Did she believe I was involved? If so, she was disappointed. There were no handcuffs, there was no interrogation, no trip to the police station. Even the questions they asked me had a tired quality. After all, there was no sign of violence. The victim had merely suffered a fall. The death — the accidental death — of one old man (even if he had been famous once) was hardly a matter for much concern.
My mother took it badly, though. It wasn’t the thought that I might have killed Dr Peacock, but just the fact that I’d been in the house, had worked in that house for eighteen months without her even suspecting it — and worse, that Eleanor had known —
‘How could you?’ she said, when they had gone. ‘How could you set foot in that house again, after everything that’s happened?’
There was no point my denying what I’d done. But as any seasoned liar knows, a half-truth can screen a thousand lies. And so I confessed. I’d had no choice. I’d had to take on extra work. It was part of the hospital’s outpatient scheme. The fact that I’d got that particular case was nothing but coincidence.
‘You could have talked your way out of it. You could talk your way out of a locked room—’
‘It isn’t as easy as that, Ma—’
She slapped me then, across the mouth. One of her rings cut my lip. Probably the tourmaline. Its taste was Campari soda with an aluminium chaser of blood.
Tourmaline. Tour. Malign. It sounds like a place of imprisonment, an evil tower from a Perrault fairy tale, and its smell is the same as St Oswald’s, a reek of disinfectant and dust and polish and cabbage and chalk and boys.
‘Don’t you dare patronize me. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.’
My mother has a sixth sense. She always knows when I’ve done something wrong; when I’m thinking of doing something wrong.
‘You wanted to see him, didn’t you? After everything he’s done to us. You wanted his fucking approval.’ Her camelbacked foot in its sling-back heel began to tap a quick, irregular rhythm against the leg of the sofa. The sound of it made my throat go dry, and the vegetable stink of it was enough to make me want to gag.
‘Please, Ma.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Please, Ma, it’s not my fault—’
She is surprisingly quick with her hands. I was expecting the second blow, and still it caught me by surprise, knocking me sideways into the wall. The cabinet with the china dogs shivered once, but nothing fell.
‘Then whose fault is it, you little shit?’
I put a hand to my cut lip. I knew she hadn’t even begun; her face was almost expressionless, but her voice was charged like a battery. I took a step closer to the cabinet. I figured she wouldn’t risk anything so close to her china dogs.
When she’s dead, I thought to myself, I’m going to take every single one of those fucking dogs out into the back yard and stamp on them with my engineer boots.
She saw me looking. ‘B.B., come here!’
Just as I thought, I told myself. She wanted me clear of that cabinet. She’d acquired a new ornament, I saw; an Oriental specimen. I put out my hand and rested it very gently against the pane.
‘Don’t do that,’ my mother snapped. ‘You’ll leave fingerprints on the glass.’
I could tell she wanted to hit me again. But she didn’t — not then — because of those dogs. Still, I couldn’t stay there all day. I turned towards the parlour door, hoping to make it upstairs to my room, but Ma grabbed hold of the door-handle and, with one hand in the small of my back, yanked the door open into my face —
After that, it was easy. Once I was down, her feet did the rest, her feet in those fucking sling-backed heels. By the time she was done I was snivelling, and my face was laddered with scratches and cuts.
‘Now look at you,’ Ma said — the violent outburst over now, but still with a trace of impatience, as if this were something I’d brought on myself, some unrelated accident. ‘You’re a mess. What on earth were you playing at?’
I knew there was no point in trying to explain. Experience has taught me that when Ma gets like this, it’s better to stay quiet and hope for the best. Later, she’ll fill in the gaps with some kind of plausible story; a fall down the stairs, an accident. Or maybe this time I was mugged, or beaten up on my way from work. I should know. It’s happened before. And those sharp little breaks in her memory are getting increasingly frequent, more so since my brother’s death.
I tested my ribs. None seemed broken. But my back hurt where she’d kicked me, and there was a deep cut across my eyebrow where the edge of the door had struck. Blood drenched the front of my shirt, and I could already feel one of my headaches coming, arpeggios of coloured light troubling my vision.
‘I suppose you’ll need stitches now,’ said Ma. ‘As if I didn’t already have enough to do today. Oh, well.’ She sighed. ‘Boys will be boys. Always up to something. Lucky I was here, eh? I’ll come with you to the hospital.’
OK, so I lied. I’m not proud of the fact. It was Ma, and not Nigel, who messed up my face. Gloria Green; five foot four in her shoes, sixty-nine and built like a bird —
You’ll be fine in no time, love, said the pink-haired nurse as she fixed me up. Stupid bitch. As if she cared. I was just a patient to her. Patient. Penitent. Words that smell of citrus green and sting like a mouthful of needles. And I have been so patient, Ma, patient for so very long.
I had to quit my job after that. Too many questions; too many lies; too many snares in which to be caught. Having discovered one subterfuge, Ma could so easily have checked me out and exposed the pretence of the past twenty years —
Still, it’s a short-term setback. My long-term plan remains unchanged. Enjoy your china dogs, Ma. Enjoy them while you still can.
I suppose I ought to feel pleased with myself. I’m getting away with murder. A smile, a kiss, and — Whoops! All gone! — like a malignant conjuring trick. You don’t believe me? Check it out. Search me from all angles. Look for hidden mirrors, for secret compartments, for cards up my sleeve. I promise you I’m totally clean. And yet, it’s going to happen, Ma. Just you watch it blow up in your face.
These were my thoughts as I lay there on the hospital trolley, thinking about those china dogs and how I was going to stomp them into powder the minute — the second — Ma was dead. And as soon as I let the thought take shape without the comforting blanket of fic, it was almost as if a nuke had gone off inside my skull, tearing into me, wringing me like a wet rag and cramping my jaw in a silent scream —
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Did that hurt?’ The pink-haired nurse, all three of her, swam briefly across my consciousness like a shoal of tropical fish.
‘He gets these headaches,’ said Ma. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only stress.’
‘I can get the doctor to prescribe something—’
‘No. Don’t bother. It’ll pass.’
That was nearly three weeks ago. Forgotten, if not quite forgiven, perhaps, the stitches removed, the bruises now veering from purple and blue to an oil-slick palette of yellows and greens. The headache took three days to subside, during which time Ma fed me home-made soup and watched by my bed as I shivered and moaned. I don’t think I said anything aloud. Even in my delirium, I think I was cleverer than that. In any case, by the end of the week, things were back to normal again, and blueeyedboy was, if not quite off the hook, then at least back in the net for another spell.