Fly in the Ointment

by Anne Fine

  A flat with a balcony, then! De-cluttering my life became a passion, and I was ruthless. In that last couple of weeks I took particular pleasure in smuggling boxes out of the house into the back of my car. Early one morning Jan slopped out in her dressing gown to stop her side gate banging in the breeze and called across, ‘They certainly must be keeping you busy at that new job of yours, Lois, if you’re having to schlep this amount of stuff back and forth every day.’

  I simply smiled. I’d wait until the coast was clear to slip out some unwanted painting or a nest of stools to give to a charity shop or drop off for auction. I cleaned the house from top to bottom. I mowed the tiny lawn before I sold the mower. I even borrowed my own ladder back to wash the windows. Nor did I neglect the matter of paperwork. Like Stuart, I fixed up a box number for mail that might follow, but, unlike him, I took the time to write the details on a piece of card with a brief note for our son. ‘Dear Malachy, I won’t nag. But when you’re done with all that poisonous stuff, this is how you can get back in touch. All my love, Mum.’

  It seemed so horribly inadequate. I tore it into pieces. This was my boy, after all. I’d nursed him, cuddled and bathed him, taught him how to tie his shoelaces – the million small intimacies between mother and child. How could the two of us have found ourselves beached up this way? Forgetting for a moment that he was the cause of all this upheaval, I thought of writing, ‘Oh, Malachy, sweetie. Come away with me. I’ll give you one last chance if you just promise to try.’ But what would have been the point? He’d have been heading back to his old haunts within a matter of hours. So in the end I wrote the first note out again, except for the word ‘stuff’. ‘Stuff’ was too weak a word for what had put an end to all my dreams of family. They called it ‘shit’ and shit it was. So that’s what I called it, and then, because that’s such an ugly word, I didn’t simply seal the envelope; I stuck on sticky tape just to be sure that no one else would read it by mistake.

  I picked a lunch hour when I knew Soraya would be working on her own to drop the envelope off at SwiftClean. I tried to sound casual: ‘I think I’ve lost Malachy again. If he comes in to find me, would you give him this?’

  Soraya took it with a worried look. ‘It isn’t cash?’

  Leaving a box number for your own son sounds so unloving that I lied. ‘No, it’s my new mobile number.’

  She slid the envelope between the wall and the radio, where we had always kept the bits and pieces with no proper home. I hung round chatting till the next customer showed up, then slid away to pick up the keys to the small service flat I’d rented for a month.

  That Saturday, at a time when I knew the Tallentires would be out shopping, the van I’d ordered came to clear out every last thing and take it to a lock-up. I scribbled one more note: ‘As I told Martin, I decided to sell after all . . . family illness in South Africa . . . stuff in storage . . . send you a proper address . . . feel free to keep the ladder.’ I knew poor Martin would get a proper ticking-off. ‘She says she told you. Honestly!’ And yet the note would satisfy their curiosity enough to stop them asking questions. They would have something to tell the other neighbours and, if I knew the world, all but my menacing telephone callers would soon forget me.

  I dropped the envelope through the Tallentires’ letter box and left a collection of my least favourite plants on their back step to add a touch of verisimilitude to my claim to be leaving the country. And then I scarpered. I said goodbye to no one. I said nothing at work. I simply slid into the delicious anonymity of 14F Forum Buildings, and used the long light summer evenings to look for somewhere permanent to live.

  In the end I chose Pickstone, a not-frightfully-attractive dormer village eight miles the other side of the city. I dropped the idea of a flat and chose instead a little terraced house. It looked like nothing from the outside, but whoever had owned it had made the most of space and light and colour. The pocket-handkerchief garden was enchanting and the place so cheap that all my outlays would be more than covered by my new salary.

  And that was furnished by a job I came to love. Even the biliously lit workplace became a pleasure. One morning Trevor Hanley and his father both came in beaming. ‘Right, ladies. We want all of you to work at home next week from Monday till Friday.’

  Audrey and Dana wheedled and probed. But the Hanleys were adamant. ‘No explanations.’ ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  It was a soothing few days. I worked in the early mornings and the evenings and took the chance to use the rest of the time to shop for all those fiddly things you find you need after a move. Without the office chatter, I finished everything in half the time. On Thursday I even considered calling in for yet another batch of clients’ files to tide me over. But in the end I spent the time in my garden. From the sheer stillness around me I could tell that soon the summer would be drawing to an end. I sat in the tiny arbour and wondered how I could be so happy after so many wasted years. It seemed to me that most other women who were in my position could tell themselves they’d salvaged something: ‘But then again I got two lovely daughters out of it’, ‘Mind you, we had some good times’, ‘I’d have to admit I saw a bit of the world.’ As for myself, sitting there in thickening dusk, I supposed that at least I had learned the value of absence. To have the two people in the world who had so thoroughly drained my crystals well and truly gone was, it seemed, pretty much all it took to make me happy. Had I been born wanting so little? Or had I learned the hard way that you can do without anything in life except for simple peace of mind?

  On Monday I found Audrey and Dana waiting for me on the office steps. ‘They’ve locked us out.’

  Even as Audrey made the complaint, the door swung open and Trevor Hanley flung his arms wide to greet us. ‘Surprise!’

  A giant picture window had appeared. It ran the length of the office. Those horrid lights had been switched off and daylight flooded in. I was astonished. I hadn’t realized up till then that the ugly and featureless room in which we’d been working was directly above the canal path. Birches and willows. Reed-warblers. Even goldfinches. From that day on my workplace was a double joy, for I have always been content dealing with numbers. Numbers do as they’re told. They are predictable. No half-tones in accounts. Add up the figures. You are either right or you are wrong. The columns balance or don’t. It’s the most satisfying and soothing of occupations. There are no trailing ends. You can be happy. And if each time you raise your head you see a swan float past, or moorhens dabbling on the far bank, or a young mother pushing a child in a stroller alongside the canal, then it is possible to feel all’s right with the world.

  For over a year I worked there, snug as toast. Audrey and Dana were pleasant company. Nobody pressed me for details about my life. (I had the feeling that, sensing I might have secrets behind me, they made a point of not prying.) From time to time young Mr Hanley or his father would ask a question about my plans for the weekend and, without telling lies, I’d manage to create the impression that I was busy with distant family. I wondered if the other two women had me down for something dramatic – perhaps a murderess out on licence, given the job through the good offices of both kindly Hanleys? But then once, when I put my hand on Dana’s back as I squeezed past between two sets of filing cabinets and she moved sharply aside, I wondered if they’d formed the view that I might be a lesbian, and that was the reason why they never pressed me, as they did seem to be constantly pressing one another, on the matter of men, and children, and how I spent my time at the weekends.

  But it is possible, of course, that their reserve sprang from the fact that they simply found me boring: a woman whose passage through the office could raise no ripples and could leave no wake. I wasn’t bothered. It all suited me, and I felt so content that it even made me smile when, walking behind the cabinets one day well into the lunch hour, I heard a snatch of Trevor Hanley’s conversation with his father.

  ‘Of course I like her. Why would I have agreed to take her on if I didn’t like her?
’

  There was a muffled reply from further in the room, and then a burst of laughter.

  ‘Invite her out? Lois? Jesus Christ, Dad! The woman’s far too cool a customer for someone like me!’

  8

  TOO COOL A customer. Was I? Yes, probably. Back in the worst time, when Malachy was still in school and I was mad with anxiety about him and his future, Mrs Kuperschmidt suggested a course of family therapy. Stuart refused point blank. ‘The only problem in this family is that boy mixing with all those losers and druggies.’

  I couldn’t budge him so I decided to go alone with Malachy. It took forever even to get an appointment, and that was for some weeks ahead. When I reminded Malachy, two days before, he irritably claimed he couldn’t make it – off to a gig in Sheffield with some mates.

  ‘But it’s a school day.’

  He gave me one of those ‘you sad, sad woman’ looks I spent my whole life trying to ignore. I fought back. ‘I’m really sorry, Malachy. But you’re just going to have to tell your friends that you’re not going. This has been fixed for weeks.’

  He didn’t show up, of course. So I went in by myself – mostly, I told myself, to try to explain how an appointment I’d fussed so much to get had ended up being treated so lightly. But in my heart I knew I’d come for solace. The therapist looked the sort – restful and elegant in the strangely shaped chair she told me was ‘ergonomically designed’ and which allowed her to lean forward in apparent ease while I was telling her the sorry tale of how things with my son had gone so painfully wrong. In the whole forty minutes I was sitting there, she can have interrupted only once or twice to steer me up some fresh path, or, to my astonishment, ask me a question that gave me reason to believe she’d even put aside the time to read the file.

  And then, to my surprise, instead of spooning out advice on stubborn husbands or on wayward sons, she’d told me that each time I found myself surrounded by worries I was to stop in my tracks and tell them that I was busy, but that I’d make an appointment for them to come back at another time.

  I simply thought that I’d misunderstood. ‘Excuse me? Make an appointment with my worries?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You mean, as if they’re people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  While I was staring at her – was she mad? – she added sternly, ‘Of course, it’s very important that you keep the appointments you make. If things get busy, you can reschedule, of course. But you must never fob your worries off. They just won’t stand for it.’

  I couldn’t get out fast enough. I even thought of phoning Mrs Kuperschmidt to tell her the woman she’d been so keen to recommend was little more than a down-and-out charlatan. But that night, as I lay worrying that Malachy wasn’t home, resentful that Stuart was uncaringly asleep as usual, fretting about everything, I’d given it a go. Because the whole business sounded such a farce, I took it lightly, even making a little private joke of it. ‘I’m sorry, worries,’ I drawled to them silently inside my head in what I took to be a Californian accent. ‘I simply can’t be dealing with you now. I have a busy day tomorrow and need my sleep. So you all mosey along and come back tomorrow at—’

  I paused to consider. Stuart brought up the tea at seven, then promptly vanished downstairs to the computer.

  ‘—at five past seven. I’ll worry with you then.’

  I pulled up the covers, rolled over and fell fast asleep.

  Next thing I knew, Stuart was chinking his way back through the door into the bedroom, carrying the tray. ‘You had a good night.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ The first of my worries rushed back. ‘Is Malachy home?’

  ‘Flat out in bed. The kitchen reeks of cigarette smoke.’

  Feeling like someone in a fairy tale granted a precious wish, I kept my part of the bargain. As soon as Stuart had hurried off, I leaned back on the pillows. ‘All right, worries. I’m all yours. What shall we fret about?’

  They hadn’t much to say. Only the same old stuff. Even if I managed to rouse him, would Malachy bother to show up at school? Would he need a cover note for bunking off, and, if he did, should I provide it or provoke yet another horrible scene by telling him I wouldn’t? Was he truly asleep, or lying there dead from an overdose? Would he, some day, set fire to the house with all these late-night cigarettes? When had I last gone round and checked the smoke alarms?

  That sort of thing. I tried to worry about each in turn. Then, since there seemed so little to be added (and, in my mind, my little worries half admitted it, even among themselves), I simply rose a few minutes earlier than usual, tested all three alarms, and drove off, rested, to work. Halfway along Hawtrey Road it suddenly occurred to me that sooner or later Malachy might start bringing ‘friends’ home from all these rock concerts of his – friends who lived way out of town, or who’d been locked out by sterner, tougher parents. Even, perhaps, ne’er-do-wells he’d only that evening met in some pub and—

  Pulling myself together, I saw my worries off with cast-iron confidence. ‘Sorry,’ I told them. ‘Right now I’m busy driving, and then I’ll be at work. How about nine o’clock tonight when I’m in my bath. That any good for you?’

  Over the years I’d blessed that therapist in my head over and over. I even managed to refine the skill she taught me till it worked for almost anything. Show me another woman who could have had a marriage for so many years, then have it end, kept track of all the paperwork through two full house moves, seen off the only two men who tried to date her (one in the hardware store and one who replaced the tyres on my car) and put her divorce papers safely away in a fireproof box without a single tear. You can fight disappointments or, like me, you can let them take your heart and shrivel it as surely as a tribe of cannibals will shrink a head. I’d let it happen and I had been grateful. I’d used that little trick the therapist had taught me, and then abused it, till I had learned the art of brushing aside anything that should have bothered me.

  So Trevor Hanley was right. I was too cool a customer for any man to fancy. Not that it bothered me. I liked to know that I was so impregnable that nothing could touch me. I even watched my own birthday come and go, unremarked by anyone, without a flicker – apart from the reminder that later that month it would be Malachy’s too. Halfheartedly I did begin to gather a few goodies in a cardboard carton: a book of cartoons, tea bags and chocolate, the tins of lychees he had always loved. But then I broke into the package of tea bags and after that, instead of pressing on to fill the box, I simply emptied it out. I wasn’t in the mood to go and trawl the city streets for my son, knowing from long experience that there was nothing I could do to change his current way of life. If he was desperate, or ill, or worryingly thin, I didn’t want to know.

  I didn’t want to care. I was too busy, loving my little house, loving my plants, loving my pretty garden arbour. I went for great long walks. I took a painting class. I cooked more, taught myself to sew and spent hours listening to the radio. I liked the daily drive into the city. I liked the way that both the Hanleys took a few minutes from their own work each day to stroll behind our desks, cooing our praises. When Audrey and Dana eyed one another as the clock came round to half past five, and closed their box files, I took great satisfaction in stacking things for the morning, then sliding my chair in neatly under my desk just as we had at school. I’d say goodbye to Dana on the steps, then walk with Audrey as far as her Queen’s Park bus stop before taking off down yet another street, towards the car park.

  And it was there one light spring evening that, pulling out of the exit, I braked to let a pregnant woman cross the road in front of me. I hadn’t even made her break her stride, but she was clearly the sort hair-triggered to take offence. Even before she stepped off the kerb she was giving me the finger. Strutting in front of my car, she made the effort to swing her arm around so she could keep up the offensive gesture. And though my window was rolled up I could still hear her piercing yell. ‘You stupid trout! Get off the fucking pavement! Bitc
h!’

  It was the voice from under the canal bridge. I stared at her, appalled. Could that be Malachy’s baby she was carrying? Oh, dear gods, no! Surely from one glance you could see she was the sort of young woman who’d get through boys and men as fast as other people get through underwear.

  My look of horror set off a fresh wave of abuse. ‘What are you staring at, you prissy bitch? You had your eyeful? Stupid, stupid cow!’

  Panicking, I glanced in my rear mirror. Just for once, no one was behind me. I slammed the car into reverse and shot back, giving myself just enough space to swing around and drive instead past the NO EXIT sign.

  And once again I was lucky. No one was driving in. Without a thought for any penalties if I were caught, I shot out of the entrance and off down the street. As soon as I dared, I took a look behind me. The witchy creature was still standing blocking the exit, probably still shrieking after me as, trembling so hard that I could barely keep a grip on the wheel, I reached the roundabout at the end of the street and took the very first turning – not the road I wanted at all – simply because it was clear.

  9

  SAFE HOME, I took stock. How had the sight of this young woman so managed to rattle me? She didn’t know who I was. And who was to say that it was Malachy’s baby? How long ago had I heard them quarrelling under the bridge, and followed them along the canal path? A whole lot longer than nine months. There was no reason to think that someone as feckless as Malachy would stick at such a troubled relationship, and she didn’t look the sort to keep her knees together very long.

  But still I couldn’t put the worry out of mind. Something went wrong. The simple trick I’d used through all my previous upheavals had deserted me. I fretted till my brain bled. From what I’d seen, the birth could easily be imminent. Over the past year I’d managed not to go out and scour the city for my son, yet now when I read the local evening paper, my eye fell first on snippets about babies that had been born in taxis or supermarket aisles; and though there was nothing about the girl I’d seen that would lead anyone to think she was the sort to want to see the words ‘Proud father Malachy’ set into print, I took to studying the birth announcements. Over and again I’d try to get a grip, reminding myself how very unlikely it was that her baby could be any grandchild of mine. And yet I couldn’t help but be aware that, on the excuse of only two days of roadworks, I seemed to have changed my route to and from work. Now I drove down the long, long street on which I’d watched the two of them catching the bus all that time ago, and more than once over the next couple of months, instead of turning off on to the road to Pickstone, I kept on north, tracking the route of 18A request stops as far as Forth Hill and Danbury, keeping my eyes peeled through those grim estates.