Питер Ловси - Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

A few tears were shed around that grave.

As the Grace was spoken I became conscious of those joyless eyes sizing me up for another approach, so I gave him one back, raised my chin to the required level and stared like one of those stone figures on Easter Island. My twenty years of teaching fifteen-year-olds haven’t been totally wasted. Then I turned away, said “Amen,” and smiled benignly at the curate.

Mean-mouth walked directly through the lych-gate, got into his car and drove off. Why do people like that bother to come to funerals?

Most of us converged on the Red Lion across the street. A pub lunch. A corrective to nostalgia. It fitted my picture of Danny that his mourners should be forced to dip into their pockets to buy their own drinks. The only food on offer was microwaved meat pies with soggy crusts. Mean-mouth must have known. He would have told me that Merle was the skinflint, and on sober reflection it is difficult to believe otherwise. It seemed Danny had ended up with a tightwad wife. A nice irony.

And the family weren’t partying at the house. They joined us, Merle leading them in while “Happy Days Are Here Again” came over the music system. Her choice of clothes left no one in any doubt that she was the principal lady in the party — a black cashmere coat and a matching hat with a vast brim like a manta that flapped as she moved. She was a good ten years younger than Danny, a tall, triumphantly slim, talkative woman who chain-smoked. I’d heard that she knew a lot about antiques; at their wedding, Danny had got in first with the obvious joke about his antiquity, and frankly the way Merle had eyed him all through the reception, you’d have thought he was a piece of Wedgwood. Yet we all knew he was out of the reject basket. Slightly chipped. Well, extensively, to be truthful. He’d lived the kind of free-ranging life he’d wanted, busking, bar-tending, running a stall at a fairground, a bit of chauffeuring, leading guided walks around the East End and for a time acting as a croupier. Enjoyable, undemanding jobs on the fringe of the entertainment industry, but never likely to earn much of a bank balance. With his innocent-looking eyes and deep-etched laughter lines, he had a well-known attraction for women that must have played a part in the romance, but Merle didn’t look the sort to go starry-eyed into marriage.

Someone bought her a cocktail in a tall glass and she began the rounds of the funeral party, cigarette in one hand, drink in the other, giving and receiving kisses. The mood of forced bonhomie that gets people through funerals was well established. I overheard one formidably fat woman telling Merle, “Never mind love, you’re not bad-looking. Keep your ’air nice and you’ll be all right. Won’t ’appen at once, mind. I ’ad to wait four years. But you’ll be all right.”

Merle’s hat quivered.

She moved towards me and I gave her the obligatory kiss and muttered sympathetic words. She said, “Good of you to come. We never really got to know each other, did we? You and Danny go back a long way.”

“To his Air Force days,” I said.

“Oh, he used to tell wonderful tales of the RAF,” she said, calling it the ‘raff’ and clasping my hand so firmly that I could feel every one of her rings. “I don’t know if half of them are true. The night exercises.”

“Night exercises at Netheravon?” said I, not remembering any.

She took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “Come on, you know Danny. That was his name for that pilot officer whose car he used.”

“Oh, her.”

“Night exercises. Wicked man.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t be jealous when he put it like that. To Danny, she was just an easy lay. I envy you, knowing him when he was young. He must have been a right tearaway. Anyway, sweetie, I’d better not gossip. So many old mates to see.” She moved on, leaving me in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Another woman holding a gin and tonic sidled close and said, “What’s she on, do you think? She’s frisky for a widow.”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Danny’s brother Ben must have given her some pills.”

“Which one is Ben?”

“In the blue suit and black polo neck. Handy having a doctor for your brother-in-law.”

“Yes.” I glanced across at brother-in-law Ben, a taller, slimmer version of Danny. “He looks young.”

“Fourteen years younger than Danny. They were step-brothers, I think.”

On an impulse I asked, “Was he Danny’s doctor also?”

She nodded. “They never paid a bean for medicines.”

Malice must be infectious. This wasn’t Mean-mouth speaking. This was a short, chunky woman in a grey suit. She introduced herself as their neighbour. Not for much longer, it seemed. “Merle told me she’ll be off to warmer climes now. She was always complaining about the winters here, was Merle.”

“To live, you mean?”

She nodded. “Spain, I expect.”

I remembered the life insurance payout. Merle’s antique had, after all, turned out to be worth something if she was emigrating. Watching the newlyweds at their wedding reception, only four years ago, it hadn’t crossed my mind to rate Danny as an insurance claim. Had it occurred to Merle?

What a sour thought to have at a funeral! I banished it. Instead I talked to the neighbour about the weather until she got bored and wandered off.

I did some circulating of my own and joined a crowd at a table in the main bar I recognized as more of Danny’s close family. They all had large teeth and lop-sided grins like his. A man who looked like another younger brother was saying what a shock his death had been. “Fifty-seven. It’s no age, is it? He was always so fit. I never knew Dan had a dicky heart.”

“He didn’t look after himself,” a woman said.

“What do you mean — didn’t look after himself?” the brother retorted. “He wasn’t overweight.”

“He didn’t exercise. He avoided all forms of sport. Never learned to swim, hold a tennis racket, swing a golf club. He thought jogging was insane.”

“He danced like a dream.”

“Call that exercise? He never worked up a sweat. I tell you, he didn’t look after himself.”

“He had two wives,” one of the men chipped in.

“Not at the same time,” another woman said, giggling.

“What are you saying — that two wives strained his vital powers?”

There was some amusement at this. “No,” said the man. “ You said he didn’t look after himself and I was pointing out that he had two women to do the job.”

“That’s what marriage is for, is it, Charlie?” the woman came back at him. “So that the man’s got someone to look after him?”

“Hello, hello. Have you turned into one of those feminists?” retorted Charlie.

“I’m sure being looked after wasn’t in Danny’s mind when he married Merle,” said the giggly woman.

“We all know what was in Danny’s mind when he married Merle,” said the feminist.

Resisting the temptation to widen the debate by asking what had been in Merle’s mind, I went back to the bar for a white wine. When I picked it up, my hand shook. A disturbing possibility had crept into my mind. The law allows a doctor considerable discretion in dealing with the death of a patient in his care. Provided that he has seen the patient in the two weeks prior to the death, and the cause of death is known to him and was not the result of an accident, or suspicious circumstances, he may sign the death certificate without reporting the matter to the coroner. Merle’s brother-in-law Ben had treated Danny.

Across the bar, Ben was talking affably to some people who hadn’t attended the funeral. This was his village, his local. Most of the family lived around here. He was at ease. Yet there was something more about his manner, a sense of relief; or perhaps it was triumph.