I tried to argue with her at first. I had no qualifications. Besides, I wasn’t cut out for medicine. Ma was saddened, but took it well — or so I thought in my innocence. I’d expected an outburst at the very least; one of Ma’s violent attacks. What I got was a week of redoubled affection and lavishly home-cooked dinners — always my favourites — which she laid on the table with the virtuous air of a long-suffering guardian angel.
Soon after that I fell violently ill, with acute stomach cramps and a fever that brought me to my knees. Even to sit up in bed was to precipitate the most awful spasms of pain and vomiting, and to stand — still less to walk — was wholly out of the question. Ma cared for me with a tenderness that might have made me suspicious if I hadn’t been suffering so much. Then, after almost a week, she reverted suddenly to type.
I’d been getting better. I’d lost pounds in weight; I was weak, but at last the pain had gone, and I was able to eat simple food in small quantities. A cup of noodle soup; some bread; a tablespoonful of plain rice; soldiers dipped in egg yolk.
She must have been worried by then, of course. Ma was no doctor; she had no concept of dosage, and the violence of my reaction must have been alarming. Waking up a few nights before from a sleep that was part delirium, I’d heard her talking to herself, arguing fiercely with someone not there:
It serves him right. He needs to learn.
But he’s in pain. He’s sick —
He’ll live. Besides, he should have listened to me —
What had she put in those lavish meals? Ground glass? Rat poison? Whatever it had been, it had worked fast. And the day I was finally able to sit up in bed, even to stand, Ma came in, not with a tray, but with an application form — a form from Malbry College, which she had already filled in for me.
‘I hope you’ve had time to think,’ she said in a suspiciously cheery voice. ‘Lying in bed doing nothing all day, letting me fetch and carry for you. I hope you’ve had time to think about everything I’ve done for you. Everything you owe me—’
‘Please. Not now. My stomach hurts—’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said. ‘In a day or two you’ll be good as new, eating me out of house and home, like the ungrateful little bastard you are. Now, have a look at these papers.’ Her expression, which had begun to darken, once more took on that look of relentless cheeriness. ‘I’ve been looking at those courses again, and I think you should do the same.’
I looked at her. She was smiling at me, and I felt a pang of guilt in my stomach for letting the thought even cross my mind —
‘What was wrong with me?’ I said.
I thought her eyes flickered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think it was something I ate?’ I went on. ‘You didn’t get sick at all, did you, Ma?’
‘I can’t afford to get sick,’ she said. ‘I’ve got you to look after, haven’t I?’ Then she moved in close to me and fixed me with her espresso eyes. ‘I think it’s time you got up now,’ she said, shoving the papers into my hand. ‘You’ve got a lot of work to do.’
That time I knew better than to protest. I signed up without a word for three subjects I knew nothing about, knowing I could change them later. I was already an accomplished liar; rather than actually take the courses and risk my mother finding out when I failed, I waited until the beginning of term and secretly changed my subject choices to something more suited to my personal talents, then found myself a part-time job in an electrical shop a few miles away, and let her believe I was studying.
After that, it was simply a question of forging my certificates — easy, on a computer — after which I hacked into the Malbry Examiner’s computer files and added a single name — my own — to a soon-to-be-published list of results.
I’ve tried to do my own cooking ever since. But there’s always the vitamin drink, of course, which Ma prepares with her own hands, and which keeps me well — or so she says, with a kind of sly innuendo. Every eighteen months or so I come down with a sudden, violent illness characterized by terrible stomach cramps, and my mother cares for me lovingly, and if these bouts of sickness always seem to coincide with moments of tension between Ma and myself, that’s just because I am sensitive, and these things have an effect on my health.
I never got away, of course. Some things are inescapable. Even London is too far to go — Hawaii, an impossible dream.
Well, maybe not quite impossible. That old blue lamp is still alight. And although it has taken more time than even I imagined it would, I begin to sense that at long last my patience is about to be rewarded.
Patience, too, is a game, of course, a game of skill and endurance. Solitaire, the Americans call it, a far less optimistic name, tinged with the grey-green of melancholy. Well, a solitary game it may be; but in my case that’s surely a blessing. Besides, in a game that one plays with oneself, can anyone be said to lose?
9
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 23.49 on Saturday, February 16
Status: restricted
Mood: trapped
Listening to: Boomtown Rats: ‘Rat Trap’
‘You’ve got a lot of work to do.’
I’d assumed at first that she meant school. In fact, school was only a part of it. My mother’s plans ran deeper than that. It began just after my illness, and hers, in the last days of September, and I remember it all in greys and blues, with a thundery light that hurt my eyes, and a heat that pressed down on to my head, giving me a penitent’s slouch, a habit that I never quite lost.
When the police called round for the first time, I assumed it was because of something I’d done. The camera I’d stolen, perhaps; the graffiti on Dr Peacock’s door; or maybe finally someone had guessed how I’d disposed of my brother.
But I was not arrested. Instead I sweated it out of doors while Ma entertained in the parlour, bringing out the good biscuits, and the visitors’ teacups that usually took pride of place in the cabinet under the china dogs. Then, after what seemed like an interminable wait, the two officers — a man and a woman — came out looking very serious, and the woman said: ‘We need to talk.’ And I could have passed out with terror and guilt, except that Ma was watching me with that look of expectant pride, and I knew that it wasn’t something I’d done, but something she expected of me —
Of course, you know what that was. Ma never lets anything go. And what I’d revealed about Emily the day Ma hit me with the plate had festered and borne fruit in her mind, so that now, at last, it was ready for use.
She fixed me with her berry-black eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to tell them,’ she said in a voice like a razor blade hidden inside a toffee apple. ‘But I’ve brought you up to respect the law, and everyone knows it’s not your fault—’
For a moment I didn’t understand. I must have looked scared, because the policewoman put her arm around me and whispered. ‘That’s right, son. It’s not your fault—’ And then I remembered what I’d written that night on Dr Peacock’s door, and all the components fell in place like the pieces of a Mouse Trap game, and I understood what my mother had meant —