Congratulations! You are an Oedipal. Your unusually close relationship with your mother has stifled your ability to grow into an emotionally balanced human being. Your ambivalence towards her emerges in violent fantasies, often sexual in nature.
Well — duh, as Cap might say.
Nigel may have missed his dad, but the man meant nothing to blueeyedboy. He wasn’t even blueeyedboy’s real father — certainly, from his photographs, he sees no resemblance to himself. To Nigel, perhaps: the big, square hands; the black hair falling across the face; the slightly over-pretty mouth, with its hidden threat of violence. Ma often hinted that Peter Winter was possessed of a nasty streak; and if one of them misbehaved, she’d say — whilst wielding that piece of electrical cord — It’s a good thing for you your father’s not here. He’d soon sort you out.
And so the word father came to have — shall we say — negative connotations. A loose-lipped, greenish, bilious sound, like the murky water under Blackpool pier, where they used to go on his birthday. Blueeyedboy always liked the beach, but the pier itself frightened him, looking as it did like a fossilized animal — a dinosaur maybe — all bones, but still quite dangerous with its muddy feet and broken teeth.
Pier. Peter. Pierre, in French. Sticks and stones may break my bones —
After seeing Mr White with his ma, our hero’s curiosity regarding Patrick White had increased. He found himself watching Mr White whenever he saw him in the Village — walking to St Oswald’s with his satchel in one hand and a pile of exercise books in the other; in the park on Sundays with Mrs White and Emily — now two years old and learning to walk — playing games, making her laugh —
It occurred to him that if Mr White were his father, then Emily must be his sister. He imagined himself with a little sister: helping his Ma look after her; reading her stories at bedtime. He began to follow them; to sit in the park where they liked to go, pretending to read a book while he watched —
He hadn’t dared ask Ma for the truth. Besides, he didn’t need to. He could feel it in his heart. Patrick White was his father. Sometimes our hero liked to dream that one day his father would come and take him somewhere far away —
He would have shared, he tells himself. He would have shared him with Emily. But Mr White went out of his way to avoid even having to look at him. A man who, until then, had always greeted him genially in the street; had always called him young man and asked how he was doing at school.
It wasn’t just because Emily was so much more appealing. There was something in Mr White’s face, in his voice whenever our hero approached him; a look of wariness, almost of fear —
But what could Mr White possibly fear from a boy of only nine years old? Our hero had no way of knowing. Was he afraid that blueeyedboy might want to harm Emily? Or was he afraid that Mrs White would one day discover his secret?
He started skipping classes at school to hang around St Oswald’s. He would hide behind the utility shed and watch the yard as lessons changed: the stream of boys in blue uniforms; the Masters in their flapping black gowns. On Tuesdays it was Mr White who supervised the schoolyard, and blueeyedboy would watch him avidly from his hiding-place as he moved across the asphalt, stopping every now and again to exchange a few words with a pupil —
‘String quartet tonight, Jones. Don’t forget your music.’
‘No, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘Tuck your shirt in, Hudson, please. You’re not on the beach at Brighton, you know.’
Blueeyedboy remembers one Tuesday, which happened to be his tenth birthday. Not that he expected much in the way of celebration. That year had been especially grim, except for his trips to the Mansion; money was tight; Ma was stressed, and a trip to Blackpool was out of the question — there was too much work to do. Even a birthday cake, he thought, was probably too much to hope for. Even so, that morning, there seemed to be something special in the air. He was ten years old. The big one-oh. His life was in double digits. Perhaps it was time, he told himself, as he headed towards St Oswald’s, to find out the truth about Patrick White —
He found him in the schoolyard, a couple of minutes before the end of School Assembly. Mr White was standing by the entrance to the Middle School Quad, his faded gown slung over his arm, a mug of coffee in one hand. In a minute or two the yard would be filled with boys; now it was deserted, except, of course, for blueeyedboy, made instantly conspicuous by dint of his lack of uniform, standing beneath the entrance gate with the school’s motto emblazoned on it in Latin — Audere, agere, auferre — which, thanks to Dr Peacock, he knows means: to dare, to strive, to conquer.
Suddenly, our blueeyedboy did not feel very daring. He was desperately sure he would stutter; that the words he so badly wanted to speak would break and crumble in his mouth. And even without the black robe, Mr White looked forbidding: taller and sterner than usual, watching our hero’s determined approach, listening to the sound of his shoes on the cobbled courtyard —
‘What are you doing here, boy?’ he said, and his voice, though soft, was glacial. ‘Why have you been following me?’
Blueeyedboy looked at him. Mr White’s blue eyes seemed a very long way up. ‘M-Mr White—’ he began. ‘I — I—’
Stuttering begins in the mind. It’s the curse of expectation. That’s why he was able to speak perfectly normally at certain times, while at others his words turned to Silly String, tangling him uselessly in a web of his own making.
‘I — I—’ Our hero could feel his face turning red.
Mr White regarded him. ‘Look, I don’t have time for this. The bell’s going to ring any moment now—’
Blueeyedboy made a final effort. He had to know the truth, he thought. After all, today was his birthday. He tried to see himself in blue: St Oswald’s blue, or butterfly blue. He saw the words like butterflies coming out of his open mouth, and said, with barely a stutter at all —
‘Mr White, are you my dad?’
For a moment the silence bound them. Then, just as the morning bell sounded through St Oswald’s, blueeyedboy saw Patrick White’s face change from shock to astonishment, and then to a kind of stunned pity.
‘Is that what you thought?’ he said at last.
Blueeyedboy just looked at him. Around them, the courtyard was filling up with blue St Oswald’s blazers. Chirping voices all around, circling like birds. Some of the boys gaped at him, a single sparrow in a flock of budgerigars.
After a moment, Mr White seemed to come out of his stupor. ‘Listen,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘I don’t know where you got this idea. But it isn’t true. Really, it’s not. And if I catch you spreading these rumours—’
‘You’re n-not my f-father?’ said blueeyedboy, his voice beginning to tremble.
‘No,’ said Mr White. ‘I’m not.’
For a moment the words seemed to make no sense. Blueeyedboy had been so sure. But Mr White was telling the truth; he could see it in his blue eyes. But then — why had he given money to Ma? And why had he done it in secret?