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
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on :
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.