I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - Part 2

I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU

Part 2

On the day that Parliament went into recess, Tom decided to stay on in town for the weekend before going up to the country. It would be a good opportunity to edit and transfer some of the more worthwhile peep clips onto a fresh tape, discarding the inactivity. He had almost forgotten some of the gems that he'd collected, and found himself viewing them with renewed interest. The one with the Asian girl brought back memories of the night when he had captured her removing her bathrobe to admire her own slender form in the mirror. She’d looked so vulnerable and appealing. His thoughts were entirely on her when the telephone rang. He left the tape playing.

As he spoke to Marian about the boring village and the infernal Womens' Institute, his eyes remained glued to the graceful nude, brushing out her long black hair; the reprise of a very private performance given especially, albeit unwittingly, for him. His wife was at the height of her tirade about Mrs. somebody or other when he recoiled and stared in disbelief. Snatching up the remote control, he pressed 'Freeze Frame' and made a weak excuse to terminate the call.

In case he’d imagined it, Tom rewound the tape a few feet then watched the same section again. The girl brushed her hair, just as she had done so many times before. She put the brush on the dressing table and stood up. Fine; nothing unusual about that. Now she would take her underwear from the drawer and put it on. But she didn’t.

Instead, she turned around and walked towards the French window, towards the camera. She opened the doors and stepped out onto the balcony, staring straight into the lens as if she knew he was there and only had eyes for him. Surely she couldn’t know? Now she was beckoning to him and becoming agitated by the lack of a response. The magnification was so good that Tom could see the very pores of her skin, and the tears that were welling up in her beautiful almond eyes.

As if to give him one last sight of her perfect body, the girl outstretched her arms and slowly revolved through 360 degrees on the spot. She did it several times. Tom blinked. Then she leapt. He saw her disappear over the balcony and drop out of the picture. He was horrified.

He hadn’t shot that scene. It had not been there before, not on the numerous occasions that he had played it. A second viewing showed the same thing. Maybe he had left the camera running. No; he had watched it over and over again in the past: it had always ended with her dressing and going out. He concentrated hard. When had he recorded it; last February, March? He couldn’t remember exactly, but it was some months ago, he was certain. There had been nothing in the papers about a suicide. Surely there would have been.

Tom couldn’t sleep that night. The ghastly image haunted him. He got up and played the tape again. From the panning shot that led up to the zoom into her flat, he could work out exactly where it was that she lived; the high block by the park. One, two, three... fourth floor, he counted. First, second... third window along from the left. He rushed to the camera and switched it on. Counting as he went, he located the same flat in his viewfinder monitor. There was a light burning but nobody in view. He watched, praying for her to be there.

Several minutes passed until another light in an adjoining room went out. Somebody came into the bedroom though they were in shadow and hard to distinguish. They looked female. Yes, it was a female. His heart thumped in his chest. Then the figure moved over to a table lamp. The light caught the face; it was her. He watched for several minutes until he had exorcised his doubt.

The tantalising enigma dominated Tom’s thoughts throughout the next couple of weeks in Norfolk. It was obvious to Marian that he had something gnawing at him. When he refused to discuss it, she suggested that he return early to London. He might as well be a million miles away, she felt. He rushed back to town and looked again. The girl was still in her flat. She was also still on the tape; killing herself repeatedly.

What excuse he would use he didn’t know. That was a minor detail. The doorlock intercom-plate held rows of labelled buttons. He read the list. Halfway down, he found Miss K Yeuh, Flat 43. It had to be her; he buzzed.

Without a word spoken, the lock clicked and the door opened.

He played for time by walking up the stairs, trying to compose his thoughts; deciding what to say, and wondering how she could possibly know he was coming. Her door was slightly ajar when he reached it. He peeped through the gap. At first he could see nobody, then he sensed a movement out on the balcony. She was out there; and she was naked.

Accidentally, he brushed the door with his arm and it opened wide, giving him a clear view of her body. The sensation was weird; watching a subject openly, without stealth. Perhaps, at last, he could take one of his subjects and actually have her. Yes he would he decided, and entered the flat, walking purposefully to the balcony. All the while she stood there, arms outstretched, showing herself to him. It was him wasn't it? Maybe not. She seemed oblivious to his presence, gazing out into the night. Was she real? Yes she was, he could hear her rapid breathing. She still had her back to him and he touched her, but withdrew quickly; she was cold. Again he watched, this time for several moments. She seemed to be gesturing to somebody, or something, out in the darkness and had started to sob.

Then she turned. The dark brown eyes locked onto him. They were compelling eyes, and he couldn’t tear his own away from them. She stared all the harder, now looking him up and down, through his body and into his soul. Instinctively, he began to remove his clothes, slowly at first then virtually ripping off the socks and underpants. He was as naked as her now and she was looking at him; quite openly yet, somehow, peeping.

At once, he felt ashamed. His hands came up to cover himself. She smiled. Then when she had seen enough she turned away once more. He felt drained; violated. He wanted to apologise; tell her how sorry he was for what he had done, not only to her but to his aunt, the Austrian girl and all the countless others. He had abused them all, denied them modesty; privacy. He opened his mouth to speak. The girl held her icy cold finger over his lips. She stepped back from him, outstretched her arms and started to rotate. Her defiant smile flashed past him once, twice - then he went rigid.

It was no longer her face but that of his aunt. On the next turn it was the au pair. Then his mother's friend, then the blonde. His aunt again. The blonde. The au pair. Marian. Alice. It went on and on. They were all there to gawk at him; lust over his nakedness. He walked backwards, trying to avoid their disapproving looks. They came after him. All of them. His scream started on the fourth floor balcony and ended down in the road.

The panel had no pity for the broken wreck who came up before them, even though he was in no fit state to give account of himself; say why he had been snooping, and why he had captured his suicide attempt on the video recorder that had been whirring away in his own flat. They deemed him a serial peeper and recommended eye extraction.

Tom was lucky. The judge agreed to send him away. The whole affair had to be hushed up, for even the reinforcement of their comfortable majority would not shelter the Government from the outcry that would erupt if the people found out. He was confined to a desensitising clinic, as prescribed under the very Act that he had personally driven into the Statute Book. The media was told that he had retired due to ill health.

* *

Psychiatrists spent several years observing the gradual change in their patient. He had responded well to Benaldalyte, and they now felt confident to suggest a parole review of his case to the Home Secretary. He should be allowed to keep his eyes, they told him.

Tom was pleased about that. It had been his only worry. The trouble with the therapy was that it took away the memories of the offence, leaving the subject wondering just what it was that he had done, and why anybody should even consider blinding him. The clinic staff had been very pleasant and they seemed to understand his problem. He was now completely cured, they said.

Tom felt cured all right. He could engage in long intellectually stimulating conversations with the doctors, beat most of them at chess, and even fill in some of his abundant spare time writing proposed amendments to the People’s Privacy Act. It was only the nights that he was not too keen on, when they'd lock him in and he was unable to see out. If he couldn't sleep, he would stare for hours at the little Judas hole in the door, playing a game of trying to guess whose eye it was spying on him from the other side whenever it clicked open.

Sometimes it was Colin the night nurse, or Dr. Cook. Even the cleaners took an occasional peek, and he could recognise them too. But the one that completely baffled him peeped several times each night. It was definitely a female, and had an oriental eye that winked at him.

** ** **

Copyright Albert Woods (2014)

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