Fly in the Ointment (19 page)

I started with the front room. I'd been in often enough when I'd brought Larry home. Always, then, I had made a point of tipping the sleeping child promptly on to the sofa and hadn't risked rousing Janie Gay's temper by staring nosily around. The carpet, I now noticed, was laid in strips, making it clear that, like my own next door, it must have been bought as off-cuts. Where anyone else would have a sideboard or a cabinet, she had a heap of boxes. The greying nets that kept out prying eyes were bunched over the rail in fistfuls rather than pinned or hung. The only pictures were a pencilled view of Notre Dame and a cartoon of a cat. Both looked to me so unlike any choice she might have made that I assumed they must have been abandoned by the last tenant. The room had always struck me as grubby and cheerless, and now I realized one more reason why. There was a fireplace, but it was clearly never used because the heavy chair in front of it faced back into the room. The only splashes of colour came from the heaps of Larry's toys spread on the carpet and across the sofa.

I'd never yet been up the stairs. Usually when my eye fell on all the shreds of tissue and the scraps of toast trailing from top to bottom, I itched to fetch a dustpan. On this occasion they were not too bad; she must have done some cleaning. I didn't have to pick my way round little messes as I climbed.

To the right was the bathroom. She must, I reckoned, have cleaned that too, because it was passable. The towels were thin and nasty – the sort most people keep only to dry a dog. And yet the bath was clean enough. Most of the shampoo bottles on the tiled window sill had their tops screwed on, and apart from a couple of sodden flannels on the floor – and that was probably Larry – it was quite tidy.

I moved on to Larry's room. I knew it must be his because, disquietingly, there was a proper lock on the outside. How often was that used? With gathering unease I pushed the door and stared around. It was so
bleak
. For one thing, perhaps because it overlooked the garden, she hadn't bothered with curtains. The place seemed chilly enough simply to look at, but it was obvious it would be freezing in winter. His bed looked cheap but adequate, with only its pillowcase of snapping sharks to make me frown: fine fuel for nightmares. I tried to cheer myself on Larry's behalf. At least both of the bright framed
posters I had sent around the previous Christmas were up on the wall.

Still, something was wrong.

It took a moment to work out what the problem was. No toys. No books. No jigsaws. Nothing. And when I thought about what I had seen downstairs, I realized that all the bright and cheerful toy cars and games and cuddly animals I'd ever sent him home with (‘Tell Mummy Sandy doesn't want it any more') were down in the front room. Had she just finished some ferocious tidy up? Oh, no. I didn't think so. Inside the cupboard there were only clothes. Inside the drawer, just socks. There was a shelf, but it was too high on the wall. No child could reach up there. Only when I had fetched the chair from the hall and climbed on top could I see the things she'd thrown up there: key rings from the pizza house, a broken torch, a plastic banana with chewed ends –

And Malachy's old prism.

The glass was dull with dust and fingerprints. No doubt she'd torn it down in one of her fits of temper. ‘I'll stop you staring at rainbows! Get those socks on right now!' She'd hurled it up here where the poor boy couldn't reach it as just one more of her spontaneous vendettas against the tiny comforts of someone else's childhood.

Mean-minded little bitch.

I wasn't going to leave the prism there. It held too many memories, and it was doing Larry no good out of sight. I didn't feel the slightest guilt, only a rush of anger at Janie Gay's sheer nastiness, and shame at my own unimaginative failure to realize just how hard her heart could be. How often had I heard her threatening poor Larry with being marched upstairs? But who would ever have thought she'd find the discipline inside herself to make sure that same bedroom could always double as a punishment cell?

And so to her room. What I wanted was a big surprise. What I was longing for, I realized, was to step into such a different world that it would make her guilty, guilty, guilty in everyone's eyes. I wanted to find some warm and comfortable nest that made it plain that here was a mother who knew exactly what she was denying her son. A room so pretty and cared for that it would justify my growing anger and set me free to accuse her: ‘Look at you! You leave your boy for hours in that cheerless dump you call his bedroom, and yet in here you have soft pillows, gentle lamps and thick lined curtains. You've left your son to fend for himself in that cold cell but you've created for yourself a cosy haven!'

That is what I wanted. A simple black and white scenario to banish the exhausting shades of grey that sent the compass of my feelings forever swivelling to
and fro – pity to hate, and back again to pity. But Janie Gay, it seemed, was not one of those mothers who make a palace for themselves and banish their children to an outhouse. Her room was just as bleak. A bed. Drab, serviceable bedclothes. An ugly wardrobe and a couple of pictures on the wall no one her age would choose.

Only one corner of her room would catch your eye – the bedside table. The thing was nothing in itself, small, cheap and chipped. But set on a saucer next to the overflowing ashtray there was a candle. And, next to that, something the shape of a hedgehog made out of strange little wires.

Some sort of lamp? I pressed my toe down on the switch set in the grubby skirting board. Almost at once the spine ends lit up in a glorious metallic blue and, as I watched, melted mesmerically to green, then silver, then to pink, and on and on, through all the colours, clean and beautiful.

I peered in the table's little drawer. My life with Malachy had taught me more than enough to recognize what I saw there: Janie Gay's own small hoard of magic spells. Here was the place she went to throw off all her miseries and disappointments. The only place, perhaps, where it was possible to push away all thoughts of her own childhood, and how things had gone wrong, and how she'd ended up tethered to a
responsibility she'd never sought even before she'd had a stab at making something of her own life.

I thought back to the dozens of times I'd wanted to slap her. The times I'd caught her teasing Larry for things he couldn't do, or couldn't quite get out in words. The time she found him lying like a starfish on the floor and said to him, ‘Dead, are you? Good! Now I can flush you down the toilet where you belong!' The times she caught him wriggling with excitement and cooled his spirits with a sharp ‘Grubs in your bum?'

And yet again the needle of the compass of my feelings spun, making me dizzy. I felt like weeping. What sort of childhood leaves a young woman like Janie Gay with nothing to console her but her own spite? What sort of empty days were these that could be turned by a few pretty lights into a wonderland?

Poor girl. She'd more excuses for all her pitiful stabs at escape than ever Malachy could have claimed. She'd probably done her best. In future, I would be kinder – renew my efforts to take this pitiful and needy child, as well as Larry, under my wing. The first thing to do was find her some decent sheets, a better pillowcase, a warmer, prettier bedspread. I looked round the room more closely. If I could make some changes in Janie Gay's life, maybe it would be easier to—

That's when I noticed it: a little run of pencil marks along the grimy paintwork as if, when the phone rang, she'd had no paper near and thought it so important not to miss the number she was being told that she had written it on the wall.

And there beside it was a larger scribble.

I bent to take a closer look. No, not a scribble. One small tell-tale letter, carelessly written.

W.

So. Wilbur again.

EARLY NEXT MORNING,
as I sat in my dressing gown putting in a couple of hours' work, I heard footsteps outside and looked up to see a man's face in the window. My curious visitor was even more startled to notice me than I'd been to see him. Panicking, he pushed his hair back. He was a nice-looking man, my age or a little younger. ‘God! I'm so sorry! I must have scared you half to death.'

I opened the window further. ‘Can I help?'

‘This is so
rude
of me. But, honestly, the only reason that I'm sneaking round like this is that I thought it was far too early to ring the doorbell.'

I glanced at the clock. It was three minutes to seven. ‘Yes,' I agreed. ‘Far, far too early.'

He grinned. And, since I couldn't help it, I smiled back. The penny dropped. ‘You must be one of the
old man's sons.' I gave him a good long stare, trying to guess if he was the generous brother who'd bought the house for his father, or the unscrupulous schemer who'd held up the division of the spoils till he had wangled a share. But his embarrassed look could have stemmed equally from modesty or guilt, and so I broke the silence. ‘Come to look at your inheritance?'

I could tell from his face that he hoped I was teasing. So. Probably the schemer. He took a moment to rally. ‘It's not as if I haven't seen the place before. But this house holds a lot of memories.'

‘Do you want to come in and look around?'

‘You wouldn't mind?'

‘No, not at all.'

We introduced ourselves. While George was wandering about, I made some coffee. Even before he joined me in the kitchen, he was shouting his patronizing praises from each room in turn. ‘I like what you've done here, Lois! . . . This is a whole lot brighter than I remember it.'

Suddenly from the back bedroom came an apparently sincere, ‘My gosh, that tree has grown!'

No cherry tree shoots up that fast. So he was almost certainly the more neglectful son. When he came down, this cheerful prodigal took it upon himself to push down the plunger and pour out the
coffee even before I had offered it. ‘I wonder why my parents never thought of moving into the bedroom that overlooks the garden.'

I didn't see why I should let the fellow get off scot-free. ‘Your father did end up there. But that was only because of the shocking damp. By the time I moved in, that front room was a shambles.'

He gave a little boyish grin as if the message it sent – ‘All right, you've got my number. I wasn't the most caring son' – would charm me out of any disapproval. He'd picked the wrong morning for that. After my secret tour of Larry's home, I wasn't in the mood to let off those who didn't shoulder their responsibilities. I simply stared, and in the end he shifted uneasily and tried to defend himself. ‘Dad wasn't easy to help. He'd hide the fact things needed doing for as long as possible.'

‘He couldn't possibly have hidden that damp.'

George blinked, then bolstered his defence with details I could only suspect him of gleaning from his more generous-spirited brother. ‘He hated having workmen in the house. He'd lead you into thinking repairs were in hand. “I've someone coming in early next week.” “They say they're waiting for a dry spell.” That sort of thing is hard to argue against with an old person.'

‘Yes,' I said drily. ‘It's never easy to deal with people
who twist the facts round just to suit themselves.'

Again, that boyish and seductive ‘so spank me' grin. And suddenly I realized that this man fancied me. Admittedly, I looked my very best. Hoping to keep Trevor sweet on our arrangement, I'd slid into the habit of making more of an effort with my hair on days I thought I might find time to call in at the office. And since my visitor had shown up early, he'd caught me floating round in the silk robe I'd bought for my Italian holiday. He couldn't work me out, though, that was obvious. The question bothering him might have been written in huge black letters right across his face. Why is this woman stubbornly resisting my confidence and charm? Twice before, when he'd walked past the table, he'd raised an eyebrow at the piles of files. Now, shifting the spotlight off himself till he felt safer, he asked me outright. ‘So, Lois. What's all this?'

‘Tax files. I'm an accountant.'

‘Accountant? What, a
real
one?'

‘Any other sort?'

‘What I mean is—'

I knew exactly what he meant. Why had a woman with a proper salary chosen to rent this house? I took a mischievous pleasure in giving the honest answer: ‘I've a close relative along the street who needs a good deal of care.'

Astonishingly, instead of looking mortified at yet another dig at his own failings, he took this as a chance to crank up the flirting. ‘Oh, God, Lois! Don't tell me that. Now I shall feel so terrible you're having to move that I'll have to offer you dinner.'

I left him to get out of this as best he could. But he persisted. ‘Oh, come on. I'm around till Wednesday. How about tonight?'

‘Sorry. Salsa class,' I lied as coolly as he'd lied to me.

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Advanced Italian.'

‘God, Lois! You don't make things easy.' But he was giving me a smile that would have made a sphinx grin back. ‘Look.' He reached in his jacket pocket. ‘Here's my card. You phone me any time and I'll drop all my other plans.'

‘I'll certainly give it some thought.'

He shook my hand in that warm, intimate, double-clasped way. ‘And thanks so much for letting me look round the old house.'

‘It was a pleasure,' I said.

Because it had been. Watching this smug, complacent stranger oozing out charm had done the best job of reminding me of all the things I truly valued and the sort of man I could respect. And my good-looking visitor had done even more than that. Like
one of those bright dancing rainbows tossed out by Malachy's prism, he'd scattered cheering reminders of a freer life. A life I wouldn't have again for quite a while but that might be,
must
be, on its way.