyes flickered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you think it was something I ate?’ I went on. ‘You didn’t get sick at all, did you, Ma?’

  ‘I can’t afford to get sick,’ she said. ‘I’ve got you to look after, haven’t I?’ Then she moved in close to me and fixed me with her espresso eyes. ‘I think it’s time you got up now,’ she said, shoving the papers into my hand. ‘You’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  That time I knew better than to protest. I signed up without a word for three subjects I knew nothing about, knowing I could change them later. I was already an accomplished liar; rather than actually take the courses and risk my mother finding out when I failed, I waited until the beginning of term and secretly changed my subject choices to something more suited to my personal talents, then found myself a part-time job in an electrical shop a few miles away, and let her believe I was studying.

  After that, it was simply a question of forging my certificates – easy, on a computer – after which I hacked into the Malbry Examiner’s computer files and added a single name – my own – to a soon-to-be-published list of results.

  I’ve tried to do my own cooking ever since. But there’s always the vitamin drink, of course, which Ma prepares with her own hands, and which keeps me well – or so she says, with a kind of sly innuendo. Every eighteen months or so I come down with a sudden, violent illness characterized by terrible stomach cramps, and my mother cares for me lovingly, and if these bouts of sickness always seem to coincide with moments of tension between Ma and myself, that’s just because I am sensitive, and these things have an effect on my health.

  I never got away, of course. Some things are inescapable. Even London is too far to go – Hawaii, an impossible dream.

  Well, maybe not quite impossible. That old blue lamp is still alight. And although it has taken more time than even I imagined it would, I begin to sense that at long last my patience is about to be rewarded.

  Patience, too, is a game, of course, a game of skill and endurance. Solitaire, the Americans call it, a far less optimistic name, tinged with the grey-green of melancholy. Well, a solitary game it may be; but in my case that’s surely a blessing. Besides, in a game that one plays with oneself, can anyone be said to lose?

  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, cryin
g 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 conscious 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.