Blueeyedboy (16 page)

The
incident
– he likes that word, its lemony scent, its tantalizing colour. Not quite an accident, but something incidental, a diversion from the main event. He can’t even call it a hit-and-run, because no one does any running.

In fact, Ms Stonewash sees him coming, hears the sound of his engine rev. But Ms Stonewash ignores him. She locks the yellow 2CV, having parked it just across the road, and steps on to the pedestrian crossing without a look to left or right, heels clicking on the tarmac, skirt hem positioned just high enough to showcase those more-than-adequate legs.

Ms Stonewash subscribes to the view expressed in the slogan of a well-known line of cosmetics and hair products, a slogan he has always despised and which, to him, sums up in four words all the arrogance of those well-bred female parasites with their tinted hair and their manicured nails and their utter contempt for the rest of the world, for the young man in blue at the wheel of the van, no pale horseman by any means, but did she think Death would call by in person just because she’s
worth it
?

He has to stop
, she thinks to herself as she steps into the road in front of him. He has to stop at the red light. He has to stop at the crossing. He
has
to stop because I’m
me
, and I’m too important to ignore –

The impact is greater than he expects, sending her sprawling into the verge. He has to mount the kerb in order to reverse over her, and by then his engine is complaining vigorously, the suspension shot, the exhaust dragging on the ground, the radiator leaking steam –

Good thing this isn’t my car
, he thinks. And he gives himself time for one more pass over something that now looks more like a sack of laundry than anything that ever danced the salsa, before driving away at a decent speed, because only a loser would stay to watch; and he knows from a thousand movie shows how arrogance and vanity are so often the downfall of bad guys. So he makes his modest getaway as the witnesses gather open-mouthed; antelopes at the water-hole watching the predator go by –

Returning to the scene of the crime is a luxury he cannot afford. But from the top of the multi-storey car park, armed with his camera and a long lens, he can see the aftermath of the incident: the police car; the ambulance; the little crowd; then the departure of the emergency vehicle, at far too leisurely a pace – he knows that they need a doctor to declare the victim dead at the scene, but there are instances, such as this one, when any layman’s verdict would do.

Officially, Ms Stonewash Blue was pronounced dead on arrival.

Blueeyedboy
knows that, in fact, she had expired some fifteen minutes earlier. He also knows that her mouth was turned down just like the mouth of a baby flatfish, and that the police kicked sand over the stain, so that in the morning there would be nothing to show that she’d ever been there, except for a bunch of garage flowers Sellotaped to a traffic sign –

How appropriate, he thinks. How mawkish and how commonplace. Litter on the highway now counts as a valid expression of grief. When the Princess of Wales was killed, some months before this incident, the streets were piled high with offerings, taped to every lamp post, left to rot on every wall, flowers in every stage of decay, composting in their cellophane. Every street corner had its own stack of flowers, mouldering paper, teddy bears, sympathy cards, notes and plastic wrappers, and in the heat of that late summer it stank like a municipal tip –

And why? Who was this woman to them? A face from a magazine; a walk-on part in a soap opera; an attention-seeking parasite; a woman who, in a world of freaks, just about qualified as normal?

Was she really worth all that? Those outpourings of grief and despair? The florists did well from it, anyway; the price of roses went through the roof. And in the pub later that week, when
blueeyedboy
dared to suggest that perhaps it was somewhat unnecessary, he was taken into a back street by a punter and his ugly wife, where he was given a serious talking-to – not
quite
a beating, no, but with enough slapping and shoving to bring it close – and told he wasn’t welcome, and strongly advised to fuck of –

At which point in the story this punter – shall we call him Diesel Blue? – a family man, a respected member of the community, twenty years older than
blueeyedboy
and outweighing him by a hundred pounds – raised one of his loyal fists and smacked our hero right in the mouth, while the ugly wife, who smelled of cigarettes and cheap antiperspirant, laughed as
blueeyedboy
spat out blood, and said:
She’s worth more dead than you’ll ever be –

Six months later, Diesel’s van is traced through security camera footage to a hit-and-run incident in which a middle-aged woman is killed crossing the road to get to her car. The van, which since has been set on fire, still bears traces of fibre and hair, and although Diesel Blue is adamant that he is not responsible, that the van was stolen the night before, he fails to convince the magistrate, especially in the light of a previous history of drunkenness and violence. The case goes to the criminal court, where, after a four-day trial, Diesel Blue is acquitted, mostly for lack of evidence. The camera footage proves disappointing, failing as it does to confirm the identity of the driver of the van – a figure in a hoodie and baseball cap, whose bulk may be due to an oversized coat and whose face is never visible.

But to be acquitted in court is not everything. Graffiti on the walls of the house; hostile murmurs in the pub; letters to the local Press; all suggest that Diesel Blue got away with it on a technicality, and when, a few weeks later, his house catches fire (with Diesel and his wife inside), no one grieves especially.

Verdict – accidental death, possibly caused by a cigarette.

Blueeyedboy
is unsurprised. He’d had the guy down as a smoker.

Post comment
:

Captainbunnykiller
:
You are totally sick, dude. I love it!

chrysalisbaby
:
woot woot yay for
blueeyedboy

ClairDeLune
:
Very interesting. I sense your mistrust of authority. I’d love to hear the story behind this story. Is it also based on real life events? You know I’d love to know more!

JennyTricks
: (
post deleted
).

9

You are viewing the webjournal of
blueeyedboy
posting on
:
[email protected]

Posted at
:
21.06 on Monday, February 4

Status
:
public

Mood
:
prickly

Listening to
:
Poison
: ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’

The birth of little Emily White saw a change in
blueeyedboy
’s Ma. She’d always been quick-tempered, but by the end of the summer she seemed perpetually on the brink of some kind of violent eruption. Part of the cause was financial stress: growing boys are expensive, and by unfortunate coincidence, fewer and fewer people in the Village seemed to need any household help. Mrs French Blue had joined the ranks of her ex-employers, and Mrs Chemical Blue, claiming poverty, had reduced her hours to two per week. Perhaps, now Ben was back at school, people felt less charitably inclined to offer work to the fatherless family. Or perhaps they’d simply had enough of listening to tales of how talented and special Ben was.

And then, just before Christmas, they ran across Mrs Electric Blue near Tandy’s in the covered market, but she didn’t seem to notice them, even when Ma spoke to her.

Perhaps Mrs Electric Blue didn’t like being seen so close to the market, where there were always people shouting, and torn-off cabbage leaves on the floor, and everything peppered with brown grease, and where people always called you
luv
. Perhaps all that was too common for her. Perhaps she was ashamed of knowing Ma, with her old coat on and her hair scraped back and her three scruffy boys, and her bags full of shopping that she had to carry home on the bus, and her hands with palms all tattooed with dirt from other people’s housework.

‘Morning,’ said Ma, and Mrs Electric Blue just stared, looking weirdly like one of Mrs White’s dolls, half-surprised and half-not-quite alive, with her pink mouth pursed and her eyebrows raised and her long white coat with the fur collar making her look like the Snow Queen, even though there wasn’t any snow.

It seemed at first as if she hadn’t heard. Ben shot her the smile that had once earned him treats. Mrs Electric didn’t smile back, but turned away and pretended to look at some clothes that were hanging on a stall near by, although even
blueeyedboy
could see that they weren’t at all the kind of clothes she’d wear, all baggy blouses and cheap, shiny shoes. He wondered if he should call her name –

But Ma went red and said:
Come on
, and started to drag him away by the arm. He tried to explain, which was when Nigel punched him, just above the elbow, where it hurts most, and he hid his face in his cry-baby sleeve, and Ma slapped Nigel across the head. And he saw Mrs Electric Blue walk away towards the shops, where a young man – a
very
young man – dressed in a navy pea coat and jeans, was awaiting her impatiently, and would perhaps have kissed her, he thought, had it not been for the presence of the cleaner and her three kids, one of whom was still watching her with that look of reproach, as if he knew something he shouldn’t. And that made her walk a little faster, clipping the ground with her high heels, a sound that smells of cigarettes and cabbage leaves and cheap perfume at knock-off prices.

Then, a week later, she let Ma go – making it sound like a generous gesture, saying that she’d imposed too long – which left just two of her ladies, plus a couple of shifts at St Oswald’s per week; hardly enough to pay the rent, let alone feed three boys.

So Ma took another job, working on a market stall, from which she would return frozen and exhausted, but carrying a plastic bag filled with half-rotten fruit and other stuff they couldn’t sell, which she would serve up in various guises over the course of the week, or worse still, put in the blender to make what she called ‘the vitamin drink’, which might be made up of such diverse ingredients as cabbage, apple, beetroot, carrot, tomato, peach or celery, but which always tasted to
blueeyedboy
like a sweet-rotten slurry of sludge-green. The tube of paint might be labelled Nut Brown, but shit smells like shit all the same, and it always made him think of the market, so that in time even the word made him retch –
mark-et
– with its barking twin syllables, like an engine that won’t start, and all that was because they happened to see Mrs Electric Blue with her fancy-boy in the market that day.

That was why, when they saw her again, six weeks later, in the street, that sickly taste rushed into his mouth, a sharp pain stabbed at his temple, objects around him began to acquire a bevelled, prismic quality –

‘Why, Gloria,’ said Mrs Electric Blue in that sweetly venomous manner of hers. ‘How lovely to see you. You’re looking well. How’s Ben doing at school?’

Ma gave her a sharp look. ‘Oh, he’s doing
very
well. His tutor says he’s
gifted
—’

It was common knowledge in Malbry that Mrs Electric Blue’s son was
not
gifted; that he had tried for St Oswald’s, but hadn’t got in, then had failed to get into Oxford, in spite of private tutoring. A big disappointment, so they said. Mrs Electric’s hopes had been high.

‘Really?’ said Mrs Electric Blue. She made the word sound like some new and frosty brand of toothpaste.

‘Yes. My son’s got a tutor. He’s trying for St Oswald’s.’

Blueeyedboy
hid a grimace behind his hand, but not before Ma had noticed.

‘He’s going to be a scholarship boy.’ That was bending the truth a little. Dr Peacock’s offer to tutor Ben was payment for his cooperation in his research. His ability remained, as yet, a matter for conjecture.

Still, Mrs Electric Blue was impressed, which was probably Ma’s intention.

But now
blueeyedboy
was trying not to be sick as waves of nausea washed over him, flooding him with that market smell, that sludgy-brown stink of the vitamin drink; of split tomatoes gone to white-lipped mush, and half-gone apples (
The brown’s the sweetest part
, she’d say), and black bananas and cabbage leaves. It wasn’t just the memory, or the sound of her heels on the cobbled street, or even her voice with its high-bred yarking syllables –

It’s not my fault
, he told himself.
I’m not a bad person. Really, I’m not
.

But that didn’t stop the sick smell, or the colours, or the pain in his head. Instead it made it weirdly worse, like driving past something dead in the road and wishing you’d looked at it properly –

Blue is the colour of murder
, he thought, and the sick, panicky feeling abated – a little. He thought of Mrs Electric Blue lying dead on a mortuary slab with a tag on her toe, like a nicely labelled Christmas present; and every time he thought of it, the sludgy stink receded again, and the headache dimmed to a dull throb, and the colours around him brightened a little, all merging together to make one blue – oxygen blue, gas-jet blue, circuit-board blue, autopsy blue –

He tried a smile. It felt OK. The rotten-fruit smell had disappeared, although it did come back at regular intervals throughout the whole of
blueeyedboy
’s childhood, as did the phrases his mother spoke that day to Mrs Electric Blue –

Benjamin’s a good boy.

We’re so proud of Benjamin.

And always with the same, sick knowledge that he was
not
a good boy; that he was crooked in every cell – that, worse still, he
liked
it that way –