Patrick White was his father.
Post comment:
ClairDeLune: I like the way your stories combine ‘real-life’ events with fiction. Perhaps you’d like to come back to Group and discuss the process of writing this? I’m sure the others would appreciate an insight into your emotional journey.
JennyTricks: (post deleted).
blueeyedboy: Jenny, do I know you?
JennyTricks: (post deleted).
blueeyedboy: Seriously. Do I know you?
11
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 22.35 on Monday, February 4
Status: restricted
Mood: amused
Listening to: Black Sabbath: ‘Paranoid’
Well, if you won’t answer me, I’ll simply delete your entries. You’re on my turf now, JennyTricks, and my rules apply. But it feels as if I know you. Could it be that we’ve met before? Could it be that you’re stalking me?
Stalking. Now there’s a sinister word. Like part of a plant, a bitter-green stalk that will one day bloom into something sickening. But online, things are different. Online, as fictional characters, we can sometimes allow ourselves the luxury of antisocial behaviour. I’m sick of hearing about how so-and-so felt so violated at such-and-such’s comments, or how somebody else felt sexually besmirched at some harmless innuendo. Oh, these people with their sensitivities. Excuse me, but writing a comment in capitals isn’t the same as shouting. Venting a little vitriol isn’t the same as a physical blow. So vent away, JennyTricks. Nothing you say can touch me. Although I’ll admit, I’m curious. Tell me, have we met before?
The rest of my online audience shows a pleasing level of appreciation — especially ClairDeLune, who sends me a critique (her word) of every single fic I write, with comments on style and imagery. My last attempt, she tells me, is both psychologically intuitive and a breakthrough into a new and more mature style.
Cap, less subtle, as always, pleads for more drama, more anguish, more blood. Toxic, who thinks about sex all the time, urges me to write more explicitly. Or, as he puts it: Whatever gets your rocks off, dude. Just try to think about mine some time . . .
As for Chryssie, she just sends me love — adoring, uncritical, slavish love — with a message that says: Ur made of awesome! on a banner made up of little pink hearts —
Albertine does not comment. She rarely does on my stories. Perhaps they make her uncomfortable. I hope so. Why post them otherwise?
I saw her again this afternoon. Red coat, black hair, basket over her arm, walking down the hill into Malbry town. I had my camera with me this time, the one with the telephoto lens, and I managed to get a few clear shots from the little piece of waste ground at the top of Mill Road before a man walking his dog forced me to curtail my investigation.
He gave me a suspicious look. He was short, bow-legged, muscular; the type of man who always seems to hate and distrust me on sight. His dog was the same; bandy, off-white; big teeth and no eyes. It growled when it saw me. I took a step back.
‘Birds,’ I said, by means of explanation. ‘I like to come here and photograph birds.’
The man eyed me with open contempt. ‘Aye, I’ll bet.’
He watched me go with no further comment, but I could feel his eyes in the small of my back. I’ll have to be more careful, I thought. People already think I’m a freak — and the last thing I want is for someone to remember later how Gloria Winter’s boy was seen lurking around Mill Road with a camera —
And yet, I can’t stop watching her. It’s almost a compulsion. God knows what Ma would do if she knew. Still, Ma has other fish to fry in the wake (ha!) of Nigel’s funeral, though the task of clearing out his flat has fallen to Yours Truly.
Not that there is much to find. His telescope; a few clothes; his computer; half a shelf of old books. Some papers from the hospital in a shoebox under the bed. I’d expected more — a journal, at least — but maybe experience had made him more cautious. If Nigel kept a journal at all, it was probably at Emily’s house, where he’d been staying most of the time, and where he could almost certainly rely on its safety from prying eyes.
There is no sign of Nigel’s girl here. Not a trace, not a hair, not a photograph. The narrow bed is still unmade, the quilt pulled roughly over the dubious sheet, but she has never slept here. There is no fleeting scent of her, no toothbrush of hers in the bathroom, no coffee cup in the sink bearing the imprint of her mouth. The flat smells of unaired bed, of stale water, of damp, and it will take me less than half a day to clear the contents into the back of a van and to drive it to the refuse site, where anything of value will be sorted and recycled, and the rest consigned to landfill, to the misery of future generations.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how little a life amounts to? A few old clothes, a box of papers, some dirty plates in the sink? A half-smoked packet of cigarettes, tucked away in a bedside drawer — she doesn’t smoke, so he kept them here, for those nights when, unable to sleep, he would look out through the skylight with his telescope, trying to see, through the light pollution, the crystal webwork of the stars.
Yes, my brother liked stars. That was pretty much all he liked. Certainly, he never liked me. Well, neither of them did, of course, but it was Nigel I feared; Nigel, who had suffered most in the face of Ma’s expectations —
Oh, those expectations. I wonder what Nigel made of them. Watching from the sidelines, pallid in his black shirts, bony fists perpetually clenched, so that when he opened up his hands you’d see the little crescents of red that his fingernails had left in his palm, marks he transferred on to my skin whenever he and I were alone —
Nigel’s flat is monochrome. Grey sheets under a black-and-white quilt; a wardrobe in shades of charcoal and black. You’d have thought he might have quit that by now, but time has made no difference to my brother’s colour scheme. Socks, jackets, sweaters, jeans. Not a shirt, not a T-shirt, not even a pair of underpants that is not the official black or grey —
Nigel was five when Dad left home. I’ve often wondered about that. Did he remember wearing colours, when he was still the only child? Did he sometimes go to the beach and play on the salty yellow sand? Or did he lie there with Dad at night and point out the constellations? What was he really looking for, scanning the skies with his Junior Telescope (paid for with money from his newspaper round)? Where did his anger come from? Most of all, why was it decreed that he should be black, or Ben should be blue? And if our roles had been reversed, would things have turned out differently?
I guess I’ll never know now. Maybe I should have asked him. But Nigel and I never really talked, not even back when we were kids. We coexisted side by side, waging a kind of guerrilla war in defiance of Ma’s disapproval, each one inflicting as much damage as he could on to the hated enemy.
My brother never knew me, except as the focus of his rage. And the only time I ever found out anything intimate about him, I kept the knowledge to myself, fearing the possible consequences. But if each man kills the thing he loves, must not the opposite also be true? Does each man love the thing he kills? And is love the ingredient that I lack?