The Blue Boy

I heard the door slam, the sound reverberating through the thin walls, rattling the china. I looked at clock. It was five-thirty, and I knew that it was Steve returning home from work.

I heard him call from the hallway, “Ruth! Ruth! Where are you, for Christ’s sake!” He walked into the sitting room and sat on the sofa, leaning forward, cradling his head in his hands.

He still wore his work boots and grass stained overalls, the words: “Parks & Works Dept.” emblazoned on the back. In eight years, I have never known Steve to wear his boots and overalls in the sitting room.

He muttered to himself and shook his head, as though trying to shake-off a stupor. “Ruth!” he shouted again.

“What is it?” said Ruth, emerging from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a dishtowel. Her brows were shaped into an angry V, her lips pursed. “What’s all the shouting about?”

Steve lifted his head, “It’s Mark,” he said. “Mark’s in trouble again.”

Ruth rolled her eyes and huffed. “So what’s new? What’s the little blighter been up to this time?”

Steve arose and took his wife’s hands. “It’s serious, Ruth. He’s down at the Police Station, he’s been arrested.”

“Arrested?” Ruth took a step back from Steve, as though he was in possession of a contagious disease that she was in danger of catching. “Mark? Arrested?”

“Yes, Ruth, bloody arrested! They called me on my mobile, said they need to see us down the station.”

“What’s it…I mean, what was he arrested for?” she asked. Her face was a pale mask, the only colour two red circles high on each cheek.
“
I don’t bloody know, they wouldn’t tell me.” He took his wife’s arm and guided her out into the hallway. “Grab your jacket, we’ll go there now.”

*

Time moves slowly for me. From where I hang, above the mantle piece in the Buttal’s sitting room, I can see clock. Each second he ticks and each hour he chimes. Constantly, every second, minute and hour made tangible for five long years.

Sometimes, when the afternoons draw long and we are alone together, I try to spark up a conversation with him. “Clock,” I say, “old buddy, old pal. What do you make of the latest little drama? What do you think of what Mark’s been up to now?” But clock does not answer. Only ticks and chimes away to himself like a broken- down toy. One of those wind-up monkeys with cymbals perhaps. The kind Kelly used to love as a baby.

Not that I really expect an answer of course. It’s just that sometimes I have to ask. Hear the sound of my own voice, even if it is only me who can hear it.

People (at least grown people) do not credit objects with thoughts and feelings. When they look at me they only see a painting. An exact replica of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, which some maiden aunt bought the Buttal family as a house-warming gift. They do not stop to consider that while they are looking at me, I might be looking at them. But I do, and I see everything.
T
ake two nights ago for instance. Around one a.m. I heard the front door open. Then the gentle footfalls of Mark, as he crept through the room, trying not to wake his parents. He did not switch on the light, managing to avoid the pitfalls of the house with an expertise born of total familiarity.

In what little light was coming in the window from the street lamps, he looked pale and haunted. His eyes black orbs sunk deep into his face.

Mark had always been a skinny boy, but at seventeen, an age when most teenagers were developing muscle and filling out into adulthood, Mark had lost weight. In the darkness he could almost be a boy of eleven or twelve. He could almost be me.

I could see him scanning the room, looking for something. He began to get agitated; picking up the cushions from the sofa and looking underneath them; opening and closing the drawers in the bureau. “Where the fuck is it?” he whispered. “I know she’s put it here somewhere.”

There was the creak from a floorboard in the hallway and then the peak of a baseball cap peering around the door like a duck’s bill. “Hurry up, Mark. We’ve not got all night!”

“Christ! I told you to wait in the hall,” Mark said. “If you wake my parents then my old man will kill me.” He opened the bottom drawer and found what he was looking for. He held his mother’s battered leather purse in his hand. The purse she used for the gas and electricity money.

“Good. Now take a couple of tens and we can get out of here,” said the baseball cap. “Josie said he’s got some top grade stuff, but he won’t hold it for us all night.”

Mark laughed and stuffed the crumpled notes into his pocket. They sneaked out closing the door behind them.

Upstairs, I heard the sound of his mother rising and coming to the top hallway. “Mark. Is that you?” she called.

“For God’s sake Ruth, come back to bed,” said Steve. “It’s just your imagination.”

“I thought I heard Mark, Steve. I’m sure it was him.”

Then she was back in her room and the only sound was their muffled voices moving back and forth, gradually diminishing until sleep once again claimed them.

In the darkness, clock ticked on.

*

I consider myself a part of this family. I have hung here, in the Buttal household, for more than eight years. I was here when Kelly started school, and watched as she pirouetted and danced with excitement. I was here when Ruth found that lump on her breast, and I was here those anxious days when they waited for the results. I have seen more birthdays, anniversaries and Christmases than I can clearly remember.
I love each one of the family in my own silent way. But I do not harbour any illusions about Mark, although, indirectly at least, I owe my existence to him.

Aunt Rose – the Maiden Aunt - only chose me because I bore a striking resemblance to her nephew. He had the same dark hair. The same narrow, delicate face. “Whenever you look at it”, she had said upon presenting her gift, “remember me”. They had nodded and thanked her, promising to do so, all the time knowing that they would not. Every time they looked up at me they would think only of their son, Mark.

Mark graduated from a precocious child, to a mean and surly teenager. When he was young his mother was convinced he was a genius. That his restless nature and spontaneous rudeness to adults were a symptom of his genius. Steve was doubtful. But, for the sake of domestic harmony, he tolerated Mark’s behaviour, hoping he would grow out of it.

He never did. By ten he was bullying the other kids at school and stealing their lunch money. By eleven he had been caught for the first time shoplifting. At fourteen he was expelled from his first school for fighting, and by sixteen had left altogether. A shiftless, worthless, teenager who did not deserve the tolerance and love given to him by his family, but was the recipient of it nonetheless.

And every time someone looks at me, that is who they see.

*

“What are we going to tell Kate?” said Ruth. She was pacing up and down the room, barely stopping since they returned. It was as though her body were an engine trying to keep pace with her racing mind.

“We’ll tell her the truth,” said Steve. He sat biting his nails and watching his wife, wishing she would stop. Wishing it all would stop.

Their daughter, Kate, was staying with friends. She had been away since Monday and was due back tomorrow. Kate doted on Mark, although she tended to live in the shadow of his bad behaviour. Many times I had seen her bring home her schoolwork for her parents, each paper marked with a red A+. But she would never get the opportunity to show them. Mark’s latest misdeed would swallow her achievement like a whale swallowing a Prophet.

Ruth stopped mid-stride and stared at her husband. “Tell her the truth!” she said, voice high with incredulity. “How can we tell her the truth?” She resumed her pacing, “How did you enjoy your stay, dear? Oh, by the way, your brother’s a Junky! It won’t work Steve, it just won’t work.” She stopped and covered her face with her hands. She began to cry, great wracking sobs coursing through her body.

Steve got up and encircled her in his arms, pressing her head to his chest. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay…Everything’s going to be alright…Shhh..I promise. I’ll make it alright…”

*

It was dark again. Steve came into the sitting room and took the stool from beside the fireplace. He placed it in front of the mantle piece and stood on it, taking me down from the wall.

It was a strange sensation. I could no longer feel the nail at my back. The pinnacle which I had hung from all these years. I missed the comfort and security of the wall at my back. The dependable ticking of clock and the quiet sound of the traffic as it passed outside the window. An odd feeling of freedom enveloped me as we moved up the stairs. As though I were a prisoner that had at last been freed, once again to be introduced to the world.

We climbed the stairs to the attic and Steve switched on the light. It was an untidy jumble of burst cardboard boxes and loosely stacked magazines and toys.

Steve took me to the back of the attic. The darkest part, where the spiders dwell, and leaned me against the wall. He looked at me. Studying the features of my face, the lines and contours shaped from flowing oils.

I noticed a tear run down his cheek.
He brushed it away and left, switching the light out as he went.

THE END.