In the afternoons they would do other things, like look at pictures and listen to sounds, which was part of Dr Peacock’s research, and which Ben found incomprehensible, but to which he submitted obediently.
There were books and books of letters and numbers arranged in patterns that he had to identify. There was a library of recorded sounds. There were questions like: What colour is Wednesday? What number is green? — and shapes with intriguing made-up names, but there were never any wrong answers, which meant that Dr Peacock was pleased, and that Ma was always proud of him.
And he liked to go to that big old house, with its library and its studio and its archive of forgotten things; records, cameras, bundles of yellow photographs, weddings and family groups and long-dead children in sailor suits with anxious, watch-the-birdie smiles. He was wary of St Oswald’s, but it was nice to study with Dr Peacock, to be called Benjamin; to listen to him talk about his travels, his music, his studies, his roses.
Best of all, he mattered there. There he was special — a subject, a case. Dr Peacock listened to him; noted down his reactions to various kinds of stimuli; then asked him precisely what he felt. Often he would record the results on his little Dictaphone, referring to Ben as Boy X, to protect his anonymity.
Boy X. He liked that. It made him sound impressive, somehow, a boy with special powers — a gift. Not that he was very gifted. He was an average pupil at school, never ranking especially high. As for his sensory gifts, as Dr Peacock called them — those sounds that translated to colours and smells — if he’d thought about them at all, he’d always just assumed that everyone experienced them as he did, and even though Dr Peacock assured him that this was an aberration, he continued to think of himself as the norm, and everyone else as freakish.
The word serenity is grey [says Dr Peacock in his paper entitled ‘Boy X and Early Acquired Synaesthesia’], though serene is dark blue, with a slight flavour of aniseed. Numbers have no colours at all, but names of places and of individuals are often highly charged, sometimes overwhelmingly so, often both with colours and with flavours. There exists in certain cases a distinct correlation between these extraordinary sense-impressions and events that Boy X has experienced, which suggests that this type of synaesthesia may be partly associative, rather than merely congenital. However, even in this case a number of interesting physical responses to these stimuli may be observed, including salivation as a direct response to the word scarlet, which to Boy X smells of chocolate, and a feeling of dizziness associated with the colour pink, which to Boy X smells strongly of gas.
He made it sound so important then. As if they were doing something for science. And when his book was published, he said, both he and Boy X would be famous. They might even win a research prize.
In fact Ben was so preoccupied with his lessons at Dr Peacock’s house that he hardly ever thought about the ladies from Ma’s cleaning round who had wooed him so assiduously. He had more pressing concerns by then, and Dr Peacock’s research had taken the place of paintings and dolls.
That was why, six months later, when he finally saw Mrs White one day at the market, he was surprised to see how fat she’d got, as if, after his departure, she’d had to eat for herself all the contents of those big red tins of Family Circle biscuits. What had happened? he asked himself. Pretty Mrs White had grown a prominent belly; and she waddled through the fruit and veg, a big, silly smile on her face.
His mother told them the good news. After nearly ten years of trying and failing, Mrs White was finally pregnant. For some reason, this excited Ma, possibly because it meant more hours, but blueeyedboy was filled with unease. He thought of her collection of dolls, those eerie, ruffled, not-quite-children, and wondered if she’d get rid of them, now she was getting the real thing.
It gave him nightmares to think of it: all those staring, plaintive dollies in their silks and antique lace abandoned on some rubbish tip, clothes gone to tatters, rain-washed white, china heads smashed open among the bottles and tins.
‘Boy or girl?’ said Ma.
‘A little girl. I’m going to call her Emily.’
Emily. Em-il-y, three syllables, like a knock on the door of destiny. Such an odd, old-fashioned name, compared to those Kylies and Traceys and Jades — names that reeked of Impulse and grease and stood out in gaudy neon colours — whilst hers was that muted, dusky pink, like bubblegum, like roses —
But how could blueeyedboy have known that she would one day lead him here? And how could anyone have guessed that both of them would be so close — victim and predator intertwined like a rose growing through a human skull — without their even knowing it?
Post comment:
ClairDeLune: I really like where this is going. Is it part of something longer?
chrysalisbaby: is that 4 real with the colours? how much did U have 2 research it?
blueeyedboy: Not as much as you might think
Glad you liked it, Chryssie!
chrysalisbaby: aw hunny (hugs)
JennyTricks: (post deleted).
6
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 02.54 on Sunday, February 3
Status: restricted
Mood: blank
I cried a river when Daddy died. I cry at bad movies. I cry at sad songs. I cry at dead dogs and TV advertisements and rainy days and Mondays. So — why no tears for Nigel? I know that Mozart’s Requiem or Albinoni’s Adagio would help turn on the waterworks, but that’s not grief; that’s self-indulgence, the kind that Gloria Winter prefers.
Some people enjoy the public display. Emily’s funeral was a case in point. A mountain of flowers and teddy bears; people wept openly in the streets. A nation mourned — but not for a child. Perhaps for the loss of innocence; for the grubbiness of it all, for their own collective greed, that in the end had swallowed her whole. The Emily White Phenomenon that had caused so much fanfare over the years ended with a whimper: a little headstone in Malbry churchyard and a stained-glass window in the church, paid for by Dr Peacock, much to the indignation of Maureen Pike and her cronies, who felt it was inappropriate for the man to be linked in any way to the church, to the Village, to Emily.
No one really mentions it now. People tend to leave me alone. In Malbry I am invisible; I take pleasure in my lack of depth. Gloria calls me colourless; I overheard her once on the phone, back in the days when she and Nigel talked.