Read Online Fly in the Ointment by Anne Fine - Free Book Online Page A

finding it difficult to sort out an adequate replacement for some important duty that had been booked for weeks.
    I studied her letter like runes, knowing she’d guessed why I had slid away from my old neighbourhood, blessing her for her tact, and for the clue she was giving me to the time and place of my son’s funeral.
    His funeral . . . The very word came as a shock. All those long nights I’d pictured Malachy’s battered frame gathering enough speed down the slope to roll across the gritty path, into the filthy canal. I’d heard his outraged howls and watched his desperate thrashings as he tried over and over to find a handhold on the steep brick side. I’d watched in agony as his befuddled brain finally stopped making the effort. I saw him dragged out in a tangle of weeds, slimy with mud. Burying my head beneath the covers, I tried to blot out my imaginings: the catcalls of his tormentors; the sheer indifference of exhausted paramedics to a young body well past help or feeling; even the scream of post-mortem tools at their grim business. All of these horrifying visions seared my brain over and over. And yet it wasn’t till MrsKuperschmidt’s note arrived that it came home to me that, all this time, phones had been ringing, men and women in sober suits had been making appointments and offering catalogues and price options – perhaps even a loan repayment schedule. All was discussed and agreed.
    My son was going to have a funeral.
    I rang the crematorium. Yes, Tuesday, they confirmed. At nine o’clock. I put the phone down, blushing. Nine in the morning? Surely that had to be the least favoured time – even the cheapest? I thought of telling my father. He was the only family I had left. Twice I snatched up my bag and hurried to the car. The first time I didn’t even get as far as switching on the engine. The next, I made it all the way to the end of our old street, then turned and drove straight back because I’d suddenly realized that he’d be expecting me. He would be sitting waiting, just as he’d waited so patiently through my mother’s last desperate illness. He’d know about Malachy’s death. He might not read the papers every day, but one of his neighbours was bound to have spotted that little square of print, giving the name and the age of the body pulled out of the water. I’d cut around it carefully and slid it in a drawer. My father would have done the same. Oh, he’d be waiting, busily honing condolences to use as a battering ram.‘So, Lois. You
have
been unlucky with your family.’ I could already see him standing accusingly, shaking his head in the way that would send his real message: ‘Look at you, Lois! You’ve killed your mother, driven off your husband, quarrelled with me, and been such a poor parent your son never even reached twenty!’
    He didn’t need me to tell him the time and place of any funeral. I knew him only too well. He would have phoned round every church and crematorium in the book till he hit lucky. And he’d be there at the back. He’d introduce himself to no one. I’d probably be the only person there who knew who he was, but he wouldn’t nod my way. He’d simply stand there in his best suit, staring ahead and making himself impregnable by putting himself in the right. ‘No one can say I didn’t go to my own grandson’s funeral.’
    I wouldn’t be able to
bear
it. I could imagine myself hurrying away at the mere sight of him. And what sort of mother did that make me? One worried more about avoiding a sneer from her father than burying her son. Across my misery ran a wash of shame, tinged with self-pity. For surely anyone else would have found herself free to mourn without the interference of ever-rising resentment against some member of the family not seen for years.
    Which brought another problem straight to mind. What about Stuart? I had assumed