Fly in the Ointment

by Anne Fine

  Timidly I echoed, ‘Nowhere to direct me?’

  She had the decency not to take refuge in the screen. ‘No. Not yet.’ Somehow she managed to sound both gentle and matter-of-fact. ‘You see, we haven’t yet received the instruction form.’

  ‘Back from the next of kin?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She leaned confidingly across the desk. ‘It often takes a while. Some people want to scatter ashes. Others prefer us to inter them. It can take time to come to a decision. We pride ourselves on giving people a bit of a breathing space. And in the meantime there’s a secure place where we can keep them.’

  ‘For how long?’

  She found the question unnerving. ‘We try not to harry people. We send the odd reminder. And if the form still hasn’t come back after a certain time . . .’ She made the vaguest gesture towards the arched window looking over the grounds. ‘We have a nice place out by the north wall.’

  She didn’t add, ‘In the shadow of that old biscuit factory,’ but I knew where she meant. Better, I supposed, taking a detour in that direction on my way out, than being left in a box on a shelf in their storage room for eternity. But still, thin comfort for the only one who ever loved you.

  That was the week I started to bring home extra work. I didn’t want Dana or Audrey to know, and even Mr Hanley would have expected some sort of explanation. So I took to slipping the more complicated of our clients’ files into a capacious bag, smuggling them home and then back in the morning.

  And still I didn’t mention the death at work. I was embarrassed. Embarrassed! They were kind people so they hovered and probed. ‘Lois, you look very pale.’ ‘You seem distracted. Something on your mind?’

  Yes. Janie Gay. The house. The life he’d lived. The state that he’d been in. All of the things I’d so determinedly not thought about while Malachy was alive were causing my mind to unravel. I’m not the sort to let myself slide under without a struggle. And so as weeks turned into months and I still woke each morning feeling as limp as a chewed rag and wretchedly besieged by questions rattling round my head, I gradually hatched the sort of reckless courage you see in parents who will take on gangs, the medical profession, even a government, to learn the truth of how their children died. Except, in my case, of course, it wasn’t the death that was haunting me. It was the life.

  I made my plans. One Saturday, I forced myself to eat my usual breakfast and drove from Pickstone to the Forth Hill estate. I didn’t go as far as Janie Gay’s, but parked in a place that I had worked out from the map would offer an uncomplicated getaway. Before I got out, I looked at myself in the mirror – an unremarkable woman with soft brown hair, dressed in a plain skirt and blouse. I rehearsed what I’d told myself over and over to stop myself turning back. This Janie Gay has no idea who you are. You’re not in the bubbling red wig you wore at her husband’s funeral. She’s only seen you looking as you do today once in her life, over a year ago, through a car windscreen.

  I set off down the street that led to her house.

  It felt like learning to walk. That sounds ridiculous, but as I tried to tell myself ‘Walk normally,’ it was as if I’d lost the gift of unthinkingly putting one leg in front of the other. I was no longer even sure what was a sensible pace. Would people look at me and wonder, ‘Why’s she in such a hurry?’ Or would they think, ‘She’s clearly loitering. Up to no good’?

  The house was semi-detached. If you were generous, you’d try to say it wasn’t such a far cry – at least in design – from the home in which Malachy was raised. But, oh, the difference from Rosslyn Road! Where we’d had glossy paintwork, Janie Gay’s last few grey paint peelings clung to rotting wood. We’d had a tidy bright garden. The patch of grass in front of this house was scuffed to bare earth, fringed by the dying remnants of box hedging, and busy with whirligigs of litter spun in the breeze. Sun sparkled off our windows. The smears and grime on Janie Gay’s glass panes must have seen off the daylight, let alone the sun. The gate – or what was left of it – swung on one hinge.

  There was no sign of life behind the grey net curtain pinned across the upstairs window. The front door was ajar. In the dark of the hall I could make out a heap of refuse bags, and hanging from a shelf was—

  ‘Hey, you old fuckbag! Had your eyeful yet?’

  I jumped a mile. I hadn’t realized how my pace had slowed. And far from being hidden safely away behind her net curtains, Janie Gay had silently come up behind me in the street. Now she was leaning against next door’s fence, a cigarette dangling, like some young opera singer practising her pose for Carmen. She looked like a cartoon slattern, but more dangerous.

  ‘Nosy fucking parker. Piss off!’

  I forced myself not to run. Act normal, I urged myself. Tell her that it’s a free country. People can stand in the street and look at other people’s gardens. So she can go away herself.

  Oh, very likely! There I stood, in my neat pleated skirt and sensible shoes. And I have never in my life been rude to any stranger. I started twittering. ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t realize that this was your house. You see, I heard a noise – like a small animal in pain. Or maybe a baby crying . . .’

  ‘Oh, fuck!’

  Practically shoving me aside, she took off up the path. I saw the packet of cigarettes she’d just slipped out to buy clenched in her hand as she pushed at her door. It swung back further to reveal the baby – wide awake but quiet – strapped in his stroller.

  Had he just woken? If not, why wasn’t he already howling to find himself abandoned in that dark hall? If I’d left Malachy tethered like that in his pushchair, I would have heard his screams of outrage behind me all the way to the shop and all the way back. Was this child simply used to being left alone? Or did he know there was another person somewhere in the house, ready to pick him up and comfort him if he should panic?

  Odd, though, that she’d not taken him along with her. After all, he was dressed. If there had been a struggle to get him into the stroller, it was already over. He was ready to go. And it was a dry bright morning. A bit of fresh air would have done him good – even the couple of moments it might have taken her to get to the end of the street, buy her fresh pack of cigarettes and then come back.

  Except I hadn’t noticed any shops as I was walking. Curious, I retraced my steps. I reached the corner. Nothing. No shops, no kiosk and no vending machine. A man walked past. The fingers of one hand were stained a fierce yellow. On an impulse I hurried up behind him. ‘Where is the nearest place I can buy cigarettes?’

  ‘Across the park.’ He saw my blank look. ‘Down there. On the right.’

  I went that way and, sure enough, between two buildings found an alley with a host of signs forbidding this and that. It opened up into a little park. It wasn’t pretty, but there were trees and bushes and plenty of starlings scavenging among the chip wrappers and broken pizza boxes. Certainly it would have done. A child in a pushchair takes an interest in anything. Did Janie Gay not realize that, young as he was, her son was all ears, all eyes? Getting on for a year old. At that age you push them to the park to see what’s there. You make a fool of yourself in front of strangers and tramps. ‘Look at the pretty ducks! Quack-quack! Quack-quack!’

  The child stares solemnly, as if his ears are stopped with wax. No smile. No happy burbles. No response at all. But, three nights later, when you try to turn the page of the story book, down comes the chubby hand, spread like a starfish to stop you. A thumb’s uncorked to free the other hand, and down comes the pointy finger, straight to the crosspatch little duck stamping his feet in the sandpit, or riding her speedboat over the bright-blue waves.

  ‘Quack-quack! Quack-quack!’

  Yes, they are listening to every word and watching each flicker of sunlight. Why would you ever leave them strapped in the dark of a hallway on such a morning? And how long had she been away? I’d crossed the park, and there was still no sign of any shop. I asked again. It was around the corner. I checked my watch and timed the walk back. Seven minutes
. Four, maybe, at a run but Janie Gay had not been out of breath when she surprised me. And she’d had time to light a cigarette. If she could take time out to be offensive to a passing stranger, how long might she have lingered with friends she met on the way there or back?

  So. Better call it ten.

  I found the way back to my car. ‘And don’t drive past again,’ I told myself. ‘Ever. Keep well away. Pretend the Forth Hill estate doesn’t exist.’ A woman my age knows all her limitations, and the last thing in the world that I could bear was for that door to swing ajar again, and show me, strapped forlornly in his stroller in that drab hall, that solemn staring child.

  13

  STILL, THERE IS duty. And with Malachy gone, and no one coming after me for debts he’d ratted on or deals he’d left undone, there seemed no reason not to get in touch with Mrs Kuperschmidt. I thanked her for her letter all those months ago. She asked about the funeral. I told her I was too upset to go, and she passed on a little of what the police officer who attended had told her after: ‘He said it was a very simple service. But someone gave a nice little talk about Malachy. And Janie Gay was very dignified.’

  It offered me the chance to ask, ‘And do you know about the baby?’

  She sounded guarded. ‘Know about the baby?’

  ‘If he’s all right. If Janie Gay is looking after him.’

  There was a pause as Mrs Kuperschmidt tried to work out where I was headed. Finally she said, a little distantly, ‘As far as I’m aware, Lois, the Dewell family isn’t on our books.’

  ‘Dewell?’ I must admit I was startled. ‘Isn’t her name Gay?’

  ‘Janie Gay. Janie Gay Dewell. Lois, I’m gathering you can’t have met her properly. And yet you’re obviously worried about her baby.’

  Sensing Mrs Kuperschmidt’s unease, I tried to sound robust. ‘Well, what with my Malachy being tangled up in drug deals, and the police officers seeming to know the child’s mother so well, I just assumed that you’d be keeping a weather eye out. At least at the start. Just in case . . .’

  I trailed off.

  Mrs Kuperschmidt said sternly, ‘Lois, do you know something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘No, no.’ I stretched the truth, but only a little. ‘I’ve never so much as set eyes on this baby.’ I almost added, ‘For all I know, he isn’t even my son’s child,’ but realized just in time that that would make my phone call sound even more odd.

  ‘So you’ve no reason to suspect the child’s in any danger?’

  I was still fishing like mad. ‘It has to be danger, does it? Before you can step in to take a look?’

  Mrs Kuperschmidt was as tactful as she could be in urging caution. ‘Lois, you know as well as I do these things are subtle. The trouble is that everyone’s an expert on other people’s kids. So we get calls from neighbours and grandparents – even from absent fathers. We do the best we can. But all too often the problem amounts to little more than –’ The phrase she used must have sprung straight from a text book. ‘– coming at child-raising from different cultural reference points.’

  ‘You mean, like living on chips? And watching telly day and night? That sort of thing?’

  ‘That sort of thing. And worse. Constantly being sworn at, or squashed or ignored. Cruelly teased, even. There have to be a million horrible ways of raising children without crossing the line. Sometimes we do step in to offer support to the family.’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘But we’re so limited. It mostly boils down to pulling strings to get a child into a nursery, or giving a bit of advice about feeding it better.’ Another sigh. ‘It’s not as if the parents haven’t been told it all before. They almost always ignore it.’

  Just being so honest had depressed her utterly. Briskly she tried to wrap up the call to get away from me. ‘Honestly, Lois. I know you’re worried. And if you should ever hear anything specific, we’d move at once to try to put things right. But from what I’ve heard, Janie Gay might have a temper but she’s not vicious. And though by all accounts she won’t win any natty housekeeping awards, she’s certainly not incapable. If you’d already been a large part of this baby’s world there might have been some tack that we could take. But, in the circumstances –’

  Mrs Kuperschmidt took a deep breath. ‘I hate to say it, Lois, but since there’s nothing you can do to change this baby’s home background, the best advice that I can give you is to be grateful you and the child weren’t close.’

  Now I was keener than Mrs Kuperschmidt to end the call. What’s ‘close’ to do with it? When I was in hospital losing my very first baby, a woman in a soft grey suit appeared on the ward. My bed was nearest the door. I watched her glance at the clipboard she was carrying, then tuck it under her arm and stroll to a bed at the end. She introduced herself, pulled up a chair, then, at a gesture of consent from the young woman propped against the pillows, tugged the privacy curtain around them. She was there long enough for me to forget about her. Ten minutes? An hour? I was in no state to pay attention. Next time I noticed her she was pulling a chair up close to the patient in the bed beside me and stretching out a hand to tug the flowery cotton curtain across to close the gap between us.

  She flashed me a smile that meant nothing. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘No. Go ahead.’

  But I could not go deaf. And all I could assume was that these two patients’ treatment could at some time in the future, if they gave permission, include the ‘harvesting’ of eggs for other, infertile women. This time the lady with the clipboard didn’t get far through her pitch. If she was on the verge of offering a host of assurances, I never got to hear them. All that came through the curtain was my neighbour’s strained voice.

  ‘Let’s get this right. You’re asking me if I’ll donate my eggs.’ She cut off the woman’s discreetly murmured response. ‘You want me to let someone else have a child that’s half mine – half mine! – and go through the whole of the rest of my life not having the faintest idea who’s looking after it, or what a pig’s ear they might be making of the job?’ Did the voice shoot higher, or was it simply that the whole of the rest of the ward had fallen silent? ‘I’m supposed to lie in bed at night and wonder if, out there, some child of mine I’ll never know is cold, or crying, or being tormented by some bully?’

  Now she was shrieking. ‘Listen to me, you stupid, stupid woman! Next time you go down a ward asking strangers to offer you eggs, try a test question first. Ask, “Have you ever in your whole life thought for a moment that you could hand a baby of your own out for adoption?” And if the answer’s “No”, then have the sensitivity to skip that person’s bed out!’

  The hapless visitor was backing off. I could see the bulge in the curtain. ‘Find someone else!’ my neighbour snapped. ‘Find someone with no children. Or no heart. Or no imagination!’

  The fuss was over and the lady in the grey suit fled. But later that day I saw the other patient she’d been talking to first, at the far end, beckon the nurse. There was a flurry of tears. Again the curtain was drawn, and I could only guess that words spat out so angrily at my end of the ward had taken root and made a difference at the other.

  In those days I’d no reason to give the matter much more thought. Why would it interest me, a woman who’d lost, not just her unborn child, but also any confidence she’d ever be pregnant again? Only when Malachy was lying safely in my arms did those hissed words come back to set me thinking. She was so right, that woman. She knew. I, who could hardly bear to leave my son for half an hour, would have gone mad to think a child of mine was somewhere I didn’t know, with someone I couldn’t be certain would care for him as well as I would.

  And now the thought of it was back again, to haunt my days and nights. The strange small feeling of unease I’d first had driving home after the funeral hardened and sharpened until I realized what it was. Even back then I’d wanted to know what would happen to the baby. It was a small thought when it first began. But it took root and spread, sending its tendrils all over. When you’ve
a dog, you notice other dogs. The same with cats. And people. Hobble out of hospital in bright fresh plaster and suddenly all around, coming out of nowhere, are people on crutches and sticks. And after your missed period and the first sight of that unwavering blue line, you notice every pregnant woman. After the birth, you see nothing but prams and pushchairs, and shops you’d never even noticed on your street turn out to have been there for years, selling things for small children.

  And now, wherever I looked, I could see babies. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want the baby. I simply wanted to know he’d be all right. After all, the chances were that he was my grandchild – the only one I’d ever get to have. I hated to think about him being raised by Janie Gay. Oh, she might not be bad enough to bring the social services down on her, but you could tell, simply from looking, she’d be the sort to have the television on like moving wallpaper from morning till night. She’d not speak to the child except to scold him. And she’d be far too idle to make a fair distinction between bad behaviour and the simple restlessness of a toddler bored to the limit and beyond.

  No. She’d be a shouter and a secret slapper. And all her concern and interest and attention would stay fixed firmly on herself. I knew her sort – one of those ghastly women so proud of their emotions they leak them out to swamp the rest of us. They think we want to know about their endlessly unruly feelings – even assume we’ll admire them. I didn’t have to talk to Janie Gay to know what she’d be like. I had seen people like her on all those vulgar television shows. ‘I love him to bits,’ they say of the child they’re always so happy to ignore, or blame and punish. ‘I’m gutted!’ they go round wailing whenever the shoes they take a fancy to in the shop window are out of stock in their size.

  I wasn’t raised like that. Neither was Malachy. And yet that little soul staring forlornly from the gloom of that hallway faced a whole childhood of it. I couldn’t bear the thought. Up until now, my own determined ignorance of what was going on had been a comfort I had rested on like a soft pillow.