Blueeyedboy (24 page)

He watched them over his Pepsi, looking askance at Emily with her starfish hands splayed around her lump of blue clay. Feather was encouraging her, saying:
Make something, darling. Make a shape
. Mrs White was leaning forward, tensed with hope and expectancy, her long hair hanging so close to the clay that it looked as if it might stick there.

‘What’s it going to be? A face?’

There came a sound from Emily that might have been acquiescence.

‘And those are the
eyes
, and there’s the
nose
—’ said Feather, sounding ecstatic, though
blueeyedboy
couldn’t see anything much to provoke such rapt excitement.

Emily’s hands moved on the clay, gouging a hole here and there, exploring with her fingertips, scraping her nails around the back to form the semblance of hair. Now he could see it
was
a head, though primitive and misshapen, with bat’s ears and a ludicrous pseudo-scientist’s brow that dwarfed the other features. The eyes were shallow thumbprints; barely even visible.

But Feather and Mrs White crowed in delight, and
blueeyedboy
drew closer to them, trying to see what it was in their eyes that made it so remarkable.

Feather gave him a dirty look. He pulled away from the table at once. But Mrs White had noticed him, and instead of pleased recognition, he saw a look of alarm in her eyes, as if she thought he might hurt Emily, as if he could be dangerous –

‘What are
you
doing here?’ she said.

He gave a shrug. ‘N-nothing.’

‘Where are your brothers? Your mother?’

He shrugged. Faced with his long-pursued quarry at last, he found that speech had abandoned him, leaving nothing but broken syllables and a stammer that rendered him helpless.

‘You’re following me,’ said Mrs White. ‘What do you want?’

Again, he shrugged. He couldn’t have explained it to her even if they had been alone, and Feather’s presence by her side made it even less possible. He twisted on the seat of his chair, feeling trapped and foolish, with the taste of the vitamin drink in his throat, and his forehead like a squeezed balloon –

Feather narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You know this counts as harassment,’ she said. ‘Catherine could call the police.’

‘He’s only a boy,’ said Mrs White.

‘Boys grow up,’ said Feather darkly.

‘What do you want?’ said Mrs White again.

‘I-I just w-wanted to s-see E-Emily,’ said
blueeyedboy
, feeling nauseous. He looked at the lump of untouched clay and the half-drunk Pepsi at his side. He hadn’t intended to order them. He had no money to pay for them. And now here was Mrs White’s friend talking about calling the police –

He really meant to tell her the truth. But now he hardly knew what that was. He had thought that when he spoke to her he would know what it was that he wanted to say. But now, as the vegetable stink increased and the ache in his head intensified, he knew that what he wanted from her was something far closer to the bone; a word that came clothed in shades of blue . . .

Late that night, alone in his room, he took out the Blue Book from under his bed and, instead of his journal, began to write a story.

Post comment
:

ClairDeLune
:
Interesting, how this fic explores the evolution of the creative process. If you don’t mind, I’d like to circulate this to some of my other students – or maybe we could discuss it here?

4

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blueeyedboy
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Posted at
:
22.40 on Friday, February 8

Status
:
restricted

Mood
:
ominous

Listening to
:
Jarvis Cocker
: ‘I Will Kill Again’

Eleanor Vine called round early tonight while Ma was getting ready to go out, and took the opportunity to take Yours Truly to task again. It seems that my continuing absence from our writing-as-therapy group has been noted and commented upon. She doesn’t attend herself, of course – too many people; too much dirt – but I guess Terri must have talked.

People talk to Eleanor. She seems to invite confidences, somehow. And I can see how it’s killing her that she has known me all this time and still has no more knowledge of me than when I was four years old –

‘You really should go back, you know,’ she says. ‘You need to get out more. Make new friends. Besides, you owe it to your Ma—’

Owe it to Ma? Don’t make me laugh.

I adjusted my iPod earpiece. It’s the only way I can deal with her. Through it, in his rasping voice, Jarvis Cocker confided to me what, if given half a chance, he would do to someone like Eleanor –

She gave me a look of fish-eyed reproach. ‘I hear there’s someone who’s missing you.’

‘Really?’ I feigned innocence.

‘Don’t be coy. She likes you.’ She gave me a nudge. ‘You could do worse.’

‘Yeah. Thanks, Mrs Vine.’

Interfering old trout. As if that collection of fucktards and losers could ever throw up a live one. I know who she means; I’m not interested. In my earpiece Cocker’s voice shifted registers, now soaring plaintively towards the octave:

And don’t believe me if I claim to be your friend
‘Cos given half the chance I know that I will kill again . . .

But Eleanor Vine is persistent as glue. ‘You could be a nice-looking young man, once those bruises have disappeared. You don’t want to be selling yourself short. I’ve seen you hanging around that girl, and you know as well as I do that if your Ma knew, there’d be hell to pay.’

I flinched at that. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘That girl in the Pink Zebra. The one with all the tattoos,’ she said.

‘Who, Bethan?’ I said. ‘She hates me.’

Eleanor raised an eyebrow that was mostly skin and wire. ‘On first-name terms, then, are we?’ she said.

‘I hardly ever speak to her, except to order Earl Grey.’

‘That’s not what
I’ve
heard,’ said Eleanor.

That’ll be Terri, I told myself. She sometimes goes into the Zebra. In fact, I think she follows me. It’s getting quite hard to avoid her.

‘Bethan’s not my type,’ I said.

Eleanor seemed to calm down after that, the roguish expression returning to her sharp and avid features. ‘So – you’ll think about what I said, then? A girl like our Terri won’t wait around for ever. You’re going to have to do something soon—’

I gave a sigh. ‘All right,’ I said.

She gave me an approving look. ‘I knew you’d see sense. Now – I have to go. I know your Ma’s got her salsa class. But keep me up to date, won’t you? And remember what they always say—’

I wondered what cliché she would use this time.
Faint heart never won fair lady
? Or:
Best strike while the iron’s hot
?

As it was, she didn’t have the chance, because Ma came in just at that moment, all in black, with sequins. Her dancing shoes had six-inch heels. I didn’t envy her partner.

‘Eleanor! What a surprise!’

‘Just having a chat with B.B.,’ she said.

‘That’s nice.’ I thought Ma’s eyes narrowed a little.

‘I’m surprised he doesn’t have a girlfriend,’ said Eleanor, with a sideways glance. ‘If I were twenty years younger,’ she said, addressing her words to my mother now, ‘I swear I’d marry him myself.’

I considered Mrs Vine in blue. It suited her.

‘Really,’ said Ma.

I suppose she means well, I told myself, even though she has no idea what she’s dealing with. She’s only trying to do what’s best, as Ma always tries to do what’s best for me. But
Our Terri
, as she calls her, is hardly the stuff of fantasy. Besides, I have no time for romance. I have other fish to fry.

Mrs Vine gave me something that I guessed was meant to be a smile. ‘Can you drop me off at home? I’d walk, but I know you’ll be driving your ma, and—’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have to go.’

5

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blueeyedboy
posting on
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Posted at
:
23.49 on Saturday, February 9

Status
:
public

Mood
:
clean

Listening to
:
Genesis
: ‘One For The Vine’

He calls her Mrs Chemical Blue. Hygiene and neatness are her concern; something that, in fifteen years, has gone beyond reason – or even a joke. Biscuits eaten over the sink; windows washed daily; dusting ten, twenty times a day; ornaments on the mantelpiece rearranged every quarter of an hour. She was always house-proud –
and what an odd word
, he thinks to himself, recalling what he knows of that house, and the way she used to watch his Ma at work, thin hands clenched in fearful distress, her face rigid with anxiety that a dishtowel might be left disastrously unaligned, or a mat slightly askew to the door, or a speck of dust left on a rug, or even a knick-knack out of place.

Mr Chemical Blue has long gone, taking their teenage son with him. Perhaps she regrets it a little, sometimes; but children are so messy, she thinks, and she never could make him understand how hiring a cleaner only complicated things; caused her, not less, but more work; meant something else to supervise, another person in the house, another set of fingerprints – and although she knew no one was to blame, she found their presence unbearable – yes, even that sweet little boy – until finally they had to go –

Since then, of course, it has worsened. With no one to keep her under control, obsession has taken over her life. No longer content with her spotless house, she has progressed to compulsive handwashing and near-toxic doses of Listerine. Always slightly neurotic, fifteen years of alcohol and antidepressants have taken their toll on her personality so that now, at fifty-nine years old, she is nothing but twitches and tics, a nervous system out of control, thinly upholstered in wan flesh.

No one would miss her, he tells himself. In fact, it would probably be a relief. An anonymous gift to her family: to her son, who visits twice a year and who can hardly bear to see her like this; to her husband, who has moved on, and whose guilt has grown like a tumour; to her niece, who lives in despair of her perpetual interference and her well-meant but disastrous attempts to fix her up with a nice young man.

Besides, she, too, deserves to die; if only for the waste of time, for sunny days spent indoors, for words unspoken, for smiles unnoticed, for all the things she could have done if only she could have settled for
less
–

Only gossip sustains her now. Gossip, rumour and speculation, disseminated via telephone lines on to the parish grapevine. Behind her lace curtains, she sees all. Nothing goes unnoticed to her; no lingering speck of human dirt. No crime, no secret, no petty aberration goes unreported. Nothing escapes examination. No one evades judgement. Does she ever sometimes wish that she could put it all aside, throw open the door and breathe the air? Does she sometimes wonder whether her obsessive attention to cleanliness does not hide a different kind of dirt?

She may have done so, long ago. But now all she can do is watch. Like a crab in its shell, like a barnacle, battened tight against the world. What does she do in there all day? No one is allowed to enter the house unless they leave their shoes outside. Teacups are disinfected before and after use. Groceries are delivered to the front porch. Even the postman deposits the mail, not through the door, but into a metal box by the gate, to be retrieved furtively, and at speed, by Mrs Chemical Blue, wearing Marigolds, her pale eyes wide with the daily unease of traversing six feet of unsanitized space . . .

It’s a challenge he cannot resist. To erase her like a difficult stain; to oust her like a parasite; to winkle her out of her shell and force her into the open again.

But in the end, it’s easy. It requires only subterfuge and some small expense. A hired white minivan, bearing the insignia of an imaginary firm; a baseball cap and a dark-blue jumpsuit with the same firm’s logo embroidered on the top pocket; sundry items ordered via the Internet, paid on a borrowed credit card and delivered to a PO box in town; plus a clipboard to give him authority, and a glossy illustrated brochure (wholly produced on his desktop PC) extolling the virtues of an industrial cleaning product of such efficiency that it has only now been granted a licence for (strictly limited) domestic use.

He explains all this through a crack in the door, from which Mrs Chemical Blue’s eye watches him with a jellyfish glaze. For a moment, fear outstrips her desire; and then she caves in, as he knows she will, and invites the nice young man inside.

This time, he really wants to watch. So he wears a mask for the crucial part, bought from an Army surplus store. The gas, purchased from a US website claiming to deal with unwanted parasites, remains officially untested on humans, as yet – although a local dog has already contributed to his research, with very promising results. Mrs Chemical Blue should last longer, he thinks; but given her poor immunity and the nervous rise and fall of her chest, he is fairly sure of the outcome.

Still, he expects to feel something more. Guilt, perhaps; even pity. Instead he feels only scientific curiosity mixed with that childlike sense of wonder at the smallness of it all. Death is no big deal, he thinks. The difference between life and its opposite can be as small as a blood clot, as insignificant as a bubble of air. The body is, after all, a machine. He knows a little about machines. The greater the number of moving parts, the greater the chance of things going wrong. And the body has so many moving parts –