Fly in the Ointment (10 page)

The hapless visitor was backing off. I could see the bulge in the curtain. ‘Find someone else!' my neighbour snapped. ‘Find someone with no children. Or no heart. Or no imagination!'

The fuss was over and the lady in the grey suit fled. But later that day I saw the other patient she'd been talking to first, at the far end, beckon the nurse. There was a flurry of tears. Again the curtain was drawn, and I could only guess that words spat out so angrily at my end of the ward had taken root and made a difference at the other.

In those days I'd no reason to give the matter much more thought. Why would it interest me, a woman who'd lost, not just her unborn child, but also any confidence she'd ever be pregnant again? Only when Malachy was lying safely in my arms did those hissed words come back to set me thinking. She was so
right
, that woman. She
knew
. I, who could hardly bear to leave my son for half an hour, would have gone mad to think a child of mine was somewhere I didn't know, with someone I couldn't be certain would care for him as well as I would.

And now the thought of it was back again, to haunt my days and nights. The strange small feeling of unease I'd first had driving home after the funeral
hardened and sharpened until I realized what it was. Even back then I'd wanted to know what would happen to the baby. It was a small thought when it first began. But it took root and spread, sending its tendrils all over. When you've a dog, you notice other dogs. The same with cats. And people. Hobble out of hospital in bright fresh plaster and suddenly all around, coming out of nowhere, are people on crutches and sticks. And after your missed period and the first sight of that unwavering blue line, you notice every pregnant woman. After the birth, you see nothing but prams and pushchairs, and shops you'd never even noticed on your street turn out to have been there for years, selling things for small children.

And now, wherever I looked, I could see babies. Don't get me wrong. I didn't
want
the baby. I simply wanted to know he'd be all right. After all, the chances were that he was my grandchild – the only one I'd ever get to have. I
hated
to think about him being raised by Janie Gay. Oh, she might not be bad enough to bring the social services down on her, but you could tell, simply from looking, she'd be the sort to have the television on like moving wallpaper from morning till night. She'd not speak to the child except to scold him. And she'd be far too idle to make a fair distinction between bad behaviour and
the simple restlessness of a toddler bored to the limit and beyond.

No. She'd be a shouter and a secret slapper. And all her concern and interest and attention would stay fixed firmly on herself. I knew her sort – one of those ghastly women so proud of their emotions they leak them out to swamp the rest of us. They think we want to know about their endlessly unruly feelings – even assume we'll admire them. I didn't have to talk to Janie Gay to know what she'd be like. I had seen people like her on all those vulgar television shows. ‘I love him to
bits
,' they say of the child they're always so happy to ignore, or blame and punish. ‘I'm
gutted
!' they go round wailing whenever the shoes they take a fancy to in the shop window are out of stock in their size.

I wasn't raised like that. Neither was Malachy. And yet that little soul staring forlornly from the gloom of that hallway faced a whole childhood of it. I couldn't bear the thought. Up until now, my own determined ignorance of what was going on had been a comfort I had rested on like a soft pillow.

Now my brief tangle with Janie Gay had shredded it, the worries spun like feathers round my head.

I had ignored the problem long enough. Something would have to be done.

EASY THINGS FIRST.
Over the next few days I filled a large plastic laundry tub with second-hand toys just right for a child of his age. I rummaged happily through charity shops each lunch time and on Saturday morning. There were some real finds. I was continually astonished at the high quality of things I managed to unearth, and their low prices. I bought a bear on wheels, a complicated but sturdy garage with ramps and a carwash area, an inspection pit and even a little working wind-up lift to the car park on top. I found a set of jigsaws on a farm-animal theme. Someone had taken the trouble to draw a symbol on the back of each little wooden piece so, though the colours of all three pictures were similarly bright, it would be easy to sort the bits into the right boxes whenever they got muddled.

Just in case, I threw in a small selection of the sort of toys that any baby in a normal home would have already: an interesting rattle, a cuddly owl, a box of bricks and bright plastic rings stacked on a cone. I found a good jack-in-the-box, and even bought one of those flat plastic affairs designed to hang in the cot that offer a fat round mirror and various buttons to flick or twirl or press to make things spin, or set a nursery tune playing.

That evening, I wrote a note:
Dear Janie Gay, I was just chucking things out and thought you might be able to use these
. After a bit of thought, I signed it ‘
M
'. Janie Gay might scratch her head, but no doubt like the rest of us she lived in a world of Margarets and Michelles, of Megans and Marys, and was unlikely to be suspicious.

Next morning I got up an hour before dawn, loaded the car, and drove to Forth Hill. I parked as close to Janie Gay's house as I dared. There wasn't a soul about, and not a sound, except for odd scatterings of birdsong. First I slid out the large and unwieldy garage. I took great care with Janie Gay's broken gate for fear it would creak and wake her or the baby. Propping the garage against it to hold it open, I went back for the plastic basket, then tiptoed up the path. Not overly trusting her neighbours, I went round the side, out of sight of the street. A
motorbike festooned with chains made it quite awkward to get past, and at the back the crumbling concrete path gave way to the scuffed earth of a pocket-handkerchief garden. I put the basket down a step or two before my shadow fell across the window. Suppose she was up? I tucked the note I'd written under one wing of the furry owl, and hurried back to fetch the garage. Then I slipped away, feeling as cheery and triumphant as any bank-robber after the perfect heist.

Flushed with success, I went back to the charity shop the following week. I can't really say what I was after this time. More toys? A sailor hat? Some bedtime-story books? But from the moment I walked through the door I saw what I wanted. It was propping open the door to the stockroom: a padded child's safety seat – one of the sort that fits in any make of car.

I lugged it over to the woman behind the sales desk. ‘How much is this?'

She said she couldn't sell it. It was their policy, she explained. No second-hand electrical goods, no helmets and no car seats. ‘Just in case.'

‘Just in case what?'

‘In case they don't work properly.' Her tone of voice made her contempt for such a jobsworth policy perfectly plain. ‘In case they're “compromised”, they tell us. No longer “fit for the purpose”.'

‘So what's it doing here,' I asked her, ‘tempting a browser like me?'

‘It was left in the doorway along with a heap of other stuff that was there when we opened.'

‘Oh, right.'

The other Lois would have left the matter there – felt a bit irritated as she walked away, and forgotten before she reached the corner. But there was a new Lois now – a bold, uncaring Lois who could be conjured out of me as easily as a wig can be lifted from a box. I drove straight home, and changed out of my blouse and skirt into a pair of slacks and a smart sweater. I tugged on the wig, put on the glasses that I'd worn to the funeral, and drove straight back.

Here was a test. This time I wasn't sneaking into a shadowy chapel at the last minute. I stood in the full light of the charity-shop window facing a woman I'd talked to less than an hour before.

She didn't blink.

Neither did I. ‘I am so sorry!' I gushed. ‘You see, this morning, by mistake, my husband left our grandchild's car seat with a heap of stuff I'd asked him to drop off on his way to—'

I didn't even finish. Already she'd interrupted, expressing her delight that the car seat had found its way home. She threaded her way between the overstuffed racks towards the storeroom at the back, still
cheerfully chatting. ‘We couldn't have sold it anyhow. And it's not as if the things are cheap. My daughter-in-law recently had to buy one, and I was shocked at how much she had to pay.'

She handed it over, not looking in the least bit puzzled by anything about me. Clearly, once I was in the wig, even my voice became some unobtrusive part of me that wasn't noticed. From sheer relief (not to mention a stab of guilt at getting a perfectly good car seat for nothing) I pressed some money into the donation box and walked out, glowing with triumph.

It was so
easy
, I had realized. Nobody ever looked twice. Curly red hair worked like a mask. It was the only thing that people saw, so you could be a whole new self without a tremor. Is that what gave me the confidence to make the first little visit? For that is how I thought of it: ‘the little visit'. That's even what I called it as I prepared. On the drive to and from work, and in the shower, and wiping down the surfaces after my supper, I would run practice conversations through my head, imagine all sorts of scenarios. I faced the fact that Janie Gay might be in any sort of mood from indifferent to virulent. (I somehow couldn't imagine her being
nice
.) I tried to think how I would deal with any line she took. I worked out all the lies I might be pushed to tell. And,
bearing in mind the temper that caused her to lash out at Malachy under the bridge all that long time ago, I even warned myself over and over to make sure that, whatever happened, I had the sense to stay between her and the door.

And then I took an afternoon off work. (‘Good on you, Lois. Doing something nice?') I drove halfway, pulled on the wig in the privacy of a church car park, then drove on to the estate and walked with confidence up the short pitted path to Janie Gay's front door.

I pressed the doorbell. There was a shuffling noise. I pictured Janie Gay burying her feet into a pair of furry high-heeled mules and scowling (‘Oh, for heaven's sake! What is it
now
?'), and nearly lost my nerve. But it was too late to turn back.

The door was opened by the very same floppy-haired lad who'd led the way to this same house after the funeral.

‘Sssh! Don't wake Larry.'

At last! If I did nothing more than turn and flee I would have managed something. I would have learned the baby's name. Larry.

The boy was eyeing me rather as if he too might be remembering that we'd seen one another before. I felt a stab of nerves, but even before I had the time to say another word he'd opened the door wider. ‘Janie
Gay's not here. But I suppose you'd better come in.'

It sounded a good deal more fatalistic than welcoming, but still I stepped in the hallway. He put out a hand to push open the door to the living room, then clearly thought better of that and went on to the kitchen. It was a whole lot cleaner and brighter than I'd imagined – tidy even, apart from a mouldering armchair jammed in the corner and the clutter of toys on the floor. I recognized the stacking bricks and loops of different colours, and felt my first ever wash of warmth for Janie Gay. At least she hadn't thrown them out.

And then I heard the squawk and noticed the cot in the corner. ‘Oh!'

The boy was grinning. ‘Nobody sees him till he makes a noise. But it's a whole lot warmer down here than in that bedroom. I put that board up so he can't get splashed from the oven. But sometimes, when he's asleep, even I can forget that he's in here.'

The squawk had turned into a determined wail. The boy reached over to scoop up the baby. Larry.

Instantly the wailing stopped, and with the baby nestling against him, the young man temporarily seemed to forget that I was there as he soothed Larry. ‘Had a good long nap? Want some milk?
Course
you do. There's my boy. Who's a clever old thing?' The whole time he was chuntering away, he was using his
free hand to dig in a cupboard for a saucepan, then reach in the fridge. He discarded one carton. ‘No, that's not your milk, is it, Larry boy? Yours is the proper stuff, isn't it? There we go. Not long now. Just hang on a moment while Daddy warms it.'

Daddy? Could that be true? Of course it was always possible, knowing what little I did of people Janie Gay's age and their lives. And what a great relief that would turn out to be. But on the other hand, the word might mean nothing. I thought back to something one of Malachy's teachers told me once, in an attempt to console me after some misdemeanour of my son's that had filled me with shame: ‘He's in with a challenging bunch of boys, Mrs Henderson. A lot of them lack stability. Do you know, walking behind a pair of them yesterday, I even heard one saying to the other, as casually as you like, “You've got my old dad now, haven't you?” What do you think about that?'

So maybe this was indeed my real and only grandson, and this was his very first ‘new dad' so deftly pouring the milk one-handed into the pan, and lighting the gas by striking the match along the edge of the box tucked under his chin. I watched him dip in a finger to check the chill was off the milk, hold up the empty bottle against the light to make sure it was clean, then pour.

Before the bottle was even halfway full, the baby
was reaching to grab it. ‘You need three hands,' I told him. ‘Can I help?' He held out the bottle and I twisted the top in place. The baby snatched it with both hands, and together they fell in the armchair, looking the picture of comfort, the boy with his feet sprawled and Larry curled in his arms.