Blueeyedboy

by Joanne Harris

  ‘Don’t forget your drink,’ she says.

  This time it’s almost a pleasure. The taste is a little better today, perhaps because the fruit is fresh; and there’s a different ingredient – blueberries, blackcurrant, perhaps – that gives it a tannic quality.

  ‘I changed the recipe,’ she says.

  ‘Mmmm. Nice,’ I tell her.

  ‘Feeling better this morning?’

  ‘Fine, Ma.’

  Better than fine. I don’t even have a headache.

  ‘Good of them to give you time off.’

  ‘Well, Ma, it’s a hospital. Can’t be bringing germs to work.’

  Ma conceded I had a point. For the past few days I’ve been sick with flu. Well, that’s the official story. In fact, I’ve been otherwise engaged, as I’m sure you can appreciate.

  ‘Sure you’re all right? You look a bit pale.’

  ‘Everyone’s pale in winter, Ma.’

  6

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  Posted at: 04.33 on Friday, February 22

  Status: restricted

  Mood: excited

  Listening to: The Beatles: ‘Here Comes The Sun’

  I bought the tickets on the Net. You get a discount for booking online. You can choose where to sit; order a meal; you can even print out your own boarding card. I chose a seat by the window, where I can watch the ground fall away. I’ve never been in an aeroplane. I’ve never even caught a train. The tickets were rather expensive, I thought; but Albertine’s credit can stand it. I snagged her details a year ago, when she bought some books from Amazon. Of course, at that time she had fewer funds; but now, with Dr Peacock’s legacy, she should be good for a few months, at least. By the time she finds out – if ever she does – I’ll be nicely untraceable.

  I haven’t packed much. Just a satchel with my papers, some cash, my iPod, a change of clothes, a shirt. No, not a blue one this time, Ma. It’s orange and pink, with palm trees. Not much in the way of camouflage; but wait till I get there. I’ll blend right in.

  I log on for the last time, just for luck, before I set off. Simply to read my messages; to see who hasn’t slept tonight; to check for any surprises; to find out who loves me and who wants me dead.

  No surprises there, then.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ she calls.

  ‘Hang on, Ma. I’ll be down in a sec.’

  And now there’s time for one more mail – to albertine@yahoo.com – before I’m ready to go at last; by noon today I’ll be on that flight, watching TV and drinking champagne –

  Champagne. Sham pain. As if sensation of any kind could ever be anything other than real. My guts are afizz with excitement. It almost hurts for me to breathe. I take a moment to relax and concentrate on the colour blue. Moon-blue, lagoon-blue, ocean, island, Hawaiian blue. Blue, the colour of innocence; blue, the colour of my dreams –

  7

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  Posted at: 04.45 on Friday, February 22

  Status: public

  Mood: anxious

  Listening to: Queen: ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’

  She must have taken off her shoes. He never even heard her. The first he heard was the door as it shut, and the sound of the key as she locked it.

  Click.

  ‘Ma?’

  No answer. He goes to the door. The keys were in his coat pocket. She must have taken them, thinks blueeyedboy, when he went back upstairs. The door is pitch pine; the lock, a Yale. He has always valued his privacy.

  ‘Ma? Please. Talk to me.’

  Just that heavy silence, like something buried under snow. Then, the sound of her footsteps receding softly down the carpeted stairs.

  Has she guessed? What does she know? A finger of ice slips down his back. A tremor creeps into his voice; the ghost of the stutter he thought was lost.

  ‘Please, Ma!’

  In fiction, our hero would break down the door; or failing that, crash through the window to land unharmed on the ground below. In real life, the door is unbreakable – though, sadly, blueeyedboy is not, as a leap from the window would surely confirm, sprawling him in agony on to the icy concrete below.

  No, he’s trapped. He knows that now. Whatever his Ma is planning, he thinks, he’s helpless to prevent it. He hears her downstairs; her steps in the hall; her shoes on the polished parquet floor. The rattle of keys. She’s going out.

  ‘Ma!’ There’s a desperate edge to his voice. ‘Ma! Don’t take the car! Please!’

  She hardly ever takes the car. Still, today, he knows she will. The café’s only a few streets away, down at the corner of Mill Road and All Saints’; but Ma can be so impatient sometimes – and she knows that girl is expecting him, that Irish girl with all the tattoos, the one who has broken her little boy’s heart –

  How did she know what he was planning? Perhaps it was his mobile phone, left on the hall table. How stupid of him to have left it there so invitingly. So easy to open his inbox; so easy to find the recent dialogue between her son and Albertine.

  Albertine, she thinks with a sneer. A rose by any other name. And she knows that it’s that Irish girl, already to blame for the death of one son, now daring to threaten the other. A wasp in a jar may have killed him, but Gloria knows that Nigel’s death would never have happened but for Albertine. Stupid, jealous Nigel, who first fell for that Irish girl and then, when he found out his brother had been following her, taking photographs, had first threatened, and then used his fists on poor, helpless blueeyedboy, so that Ma had had to take action at last, putting Nigel down like a rabid dog lest history repeat itself –

  Dear Bethan (if I may),

  I suppose you must have heard the news by now. Dr Peacock passed away the other night at the Mansion. Fell out of his wheelchair down the steps, leaving the bulk of his estate – last valued at three million pounds – to you. Congratulations. I suppose the old man felt he owed you something for the Emily White affair.

  I have to say I’m surprised, though. Brendan never told me a thing. All that time he was working for Dr Peacock, and never thought to tell me about this. But maybe he mentioned something to you? After all, you’re such good friends.

  I know our respective families have had our differences over the years. But now that you’re seeing both my sons, perhaps we can bury the hatchet. This business comes as a shock to us all. Especially if what I’ve heard is true; that they’re treating the death as suspicious.

  Still, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. These things blow over in time, as you know.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gloria.

  Yes, Ma wrote the letter, of course. She has never flinched from her duty. Knowing that Nigel would open it; knowing that he would take the bait. And when Nigel came round that day, demanding to talk to blueeyedboy, she was the one who deflected him, who sent him away with a flea in his ear – or at least, with a wasp in a jar –

  But now her only surviving son owes her a debt that cannot be repaid. He can never leave her now. He can never belong to anyone else. And if he ever tries to run – 394

  Post comment:

  blueeyedboy: Comments, anyone? Anyone here?

  8

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  Posted at: 04.47 on Friday, February 22

  Status: public

  Mood: devious

  Listening to: My Chemical Romance: ‘Mama’

  She ought to have seen it coming, of course. She ought to have known he would end up this way. But Gloria is no expert on child development. To her, developing is something he does in his darkroom, alone. She doesn’t like to think of it much. It’s like the nasty old Blue Book, she thinks, or the games he likes to play online with those invisible friends of his. She has looked into it once or twice, with the same faint dutiful distaste as when she used to wash his sheet
s, but only for his protection; because other people don’t understand that blueeyedboy is sensitive; that he is simply incapable of ever standing up for himself –

  The thought makes her eyes mist over a little. For all her steely hard-headedness, Gloria can be strangely sentimental at times, and even in her anger, the thought of his helplessness touches her. It’s always been at these moments, she thinks, that she loves him best of all: when he’s sick, or in tears, or in pain; when everyone else is against him; when there’s no one to love him but her; when all the world thinks he’s guilty.

  Of course, she knows he’s innocent. Well, of murder, anyway. What else he may be guilty of – what crimes of the imagination – is between blueeyedboy and his Ma, who has spent her whole life protecting him, even at her own cost. But that’s her son all over, she thinks: sitting in the nest she has built, like a fat and flightless cuckoo chick with his beak perpetually open.

  No, he wasn’t her favourite. But he was always the luckiest of her three unlucky boys: a natural survivor in spite of his gift; a chip, she thinks, off the old block.

  And a mother owes it to her son to protect him, no matter what. Sometimes he needs to be punished, she knows; but that’s between blueeyedboy and his Ma. No stranger raises a hand to him. No one – not his school, not the law – has the right to interfere. Hasn’t she always defended him? From bullies and thugs and predators?

  Take Tricia Goldblum, the bitch who seduced her elder son – and caused the death of her youngest. It was a pleasure to take care of her. Easy, too: electrical fires are always so reliable.

  Then Mrs White’s hippie friend, who thought she was better than they were. And Catherine White herself, of course, so easy to destabilize. And Jeff Jones from the estate, the man who fostered that Irish girl, and who some years later, in the pub, dared to raise a hand to her son. Then there was Eleanor Vine, the sneak, spying on Bren at the Mansion, and Graham Peacock, who cheated them, and for whom the boy had feelings –

  He was the most rewarding of all. Tipped over in his wheelchair and left to die alone on the path, like a tortoise half-out of its shell. Afterwards, she went upstairs and relieved him of his T’ang figurine, the one with which he taunted her all those years ago, and which she carefully placed in her cabinet along with the rest of her china dogs. It isn’t stealing, she tells herself. The old man owed her something, after all, for all the trouble he has caused her son.

  But in spite of everything she has done for him, what gratitude has blueeyedboy shown? Instead of supporting his mother, he has dared to transfer his affections to that Irish girl from the village, and worse, has tried to make her believe that she could have been his protector –

  She’ll make him pay for that, she thinks. But first, to take care of business.

  Now, from upstairs, she hears his voice, accompanied by a banging and slapping at the bedroom door. ‘Ma! Please! Open the door!’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ she says. ‘When I get back, then we can talk.’

  ‘Ma, please!’

  ‘Don’t make me come in—’

  The sounds from the bedroom cease abruptly.

  ‘That’s better,’ says Gloria. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about. Like your job at the hospital. And the way you’ve been lying to me. And what you’ve been up to with that girl. That Irish girl with all the tattoos.’

  Behind the door, he stiffens. He can feel every hair stiffening. He knows what’s in the balance here, and in spite of himself he is afraid. Of course he is. Who wouldn’t be? He is caught inside the bottle trap, and the worst of it is, he needs to be caught; he needs this feeling of helplessness. But she’s there on the other side of the door like a trap-door spider poised to bite, and if any part of his plan goes wrong, if he has failed to compensate for any one of those minute variables, then –

  If. If.

  An ominous sound, tinged with the grey-green scent of trees and the dust that accumulates under his bed. It’s safe under the bed, he thinks; safe and dark and scentless. He listens as she puts on her boots, fumbles with the front-door key; locks the door behind her. The crump of her footsteps in the snow. The sound of the car door opening.

  She takes the car, as he knew she would. His begging her not to do so now ensures her cooperation. He closes his eyes. She starts the car. The engine ratchets into life. It would be so ironic, he thinks, if she had an accident. It wouldn’t be his fault if she did. And then, at last, he would be free –

  Post comment:

  blueeyedboy: Still no one here? Right, then. I guess that leaves me all on my own for Stage 4 . . .

  9

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  Posted at: 04.56 on Friday, February 22

  Status: public

  Mood: cautious

  Listening to: The Rubettes: ‘Sugar Baby Love’

  I think you must have guessed by now that this is not an ordinary fic. My other fics are all accounts of things that have already happened – though whether they happened quite as I said is up to you to determine. But this little story is more in the way of being a work-in-progress. An ongoing project, if you like. A breakthrough in concept, as Clair might say. And like all conceptual work, it isn’t entirely without risk. In fact, I’m more or less convinced that it’s all about to end in tears.

  Five minutes to drive to the Zebra. Five more to see to business. And after that – Whoops! All gone! – here comes the explosive finale.

  I hope they’ll look after my orchids. They’re the only things in this house that I’ll miss. The rest can rot, for all I care, except for the china dogs, of course, for which I have special plans of my own.

  But first of all, to get out of this room. The door is pinewood, and well-made. In a movie, perhaps, I could break it down. Real life demands a more reasoned approach. A multi-tool with a screwdriver, a file and a short-bladed penknife should help me deal with the hinges, after which I can make my exit unimpeded.

  I take a last look at my orchids. I notice that the Phalaenopsis – otherwise known as the moth orchid – is in need of re-potting. I know exactly how she feels; I, who have lived for all these years in the same little, airless, toxic space. Time to explore new worlds, I think. Time now to leave the cocoon and to fly . . .

  It occurs to me as I work on the door that I ought to be feeling better than this. My stomach is filled with butterflies. I’m even feeling a little sick. My iPod is packed in my travel bag; instead I turn on the radio. From the tinny speakers comes the bubblegum sound of the Rubettes singing ‘Sugar Baby Love’.

  When I was a little boy, mistaking baby for B.B., I always assumed that those songs were for me; that even the folk on the radio knew that I was special, somehow. Today the music sounds ominous, a troubling falsetto sweeping across a fat layer of descending chords to a mystic accompaniment of doop-shoowaddies and bop-shoowaddies; and it tastes sour-sweet like acid drops, the ones that, when you were a child, you poked into the side of your mouth to make your tastebuds shudder and cramp, and if you weren’t careful, the tip of your tongue would slide over the boiled-sugar shell and snag on the sharp-edged bubbles there, and your mouth would fill with sweetness and blood, and that was the taste of childhood . . .

  Nyaaa-haaaa-haaaa-ooooooooooooooh

  Today there’s something sinister in those soaring, sustained vocals; something that tears at the insides like gravel in a silk purse. The word sugar is not sweet: it has a pink and gassy smell, like dentist’s anaesthetic, dizzy and intrusive, like something boring its way into my head. And I can almost see her there – right at this moment, here and there – and the Rubettes are playing at migraine volume in the Zebra’s tiny kitchen, and there’s a smell, a sickly-sweet, gassy smell that cuts through the scent of fresh coffee, but Ma doesn’t really notice that, because fifty years of Marlboros have long since shot her olfactory organs to hell, and only the scent of L’Heure Bleue cuts through, and she opens the door to the k
itchen.

  Of course I can’t quite be sure of this. I could be wrong about the radio station. I could be wrong about the time – she might still be in the car park, or by now it might even be over – and yet it feels completely right.

  Sugar baby love

  Sugar baby love

  I didn’t mean to make you blue –

  Perhaps there was something, after all, in Feather’s tales of walk-ins and ghosts and spirits and astral projection; because that’s how I feel now, lighter than air, watching the scene from a place somewhere on the ceiling, and the Rubettes are singing – aaaah-oop shoowaddy-waddy, doop-showaddy-waddy. And now I can see the top of Ma’s head, the parting in her thinning hair; the packet of Marlboros in her hand, the lighter poised above the tip; and I see the superheated air ripple and swell like a balloon inflated beyond its capacity, and she calls out – Hello? Is anyone there? – and lights a final cigarette –

  She has no time to understand. I never really intended her to. Gloria Green is no wasp in a jar, to be caught and disposed of at leisure. Nor is she a seaside crab, left to die in the simmering sun. Her passing is instantaneous, and the hot draught sweeps her away like a moth – Pfff! – into oblivion, so that nothing, not even a finger, remains for blueeyedboy to identify, not even a measure of dust large enough to rattle inside a china dog.

  From my room I can almost hear the dull cr-crumpf of the explosion, and it’s like crunching a stick of Blackpool rock, all sharp edges and toothache, and although there’s no way I can know for sure, I am suddenly certain, in a surge of wonder and indescribable relief, that I’ve done it at last. I’m free of her. I’m finally rid of my mother –