Fly in the Ointment

by Anne Fine

  ‘Look, Janie Gay, I—’

  ‘Come on! What kind of crap have you been shoving down his gob?’

  ‘I can assure you—’

  If I’d not stepped aside, she would have pushed the stinking material in my face. ‘You fucking get the stain out! You’re the big one for laundry – forever out here hanging stuff on the line so you can snoop at my house over the fence. You fucking sort it out!’

  She spat – she actually spat – in my direction. Then she turned and strode off. She rarely left without a parting shot and so I waited. Sure enough, as she wrenched open my gate, she hurled one last theatrical gobbet of spite in my direction. ‘And don’t think I’ll be letting Larry near you until that jacket’s back. And looking perfect.’

  I didn’t go inside at once. I think I wanted to let her poisonous miasma dissipate before I opened my door. That is the only reason why I saw the head bob up above the hedge.

  ‘Trevor?’

  Realizing he’d been rumbled, he rose to his full height and walked along the pavement to come in through the gate. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘I followed you. I tried to catch you as you left the office. I thought you’d heard me calling, but you just threw yourself into your car. Mine was right there, so I took off after you.’ He gave his head a rueful shake. ‘You weren’t half belting it, Lois. I was behind you for the first couple of streets and you never even noticed me flashing.’ He waved a hand behind him. ‘I found a parking space just up the street, but couldn’t work out which house you were in.’ All the time he was talking he was busily prising Janie Gay’s stinking jacket out from between my fingers. Dropping it next to the tub of flowers on the step, he ran an arm round my shoulders. ‘Anyway, Lois, that was all most unpleasant. You’d better come with me, at least until she calms down.’ He shuddered. ‘Christ, what a woman! I had no idea what you were putting up with. Let’s push off quickly, before the crosspatch little madam comes back for second helpings. I know. I’ll take you out for a late lunch.’

  ‘No, no.’

  He swivelled me round, a hand on each of my shoulders. All of his previous shyness seemed to have vanished. ‘Lois, I’m going to have to insist. You can’t stay here. She might be back at any moment. I know you’re doing your best by her but, really, the woman is unhinged. She looked quite fierce. You would be much, much wiser to leave her house entirely until you’re sure that she’s calmed down.’ He looked around in the most business-like fashion. ‘Now, where’s the little boy? Is he inside? Should we take him along with us and leave a note?’

  With perfect timing from across the fence we heard a crash, a hard slap and a raging howl. And then that unmistakeably grating voice. ‘I told you not to take that sodding thing outside. Now you stay out with it!’

  Slam!

  Trevor looked over the fence. ‘Hang on. Wasn’t that her?’ Baffled, he looked back at my door. ‘But isn’t this –? I mean, if she’s in that house, who is living here?’

  I sighed. There didn’t seem much point in hiding the truth any longer. ‘This is my house,’ I said. ‘I rent it, just to keep an eye on things.’ And I pushed open the door. ‘Come in.’

  Well, after that, of course, I was Saint Lois. Trevor looked round. He saw the black mould trying to make its come-back. He saw the shabby furniture, the curtains that didn’t really fit, the adequate but rather nasty bathroom. And he decided that I was a heroine. The first thing he did was promise me another raise and even (in the strictest confidence) an added bonus for keeping up so well with the work. He even offered to lend me all the money I’d need to send Larry safely off to a good nursery for several hours a day. How could I turn that down? It would be the perfect solution to bridge the gap between my conscience and the situation Larry was in. And I knew I’d be able to pay the Hanleys back. Once I was down to only one house, things would be so much easier.

  And so I thanked him unreservedly and knuckled down to scour the city till I had tracked down another jacket of the sort that had made Janie Gay fly off the handle. On the way home, I even bought some flowers to take along as well. I wasn’t going to make it easy for her to turn my offer down. I made one fortifying cup of tea and then, unwilling to put off the difficult encounter a moment longer, left the mug steaming on the table and went next door.

  Opening the door to my knock, she stared, first at the neatly folded pile of shimmering material, then at the bunch of lilies I was carrying.

  Her face stayed set.

  ‘Here,’ I said, thrusting the jacket into her hands. ‘I’ve done it. It’s as good as new.’

  She shook it out and peered suspiciously. ‘It looks all right . . .’

  I pushed the lilies closer. ‘And these are for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  She sounded so horribly suspicious I fled to the safety of a lie. ‘Oh, I’ve just had a brilliant year in the garden. Too many, really. So I thought I’d spread them round.’

  I looked at her blank face. ‘They will need water,’ I reminded her. And, since she’d clearly never been offered a bunch of flowers in her whole life, ‘Perhaps you have a vase. Or jug. Even a food jar. Anything will do.’

  Already, I could tell, it was beginning to sound like too much work. Rather than tackle the problem herself, she let me in the kitchen. There was no sign of Larry.

  ‘Where’s the little fellow?’

  ‘Up in his bedroom.’

  ‘Playing quietly?’

  ‘No. He’s been sent up there. For cheek.’

  It sounded so old-fashioned. ‘Cheek?’

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘The same old thing. He wouldn’t bloody let up.’

  ‘You should have sent him round to me.’ No point in waiting for a better opportunity. ‘In fact, I was just thinking that maybe Larry would enjoy a little time in nursery.’

  ‘Then tough on Larry.’

  I pulled a smelly pickle jar out from the chaos of the cupboard under the sink and rinsed it. ‘I’m sure there are grants and things.’ My own ingratiating tone was sickening me, but I pressed on. ‘If you like, I could make a couple of phone calls to try to find out if—’

  She brushed the offer aside even before I’d finished making it. ‘Not worth the effort.’

  There didn’t seem to be a pair of scissors anywhere so I broke off the lilies’ stems as best I could to get them short enough to stand in the jar without toppling over. ‘It might be,’ I persisted. ‘After all, the benefits people will be on your back pretty soon, surely, nagging you back to work.’

  ‘They’ll be on a loser there, then.’

  ‘Not keen?’

  She snorted. ‘No, fucking well not keen.’

  I kept on primping the lilies. ‘They can be horribly persistent – cutting your money and all that.’

  ‘Not if you’re ill.’

  This was a new one on me. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I will be if that lot start up. I’ll have that pretend one where you can’t do anything except loll about.’ Putting a hand to her forehead, she did a passable imitation of someone in a Victorian melodrama. ‘Doctor! I feel so weak. I only have to try to get out of bed and I’m exhausted.’

  ‘What if they’re not fooled?’

  She shrugged. ‘You say your back’s gone out. You can keep that up for years.’ She sounded almost wistful, as if it might prove difficult to choose between these two inviting possibilities. ‘Backache is better really, because you can always come right again whenever you want to go out.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  She looked at me as if I was daft. ‘Everyone knows it.’

  I thought about the piles of papers on my table. All those hardworking people, slogging their guts out in order to pay people like me to work out how much they had to hand over in taxes to subsidize idlers like her.

  ‘But wouldn’t you be happier sending him to nursery?’ Turning my back, I parroted a frequent complaint of hers: ‘At least then he’d be o
ut from under your feet.’

  ‘It’s only more work,’ she said, as if I were some halfwit who still hadn’t grasped the point. ‘You’ve got to remember which days he goes. You’ve got to get up to take him. You’ve got to drag him there. You’ve got to go back to fetch him and bring him home again, even if it’s raining. And if you’re a minute late, you get a bollocking from all those smarmy, po-faced women.’

  She might as well have said it: ‘Easier to pack him off to you, or to his bedroom.’

  I gave the flowers one last shuffle in their jar. But I could think of nothing else to say to try to persuade her. I think she must have misinterpreted my disappointment as unease, because she suddenly added, almost as if to comfort me, ‘Don’t worry, Lois. He will go to school.’

  School. So. A two-year sentence. Seems nothing now, of course. Almost a blink. But back then, in the real world, it seemed a horribly long time.

  23

  THE WEEK OF germs passed over. I charmed Trevor into a reprieve by taking home two of the messiest files and holding out the hope of a space for Larry next term at the Sunnyside nursery. Meanwhile, in the attempt to give the child a bit of company of his own age, I stayed on the same old treadmill of mother and baby mornings (‘Yes, I’m his grandmother’), coffee and playtime in the old church hall, and that old standby of the petting farm, where Larry cuddled the rabbits for as long as he was allowed, kept well away from the turkeys, and queued impatiently for his short turn on one of the dull little ponies.

  And it was there that, coming round the corner one day towards the tiny mud ring grandly referred to as ‘the paddock’, I felt the little hand clasped in mine tighten. I looked around to see what animal had startled Larry this time, and there, holding the leading rein of one of the Shetland ponies as it plodded dutifully around the ring, I spotted Guy.

  It took a moment to think what to do. I couldn’t – obviously – be so cruel as to drag Larry away. I couldn’t call to Guy. For one thing, he was being paid to pay attention to the little girl clutching the pony’s mane, and for another I wasn’t supposed to know him. After all, last time we met I’d had red hair and was pretending to be Mrs Kuperschmidt. So in the end I lowered my head and whispered to Larry, ‘Want another ride?’

  Too overwhelmed to speak, he simply nodded. We joined the line, and as we settled ourselves behind a pair of restless boys tugging their mother’s jacket, I took the chance to swivel the little wooden sign we’d just walked past around from Pony Ride Open to Sorry! Pony Line Closed. I kept on wondering what I would do if one of the other helpers came up to take Guy’s place. Would I rush after him to push Larry in his path on the unlikely chance that he would recognize this sturdy little fellow for the unsteady toddler he’d left behind? My heart was thumping on poor Larry’s behalf. But though his hand grasped mine more and more tightly, in the end all went well. After what seemed an age of waiting, we reached the front of the line and it was Larry’s turn to be swept up by those strong arms.

  I did what I could to ease the introduction. ‘There you go, sweetie-pie!’ I said as my small charge was swung up on the back of this so patient pony. ‘A real little horse ride! Now we’ll have something to tell Janie Gay.’

  How could a name like that fail to hit home? Guy stared at the child he’d just plonked in the saddle. ‘My God! Is it Larry?’ Without a thought, he scooped him off again and back in his arms. ‘Larry-boy? Is it really you?’

  The child froze, face as taut as a balloon, eyes huge. It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to breathe for fear this was some trick and all the hope that had been building up in him would, like a soap bubble, pop into nothing.

  Guy held him further away so he could see his face. ‘You do remember me, don’t you?’

  And Larry nodded. This time, when Guy crushed him tight, he slid his arms around Guy’s neck and buried his face in his shirt. Guy looked at me over the trembling mop of blond hair. ‘You see, I know him,’ he began explaining. ‘The thing is that we used to be—’ He started over. ‘What I mean is, for quite a while I was—’

  ‘I know. A sort of dad to him when he was younger.’

  He peered at me more closely. ‘Sorry. Do I know you?’

  He didn’t sound the least bit confident, so I ignored the question. Once again over me had swept the absolute conviction that somewhere in the sheer good nature of this young man lay hope of Larry’s deliverance. So I pressed on. ‘He talks about you all the time,’ I lied, knowing that Larry wasn’t in a state to raise his head and argue. I larded it on in spadefuls. ‘He thinks of you as his Dada. He thinks that you’ll be coming back – or, at the very least, that you’ll come round enough to do a few of the old things with him. He talks about races along the street in the pushchair, and sitting on the seat of your motorbike with you saying, “Brrrrm-brrrrrrm”. He even remembers you warming up his bottles and cuddling him in the big armchair in the kitchen.’

  Poor Guy looked stricken. ‘I thought he was so young he would forget in no time.’

  I tried to soothe him. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. A lot of people make the same mistake. And anyway, you probably assumed his mum would get in touch if she was worried.’

  My passing on the blame to Janie Gay had clearly cheered him. Still, I could see it was an effort to ask, ‘So how are things back there?’

  I shrugged.

  He misinterpreted my rather glum look. ‘Nothing much changed?’

  ‘The same old problem.’ Then I took a chance. ‘The same old solution, too . . .’

  ‘That bloody Wilbur!’

  Bingo!

  ‘Ah, well,’ I told him cheerfully. ‘At least we’ve had the luck of bumping into you.’

  And what a difference that turned out to make. Over the next few weeks I learned Guy’s timetable backwards. If he was supervising rides, then Larry had to wait in line like everyone else. But once he was up in the saddle, Guy and I would quickly strike a deal.

  ‘Got any time?’

  He would already have been studying his watch. ‘Look, Lois, can you take him off to see the rabbits or something? My break’s at noon today. I’ll meet you both up at the café.’

  We’d save a space. When Guy came in, he’d beckon Larry over to the counter to choose the cake that came free with each helper’s break. Together they would wander back, Larry already telling Guy about his morning. ‘It was the big one. With the funny tail. And it was gobbling.’

  Guy did the turkey imitation that so amused them both. The three of us would sit around the table, with Larry merrily dispensing crumbs. Gradually I heard Guy’s story. After the break with Janie Gay, he’d gone back home to Dover. Another girlfriend he had met down there had finally decided she was too young to settle down, so in a fit of what he now admitted was pure pique, he’d come back north. Somehow he’d managed to wheedle his way into the petting zoo when they were desperate for staff. Now he was hoping to get a reference good enough to find a job with horses.

  To my relief, he seemed to have forgotten ‘Mrs Kuperschmidt’. Even when, in an unguarded moment, I let the subject of Larry’s check-ups arise, Guy failed to mention the woman with the bouncy red curls who’d once arrived on the doorstep. But then again, why should a lad his age think twice about some woman far too old for him to fancy? After all, Larry and I had tea with him a score of times over those first few weeks, and yet he barely asked me anything at all about my own life. Clearly he had me down for some old neighbour starved of grandchildren who was content to lavish her affection on someone else’s child.

  I took my time to find out what I wanted to know. The chance would come. Sure enough, while we were sliding our cluttered trays back on the rack one day, Guy nodded over at Larry, still being chased around the room by two little girls in matching frocks, and asked, ‘So how’s his mother?’

  ‘She’s all right, I suppose,’ I said, adding a fairly neutral, ‘Sometimes I wonder if she isn’t a little lonely.’

  ‘Her? Lonely?’ I was surprise
d at his apparent depth of bitterness. ‘Why should Janie Gay be lonely? After all, she can’t stand other women and she can’t get on with men.’

  ‘You and she stuck together quite a while.’

  He nodded towards Larry. ‘I reckon that was more for him.’

  I trod so carefully. ‘And surely there was someone else before you.’

  ‘Mally? Well, he was a fool. Once he got stuck on the gear, old Mally would put up with anything to keep a roof over his head.’

  I asked it outright. ‘Was he Larry’s father?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  I asked the question that mattered. ‘Do you think he’s yours?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But he might be?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You’ve never thought of having one of those tests?’

  He stared at me in simple astonishment. ‘No,’ he said sharply, and turned away. I hurried to mend fences. ‘Quite right! It makes no difference to how you feel about the boy.’ Was there some tactful way of skating over the fact that taking a test would also bring in its train the issue of child support? ‘After all, why look for trouble?’

  I was forgiven. He gave me one of his delightful grins, and called to Larry. As we came out of the café, a silver sun slid out from behind a cloud and the wind lifted. Guy glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve still got twenty minutes.’

  So I slipped away, as I so often did now, leaving the pair of them in one another’s company. Moments like this gave me the chance to push off by myself down to the meadow, to watch the stream purling through cowslips and feel content, knowing that every single one of these short visits to the petting farm was yet another link forged on the chain that would pin Larry closer to his precious ‘Dada’.

  He must have let the word drop once too often. Or, just for once, Janie Gay must have been listening, because one morning as I was loading files into my car I heard her front door open and the scolding begin. ‘For God’s sake, Larry! Forget your stupid Squeezy Owl and shift your arse! She’s just about to leave!’