Granjy's Eyes

By Matt McAvoy

Meet Ollie.
Well-educated and spoilt - a rich kid, fun-loving party-goer and brutal sociopath. Ruthlessly arrogant Ollie takes what he wants, when he wants it. But Ollie's going to learn, the hard way, that for every action there's a consequence, and for every bounty a price.

Because living with Granjy isn't the bed of roses he thought it was going to be; the blind old lady sees everything - sees him - and most of all sees the monster he is becoming. It was she that made him rotten-to-the-core, and now his payment is due - Ollie will tear apart his own dark soul, and Granjy will teach him new meaning of the word 'remorse'.
(Approx. 42,000 words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt McAvoy
• Release date: Oct 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311168191

Matt McAvoy

Matt McAvoy was born in Hertfordshire in 1974. As a child he attended the Torquay Grammar School for Boys and started writing fiction at an early age.He has studied screen-writing and production, psychology, social policy and criminology; he has written several short stories, novels and screenplays, including "Kill the Witch!" and the critically acclaimed "Granjy's Eyes". He now runs his own editorial services company, MJV Literary Editorial Services.Matt lives in London with his wife Katherine.

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ISBN-13: 9781519189257

ISBN-10: 1519189257

Copyright © 2011 Matt McAvoy.

All rights reserved.

Edited and published by MJV Literary, London.

www.mjvliterary.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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GRANJY’S

EYES

__________

Matt McAvoy

ONE

Granjy’s eyes punish.

They threaten, warn, scold and torment me. Blind and blinding, milky-white like acetylene, they cut deep into me; the agony is every bit as excruciating.

I’m the only one that can see them, as clear as day - as clearly as I see that light-switch, or that chair, or those curtains. I see them all the time.

Nobody else even knows they’re there – nobody sees them; but one day, maybe soon, maybe not so, they will. They’ll all see them, and they’ll know, just like Granjy’s eyes know, and always did; they’ll know everything. They’ll know me.

You may think I’m melodramatic, but it isn’t my imagination. They are there, those eyes, and they speak, without words.

Suffer, they tell me, with brutal intent. Suffer.

TWO

I always loved the old lady; I was always her favourite. She was an absolute diamond of a woman, and I loved my Granjy to bits.

She’s cared for me my whole life; she always looked out for me and I know she’ll always be watching over me. When nobody else would, she stuck by me through thick and thin, good and bad. And that’s a lot of bad… a lot!

I think perhaps some of my first memories were of Granjy; funny - the first, the last, and everything in between. It’s profound that from childhood I remember very little except playing with my sister on that shiny plastic slide while Granjy brought out Ribena and home-made cakes baked especially for us. This and getting into trouble.

She’s my grandmother - her name is Georgina. I always called her Granjy from when I was as young as I can remember.

When I had two nans (and may still have – haven’t seen the other one in years and don’t particularly care to) I called them Granny-G and Granny-M (it doesn’t matter what the M stands for – forget the other one); this became Granjy.

My grandfather died young, having made a fortune in antiques, and I never really knew him.

Happy days they were, and happy families in that beautiful great garden of hers that I never fell out of love with – with Granjy the happiest of all.

My sister and I adored that big garden, though probably me more; it was a boy’s paradise – twenty acres or so, full of brooks and nooks, trees to climb and archways to run through. When we were children we would spend hours playing in it, splashing around, making things and marvelling at the wildlife. We would fib to each other about the animals we’d seen, and I learnt the names of every species of bird that lived there.

Granjy loved gardening, and she was very good at it. She taught me a lot about nature – my Big Sis’ too, although she never really had an aptitude for it, and in her case this meant no interest.

Me? I loved it, and would be out there in all weathers, turning over rocks and climbing the trees to see what I could find. I wanted to see how they worked – the bugs and rodents; wanted to examine and explore them, to open them up and look inside. But I never did.

You would never really know if Granjy was in a bad mood – if so, she certainly never let on to us. She just spoilt us, cuddled us, stood up for us if we were being told off (often) and generally made us happy.

Of course, you could say she spoilt us too much; with hindsight I would say undoubtedly so. Most intelligent parents nowadays (though still, sadly, not enough) will reach consensus that such unconditional love and solidarity does not make for a child’s best development, and I think it’s probably fair to say that I came to take Granjy’s for granted.

I didn’t really need it from my parents – love, that is - didn’t really need it full-stop, in fact, and never have. But, even at a very young age, I realized that punishment generally usually consists of deprivation of some sort - toys, pocket-money, whatever - so I welcomed and actively sought Granjy’s adoration.

This wasn’t because I was so fond of her, but more that, even then, I knew what side my bread was buttered, so to speak; she was the primary source of all these little bounties that would be conditionally denied by others. I knew that whatever I did wrong, she would never deprive me of anything. This went for material as well as emotional provision.

Put quite simply, the way Granjy spoilt me, I didn’t really need anybody else, and so I could pretty much get away with being as naughty as I liked. And anything I wanted, from her, I got.

So, later in life, when my family weren’t around, Granjy always was; when my friends and everybody else turned their backs on me, not her.

*

I’ve always liked getting what I want – pretty much depended on it, in fact. And I’ve never been one to toe the line.

Teachers meant nothing to me, and authority was not in my comprehension. Even my own parents had nothing over me.

I think this kind of attitude marked me in primary school as one to watch. It first started, I think, utterly unfairly; you see, I expressed an opinion, and when you’re seven, adults don’t like that kind of thing.

The first time they began to ask questions about me was when we were shown a video, shortly after Live Aid, about Ayana, an Ethiopian girl of our age; Ayana walked twenty miles every day to provide water for her family.

I asked, with some validity, I still think, why they don’t just move nearer to the fucking water. This strength of opinion was considered unsavoury, and suggested a streak staggeringly lacking empathy for one my age, which the teachers could not handle; for that I got a detention.

See, I was smarter than them and they knew it. They marginalized me for it, and in return I lost respect for them, if I had ever possessed it. They called my subsequent behaviour rebellion. I called it character.

My own parents were no better at nurturing my personality.

I remember one time, when I was about eight or nine, I got caught stealing a Walkman off of the display in Rumbelows (this was before the days everything was electronically tagged in those places, and the Walkman was a tape one, not a CD). Well, I didn’t really get caught as such, at least not at the time anyway.

It’s just that everybody else had one – I think it was the film Back to the Future which really made them popular – all my friends, even my sister (another one who doesn’t keep in touch anymore). Presents bought for them by their parents, so their kids wouldn’t be deprived; keeping up with the neighbours and all that.

But not my parents. No, they would never buy me anything – always said I had to wait for Christmas or my birthday or some other shitty excuse, just like Big Sis’ had had to; said that money didn’t grow on trees and I had to learn the value of it.

I wouldn’t have minded if we had been poor, but they had more money than all my friends put together - I remember when they bought their house in Surrey they said it cost around a quarter of a million, and this was in the eighties!

Unbelievable; so ironic that that very kid the other parents were trying to keep up with was me, and I myself wasn’t even allowed one!

So anyway, I nicked it. Bold as brass in my school uniform, I saw it on display and just took it.

You’ll find that’s always been a problem of mine: I just take what I want – it’s got me into several scrapes over the years, that’s for sure.

The mistake I made was leaving the Walkman lying around in my bedroom, still with the price-sticker on it. I couldn’t actually use it because I hadn’t got around to stealing the earphones yet. Well, when Mum found it she went nuts (she had some temper when she was angry); I lied and lied but I suppose I couldn’t convince her I’d managed to save up thirty-five quid.

So you know what the bitch did? She marched me down to Rumbelows to apologize and give the thing back, and even offered the taff manager her full support if he wanted to press charges.

Luckily the guy didn’t want to – he said I’d probably learnt my lesson and wouldn’t make that mistake again. Laughing too while he said it, before banning me from the store. Laughing, at me!

Well, I was the one laughing a few years later when I nicked a video recorder out of the same shop – not because I wanted to, but just for the hell of it.

Anyway, when Granjy heard what had happened she came down to the house and caused a bit of a scene – not with me, but with my parents. She reminded them how hard her husband had worked to make this money so they didn’t have to, and that his money, not theirs, had made it possible for them to live in this lovely house of theirs. She told them Oliver (that’s me) has as much right to his granddad’s wealth as they do.

You know what she did then? She went down to Rumbelows and bought me a Walkman, brand-new and in the box – the forty-five pound model too. Said if Mum and Dad had a problem with this they should take it up with her. And I told them that too, in my manner - cocky little sod I was, always have been.

It wasn’t long after that they moved us deeper into Surrey, outside the M25, away from Granjy. After that they didn’t see as much of her – nowhere near in fact.

I’ve got a hundred stories like the Walkman one; she always stood up for me. Whenever I got into trouble, she helped me, whenever I wanted something, she bought it, if I needed money she handed it over. And always with a smile and a little kiss on the cheek. Ollie Bear she called me; I was always her favourite.

Over the years she and I would become closer while my parents and I drifted further apart. I started to spend a lot of time with her.

We’ve shared this big old house now for some fifteen years, give or take, and even now she’s dead, she’s here with me. Of course, she knows more about me now; much more.

*

That crack in the ceiling has been getting worse for a while – I’ve been keeping a close eye on it; now I’ve noticed plaster has started crumbling away. I thought I’d done a good job at the time.

Sub-standard materials I guess - never been much of a plasterer; should have used exterior rendering, made things to last, like Granjy always told me Grandad used to. As I look up at the crack, I can almost feel the pieces of it crumbling onto me, but I know that’s just my imagination.

Things that may seem trivial to some bother me a lot more now than they used to – now she’s gone. I find myself agonizing over the little disagreements we had; oh, we never really argued for the most part – she always had a smile for me and a little pinch on the cheek, even when I was totally out of order – but when you live with somebody for that long… well, inevitably the pressure will tell.

I’ve really found myself questioning some of the things I did when I was younger.

They say guilt affects people in different ways, and they may not even associate it, though I can’t say it really affected me