What will it be, I wonder? Having now made my intentions so clear, I cannot expect him to make an exception in my case. He’ll try to kill me. He has no choice. And his feelings for me – such as they are – are founded on guilt and nostalgia. I’ve always known what I was to him. A shade; a ghost; a reflection. A substitute for Emily. I knew that, and I didn’t care; that was how much he meant to me.
But people are lines of dominoes: one falls, then all the others follow. Emily and Catherine; Daddy, Dr Peacock and me. Nigel and Bren and Benjamin. Where it begins is seldom clear; we own only part of our personal story.
It doesn’t seem fair, does it? We all imagine our lives as a story in which we ourselves take centre stage. But what about the extras? What about the substitutes? For every leading role there exist a multitude of expendables, hanging around in the background, never in the spotlight, never speaking a line of dialogue, sometimes not even making the final edit, ending their lives as a single frame on the cutting-room floor. Who cares when an extra bites the dust? Who owns the story of
their
life?
For me it begins at St Oswald’s. I can’t have been more than seven years old, but I do remember what happened in remarkably vivid detail. Every year my mother and I would go to the Christmas concert in the chapel at St Oswald’s at the end of the long winter term. I liked the music, the carols, the hymns, and the organ like a hydra with its shining tongues of brass. She liked the solemnity of the Masters in their black gowns, and the sweetness of the choristers with their angel smocks and candles.
I saw things with such clarity then. The memory loss came afterwards. One moment I was in sunlight; the next in chequered shadows, with only a few flecks of brilliance left to prove that the memories had ever been there. But that day, everything was clear. I remember all of it.
It begins with a little girl crying in the row just in front of me. That was Emily White, of course. Two years younger than I was, and already stealing the limelight. Dr Peacock was there, as well – a large, kind-looking, bearded man with an affable voice like a French horn, whilst elsewhere – another small drama played out, unseen by the major protagonists.
It wasn’t much of a drama. Just a blue-eyed boy in the choir pitching forward on to his face. But there was a minor commotion; the music wavered, but did not stop, and a woman – the boy’s mother, I assumed – rushed forward into the stalls, her high shoes skidding on the polished floor, her face a lipstick blur of dismay.
My own mother looked disapproving.
She
wouldn’t have rushed forward. She would never have made such a fuss – especially not here, in chapel, with everyone so ready to judge and to spread those hateful rumours.
‘Gloria Winter. I should have known—’
It was a name I’d heard before. She’d told me the boy had caused trouble at school. In fact, the whole family was bad news: godless, wicked and profane.
Irredeemable
, she’d said. It was the word Mother reserved for the worst kind of sinners: rapists, blasphemers, matricides.
Gloria was holding her son. He had cut his head on the side of the pew. Blood – a surprising amount of it – spattered his chorister’s surplice. Behind her, two boys, one in black, one in brown, stood by like extras in a game. The black one looked sullen; even bored. The one in brown – a clumsy-looking boy with long, lank hair over his eyes and an oversized sweatshirt that emphasized, rather than hid, his gut – looked distressed, almost dazed.
He put a shaking hand to his head. I wondered if he’d fallen, too.
‘What do you think you’re playing at? Can’t you see I need help?’ Gloria Winter’s voice was sharp. ‘B.B., get a towel, or something. Nigel, call an ambulance.’
Nigel, at sixteen; an innocent. I wish I could say I remembered him. But frankly, I never noticed him; my attention was all on Bren. Perhaps because of the look in his eyes: that trapped and helpless expression. Perhaps because I sensed, even then, a kind of bond between us. First impressions matter so much; they shape us for what comes later.
He raised his hand to his head again. I saw his expression, a rictus of pain as if he’d been hit by something falling from the sky, and then he stumbled against the step and fell to his knees almost at my feet.
My mother had already moved to help, guiding Gloria through the crowd.
I looked down at the boy in brown. ‘Are you all right?’
He stared at me in open surprise. To tell the truth, I’d surprised myself. He was so much older than I. I rarely spoke to strangers. But there was something about him that moved me, somehow: an almost childlike quality.
‘Are you all right?’ I repeated.
He had no time to answer me. Gloria turned impatiently, one arm still supporting Benjamin. It struck me then how tiny she was: wasp-waisted in her pencil skirt, stiletto heels barely grazing the floor. My mother disliked stiletto heels – which she called
slutilloes
– and which, she claimed, were responsible for a variety of conditions ranging from chronic back pain to hammer toes and arthritis. But Gloria moved like a dancer, and her voice was as sharp as those six-inch heels as she snapped at her ungainly son:
‘Brendan, get over here right now, or, God help me, I’ll wring your fucking
neck
—’
I saw my own mother flinch at that. The F-word was strictly outlawed in our house. And coming from the boy’s mother, too – I couldn’t help but feel sympathy. He scrambled clumsily to his feet, his face now flushing a dull red. And I could see how troubled he was, how scared and self-conscious and filled with hate.
He wishes she were dead
, I thought, with sudden, luminous certainty.
It was a dangerous, powerful thought. It lit up my mind like a beacon. That this boy should wish his mother dead was almost beyond imagining. Surely this was a mortal sin. It meant that he would burn in hell; that he was damned for eternity. And yet, I was drawn to him somehow. He looked so lost and unhappy. Maybe I could save him, I thought. Maybe he was redeemable . . .
11
You are viewing the webjournal of
Albertine
.
Posted at
:
02.04 on Thursday, February 21
Status
:
restricted
Mood
:
anxious
Let me explain. It’s not easy. As a child I was very shy. I was bullied at school. I had no friends. My mother was religious, and her disapproval weighed upon every aspect of my life. She showed me little affection, making it clear to me from the start that only Jesus deserved her love. I was my mother’s gift to Him; a soul for His collection, and though I was far from perfect, she said, with His grace and my efforts I might one day be good enough to meet the Saviour’s exacting standards.
I don’t remember my father at all. Mother never spoke of him, though she wore a wedding ring, and I was left with the vague impression that he had disappointed her, and that she had sent him away, as I too would be sent away if I failed to be good enough.
Well, I tried. I said my prayers. I did my chores. I went to Confession. I never spoke to strangers, or raised my voice, or read comic-books, or took a second slice of cake if Mother invited a friend to tea. But even so, it was never enough. I always fell short of perfection, somehow. There was always a fault in my stubborn clay. Sometimes it was my carelessness; a tear in the hem of my school skirt; a smear of mud on my white socks. Sometimes it was bad thoughts. Sometimes, a song on the radio – Mother detested rock music and called it
Satan’s flatulence
– or a passage from a book I’d read. There were so many dangers, Mother said; so many pits on the road to hell. But she tried, in her fashion; she always tried. It wasn’t her fault I turned out this way.
There were no toys or dolls in my room, just a blue-eyed Jesus on the cross and a plaster angel (slightly cracked) that was meant to drive away bad thoughts and make me feel safe at night.
In fact, it made me nervous. Its face, neither male nor female, looked like a dead child’s. And as for the blue-eyed Jesus, with his head thrown back and his bleeding ribs, he looked neither kind nor compassionate, but angry, tortured and frightening – and why not, I asked myself? If Jesus died to save us all, why wouldn’t He be angry? Wouldn’t He be furious at what He’d had to endure for our sakes? Wouldn’t He want vengeance somehow – for the nails, and the spear, and the crown of thorns?
If I die before I wake, I pray, dear Lord, my soul to take –
And so at night I would lie sleepless for hours, terrified to close my eyes in case the angels took my soul, or, worse still, that Jesus Himself would rise from the dead and come for me, ice-cold and smelling of the grave, and hiss in my ear:
It should have been you.
Bren was dismissive of my fears, and indignant that Mother encouraged them.
‘I thought my Ma was bad enough. But yours is a fucking fruitcake.’
I sniggered at that. The F-word again. I’d never dared to use it. But Bren was so much older than I; so very much more daring. Those stories he told me about himself – stories of cunning and secret revenge – far from being horrified, I felt a sneaking admiration. My mother believed in humility, Bren in getting even. This was an entirely new concept to me – accustomed as I was to one kind of creed, I was secretly both thrilled and appalled to hear the Gospel of Brendan.
The Gospel of Brendan was simple. Hit back as hard and as low as you can. Forget about turning the other cheek; just get the first punch in and run away. If in doubt, blame someone else. And never confess to
anything
.
Of course I admired him. How could I not? His words made a great deal of sense to me. I was slightly anxious for his soul, but secretly it seemed to me that if Our Saviour had adopted some of Brendan’s attitude instead of being
quite
so meek, it might have been better for everyone. Brendan Winter kicked ass. Bren would never let himself be bullied or intimidated. Bren never lay awake in bed, paralysed by fear. Bren hit back at his enemies with the force of angels.
Well, none of that was strictly true. I realized
that
soon enough. Bren told me things as they
ought
to have been, and not precisely as they
were
. Still, I liked him better that way. It made him – if not quite innocent, then at least redeemable. And that’s what I wanted – or thought I did. To save him. To fix what was broken inside. To shape him like a piece of clay into the face of innocence.
And I liked to listen. I liked his voice. When he was reading his stories to me, he never used to stutter. Even his tone was different – quiet and cynically humorous, like a woody cor anglais. The violence never troubled me; besides, it was fiction. What harm could it do? The Brothers Grimm had written far worse: babies devoured by ogres, by wolves; mothers deserting their children; sons sent into exile or killed, or cursed by wicked witches.
The moment I first saw him I knew that Bren had a problem with his mother. I’d seen Gloria in the Village, though we didn’t have much to do with her. But I knew her through Bren, and hated her – not for my own sake, but for his.
Slowly, I came to know her more: the vitamin drink, and the china dogs, and the piece of electrical cord. Sometimes Bren showed me the marks she had left: the scratches, welts and bruises. He was so much older than I was, and yet on these occasions I felt as if
I
were the grown-up. I comforted him. I listened to him. I gave him unconditional love, sympathy and admiration. And it never once occurred to me that while I thought I was shaping
him
, he was really shaping
me
. . .
12
You are viewing the webjournal of
Albertine
.
Posted at
:
13.57 on Thursday, February 21
Status
:
restricted
Mood
:
melancholy
Brendan Winter and I became friends five months after the concert. I was going through a difficult time; Mother was always busy at work, and at school I was bullied more than ever. I didn’t really understand why. There were other fatherless children in Malbry. Why was I so different? Perhaps it was my fault, I thought, that my Dad had gone away. Perhaps he’d never wanted me in the first place. Maybe neither of my parents had.
That was when Brendan turned up again. I recognized him immediately. Mother was busy, as always. I was alone in the garden. And Emily was in her house, playing the piano – something by Rachmaninov, something sweet and melancholy. I could hear her through the window, which was open, and around which a tangle of roses were in bloom. It looked like a fairy-tale window to me, in which a princess ought to appear: Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, or maybe the Lady of Shalott.
Brendan was no Lancelot. He was wearing brown cords, and a beige canvas jacket that made him look like a padded envelope. He was carrying a satchel. His hair was longer than before, almost covering his face. He passed by the house, heard the music and stopped, not ten feet away from the garden gate. He hadn’t seen me; I was on my swing under the weeping willow tree. But I saw his face as he heard her play, the little smile that touched his mouth. He took out a camera from his satchel, a camera with a long lens; and with a deftness that looked out of place, he clicked off a dozen shots of the house –
clickclickclick
, like dominoes falling – before slipping the camera back into his satchel almost without breaking step.
I left my place on the swing. ‘Hey.’
He turned, looking hunted; then seemed to relax when he saw who I was.
‘Hey, I’m Bethan,’ I said.
‘B-Brendan.’
I leaned my elbows on the gate. ‘Brendan, why were you taking pictures of the Whites’ house?’
He looked alarmed at that. ‘Please. If you t-tell anyone, I’ll get into trouble. I – just like taking pictures, that’s all.’