Duty and Delusion

by Shawna Lewis

  Ms Struthers continued. “Investigations showed that the sparrow had been wrapped in an off-white paper towel, very similar in colour to the supermarket tortilla wraps you mentioned earlier. So similar, in fact, that your daughter – yes, your daughter, Mrs Lowe – engaged in conversation with her friends as she was – raised the ‘wrap’ to her mouth without noticing anything amiss, and took a strong bite.

  “It was the feathers, followed by the crunch of beak, which caused the poor child to spit out the contents of her mouth, which, unfortunately, landed in the hair of the young man opposite, with whom Melanie has an on/off relationship, and who currently favours a rather long and unkempt hairstyle.”

  “Dear me.”

  “Is this making sense to you, Mrs Lowe?” The Director of Studies stopped, leaned forward, looked around at the assembled meeting, hesitated a little longer, before saying with a wry smirk, “I can see from your expression that it is.”

  Belinda’s voice was faint.

  “I look after Sallby Village Hall. Or at least, I’m Chair of the Management Committee. Yesterday, when I went to check the building, I found a dead bird. It must have got in somehow and been unable to get out. I wrapped the bird in a paper towel and put it into a Tupperware box I had with me at the time. But I can’t remember what I did with the box after that. Honestly!”

  “Well you know now, Mrs Lowe. You gave it to your daughter for lunch!” Ms Struthers’ sarcastic tone did nothing to amuse the others in the room. Mr Montano decided to take hold of the reins.

  “I’m afraid I have no choice but to take this further, Mrs Lowe. As the victim’s mother, you seem disturbingly unconcerned about her condition. You have also failed to explain the presence of a packet of salted potato crisps in the lunch box. I must ask you to accompany me to my office in the Social Services building on Dewdrop Way. We will leave your car here. And we would like to speak to Melanie’s father with some urgency. Do you have his work number?”

  No, she didn’t… had only a vague idea of his whereabouts, it seemed. Reluctantly, she checked on her own rarely used phone for Doug’s number. The PCSO, Ms Struthers and others wrote it down: further evidence of familial dysfunction. To Belinda, they were signing her death warrant.

  “I’ve got to go to work. I need to open the library at two o’clock.” She glanced at her watch. Everyone else looked at the large clock on the wall. Both indicated five minutes to two. She had five minutes to get to work and open up.

  “You continue to demonstrate a callous disregard for your daughter, Mrs Lowe. Most mothers would be at A&E by now. You need to notify your employer that you must absent yourself from work this afternoon… and possibly for considerably longer.”

  “Of course I want to see Melanie! I’m just confused, and can’t believe this is happening. I can’t lose my job though… give the council an excuse and they’ll close Denswick Library in a flash.”

  A stout man in a well-worn suit, who had sat quietly throughout, swelled his chest, lifted his head and introduced himself.

  “I’m Councillor Bernard Tuke, Chairman of the Board of Governors at Truetrust Academy. My special interest is the welfare of children and I am Chair of the Schools, Children and Young Persons’ Overview and Scrutiny Panel. I also sit on the Libraries Committee. From this meeting I will be going directly to another at the Town Hall, at which the future of the remaining libraries in the borough will be discussed, along with arrangements for staff redundancy and redeployment. You haven’t done yourself any favours, Mrs Lowe.”

  Councillor Tuke lapsed once more into silence and deflated back into his chair, his florid face grim.

  Before long, the meeting broke up. Belinda was allowed to telephone her boss to plead family crisis before Mr Montano ushered her out of the building. The PCSO stopped them in the car park.

  “I’m on lates tonight. I’ll be round your house for a chat later. And I’ll want to talk to your daughter.” Stern, she climbed into the waiting squad car that had arrived at her summons.

  In the car, Belinda tried to engage Mr Montano’s eyes, but he stared determinedly ahead throughout the journey. Her head seemed to have turned to mush: she had no words; no explanation; no excuses; no hope. And she had had no dinner!

  “I need something to eat,” she announced, confirming the illusion of a self-obsessed and uncaring parent Mr Montano had formed on first sight of the mother, “and a cup of tea.”

  Once in his office, the man relented and requested tea and biscuits. Minutes later, sipping her own drink, Belinda watched as the secretary set a cup in front of her boss and picked a stray hair from his jacket with a familiarity bordering on lust. Feeling a warmer glow and drawing the chair up to his desk, Tony Montano clasped his hands and leaned forward.

  “Tell me about your relationship with your daughter.”

  *

  It took until after 3.30 to persuade Anthony Montano that Belinda’s mental condition posed little threat to her daughter’s wellbeing. There were gaps in the mother’s story, to be sure, and he was not entirely convinced that the sparrow’s death had been accidental. Nevertheless, safeguarding children, not wildlife, was his priority.

  The phone lines between Dewdrop Way and Truetrust Academy had been busy throughout the interview. It appeared that Melanie had suffered no lasting physical damage but an appointment with a counsellor would be in the post within days. Ms Jeggings was supporting her aunt as she sat in the waiting area of the hospital’s Medical Imaging Department, in expectation of an X-ray on her crushed ribs. Ms Struthers herself was on her way to collect Melanie from A&E, whence she would deliver the child to the emergency contact address held by the school, to be left in the care of her grandparents.

  This information was relayed to the girl’s mother by the attentive secretary. Feeling drab and dumpy, Belinda wondered how to go about explaining things to her parents. When she reached their bungalow, Melanie was nowhere to be seen.

  The girl’s grandfather was trembling and pale. A thick veil of disbelief and bafflement hung between daughter and parents. Belinda was good. She was their rock, their support. Belinda took care of people. She managed things; tended to their needs; organised whatever needed organising. They had believed her to be utterly stable and benign. They loved their granddaughter, but could barely recognise the tear-stained waif deposited by the headmistress. The explanation offered had been curt and unfeeling. As soon as Ms Struthers left, Melanie had paid no heed to their entreaties and flounced for home herself.

  No-one offered to put the kettle on for Belinda. How could they not? The kettle symbolised normality and civilised conduct. Her knees gave way; she sank to the sofa. No-one spoke. No-one looked at her. No questions or explanations were forthcoming. She rested her head on the cushions and sought oblivion. It was not long in coming.

  *

  Two hours later, she noticed that someone had covered her with a blanket. It smelt vaguely of Febreeze and dead dog, but it was the sliding slam of a van door that had gatecrashed her mental void. The click-clack of a front gate, three loud thumps on the unlocked door, and by the time she was fully awake, Doug stood with eyes steaming down at her.

  “What the ’ell’s been going on?”

  Where was the placid, gentle man she was wedded to?

  “What the effing ’ell are you doing lying there asleep while our daughter’s running round half-naked?”

  Had he been drinking? She was sure she’d caught a whiff of ale as he yelled.

  “I bin working all morning – just nipped to t’pub wi’’lads for us lunch – and I gets this call from some posh bird, telling me mi daughter’s been traumatised and tekken t’ ’ospital.” Belinda hated it when Doug lapsed into matespeak – he spoke quite grammatically as a rule. She tried to speak but no sound came.

  “I’ve ’ad to leave mi pie and pint, let’lads down ‘cos I’m ’only spark on ’job, and drive 150 m
iles – brekking ’speed limit and I’ve ’ad a drink – and what do I get home to?”

  No-one dared hazard a guess.

  “This little trollop having it off in’shed wi’yon lad from next door, while ’er mother’s fast asleep on ’er granddad’s settee!” He thrust forward a weeping, haphazardly dressed Melanie, who’d been lingering in the doorway. “Explain yerselves!”

  He flung Belinda’s feet off the sofa and sat down. “An’ put t’kettle on. Mekk us a coffee.”

  This version of Doug was unrecognisable, but the coffee was made instantly and handed over. Melanie had curled up in the corner behind the TV, aiming for invisibility.

  “What do you mean, ‘Having it off’?” her mother ventured.

  “What do you think I bloody mean? I’ve bin t’ospital, school, library – no sign of either o’ yer. Even went to ’village ’all an’ all. That scrawny lass from Christmas were there. Then I went home and found this…” he nudged the girl with his foot, like a turd he was trying to wipe off “… stark naked in’shed wi’ that Street lad. Didn’t ’ear me comin’ an’ I copped for the lot!”

  The traumatised father was shaking from head to foot. Other adults in the room observed the veins bulging in his temples and feared a seizure was imminent. His angry eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

  Belinda’s mother had a clear thought, for once. From the sideboard she extracted a decorative candle in a box labelled, Waxomatherapy: light a candle to your troubles and feel them slip away.

  A box of matches, kept nearby in case of power cuts, was produced. Within seconds the dead dog smell was overpowered with that of something called, according to the box, Vetivert, or burning wood, according to Doug.

  “Mekks mi wanna puke. I’m working mi guts out up there, trying to mekk enough money to keep yon lad at uni and ’er in smartphones (another toe nudge at the girl) – and you can’t even feed ’er properly or keep an eye on ’er!” He flung his cup aside. “I’ve ’ad it wi’ you lot!”

  He slammed out to pace the narrow path of the front garden. An elderly woman in a beige coat passed the gate, watching him.

  The throwaway line ‘that scrawny lass from Christmas’ jarred even amidst the other horrors of the day, but Belinda couldn’t deal with it just then. The comment sought a quiet place at the back of her mind, where it could fester till given air. ‘Had it wi’ you lot!’ squeezed in beside ‘scrawny lass’.

  She pulled herself together and Melanie to her feet. Maybe the candle was working. (She must write to Waxomatherapy in anticipation of some free samples.) Perfunctory pecks on the cheek for Mum and Dad, coats and bags gathered, the door closed quietly behind them. They climbed into the van and waited for Doug to cease his pacing. It would all turn out to be something and nothing, Belinda was sure.

  The bungalow returned to peace, quiet and resumed confusion.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” was all the walls heard until cocoa time. The occupants knew enough to be baffled, but not enough to begin to understand what was happening to their family.

  *

  Doug followed his wife into the house in Dapple Grove. She pointed to the electricity bills Derek Spinks had dropped off some weeks earlier.

  “I was just about to see if I could get the village hall accounts from Sybil Spinks when Mrs Struthers rang,” she ventured. “I just dropped everything and went to the school.”

  Melanie had by this time trudged indoors.

  “It’s MZZZ Struthers, for Heaven’s sake! God, you’re so unliberated. Her husband’s not even married to her. He’s married to Mrs Hickstart, and they’ve got two twins in Year 7 but everyone knows she’s a lezzer and only likes playing hockey and watching girls in the showers, so it’s OK.”

  No response sprung to either parental mind beyond, ‘What is the world coming to?’

  Sobs, repressed all day, could be held back no longer. “I thought Melanie was dead!”

  *

  He did not hold out his arms in comfort as she’d expected, but went out the back to close the shed door, which swung wildly on its hinges in a strengthening wind. He pottered outside, pulling weeds, emptying last year’s pots – anything to avoid her weeping and that obscenity which had once been his little girl.

  *

  It was dark before he came indoors again. The girl had cried herself to sleep in bed; her mother, likewise, in the bath. He called.

  “Belinda! Get yourself out of there. You’ll catch cold.”

  She stirred, came to and clambered out, shivering. By the time she climbed into bed, he was waiting up with a cup of cocoa and a hot water bottle. He no longer sounded like a stranger.

  “You’ll have to take her…you know…to the clinic.”

  “What clinic? She won’t actually have done anything, Doug. She’s too young. It will just have been a game of ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’.”

  “I saw them! It was everything. She’ll have to go to the clap clinic.”

  “But they’re children! I don’t think she even likes Jermyn Street. It can only have been the once, anyway. It’s Ben she likes.” Ben was clever, clean-cut and an all-round star: a suitor to encourage.

  “Take her!” he insisted. Belinda kept quiet.

  “That family – the lot of ’em – they’ll go with anything that moves. Animal, vegetable or mineral!” He was undressing, turned away from her, and didn’t notice her puzzled expression as she tried to think of vegetables and minerals that moved of their own volition. And another seed was sent to the festering hole: how did he know?

  “I’ll have to be up at five so I can be back on the job at eight. It’ll be down to you to get it sorted.” He clambered into bed and faced away from her. As an afterthought, he half-turned and patted her thigh through her nightie.

  “You will,” he murmured.

  When PCSO Heather Banks and her hobbo Grant Hall stopped by at 21.30, the house was in darkness. They went to check out the pub instead.

  *

  On the first Tuesday of each month, it was a pie and a pint at the Bucket and Shovel for Tony and his mate Guy from the Environmental Health Department. They talked about motor sport, the best routes to take from A to B, the price of petrol and the latest football debacle. Rarely about work, and never about families.

  But the tale of the sparrow sandwich was a tale worth telling and, that evening, Tony couldn’t resist. To be fair, the borough’s Chief Child Protection Officer was minded to accept the mother’s version of events: that the child had taken the wrong plastic box from the fridge. And he took care not to mention names or identifying features. He was, however, a lively raconteur with a gift for embellishment, and there was soon a substantial party of listeners-in. The remaining questions – how the bird met its demise, why it had been wrapped and stored so carefully, and what else might be in the refrigerator – remained tantalisingly unanswered and an exhilarating topic of speculation.

  Guy Dance had not reached such elevated Local Government heights as Tony. He had come to rest on the middle rungs of the Environmental Health career ladder, spending a lot of his time checking the state of the grouting in fish and chip shops, with occasional forays to follow up reports of foreign substances in shop-bought pies. When things were slack and he fancied a trip out, he’d rummage through his files on premises where food was served only occasionally, to see where he could carry out a quick inspection and take advantage of lunch in a country pub nearby.

  Thus it was that the very next day at 9.15am, Guy dialled the number of the council’s contact for Sallby Village Hall. Bird ingress was a serious business and potentially a major health hazard in a public building, and the RSPB had let it be widely known that sparrows are a ‘species at risk’. This was Guy’s chance to get his name in the papers – maybe even bring a prosecution. It said on the council database that Sallby Village Hall was a charity. Even better. The
re was nothing the papers liked better than to dish the dirt on so-called do-gooders. Let there be so much as a sniff of bird muck or mouse shit, Guy Dance would slap an order on the place.

  He’d noticed that the contact person was female. A Mrs B. Lowe. A woman. He wasn’t too keen on them, despite being married to one, brother to two more and father to three wannabes. Too cocky by half, the lot on ’em. Guy blamed it all on The Queen, The War, The Pill, Tights and Tampons. Teach a woman to drive and she thought she were your equal. The rest just followed on.

  The voice that answered the phone did not sound confident. Good. It encouraged him to adopt his most officious tone and soon, an appointment was made for him to inspect the hall that afternoon. He looked forward to the inspection with a determination bordering on glee.

  He’d ’ave ’em! Let ’em try any more sparrow shenanigans, and he’d ’ave ’em! He was a bird lover, was Guy.

  *

  Oddly, Belinda slept soundly the night after the meeting, both from exhaustion and fear of waking. Doug’s warm and heavy presence kept the bed cosy; she felt perhaps a little less alone than had become the norm.

  Waking, it took seconds to notice that her husband had already left for Sunderland, then to recall the horror that was yesterday. It was all something else that had to be tucked away, to be dealt with later. There was no way she could imagine tracking down the ‘clap clinic’ – though there was probably a leaflet on it somewhere among her items for display at the library. But what would it really be called?

  Her mind played with the possibilities as she dressed. The idea of her little girl being at risk from a sexually transmitted disease was nonsense, of course. It never took root. It was some horrible fantasy of Doug’s brought on by drink and exhaustion. All would be well when Melanie came home from school. They could have a laugh about Dad’s over-reaction. Belinda smiled fondly at her own memories of snogging spotty youths behind the bike sheds at Melanie’s age. This episode was a storm in a tea cup, she was sure. Best ignored.