Fly in the Ointment Read Online Free PDF Page A

crackers and cheese with lime pickle and not thinking twice about stains on my nightie. If true contentment is living free from irritation, then I was content.
    Everyone at work put my good spirits down to the fact that I was leaving. ‘But, Lois, what are you going to
do
? You can’t stop work at your age!’ I didn’t like to tell them that way back in early youth I’d taken thetrouble to qualify myself for a far better job than standing behind a counter tutting over stains. On my last day, I brought in a lavish cake. They had good-luck cards to give me. And though there’d been much talk of the four of us going out for a celebratory drink together after SwiftClean closed, Soraya avoided bars, Brenda was off, and Ravij felt he really ought to stay on the premises a few minutes longer in case the repairman he’d been waiting for all day finally showed up.
    At twenty to six, I kissed Soraya and Ravij goodbye and strolled to the bus stop. Two drunks were sitting on the bench and one was spitting. Repelled, I walked on past. I wasn’t in a hurry. By the next bus stop I was in my stride, so kept on walking. It was a lovely soft evening. I went through Queen’s Park, along the canalside walk the council had smartened up at huge expense, and up on to the old stone bridge.
    Hearing a barney starting up somewhere below me, I rested my arms on the cool gritty parapet and leaned over to look. On the towpath beneath, a tartylooking young woman was ripping into some unfortunate still out of sight under the arch. Her face was twisted with temper. Her arms kept lashing out towards whoever it was who’d sparked her fury. The accusations ricocheted up. ‘Stupid! . . . Already
warned
you.’ Each time she hurled herself forward I’d hear her choked and incoherent shrieks echoing over and again under the archway. ‘Offering crap like that to Wilbur! . . . Wilbur! . . . Wilbur! . . . Want to get us
mashed
. . .
mashed
. . .
mashed
. . .? You fool! . . . fool! . . . fool!’
    The arms kept flailing. The girl was in such a tantrum she could have been trying to push whoever it was who had made her so furious into the river. Was it because the sheer frustration fuelling her rage brought back so many memories of scenes with Malachy that I suddenly thought, ‘My God! That could be some poor child that she’s attacking!’ And I leaned over the bridge as far as I dared, to check on the victim.
    It was my own son.

5
    I FOLLOWED THEM at least a mile along the canal path. The young woman kept on screeching. I was too far behind to get the gist of it, but it was clear that she was one of those people on whom anger works like a pump. Each step she took, she sounded louder and shriller.
    Suddenly she parked herself down on a bench. I hurried to hide behind some huge and hideous sign detailing the natural beauties to be seen across the water. The sign was made in sections, like a dressing-table mirror, and through the gaps I watched the furious young woman toss back her raggedy hair and light a cigarette. It must have done something to calm her because after a moment my Malachy dared put out a hand to ask for his share of it. He pulled a couple of deep drags down into his own lungs andthe two of them stayed there, seemingly without speaking, until she tossed the cigarette away and they set off again. The stub was still leaking its thin acrid trail when I trod over it a moment later.
    At the next bridge they climbed the steps to the road. I walked past the shops on the other side, keeping behind till they suddenly parked themselves on a bench by a bus stop. At once I darted into a place called Body and Soul and wandered round among the essences and lotions, keeping my eye on them through the shop window until a bus drew up between us.
    When it moved off, the two of them had vanished.
    I hurried out to check the number on the back. 18A. Forth Hill and Danbury – neither of them estates on