Fly in the Ointment (15 page)

Cheerfully, I'd lie to him. ‘Off with a little friend. I'm going to pick him up again in just a few minutes.'

He'd take the hint, and push his mug away across the table. Once or twice, on his way to the door, he even managed to summon the confidence to try to break through my reserve. ‘Don't you get lonely, Lois?'

I simply shook my head.

On his next visit he gathered up the nerve
to tell me, ‘The office does seem drab without you.'

I looked down at my plain grey blouse and plain grey skirt, and simply chuckled. I think I knew that in some other world, with fewer secrets and responsibilities, I would have taken to this man in the same light and amiable way I'd had my fling with Dan. But this was not the time. I gave him no encouragement, and so the last attempt he made to get the beginnings of a courtship off the ground did take real courage. I watched him fiddling with his spoon for fully a minute before he suddenly raised his head, went red as beet and told me, in a rush, ‘You do know that if you get bored here working all alone, Lois, all that you have to do is give me a ring and—'

I waited. Once again, he lost his nerve. ‘And Dad and I will come and take you out to lunch somewhere nice. You're not too far from Todmore out here, are you? There's a fine bistro just beyond the racing stables.'

I nodded, smiling gratitude, but I said nothing. Horribly disappointed, he gathered the files I'd snatched up from Limmerton Road and stacked on the table so Trevor would assume I'd just been working on them there. I gave him the usual ten-minute start, then picked up the fresh batch he'd brought along and shoved them in a box. Turning the heating down and switching off the lamps, I set off back to
Forth Hill, plotting my next attempt to get Janie Gay to ‘lend' me Larry.

‘There's not much difference in height between him and Sandy now. So I was wondering if you'd let me borrow him to test out a couple of second-hand pedal cars down at the thrift shop. If they turn out to be cheap enough, shall I get one for Larry too?'

She scowled. ‘You want to waste your money on stuff he'll hardly ever use, you go ahead.'

Her message firmly sent – ‘
I
won't be paying you back' – she'd heave him over the fence. I'm no spring chicken any more and he was getting heavier. And so I seized my chance when once again one day the fast blue car came by to sweep away a spruced-up Janie Gay, and in short order Larry was bundled over to my house.

‘I haven't the faintest idea when I'll be back.'

‘It doesn't matter. You have a good time. Can't have you struggling with a pushchair in that nice top and those shoes.'

She smiled. She actually
smiled
. And suddenly she looked so young and pretty. I was still asking myself, ‘Is this the girl that Malachy and Guy knew?' when out of the car window came her last injunction: ‘And if he keeps sucking that stupid thumb of his, make sure you slap him.
Hard
.'

It made it easy to do what I'd been planning for weeks – go round to her side of the fence and kick at the broken bottom slats until I'd made the hole big enough for Larry to crawl through. Half of the battle. To tempt him, I took to leaving toys he'd never seen before a short way in on my side. Once he was in my garden, it was an easy matter to get him to the back door, then in the house. Sometimes, if Janie Gay was sleeping late, or safely away upstairs in one of the afternoon stupors I took care always to refer to as ‘Mummy's little naps', the child might be with me for hours, fully absorbed in shunting the little wooden carriages of his train around the edge of a rug, or up on the stool, trying to wrap his chubby hands round mine as I stirred freshly made spaghetti sauce or we made cake dough.

Sooner or later we'd hear that raucous shrieking over the fence. ‘La-
rree
! La
-rree
!'

I'd watch his confidence fade. If he was eating, he'd be off the chair in moments. If we were cuddled on the sofa, he'd slither off my lap. I'd pick up the armful of washing I kept by the door and hurry outside, keeping him safely behind me.

‘Larry? He was around the front only a moment ago,' I'd tell her. ‘Playing nicely.'

She'd stride off, bellowing that way. ‘La-
rree
!'

And he'd be safely through, into his own back
garden, ready to run round the side of the house and face her irritation.

If I knew there was little chance that he'd be back that day, I would go in to work and face the questions. ‘How's it going, Lois? Is Janie Gay in any better nick?' There'd be a wistful look on Trevor's face that made it clear he hadn't given up on the idea of getting me not just back in the office, but deeper into his life. If I was not in the mood to face those hopeful brown eyes, I'd choose instead to drive to Pickstone to face the more subtle interrogations that floated over the fence. ‘Lois! Look at your clematis. It's going
mad
. Shame that you're missing so many days of it . . .'

I didn't want them all to get suspicious. ‘Isn't it? But I've been spending so much time with my poor daughter-in-law. She's not at all well so I'm helping out a lot with Larry.'

‘You should have brought the little fellow with you today.'

I'd shrug. ‘Oh, you know. Nice to have the time to do a spot of gardening.'

And yet within the hour I'd realize that there might be peace, but never peace of mind. All I was doing was wondering about poor Larry back at Limmerton Road, at the mercy of his mother's foul temper.

Come, come! I'd scold myself. Just how much
happiness does a child need to grow and thrive?

But then I'd find myself thinking of Malachy. He'd been years older than Larry and twenty times more canny. Yet when his life became a misery in school time – little more than nine till three – he'd still gone off the rails. So every hour away at Pickstone began to feel less like a break than the betrayal of a helpless child, and as the weeks passed I found I was spending less and less time there.

And I was getting used to the estate. It might be drab, and frighteningly noisy on weekend nights. But always there was something to lift my spirits: rashes of colour in those of the gardens that anyone bothered to tend; the crisp still summer mornings; sunlight on berries, or the first winter rime on walls and fences. Larry and I had merry enough times together and all the time he grew in confidence. Announcements started coming thick and fast. ‘I'm not scared of spiders and I'm not scared of bats!'

‘Good for you, Larry.'

‘I can walk with my eyes shut!'

I didn't know if he confided the same small proud achievements to his mother. I doubted it. I'd make him supper then I'd take him home. Even as Janie Gay was unbuttoning his jacket she'd already be scolding. ‘Stand still! Look where you're treading!
Now
look what you've done!' Still, he'd be buoyed
with excitement from an encounter with the cat across the way. ‘I cuddled Harry! Harry let me! And he was purring. Really loud. And then he ran away and we couldn't see him. And Aunty Lo said—'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake! You're giving me a headache. Shut your damn hatch!'

The efforts that I had to make never to slap her! Never to tell her what a shrew she was to think her poor child's only role in life was to take on the chin whatever it was she felt like dishing out.

Or keeping from him. One glorious summer morning, I tried to tempt her. ‘I've a good idea. Let's take my car and go off to the sea.'

‘I don't like water.'

It wasn't said as a confession, more as a statement of pride. I'd very easily become accustomed to Janie Gay's blinkered assumption that anything she didn't care to do wasn't worth doing. (It mirrored perfectly the attitudes of both my bull-necked father and my censorious husband.) But I did think that in this case I might just manage to persuade her into a smidgeon of self-sacrifice. After all, every child has to see the sea some time, and Larry was now getting on for three. I would be doing a favour, not just to him but to myself, if I could teach her how to be a better mother.

So I persisted. ‘Larry could paddle. You could hold his hand.'

‘You're joking! Make a rod for my own back? He'll come home moaning all the time.' There was no fondness in her imitation of her son. ‘“Can we go back to the seaside? Can we? Can we?
When?
” Then he'll find out about the pool behind Marriot's, and it'll be nag, nag, nag about that.'

‘What's wrong with taking him there?'

‘Why should I want to go there? I can't swim.'

‘But you could learn. They do have classes for adults.'

‘Why should I bother?'

And that is suddenly how I felt. Why should I even bother to say the words, ‘For
Larry's
sake, that's why.' She'd never grasp the point that he was not just some lump of bad luck that had come her way, even a punishment. He was her
son
. Frankly, I couldn't see how anyone could get through life hampered by such cast-iron self-absorption. But thinking only of oneself is probably the strongest of addictions. She'd have top billing, even if her child was weeping or screaming his head off. Whenever I saw them together she seemed to be snapping at him. ‘Stop making a pudding in your teacup!' ‘Oh, shut it, Larry!' ‘Look at me that way one more time and I'll peel you like a banana!' Why should a child his age be expected to handle the fallout from all her vile moods when I could see the neighbours dive for
cover each time that she emerged, irritably blinking, to start her endless shrieking? At first I simply thought that Janie Gay, like any other ranting fool, made the mistake of assuming that since she made a deal more noise than anyone around her, her needs were greater than theirs. But gradually I realized the problem ran far deeper. She was what on the estate they called a headbanger. Some days she simply slopped through – careless and inattentive to her child, but lacking venom. On other days, rage simmered behind every look and under every remark, and she became a walking force field of misery and aggression. At any moment at these times, one felt, the last few flapping shreds that tethered her to reality might fray too far and she would lose her grip, and do something terrible.

And that, I realized, was what was causing all those rushes of compassion I kept on feeling. For, when you thought about it, Janie Gay was little more than a living, breathing example of what a child like Larry might become, left to grow up with no protector. If I am honest, I was little short of grateful that the contortion of her personality made it so easy for me to abandon my pretty little house and spend my days on an estate so cheerless it could make you weep. What sort of rancid childhood could have caused some little girl in pigtails to grow up to become
someone whose only satisfactions stemmed from being more irritated, and thinking herself more put upon, than anyone around her? And, more disquietingly, what had kept my own son there through all the screaming matches and the fits of rage? Had Malachy sensed, as I did, that inside this spoiled woman there was a childhood so awful, so destructive, so unmendable that all this nastiness was not her fault?

And so I probed, steadily tossing out my casual questions. ‘Janie Gay, did you grow up round here?' ‘Which school were you at?' ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?' Usually she ignored me, brushing away the questions as if her childhood had been something so dull and unremarkable it wasn't worth her while to take the breath to answer. One day, however, I asked her, ‘Do you get any help at all from any of your family?'

The floodgates opened. ‘Shite, no! I wouldn't want it, either. Not from that nest of rats.'

And out it all poured, about the mother who had run off for the very last time before Janie Gay was even seven; Dad's eighteen-year-old girlfriend, all secret slaps and spite; the final showdown leading to a year in a children's home, followed by foster families who couldn't deal with the endless bunking off from school, the stealing and tantrums, and Janie
Gay's refusals to come home at night. Soon she was in the family way, of course. ‘And he was a right royal bully. He couldn't
stick
the baby making any fuss.'

It didn't sound at all like Malachy. ‘Really?'

‘Oh, yes. A proper bastard. Downright nasty! And all too easy with his fists. Really I had no choice, so I just waited till he was flat out one night, and did a flit.'

I was appalled. Who would have thought my son could have sunk so low? ‘He was so bad you just took off? With Larry?'

‘Not Larry, no.' She scowled. ‘And anyway, I didn't
take
the baby.' The look on her face flattened to one of pure sanctimony. ‘I should have, though. I knew Ramon would totally arse up looking after her.'

Thank God! An
earlier
lover.

And another child. But, my Christ, what sort of mother was she, that she could have a baby when barely out of school and then abandon it the very same way that she herself had been left? And where was that little girl now? Dead after one small fuss too many in front of the loose-fisted Ramon? Or mercifully safe in care? I kept my mouth shut, not really wanting to know. At times like these, the whole demanding business of living among these totally undisciplined people – halfway to feral sometimes – could prove too taxing.

It was with such relief I saw the post van drawing up outside.

‘Parcel for Cartright.'

‘Me!' I called loudly. And I fled.

RAMON. MALACHY. GUY.
easy to see how Janie Gay could catch a man's attention. When it was not disfigured with scowls, she had a pretty face. And though the garish and ill-fitting outfits she carried home from shopping trips in town were of the sort to make me shudder, when she was all dolled up she could turn any man's eyes.