John was a simple boy. Not by way of intelligence, for his was a shrewd and calculating mind; but by way of appearance, for his was a pallid complexion, like weak October moonlight or day-old milk. (Africa's scorching, wrathful sun would, in time, turn October to August and milk to darkest brandy.) Piggy little eyes, they said, in a piggy face like a crescent moon. Piggy little eyes where the light never penetrates and the iris and pupil are one. Never a slim boy, never a matchstick of a kid even though the table's spread was meagre and the evaluating glint in his eye was indicator enough of a stomach never full. Run, Piggy, run, they call across the cobbles, over the click-clacking of their boots. But Piggy won't play along with their game and so in time the boy with the moon face slips into darkness, into oblivion. John doesn't forget, though.
John was a simple boy. Not by way of observation, for his eyes were pin-prick sharp; but by way of pastimes. Harry and Freddie were the ringleaders of the street, with its terraced houses of depressing realities and washing that was filthy even when it was clean. Harry and Freddie rallied the troops, chose the best first and flipped a coin over the worst and would play ballgames in the street until the washerwomen and workers let forth guttural cries. Then the boys dispersed like dandelions in a breeze before the belts came out, and none of them noticed the face at the window. Harry and Freddie and Charlie and Joe and wispy little Alfred with the stupid name got dirty and kicked each other when their team went down; John left jars by the windows and trapped butterflies in a cruel vacuum, a two-way medium where predator and prey gazed at one another until their little bodies could take no more.
Then he jabbed pins through their wings and stuck them to the board to better admire them. He pinned them just so, to capture their maximum wingspan, to display the prismic colours of their wings. Sometimes he was impatient, stuck the little blighter before it perished and it would struggle and squirm and try to wrench itself free from the metal bars before exhaustion took its toll. John was sure he only imagined the little sigh of life leaving the body.
John was a simple man. Not by way of reckoning, for tactics came simply to him and only the inferiority of that terrace he was born in kept him from showing his prowess; but by way of mechanisation. Africa was nothing he had ever known, nothing he had thought to anticipate; Viscount Downton was nothing he had expected either, but harsh heat took its toll on him and hardened the clay into something brittle and rough. Killing was nothing more than a breath in-and-out, and Piggy was saved by the fat on his leg when a bullet wormed its way through the flesh
John was a simple man. By way of appearance and pastimes and mechanisation, he killed so easily (and there was such beauty in the simplicity of it) and thought no more of it. By way of appearance and pastimes and mechanisation, he yes-milord'ed and please-milord'ed his way out of jail and he found simple pleasure in the blue sky and feel of the countryside breeze on the nape of his neck.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple" - Oscar Wilde