The Blanks

Chapter I: Frasier's Thermometer

Chapter I: Frasier’s Thermometer

James Pierrefond was reaching his nineteenth birthday. Unlike most people his age, James Pierrefond was not excited. Not in the least.

His birthday was the only day of the year that he had to see his drunkard uncle, that is, the only day since he was seventeen and was allowed to live on his own. Tom Balston, his madcap perpetually drunk uncle, gave his nephew the ultimate birthday wish – to take him out to dinner, and speak to him for an hour or two each year.

He knew James would not refuse. Although James Pierrefond hated his uncle, his impulsive and rash behaviour; the way he let his emotions control his brain, Tom Balston knew it would happen until he drank himself out to greet death. Tom Balston was a seemingly ordinary drunkard, with an ordinary name, but there was nothing so unusual as his misty and clouded past.

Nobody knew what or whom exactly he was, besides his wife who had unexplainably vanished some ten years previously. James had very little memory of Gwyneth Balston, except the last time he saw her, one dark moonless night.

“Ah, laddy, I fought I’d see you here,” slurred Balston, roughly clubbing James Pierrefond on the shoulder. “It’s your birfday, innit? Nice place,” he added, turning to the small, dark Italian restaurant that James had picked.

Steering his uncle in, they got a table for two from the grungy looking waiter. Balston slumped into a seat, and peering around through his blond, lank hair. He picked up the menu, and studied it for a while in silence.

“Always da quiet one, eh? Still silent, laddy?”

“I’m not being silent.”

“Oh, don’t fink I dunno why you come here every fingle year,” said Banks. “Because it’s empty, always empty. Embarrassed by me? Fink you need to hide the uncle of handsome, silent, fmart Jamie Pierrefond?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know why I don’t like you,” said James, almost casually.

“You finking about what happened when Gwyef diffapeared, ain’t you?”

For once, James’s dark eyes met Tom Balston’s hazel ones.

“Oh, I just though you’d forgotten. You know, murderers usually do. It doesn’t matter to them anymore, does it?” said James, scanning through the menu, just to see whether there was something that might not give him food poisoning.

“You fink I murdered her?”

“She never came back, did she? I wondered for a while, you know, whether she’s left or something… but no, you wouldn’t let her do that, would you?”

“Well, Pierrefond – ” James noticed the new use of his surname “ – I just about did, didn’t I? You wouldn’t know, would you – nah, you wouldn’t. One day, Fond, you will.”

It was now three months after James’s birthday, and he had finally stopped obsessively brooding over what his uncle had meant, because right after the wine had come, Balston had forgotten. Before he died, was Tom Balston going to tell him everything? Was he going to admit the killing of his wife – because that, now, was in James’s mind perfectly true, and from what his uncle had told him on his birthday, had cemented the fact.

Deep down, buried deep beneath the surface, was still that burning desire to know something, because there was something that was out of place. It was like a blank spot that didn’t fit into anything James knew. There was an intolerable anger always on the brink of bubbling to the surface, and one day, it would explode. He managed to keep it under control with the University. The University was like a haven, where it was silent in the library, and the lecture halls rang with knowledge, and he could put his life into work.