‘The boy from next door threw his ball over the fence and he came to the door to ask for it back.’
Mummy put down her shopping bag. ‘You didn’t open it, did you?’
Fiona shook her head, and now she was conscious of how loose and wobbly her lips were. ‘I went upstairs to see if you were there, but you weren’t.’
‘Well, I’m here now. I’ll throw his ball back over for him. Would you like some lunch? I can make you some sandwiches, and you can eat them outside, like a picnic.’
‘Mummy …’ Fiona began. She wanted to ask her about the beholders, and how Mummy had allowed them to take her beauty away, but then she thought better of it. Mummy always took such good care of her. She had probably done everything she could to keep the beholders away, and Fiona didn’t want to upset her or make her feel guilty about something that she had been powerless to prevent.
There were many times when Fiona had heard Mummy sobbing in the middle of the night, or she had come downstairs late in the evening for a glass of water and Mummy had quickly torn off a sheet of kitchen towel to wipe her eyes.
They went outside. Mummy picked up the tennis ball in the middle of the lawn and threw it back over the fence. There was no reply from next door. Robin and Caroline must be inside, having their lunch, too. Fiona knelt down on the patio and put Rapunzel back on top of her tower.
‘Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!’
As she said that, she saw a large brown snail creeping across the patio, leaving a silvery trail behind it. It had only one pair of ten-tacles sticking out from the top of its head, and she knew from her children’s encyclopedia that the shorter tentacle was for feeling its way around, while only the longer tentacle had an eye on the end of it. All the same, that single eye was definitely looking at her.
She hesitated for a moment, and then she stood up and went back into the kitchen.
‘Won’t be long, darling,’ said Mummy, spreading butter on four slices of bread. ‘Would you like tomato in your cheese sandwich, or brown pickle?’
‘Brown pickle, please.’
Mummy was standing with her back to her, so Fiona was able to slide open the drawer next to the cooker and quietly lift out the black-handled scissors which Mummy used to cut the tips off chicken wings. She dropped them into the pocket in the front of her dress and went back outside.
The snail was still only a third of the way across the patio. Fiona knelt down close to it, and peered at it intently. Its eye was unquestionably swivelling in her direction, so in its tiny way it, too, must be a beholder. Even if it had taken only the minutest part of her beauty – a pretty little dimple from her chin, perhaps – she wanted it back.
‘What do you want to drink?’ called Mummy. ‘Orange squash or lemon barley water?’
She would be coming outside in a minute, so Fiona couldn’t hesitate. She took the scissors from her pocket and snipped the snail’s eye from the end of its tentacle. Instantly, the snail rolled both of its tentacles back into its head, but it was too late. Fiona had its eye now, and everything that its eye contained.
As Mummy stepped out of the kitchen, carrying a small tray, Fiona popped the snail’s eye into her mouth and kept it on her tongue. It felt very small and bobbly, and it tasted beige, if there was such a taste.
‘Here you are, Fee-fee,’ said Mummy, and set the tray down on the top of the steps that led down to the lawn. ‘Cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, and a strawberry yogurt.’
Fiona nodded and tried to smile. Mummy affectionately scribbled her fingers in Fiona’s hair. ‘You are a funny girl, aren’t you?’ she said, and then she went back inside.
With the tip of her tongue, Fiona pressed the snail’s eye as hard as she could against her palate, but it refused to pop. In the end, she manoeuvred it between her front teeth, and bit it in half, and swallowed it. It was far too minuscule for her to taste any optical fluid, but she knew that she had taken back at least a tiny part of her beauty, and that was a good start.
The snail stayed where it was, not moving, as if it had been paralysed by the shock of losing its eye. Fiona watched it for a while, as she ate her first sandwich. After five minutes, when it still hadn’t moved, she stood up and stamped on it, with a crunch. Serves you right, she thought. She touched her chin to see if she had regained a pretty dimple, and she was sure that she could feel some indentation. This seemed to work, taking the eyes from her beholders. She wondered how many more snails were carrying images of her beauty around in their eyes; or how many birds, for that matter.
As if in answer to her question, she heard a tinkle, and a grey tortoiseshell cat jumped up on to the fence, with a little silver bell around his neck. He belonged to old Mrs Pickens, who lived on the other side of Fiona and her Mummy. Fiona knew that the cat’s name was Zebedee, because she had heard Mrs Pickens calling him in at night. Zebedee was always sitting on top of the fence, staring at her unblinking with his yellow eyes, so he must be a beholder, too.
‘Here, puss!’ Fiona called him. ‘Come on, Zebedee! Come here, puss!’
Zebedee remained aloof on top of the fence. Fiona stood up and walked across the patio until she was standing directly beneath him.
‘Come on, puss! Come down and play!’
Zebedee stared at her for a long time but still stayed where he was. Fiona took the top slice of bread off her half-eaten sandwich and threw it out into the garden, so that it landed on the lawn. Zebedee yawned and looked the other way.
Less than minute later, however, two fat pigeons landed on the lawn, and strutted toward Fiona’s sandwich as if they had ordered it specially. They started to peck at it, and that was when Zebedee crouched himself down and arched his back and scratched at the fence with his claws as he repositioned himself, ready to strike.
‘Go on, puss!’ Fiona urged him. He ignored her at first, as he tried to balance himself in the best position for leaping off on to the lawn. But then – as the pigeons started to squabble with each other over the last remaining fragment of crust – he sprang off the fence and landed less than two feet away from them, making a southpaw lunge for the nearer pigeon and catching some of its tail feathers.
The two pigeons immediately flapped up into the air, and were gone. Zebedee circled around the lawn, looking up at the sky as if he had intended only to chase the pigeons away, and was just making sure that they didn’t have the temerity to try to come back.
Fiona was sitting on the top step now, watching him. He came toward her, climbed the steps and started to sniff at her sandwiches.
‘Cats don’t like cheese and pickle,’ said Fiona. Zebedee stared at her and licked his lips, as if he expected her to offer him something else, like sardines. Or maybe he only wanted to show her how much he relished the beauty that he had taken from her.
‘You’re a beholder, too, aren’t you, Zebedee?’ Fiona asked him. ‘I can tell, because you’re so beautiful. “What a beautiful pussy you are, you are.”’
Zebedee came up closer to her and sniffed at her. She reached out and stroked his head, so that he half-closed his eyes and flattened his ears back.
It was then that Fiona suddenly snatched his green leather collar and twisted it around tight, so that it was almost strangling him. He yowled and struggled and scratched, jerking his body wildly from side to side, but Fiona held on to him, and pressed her thumb into his furry throat until he was whining for breath.
Gradually, his convulsive kicking became weaker and more spasmodic, and at last he stopped struggling altogether. Fiona laid him on his back across her knees, and tried to feel if he still had a pulse, but she couldn’t find one. His eyes were closed and his upper lip was raised in a silent snarl.
‘Now let’s see who’s beautiful,’ she said. She picked up the small stainless-steel spoon that Mummy had given her for eating her strawberry yogurt. Then, with her thumb, she raised Zebedee’s sticky left eyelid, so that his eye was exposed, with its sunflower-yellow iris. He didn’t try to blink, so she assumed th
at he must be dead. She felt that it was a pity, in a way, that he was dead, because she would have liked him to be aware that she was taking back her beauty. He had stared at her. A cat may look at a queen, she thought, but that doesn’t mean that the queen won’t be angry for being looked at.
Very carefully, with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth, Fiona dug the tip of the yogurt spoon underneath Zebedee’s eyeball. The eyeball made a slight sucking sound as she lifted it free from its socket, but it wasn’t difficult to lever it out. Soon it was hanging on Zebedee’s cheek, staring sightlessly at his whiskers. Fiona picked up the scissors and cut the optic nerve, and then she carefully placed the eyeball on the tray next to her plate of sandwiches.
She took out the other eye the same way, and then she had both eyeballs side by side. She couldn’t help smiling because they were squinting, like cartoon eyes.
‘Fee-fee!’ called Mummy, from the kitchen. ‘Have you finished your lunch yet?’
‘Nearly!’ Fiona called back. She lifted Zebedee off her lap and stood up. Then she carried his lifeless body over to the side of the house, where the dustbins stood. He was surprisingly heavy, and his legs swung from side to side like a pendulum. She opened the lid of the dustbin and dropped Zebedee into it, on top of a black plastic bag.
She had half-closed the lid when there was a frantic rustling of plastic, and a scrabbling sound, and then, with a screech, Zebedee came jumping up the inside of the dustbin, blindly scratching at the sides in an attempt to climb out. He managed to get his front legs and his head over the rim of the dustbin, but the plastic was too slippery for him to get any purchase with his back legs.
Fiona slammed the dustbin lid down on his neck, and pressed down as hard as she could. Zebedee spat and hissed at her, his eyeless face contorted with fury and pain. She pressed down harder still, and at last she heard a snap as the vertebrae in his neck were dislocated. He stopped hissing, and when she lifted the lid up a little he dropped back heavily on to the plastic bag full of rubbish.
Serves you right, too, thought Fiona.
She returned to the steps and sat down. She picked up one of Zebedee’s eyes and held it up, so that she could stare into it. It stared back at her, sightlessly, with a shred of optic nerve hanging from the back of it. In there, that’s where my beautiful face has been hiding. She hesitated for a moment, not because the eye disgusted her, but because she was so pleased that she had discovered how to get her beauty back, and it was a moment to savour.
She placed the eye on her tongue, and then she slowly closed her mouth. The eye felt like a grape, although it had a strange taste to it, oily and slightly musky. She waited a few seconds longer, and then she bit into it, so that it popped, and this time she could actually feel the small blob of optic fluid sliding down her throat.
She picked up the other eye, and bit into that, too. This eye had a longer string of connective tissue still attached to it, which stuck to the back of her throat and made her gag. For a few seconds she thought she was going to be sick, and lose all of the beauty which she had retrieved from Zebedee’s eyes, but then she took a mouthful of lemon barley water and managed to swallow it.
She finished the second half of her cheese-and-pickle sandwich, and then she ate her strawberry yogurt. The sun flickered through the leaves of the horse-chestnut trees at the end of the garden and made Fiona feel as if she were an actress in a film. She kept touching her face and she was sure that she could actually feel her beauty coming back to her, little by little.
She sang, in a high, reedy voice, ‘I feel pretty … oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and bright!’
From next door, she heard old Mrs Pickens calling out, ‘Zebedee! Zebedee! Where are you, you naughty cat?’
Later that afternoon, when Mummy was busy in the kitchen, Fiona crept upstairs again and went into Mummy’s bedroom. As quietly as she could, she turned the little key in the lock and opened the closet doors.
There she stood, in the mirror, the girl with the hideously distorted face. Fiona peered closely at her, so that their lumpy little noses almost touched, and she was sure that she wasn’t quite as ugly as she had looked before. So it did work, finding beholders and swallowing their eyeballs. But it wasn’t working as dramatically as she had hoped. She needed more – many more – and the bigger the eyeballs, the better.
A person, that’s what she needed. A person who had seen her.
But who had seen her? Daddy was dead and presumably buried, or cremated, and Mummy had never taken her out of the house. She had never been to school, because Mummy taught her everything. She had never been to a shop, although she knew what they were because Mummy had shown her pictures of them.
She thought she could remember a man and a woman looking at her. They had both been wearing white coats and said things which she hadn’t been able to understand. But that had been a very long time ago, and she had no idea who they were or where she could find them.
She carefully closed the closet doors and went back downstairs. Mummy was vacuuming in the sitting room so she was able to go through the kitchen and out on to the patio without Mummy seeing her.
She sat on the steps with Rapunzel and started to braid Rapunzel’s hair, in the same way that Mummy braided her hair. The sunlight was still flickering through the trees, but it was much lower now, and the shadows across the lawn were much longer. After she had pinned up Rapunzel’s braids, Fiona turned her around and looked at her blank, featureless face.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That’s what Mummy had said. And it was then that it occurred to her. Mummy. Apart from those two people in the white coats, Mummy was the only person who had seen her, all these years. There had been no other beholders, apart from the insects and the animals and the birds in the garden. Mummy was the only one.
Mummy came outside and sat beside her on the steps.
‘Phew!’ she said, with a smile, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘That’s all that done!’
Fiona stared at Mummy’s eyes. Her irises were pale blue, like hers, but in the late-afternoon sunlight her pupils were only pinpricks. But now Fiona knew. Inside the blackness of Mummy’s eyes, that was where her beauty was hidden. It must be. Nothing else made sense.
‘What shall we do this evening?’ asked Mummy. ‘What about a film? We could watch The Cat in the Hat again, if you like.’
Fiona thought of that stringy shred of tissue sticking to her throat and shook her head. ‘I’ve gone off cats.’
Once she was in bed, she was allowed to read for half an hour, but this evening her storybook remained unopened, because she was too busy thinking.
Mummy had always done everything she could to protect her and take care of her, ever since she was little, so she was sure that Mummy would understand why she needed to take out her eyes. Mummy would be blinded, yes, but blind people could still go shopping, couldn’t they? And Fiona could help her around the house, cleaning and cooking. Fiona could roll out pastry and she knew how to make baked potatoes with grated cheese in them.
Perhaps they could get a guide dog, so long as the guide dog didn’t look at her, and become another beholder. A guide dog with no eyes wouldn’t be much good. The blind leading the blind!
The main problem would be keeping Mummy still, while she did it. And quiet, too. Zebedee had fought like a demon, even though he must have known that what was in his eyes belonged to her, and not to him.
At eight-thirty, Mummy came into her bedroom to tuck her in and give her a goodnight kiss.
‘Sleep well, darling. Pleasant dreams.’
‘Mummy?’ said Fiona, as Mummy switched off the light.
‘What is it, Fee-fee?’ she asked, standing in silhouette in the doorway.
‘If I did something terrible, but I did it because it made me happy, would you forgive me?’
‘What do you mean by “something terrible”?’
‘If I hurt somebody, really badly.’
‘I don’
t know what you mean, darling. You don’t know anybody, do you, apart from me?’
Fiona was tempted to tell Mummy what she wanted to do. Perhaps Mummy would agree to gouge out her eyes voluntarily, so that Fiona could be beautiful again. She had already given up her whole life for her, what difference would it make if she gave up her sight?
But then Fiona thought: what if she says no? What if she finds the idea really horrifying, and refuses to do it? After that, she will always be on her guard, and I won’t be able to sneak into her bedroom in the middle of the night and take out her eyes, even though she doesn’t want me to.
‘I know, Mummy. I was just being silly.’
Mummy blew her a kiss. ‘You are a funny girl sometimes. You know that I’d forgive you anything, don’t you? Since Daddy left, you’re all I have.’
‘Daddy left? I thought Daddy died.’
‘That’s what I meant, darling. Since Daddy left us, and went to Heaven.’
‘Oh.’
Mummy closed the door, leaving Fiona lying in darkness, except for the illuminated green numbers on the digital clock beside her bed. For some reason, she thought that Mummy had sounded strangely unconvincing when she had said that Daddy had gone to Heaven. Perhaps he hadn’t gone to Heaven at all. Perhaps he had gone to Hell.
She waited for over an hour, trying hard to keep her eyes open. She could hear the television in the sitting room below her, as Mummy watched the news and then some comedy program with occasional bursts of studio laughter.
This is the last time she’ll ever be able to watch TV, thought Fiona. But she can listen to it, can’t she? And she’ll still have the radio in the kitchen.
At last she heard Mummy switch off the television and come upstairs. Mummy closed her bedroom door behind her and a few minutes later Fiona heard the bathwater running. The water tank in the attic always made a rumbling sound like distant thunder, followed by a high-pitched whistle.
Fiona waited for another half-hour, and then she sat up. She went across to her door and opened it. Mummy had switched off her bedside lamp, and the landing was in darkness. She knew that Mummy almost always took a Nytol tablet before she went to bed, so it was likely that she was asleep already. Mummy said she took Nytol because she found it difficult to get to sleep, and even when she did she had nightmares about monsters.
Figures of Fear Page 23
