Fly in the Ointment (7 page)

I turned to stare. A boy, then.

Three months old.

The woman officer was still rabbiting on. I
couldn't stop her. ‘There'll be a full criminal investigation, of course. But, in the circumstances . . .' From the shrug it was clear that even someone defending themselves against a lesser charge than murder could probably put up quite a passable defence. Rather reluctantly, she finished up, ‘It seems your son was very drunk.'

Instantly her companion changed tack. ‘You really shouldn't sit here by yourself. Can we phone someone for you?'

Of course, there was no one. And that's what set me thinking. ‘How did you know where to find me?'

His face took on a look of deep unease. The woman, meanwhile, picked her words with obvious care. ‘Of course, our only
official
responsibility is to the next of kin.'

What was she saying? Surely if anyone was Malachy's next of kin, then it was—

Ah!

Can shock be real and still shot through with cunning? ‘Malachy's wife?'

‘Yes. Janie Gay.'

A name for her at last, then. Janie Gay. And they were married! And all I could feel was utter contempt for that part of myself that recognized my son was dead yet still took the chance to murmur with utter
mildness, ‘Yes, of course,' to make them think I'd known that all along.

‘But Mrs Kuperschmidt was in the station picking up somebody's file when –' She stopped. I knew she must be glazing over something horrible she thought I didn't need to know. ‘Anyhow, the desk officer was on the phone about arrangements. She overheard him saying Malachy's name and told him she'd dealt with your family over a number of years and wasn't sure—'

Another stutter to a halt.

‘In short, she wasn't sure quite how you'd come to hear the news and didn't want you to stumble on it in tomorrow's papers. We did ask Janie Gay for your address, but I'm afraid—' There was another long, long pause. ‘Well, she wasn't in a fit state to help with your details. But Mrs Kuperschmidt did say that since you and Malachy had never formally put a stop to the counselling, we would be justified in—'

Ah! So their worries were about
procedures
. Kind Mrs Kuperschmidt had pushed them into twisting rules. My head was bleached of sense. How could I even be making space for thoughts like these when there was Malachy – no, when there
wasn't
Malachy – when—

The officer was still explaining. ‘And there are channels we can use to find a person's address when it's –
important
.'

I didn't have to play her hesitation through again to know that she'd pulled back from saying ‘when it's a death'. And once again I was distracted by the sheer astonishment of finding I could lose my son and still have room in my brain to wonder at the graciousness and tact of someone else's daughter.

And then I forced myself up, up, and up some more, till I was standing. I took their hands. I thanked them and assured them both that I'd be fine. I promised I would phone if I could think of anything that anyone could do. I took the leaflet that they offered me called
Help at Hand
and laid it carefully aside, for all the world as if I were going to keep it, not simply rip it into pieces and stuff it in the bin. I showed them to the door and gave a little wave as they walked down my path, still thanking them sincerely for bringing me the news of Malachy lying on a marble slab – kicked, beaten, drowned, and lost to me for ever.

THE OTHER KIND
words came from Mrs Kuperschmidt. Just as I stepped into the bath on one of those first black, everlasting evenings that followed the dreadful visit, another police car drew up outside and before I could put on my dressing gown and hurry down, something had dropped through the letter box.

It was a note: ‘
I was so very sorry to hear
. . .'

I wondered why she hadn't posted it, then realized the officers' unofficial favour had not extended to passing on my address. She said she could offer no comfort except to say that in her experience grief had a life of its own. It was born – kicking strong and greedy, and draining everyone around of every ounce of energy. Then, as time passed, it grew more settled: one could live with it. And in the end, just like a person, it would age and die, to leave only memories.
She wrote her phone number at the top, and then again in the last paragraph. She said she hoped to see me on Tuesday morning at the crematorium, but she was finding it difficult to sort out an adequate replacement for some important duty that had been booked for weeks.

I studied her letter like runes, knowing she'd guessed why I had slid away from my old neighbourhood, blessing her for her tact, and for the clue she was giving me to the time and place of my son's funeral.

His funeral . . . The very word came as a shock. All those long nights I'd pictured Malachy's battered frame gathering enough speed down the slope to roll across the gritty path, into the filthy canal. I'd heard his outraged howls and watched his desperate thrashings as he tried over and over to find a handhold on the steep brick side. I'd watched in agony as his befuddled brain finally stopped making the effort. I saw him dragged out in a tangle of weeds, slimy with mud. Burying my head beneath the covers, I tried to blot out my imaginings: the catcalls of his tormentors; the sheer indifference of exhausted paramedics to a young body well past help or feeling; even the scream of post-mortem tools at their grim business. All of these horrifying visions seared my brain over and over. And yet it wasn't till Mrs
Kuperschmidt's note arrived that it came home to me that, all this time, phones had been ringing, men and women in sober suits had been making appointments and offering catalogues and price options – perhaps even a loan repayment schedule. All was discussed and agreed.

My son was going to have a funeral.

I rang the crematorium. Yes, Tuesday, they confirmed. At nine o'clock. I put the phone down, blushing. Nine in the morning? Surely that had to be the least favoured time – even the cheapest? I thought of telling my father. He was the only family I had left. Twice I snatched up my bag and hurried to the car. The first time I didn't even get as far as switching on the engine. The next, I made it all the way to the end of our old street, then turned and drove straight back because I'd suddenly realized that he'd be expecting me. He would be sitting waiting, just as he'd waited so patiently through my mother's last desperate illness. He'd know about Malachy's death. He might not read the papers every day, but one of his neighbours was bound to have spotted that little square of print, giving the name and the age of the body pulled out of the water. I'd cut around it carefully and slid it in a drawer. My father would have done the same. Oh, he'd be waiting, busily honing condolences to use as a battering ram.
‘So, Lois. You
have
been unlucky with your family.' I could already see him standing accusingly, shaking his head in the way that would send his real message: ‘Look at you, Lois! You've killed your mother, driven off your husband, quarrelled with me, and been such a poor parent your son never even reached twenty!'

He didn't need me to tell him the time and place of any funeral. I knew him only too well. He would have phoned round every church and crematorium in the book till he hit lucky. And he'd be there at the back. He'd introduce himself to no one. I'd probably be the only person there who knew who he was, but he wouldn't nod my way. He'd simply stand there in his best suit, staring ahead and making himself impregnable by putting himself in the right. ‘No one can say I didn't go to my own grandson's funeral.'

I wouldn't be able to
bear
it. I could imagine myself hurrying away at the mere sight of him. And what sort of mother did that make me? One worried more about avoiding a sneer from her father than burying her son. Across my misery ran a wash of shame, tinged with self-pity. For surely anyone else would have found herself free to mourn without the interference of ever-rising resentment against some member of the family not seen for years.

Which brought another problem straight to mind. What about Stuart? I had assumed he'd vanished
from Malachy's life as swiftly and cleanly as he'd gone from mine. But who was to say the two of them hadn't been in touch again over the last couple of years? Wherever it was that Stuart was living now, he might have come back, even for a single day. Perhaps, like me, he'd spotted Malachy hanging around in some doorway or waiting for a bus. He could have stopped to speak. And if the months of distance had worked some magic, the two of them might have even strolled off together to share an amiable pint. A thousand possibilities ran through my mind and, hating my own father as I did for his stern, calculated cruelty in not telling me about my mother's death, I couldn't bear to think that someone else might one day claim I'd treated them in the same monstrous fashion. I'd live in terror, knowing that one day my bell might ring and Stuart would be on the doorstep. ‘For God's sake, Lois! Malachy was my son too! How could you not have tried to let me know?'

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.