Midweek, between visits to the Mansion, he would sometimes walk past Emily’s house in the hope of seeing her playing outside. Occasionally, he saw her in town, but always with her mother: standing to attention like a good little soldier, sometimes flanked by Dr Peacock, who had become her protector, her mentor, her second father. As if she needed another one, as if she didn’t already have everything.
It probably sounds like he envied her. That isn’t altogether true. But somehow he couldn’t stop thinking about her, studying her, watching her. His interest gathered momentum. He stole a camera from a second-hand shop, and taught himself to take pictures. He stole a long lens from the same shop, almost getting caught that time, but managing to get away with his trophy before the fat man at the counter — surprisingly speedy for all his bulk — finally gave up the pursuit.
When his mother told him at last that he was no longer welcome at the Mansion, he didn’t quite believe her. He’d become so accustomed to his routine — sitting quietly on the couch, reading books, drinking Earl Grey tea, listening to Emily’s music — that to be dismissed after all this time felt like an unfair punishment. It wasn’t his fault — he’d done nothing wrong. It was surely a misunderstanding. Dr Peacock had always been so kind; why would he turn against him now?
Later, blueeyedboy understood. Dr Peacock, for all his kindness, had been just another version of his mother’s ladies, who’d been so friendly when he was four, but who had so quickly lost interest. Friendless, starved of affection at home, he’d read too much into those affable ways: the walks around the rose garden; the cups of tea; the sympathy. In short, he’d fallen into the trap of mistaking compassion for caring.
Calling round that evening in the hope of finding out the truth, Yours Truly was met, not by Dr Peacock, but by Mrs White, in a black satin dress with a string of pearls round her long neck, who told him that he shouldn’t be there; that he was to leave and never come back, that he was trouble, that she knew his type —
‘Is that what Dr Peacock says?’
Well, that was what he meant to say. But his stammer was worse than ever that day, closing his mouth with clumsy stitches, and he found he could hardly say a word.
‘B-but why?’ he asked her.
‘Don’t try to pretend. Don’t think you can get away with it.’
For a moment, shame overwhelmed him. He didn’t know what he had done, but Mrs White seemed so sure of his guilt, and his eyes began to sting with tears, and the stink of Ma’s vitamin drink in his throat was almost enough to make him gag —
Please don’t cry, he told himself. Not in front of Mrs White.
She gave him a look of burning contempt. ‘Don’t think you can get around me like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
Blueeyedboy was. Ashamed and suddenly angry; and if he could have killed her then, he would have done it without hesitation or remorse. But he was only a schoolboy, and she was from a different sphere, a different class, to be obeyed, no matter what — his mother had trained her sons well — and the sound of her words was like a spike being driven into the side of his head —
‘Please,’ he said, without stammering.
‘Go away,’ said Mrs White.
‘Please. Mrs White. C-can’t we be friends?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Friends?’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother was my cleaner, that’s all. Not even a very good one. And if you think that gives you the right to harass me and my daughter, then think again.’
‘I wasn’t ha-ha—’ he began.
‘And what do you call those photographs?’ she said, looking him straight in the face.
The shock of it dried his tears at once.
‘Ph-photographs?’ he said shakily.
Turns out Feather had a friend who worked in the local photo shop. The friend had told Feather, who’d told Mrs White, who’d demanded to see the relevant prints and had taken them straight to the Mansion, where she’d used them to prove her argument that befriending the Winters had been a mistake, one from which Dr Peacock should distance himself without delay —
‘Don’t think you haven’t been seen,’ she said. ‘Creeping around after Emily. Taking pictures of us both—’
That wasn’t true. He never shot her. He only ever shot Emily. But he couldn’t say that to Mrs White. Nor could he beg her not to tell Ma —
And so he left, dry-eyed with rage, tongue stapled to the roof of his mouth. And as he looked over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the Mansion, he saw a movement in one of the upper windows. He moved away almost at once; but blueeyedboy had had time to see Dr Peacock, watching him, warding him off with a sheepish smile —
That was where it really began. That’s where blueeyedboy was born. Later that night he crept back to the house, armed with a can of peacock-blue paint, and, almost paralysed with fear and guilt, he scrawled his rage on the big front door, the door that had been cruelly shut in his face, and then, alone in his room again, he took out the battered Blue Book to draw up another murder.
Post comment:
Albertine: Oh please, not another murder. I really thought we were getting somewhere.
blueeyedboy: All right, but — you owe me one . . .
13
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:
Posted at: 02.05 on Tuesday, February 12
Status: public
Mood: crushed
Listening to: Don Henley: ‘The Boys Of Summer’
It only started out as that. A journal of his fictional life. There is a kind of innocence in those early entries, hidden away between the lines of cramped, obsessive handwriting. Sometimes he remembers the truth: the daily disappointments; the rage; the hurt; the cruelty. The rest of the time he can almost believe that he was really blueeyedboy — that what was in the Blue Book was real, and Benjamin Winter and Emily White just figments of some other person’s imagination. The Blue Book helped him stay sane; in it he wrote his fantasies; his secret vengeance against all those who hurt and humiliated him.
As for little Emily —
He watched her more than ever now. In secret, in envy, in longing, in love. Over the months that followed his expulsion from the Peacock house, he followed Emily’s career, her life. He took hundreds of photographs. He collected newspaper clippings of her. He even befriended the little girl who lived next door to Mrs White, giving her sweets and calling on her in the hope of a glimpse of Emily.
For some time Dr Peacock had worked to keep Emily’s identity secret. In his papers she was simply Girl Y — a fitting replacement to Boy X — until such time as he and her parents chose to launch her into the world. But blueeyedboy knew the truth. Blueeyedboy knew what she was. A Luna moth in a glass case, just waiting to fly from the chrysalis straight into the killing jar —