Fly in the Ointment

by Anne Fine

  I thought things through till I was dizzy. I wouldn’t look for Stuart. I would rather die. The craven coward he’d turned out to be must pay the price for sloping off without a word. I didn’t care. Then, in an instant, all my fine reasons for doing nothing would be swept away in waves of shamed embarrassment as I imagined my former husband standing on my doorstep, listening to me try to defend them. After all, the police had tracked me down. Who was to say they couldn’t find Stuart just as easily? A visit to his old workplace or a few phone calls to other government departments was all it would take. How could I kid myself there weren’t a dozen ways in which, if the situation were reversed, I would feel justified in thinking that Stuart ought to have looked for me?

  The weekend passed in a fog of guilt, then misery, then guilt again. I listened to the clock tell cold grey time. By Monday morning I knew I should be ringing Mr Hanley to tell him that I wouldn’t be coming in – no, not today and not tomorrow either. And probably not the day after that. I’d pick up the phone and stand there, paralysed, until the welcoming silence turned to a warning buzz. I couldn’t make the call. Oh, I could face his kindness, but not his astonishment. ‘Lois? Oh, Lois, I’m mortified. I didn’t even realize you had a son. Oh, Lois, we’re all so sorry.’ Before he’d even put down the phone there’d be a puzzled look on Audrey’s face. ‘Lois? A son?’ She’d turn to Dana for the confirmation that would appal them all: ‘I’m as surprised as you two. All of this time! And yet she never even mentioned him. What a strange thing!’

  The sympathy of decent people so profoundly shocked would be intolerable. And so on Monday morning I got out of bed, put on my plain grey skirt and ruffled blouse and went to the office as usual. The sun shone gloriously through the wide, freshly washed window. There was a heron standing in the reeds. I tried the old, old trick to put off anguish. ‘Wait until after work,’ I begged my sorrows and strains. ‘You’ve had the whole weekend. You’ll have the whole of tomorrow. Please let me off for just an hour or two so I can rest in work.’ Desperate for the unfeeling clarity of numbers, I stared at shimmering columns. Nothing made sense. I checked things over and over and, even when sure I was right, still had to go back to check that the calculation I’d done was the one that was needed.

  A shadow fell across my desk. ‘Lois?’ Trevor Hanley was staring. ‘Lois, you’re crying.’

  He laid a finger on my paperwork, then held it out for me to inspect. ‘That’s a tear, Lois.’ It wasn’t a question. And yet, as though to offer me the benefit of the doubt, he licked the tip of his finger.

  It was a gesture of such intimacy that I was shocked. I sat in silence as he spread his huge hand to swivel my worksheet to face him. ‘Not like you, Lois.’

  Had he spotted a mistake? He swung a plump trousered leg across the corner of my desk. It was as if some schoolteacher had suddenly decided to park himself more comfortably while he ran through the principles of long division one more time with some dim pupil. ‘Lois, what’s up? The ladies are telling me you’re in an awful state. Your figures are all over. And you’ve been crying.’

  I hadn’t made that massive effort to get up and come in, just to throw things away. ‘It’s nothing, Trevor.’

  ‘It must be something.’

  ‘No, honestly.’ (The very word set off the urge to lie.) ‘It’s only that I’m terrified of dentists, and I’ve an appointment for tomorrow morning.’ Catching his startled look, I added pathetically, ‘The only reason I haven’t told you yet is because I’m still thinking of skipping it.’

  His face cleared. ‘Skip the dentist because you’re scared? Oh, Lois, that won’t do.’ Turning to Audrey and Dana, he offered them the excuse to admit that they’d been listening. ‘Which of you two is going to take poor Lois out for a drink after work? Give her some Dutch courage?’

  Thank God, neither admitted to being free. Promptly at half past five I closed down my computer and crept away, crippled by shame. It seemed to me my stupid lie had robbed poor Malachy of his last shreds of dignity. Linking his funeral to something as trivial as a trip to the dentist, even in words alone as an excuse for absence, was nothing short of despicable. An insult to my son. But then again, right from the moment the officers had arrived on my doorstep with the bad news on their faces, everything I’d done and thought and felt had been unswervingly contemptible. I had to face the fact that over the last few days, when any decent woman would have spent her hours grieving properly, I’d spent mine being angry with my own father, and trying to conjure out of nowhere a sheer impossibility: a cast-iron explanation for not even trying to let another father know the date and time of his son’s funeral.

  Brains can’t be tamed, though. And early in the morning, as I was pulling everything out of my closet – black shoes, black bag, black dress, black coat – the lid fell off that small discreet brown box I’d thrown in sheer exasperation to the back.

  Out of it fell not just the bright-red wig, but the solution.

  Simple. Foolproof.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stuart. But I didn’t know about the funeral either. Ask anyone who went, and they will tell you that I wasn’t there.’

  11

  THE WIG-MAKER HAD done a better job for me than she would ever have thought. I wore a pair of rimmed glasses, kept my head down to let the partially tamed red curls cover my face, and waited until the last minute before getting out of my car and hurrying across to the chapel.

  I can’t think what I must have been expecting. A pack of drug-dealers with vulpine smiles? A host of tarts, all tottering on high heels and showing a deal too much skin? Maybe an empty chapel, with no one sitting there except my father.

  A respectable number of people were spread across the pews, all looking comfortingly normal. I recognized one or two of Malachy’s old mates from school: a lad with hair the colour of marmalade that flopped around so much it looked more like a wig than my own; another boy I’d always thoroughly disliked but who, in his sharp grey trousers and bright white shirt, might even have been able to convince me that in the years since I’d last seen him he had turned over a new leaf. There was a pew crammed altogether too tightly with girls. Almost without exception their hair was more garish than mine, and the whispers of one or two of them kept inappropriately approaching giggles. There was a man in a black suit who stood so straight I guessed he must be representing the police, and I was quite touched to think they took the time and showed the sensitivity to go to the funerals of people whose bodies they’d pulled from the water. Next to him stood a couple in dark but casual clothing. Were they plain-clothed officers? Or from the probation services? And was the fact that these three knew each other well enough to sit together proof that my Malachy’s life had carried on with its slow slide?

  And, sitting directly across the aisle from the three of them, there was my father. He’d turned at the creak of the door but looked my way with not a sign of recognition. A shiver of pure hatred ran down my spine. Just how cold was his heart? He must at least have thought I would be there for Malachy. Would it have killed him to have been waiting outside until the music soared, hoping to greet his only daughter, comfort her, and lead her in on his arm?

  I took a seat at the back. I was the last in, but whole minutes passed. The whispering increased. Finally the canned organ dirge broke off and something much the same but a little more rousing started up instead. Everyone took it as a hint to stand, and, sure enough, almost at once in came the coffin with Janie Gay behind it. As she walked past, her high heels vulnerably wobbling as she was forced to slow her steps to match the coffin-bearers’ steady pace, I sneaked a glance. She looked a whole lot better than I remembered. Both times I’d seen her before, of course, her face had been disfigured by snarls, and she had somehow managed to seem, at the same time, both bloated and half-starved. Now she looked much, much younger – almost Malachy’s age – and, in her plain dark suit, a good deal less tarty. I found that a great comfort. Nobody likes to think their son was such a loser that he could end
up sharing the last of his run-down life with some rock-bottom slattern who can’t even scrub up for his funeral. Still, it was hard for me to melt with sympathy as she came past. I’d seen her martyred little look, as if my son’s death had been one more irritation to make life awkward in a tiresome week.

  It was a dismal service, straight from the printed pamphlet lying on the pew ledge, with no additions or readings, nor even any singing. Someone I took to be a crematorium employee did give a short address, saying exactly the sort of thing you would expect him to say about a young man he openly admitted he’d never met (and probably guessed hadn’t amounted to much): ‘Everyone equally valuable in the sight of God . . . so much more sad when someone is cut down before their full potential can be realized’ – that sort of thing. I tried as hard as I could to push away unruly thoughts crowding my brain. How was I going to get out at the end without speaking to anyone? Where was this famous baby? At one point I even found myself having to force down a rush of terror as I imagined my father churning in his mind something about the stance of that red-headed woman whom he’d watched walk in, then swinging round to point a finger. Even as the curtains were closing around the coffin I couldn’t keep my Malachy in mind. Almost before the perfunctory service was over I’d sunk to my knees, prudently burying my face in my hands, as though in earnest prayer.

  It wasn’t long before the murmuring began, followed by the shuffling of feet and the rustle of abandoned pew sheets. I kept my face well hidden as all the other mourners made their way past, waiting till I was sure the chapel was empty before I warily raised my head and hurried to the back, past the collection plate that had stayed so dispiritingly empty.

  I pushed the door open a crack. The lad with the floppy marmalade-coloured hair was down on one knee, struggling with a snapped lace as he continued to discuss with a friend the people who’d been present. ‘Her? She was a drug nark, I thought. Dressed like one, anyway. And that one sitting right in front of you was one of Janie Gay’s cast-offs, back for some more.’ Scrambling to his feet, he inspected his watch. ‘Stopping off for a drink?’

  ‘At Janie Gay’s? Why not?’

  ‘Know the way?’

  ‘I’ll follow you.’

  ‘I’m on the bike over there.’

  ‘Don’t lose me in that warren. I’ll never find my way out.’

  And they were off, crunching in different directions across the gravel. I felt a surge of relief that I’d escaped without being recognized and in an instant it had turned to rage that, even now, leaving my own son’s funeral, my father was still uppermost in my mind. I forced myself to think of Malachy. What had his life been like over the last couple of years? By the time he died, had he and this peculiarly changeable Janie Gay – domineering girlfriend, vituperative citizen, vulnerable widow – managed to build a shared life – been happy, even? Maybe out there in Forth Hill – or, God forbid, Danbury – they’d managed to put together a halfway decent home, ready for their new baby. What was it like? Somewhere in one of those endless interlocking streets rife with infuriating cul-de-sacs to thwart the novice visitor, had Malachy been able to step out of his own little house into a garden? Or had the two of them ended up in one of those grim tower blocks the council had thrown up around the edges, where tenants had to stumble down flight after flight of stinking communal stairs to emerge in some litter-strewn yard? When Malachy looked out each morning, what had he seen? The shadow of some other ugly building looming over him, or a green waving tree? And had the sun reached down enough for him to hang in the window the only thing he’d ever bothered to take away with him from our old home: that tiny multi-faceted glass ball he’d loved so much through childhood, which caught the light and tossed its rainbow dots all round the room – bright splatterings of colour that in the last few years we were together it had exasperated me so much to watch him set dancing with a touch, over and over.

  I’d never know.

  Unless—

  Not even offering myself the chance to change my mind, I stepped back into the chapel. Already an usher was passing between the pews, skilfully gathering up the battered old pamphlets from Malachy’s bog-standard service with one hand while slapping down specially printed sheets for the next with the other.

  I tugged off the wig and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to unflatten it. I almost ran to my car. Parking it close to the gates had given me so much of a head start that by the time the huge black motorbike roared past, I was already in gear. In other circumstances they might have noticed that the same small blue car was right behind them all the way. But I suppose a part of their attention was on the leading and the following. In any case, what were they going to think? Some woman driving in the same direction. What’s special about that? I didn’t even take the risk of keeping back too far, or trying not to turn a corner till they were round the next. Each time I spotted a street sign I muttered the name of it under my breath until I saw the next. I never really thought I’d get to follow them the whole way to the house. But, almost without warning, the car ahead of me slewed to the kerb behind the motorbike while I sailed past, glancing from left to right in a desperate hunt for some house name or number.

  One hundred and forty-two, or thereabouts. And still in Forth Hill, thank God. We hadn’t gone as far as Danbury. I slowed the car to a crawl until I’d spotted in the rear-view mirror which gate they pushed. Then I drove on, checking the street name once again at the next corner, then pulling to the side myself to scribble what I thought was the address down on a petrol receipt.

  And then I sat and thought. Dare I go back and drive past slowly again?

  No. I had shot my only bolt of courage. I’d come back later, in my own good time. Even walk past. But now I felt done in. All the way home, I felt uneasy. For God’s sake, Lois, I kept on telling myself. You’ve just this minute stood to watch your own son’s body slide into an oven to be burned to ashes. Give yourself a break.

  I drove home carefully, as if through flames.

  12

  GRIEF’S STRANGE. THE Malachy in my head was two, or six, or a rambunctious twelve – anything other than the age he’d been when his life ended. How old was he when I last saw him? I worked it out to the exact day and hour and was astonished to realize it was a calculation I’d never have to make again. How long it was since I saw him – that would change every day. It might even, if I lived long enough, rise into tens of years. But just how old he was the day I watched him swallowed up by that green bus – well, that would never change, not by a single minute.

  The nights were long. I don’t remember crying. But then again, I rarely have, except in childhood when I trapped my fingers in a doorway or fell out of a tree. Classmates who cried at school always repelled me. I’d turn away rather than see those spurting teardrops and open wet mouths. I hated the howling, and couldn’t understand how teachers could stand so close, or help to mop those slimy reddened faces.

  No, what I remember of the next few months is the dull thud that echoed in my chest like a twin heartbeat. Sometimes I could forget that it was there. Sometimes I couldn’t. One night I came home with a bottle of gin. I’m not a drinker. I don’t know how to do it, or when to stop. That first time, I poured out the tiniest amount, drowned it in lemonade and never even bothered to finish it. The next night, I drank a whole big tumbler, almost neat, and then threw up. In my disgust, I thought of emptying the bottle down the sink; but in the end my thrifty instincts made me shove it out of sight behind the cornflakes. I spent a lot of time on the canal path underneath the arch where I’d first come across this Janie Gay, wondering whether, if I’d called down to my son instead of simply following the two of them along to that bus stop, I might have somehow altered the course of things. After a death there’s no other way to look than backwards. Was it too much I did on that occasion? Or too little there? I must have done something wrong to cause the end of things in such a way.

  Then I’d remind myself that that is what it was. The end. Week a
fter week I scoured the crematorium grounds for some new urn or recently set plaque bearing my son’s name. But nothing, always nothing. One morning, after yet another hour’s fruitless search, I walked between the mock palladian pillars into their reception office. ‘I was just wondering—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How you find out where someone . . . Where . . .’

  The grey-haired woman jumped with practised ease into my hesitation. ‘Where someone’s ashes have been interred?’ Her voice was tender. ‘You couldn’t possibly give me a name?’

  The question was so ludicrous I felt like snapping. In all her experience of working behind that desk, had anyone ever come in to ask for help in finding the last remains of someone whose name they hadn’t known? Instead I said with what I hoped was a suitable level of reverence, ‘It’s Henderson. Malachy Henderson.’

  It only took a moment for her to – as she so unfortunately termed it – ‘bring him up’. Lifting her eyes from the screen, she told me, equally softly, ‘I’m awfully sorry but, as yet, there’s nowhere I can direct you for that name.’

  I wanted to bellow at her, ‘He is not a name. He was my son.’ But the bereaved must quickly learn to act with perfect meekness. Release a fraction of your murderous feelings, and every human contact would vanish at once.