Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

The Pushover

During the singing of the Twenty-Third Psalm, the man next to me gave me a nudge and said, “What do you think of the wooden overcoat?”

Uncertain what he meant, I lifted an eyebrow.

“The coffin,” he said.

I swayed to my left for a view along the aisle. I could see nothing worth interrupting the service for. Danny Fox’s coffin stood on trestles in front of the altar looking no different from others I had seen. On the top was the wreath from his widow, Merle, in the shape of a large heart of red roses with Danny’s name picked out in white. Not to my taste, but I wasn’t so churlish as to mention this to anyone else.

“No handles,” my informant explained.

So what? I thought. Who needs handles? Coffins are hardly ever carried by the handles. I gave a nod and continued singing.

“That isn’t oak,” the man persisted. “That’s a veneer. Underneath, it’s chipboard.”

I pretended not to have heard, and joined in the singing of the third verse — the one beginning “Perverse and foolish oft I strayed” — with such commitment that I drew shocked glances from the people in front.

“She’s going to bury Danny in the cheapest box she could buy.”

This baboon was ruining the service. I sat for the sermon in a twisted position presenting most of my back to him.

But the damage had been done. My response to what was said was blighted. If John Wesley in his prime had been giving the Address I would still have found concentration difficult. Actually it was spoken by a callow curate with a nervous grin who revealed a lamentable ignorance about the Danny I had known. “A decent man” was a questionable epithet in Danny’s case; “a loyal husband” extremely doubtful; “generous to a fault” a gross misrepresentation. I couldn’t remember a time when the departed one had bought a round of drinks. If the curate felt obliged to say something positive, he might reasonably have told us that the man in the coffin had been funny and a charmer capable of selling sand to a sheik. I cared a lot about Danny, or I wouldn’t be here, but just because he was dead we didn’t have to award him a halo.

My contacts with the old rogue went back thirty years. Danny and I first met back in the sixties, the days of National Service, in the Air Force at a desolate camp on Salisbury Plain called Netheravon, and even so early in his career, still in his teens, Danny had got life running the way he wanted. He’d formed a poker school with a scale of duties as the stakes and, so far as I know, served his two years without ever polishing a floor, raking out a stove or doing a guard duty. No one ever caught him cheating, but his silky handling of the cards should have taught anyone not to play with him. He seduced (an old-fashioned word that gives a flavour of the time) the only WRAF officer on the roll and had the use of her pale blue Morris Minor on Saturdays to support his favourite football team, Bristol Rovers. Weekend passes were no problem. You had to smile at Danny.

I came across him again twelve years later, in 1973, on the sea front at Brighton dressed in a striped blazer, white flannels and a straw hat and doing a soft-shoe dance to an old Fred Astaire number on an ancient wind-up gramophone with a huge brass horn. I had no idea Danny was such a beautiful mover. So many people had stopped to watch that you couldn’t get past without walking on the shingle. It was a deeply serious performance that refused to be serious at all. At a tempo so slow that any awkwardness would have been obvious, he shuffled and glided and turned about, tossing in casual gull-turns and toe-taps, dipping, swaying and twisting with the beat, his arms windmilling one second, seesawing the next, and never suggesting strain. After he’d passed the hat around, we went for a drink and talked about old times and former comrades. I paid, of course. After that we promised to stay in touch. We met a few times. I went to his second wedding in 1988 — a big affair, because Merle had a sister and five brothers, all with families. They were a crazy bunch. The reception, on a river steamer, was a riot. I’ve never laughed so much.

Danny was fifty-seven when he died.

We sang another hymn and the curate said a prayer and led us out for the Committal. The pall-bearers hoisted the coffin and brought it along the aisle. I didn’t need the nudge I got from my companion as they passed. I could see for myself that the wood was a cheap veneer. I wasn’t judgmental. Quite possibly Danny had left Merle with nothing except his antique gramophone and some debts.

“She had him insured for a hundred and fifty K,” Mean-mouth insisted on telling me as we followed the coffin along a path between the graves. “She could have given him a decent send-off.”

I told him curtly that I wasn’t interested. God knows, I was trying not to be. At the graveside, I stepped away from him and took a position opposite. Let him bend someone else’s ear with his malice.

Young sheep were bleating in the field beside the churchyard as the coffin was lowered. The clouds parted and we felt warmth on our skins. I remembered Danny dancing on the front that summer evening at Brighton. Bon voyage, old buccaneer, I thought. You robbed all of us of something, some time, but we came in numbers to see you off. You left us glittering memories, and that wasn’t a bad exchange.

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.

As for Merle, she was remarkably animated for a woman who had only just buried her husband. It must be an act, a brave attempt to get through the day without weeping, I tried telling myself. Watching her, I wasn’t convinced. Her eyes shone like a bride’s.

Another curious thing I noticed was that Merle spent time with everyone in that bar except her doctor brother-in-law, Ben. She kept away from him as if he were radio-active. Yet they were keenly aware of each other. Each time Merle moved, Ben would look across and check her position. Occasionally their eyes locked briefly. I was increasingly convinced that they had agreed not to be seen talking together. They weren’t being hostile; they shared a secret.

When I left about six, the party was still going on. I didn’t blame anyone for turning it into a wake. I was sure Danny would have approved. He would have been in the thick of the junketing, well pickled by this time, full of good humour, just as long as he didn’t have to buy a round.

My unease about the circumstances of Danny’s death dispersed within a week. I had more urgent things going on in my life that don’t play any part in these events except that by February, six months after the funeral, I was tired and depressed. Then someone made things worse by breaking into my car and stealing my credit cards. The police were useless. The only positive thing they suggested was that I inform the people who issued the cards. When my shiny and pristine replacement cards arrived, I had an impulse to use them right away to give myself a boost. I walked into a travel agent’s and booked two weeks in the sun. Immediately.

In Florida I spotted Merle Fox. By pure chance, or fate, I walked into the Guild Hall Gallery on Duval Street in Key West and there she was, looking at stained glass pictures of fish. She’d bleached her hair and cut it short and she was deeply tanned and wearing a skimpy top and white trousers that fitted like a second skin. Something new in widow’s weeds, I thought unkindly — for I recognized her straight away. Of course she hadn’t altered her features, but her stance was the giveaway, the suggestion of swagger in the shoulders. It was no different from the way she’d swanned around the bar of the Red Lion after Danny’s funeral.

I didn’t speak to Merle. In fact, I moved out of range, hidden from her view by a rotating card-stand. But when she came out of the shop I followed, intrigued, you may say, if you don’t call me nosy. I was pretty inconspicuous in T-shirt and shorts like most of the tourists strolling along the street.

Halfway along Duval Street she turned up a side road that was mainly residential and lined with two-storey Bahamian-style wood-frame buildings shaded by palms and wild purple orchid trees and fronted by white picket fences. She walked two blocks (with me in discreet attendance) and let herself into an elegant three-bay house with a porch and — more irony here — a widow’s walk. Had I really seen Merle? The moment she’d stepped out of my view I became doubtful. It isn’t the custom in Key West to have one’s name on the mailbox, so it was difficult to make certain without speaking to the woman. I wasn’t sure I wanted a face-to-face.

I crossed the street for a longer view of the house. The shutters were open, but the louvred windows effectively screened the interior.

You wouldn’t believe that a leafy street bathed in sunlight could make you feel uneasy. After the crowds on Duval Street, this was eerie in its quietness.

A cat leaned against my shin and made a plaintive sound. I stooped to stroke it.

A voice startled me. “We call him Rocky, after the boxer. He has the most formidable front paws.”

I looked behind me. This elderly woman had been sitting unnoticed in her porch swing in front of a small white house.

“He’s a champion,” I remarked, wondering if my luck was still running. “I was looking for a friend of mine who came to live in Key West. Mrs Fox. Do you know her?”

She paused some seconds before answering, “I can’t say I do.”

“She must have arrived some time in the last three months,” I ventured. “She’s a widow.”

“The only lady who came to Southard Street since the summer is Mrs Finch in the house across the street and she’s no widow,” she informed me.

My confidence ebbed. “Mrs Finch, you said?”

“Mrs Merle Finch, from England. They’re both from England.”

“Ah. That wouldn’t be the lady I know,” I said, mentally turning a back-flip of triumph. “But thank you for your help, ma’am. Rocky is a cat in a million.” I walked away, reflecting that Merle must have kept her hair extra nice to have charmed Mr Finch, whoever he was, into such a quick marriage. A little over six months since she had buried Danny she was re-married, settled in her new home. If her tan was any guide, she had already been in Florida some time.

The big insurance payout, the death certificate provided by her brother-in-law, the quick marriage and the escape to Florida. Had they all been planned? Was it any wonder I felt suspicious?

My holiday routine altered. Next morning I made sure of passing the house on my way to the shops. I lingered across the street for ten minutes or so. Wherever I went in Key West I was hawk-eyed for another sighting.

It came the next evening. Merle stepped out of Fausto’s Food Palace on Fleming Street, crossed my path to a moped and put her bag on the pannier. My heart-rate stepped up. The hours of watching out for her, passing the house and so on, had made me feel furtive. NowI was ready to panic. Ridiculous.

I don’t like being sneaky. That isn’t my nature. I like to be straight with people. Confrontation is the honest way. So I steeled my nerves, stepped towards her and said, “Hi, Merle.”

She stopped and stared.

“Remember me?” I said. “Danny’s oppo from his Air Force days. Isn’t this amazing? I must buy you a drink.”

She couldn’t deny her identity. Recovering her poise, she said in her very British accent that she would have been delighted, but she had to get back to the apartment. She had something cooking.

I almost laughed out loud at the phrase. Instead I insisted we must meet and suggested a nightcap later at one of the quieter open-air bars. She had a hunted look, but she agreed to see me there at ten.

“You got your wish, then,” I said when we shared a table in a dark corner of the bar drinking margaritas.

“What do you mean?” She was tense.

“A warm place to live. I presume you live here.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And not alone. You’re Mrs Finch now.”

She frowned. “How did you know that?”

“I was told. Is he British, your husband?”

She gave a nod.

“Anyone I know?”

She said, “Why are you asking me these things?”

I said, “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to talk about them?”

She said, “I left all that behind. It’s painful. I don’t want to be reminded.”

“I wasn’t reminding you about the past, Merle. I was enquiring about the present. Your present husband. What’s his name?”

She took a long sip of her drink. “Have you seen him?”

“No. But I’d love to meet him — if you let him out.”

She pushed aside the drink. “I’ll pay for these. I’m leaving.”

I put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive. Don’t take offence.”

She brushed my hand away and got up. I didn’t follow. I knew it would be no use. I had been insensitive. But she had fuelled my suspicions. She had behaved like a guilty woman. Meeting me had been an unpleasant shock. The geography of the Florida Keys — the long drive south from Miami over bridges that span the sea — fosters a feeling of escape, of reaching a haven in Key West bathed in sun and good will. You don’t expect sharp questions about your conduct.

I believed Merle and her brother-in-law Ben had conspired to murder Danny. A lethal injection seemed the most likely means. Ben had written something innocuous on the death certificate and Merle had claimed the insurance, paid Ben for his services and escaped to Florida to marry her lover, the fascinating Mr Finch.

I believed this, yes. But it was only belief so far. The evidence I had was circumstantial. A cheap funeral, an alleged insurance payout, some sly glances and a quick marriage. None of this was sufficient to justify fingering Merle for murder.

Unable to sleep that night, I asked myself why I wanted to pursue the matter, for it was taking over my holiday. Was it anything as highminded as a concern for justice? Or was it morbid curiosity?

No.

It was more personal. Danny had been important in my life. The link between us was stronger than I’d admit to anyone. I was angry, deeply angry, at what I believed had happened. Our lives had touched only intermittently since 1961, and I regretted that. Face it, I thought. His murder killed a part of you.

Yet I knew if I pursued this, I was putting myself at risk. If I threatened Merle with exposure I would give her a reason for killing me. Or having me killed.

These were the thoughts I grappled with next day. They made me sick with self-disgust because I had discovered I was a coward. I was scared to do any more about my suspicions. I despised myself.

So I became a tourist again, instead of a snoop. I lounged by the hotel pool in the morning and later took a trip to the coral reef in a glass-bottomed boat. I spent an hour in the cemetery. Morbid, you may think, but the gravestones are on the tourist trail. I found the famous epitaph “I told you I was sick.” It didn’t seem funny when I saw it.

Late in the afternoon, I had a quiet drink in one of the smaller bars on Duval Street watching the movement of people towards Mallory Square. There’s a tradition in Key West that people converge on the dock to celebrate the sunset. When I’d finished my drink, I joined them.

I didn’t expect to meet Merle there. As a resident, she’d regard the sunset spectacle as a sideshow for tourists. Even so, as I sidled through the good-natured crowd I caught myself looking more than once at women who resembled her and the men they were with. I still wanted keenly to catch a glimpse of Mr Finch, the new husband.

The sky became pastel blue and the sun dipped towards the sea, becoming ever more red. The heads of some of the crowd were in silhouette. At one end a tightrope was slung between tripod posts and the performer was teasing his audience, keeping them in suspense with patter and juggling. I ambled on, past a guitarist and a dog-trainer. Ahead, someone else had drawn a fair crowd. A fire-eater, I guessed. There’s something hypnotic about the sight of a flame, particularly in the fading light. But I decided the aerialist would be better value and I turned back. I was actually retracing my steps when I heard a scratchy sound that froze my blood, an old 78 record of a band playing some song from way back. It was coming from behind the crowd at the end.

I returned, fast.

I couldn’t see for the tightly packed people. I circled the crowd in frustration while that infernal tune blared out. Unable to contain my feelings I scythed through the crowd saying, “I’m sorry, I have to get through” — until I had a view.

Danny was wowing them in his straw hat, blazer and flannels, hoofing it just as smoothly as he had in the old days. Far from dead, he had a better colour than most of his audience. The old gramophone was behind him on the ledge, grinding out “Let’s Face the Music.”

He saw me and winked.

I stared back, stunned. Maybe I should have rejoiced, but I’d grieved for this fraudster. I was more angry than relieved. It was a kind of betrayal.

Coward that I am, afterwards, when the sun had set and the crowds had dispersed I sat tamely with Danny on a ledge of the sea wall at the south end of the dock, our backs to the sea. He had a six-pack of Coors that he systematically emptied. Dancing, he explained, was thirsty work. He offered me some, and I declined.

“Merle told me she met you,” he admitted. “She didn’t want me to come out tonight, but I’m a performer, damnit. The show goes on. She doesn’t understand that you and I go back a long way. You wouldn’t blow the whistle on your old RAF buddy.”

I didn’t rise to that. “You’ve played some cool poker hands in your time, Danny, but this beats everything. I don’t know how you managed it.”

He grinned. “No problem. My stepbrother Ben is my doctor. He signed the death certificate. Merle picked up the life insurance and here we are — Mr and Mrs Finch. The fake passports cost us a packet, but we could afford them. Isn’t this a great place to retire?”

“But there was a funeral.”

“That didn’t cost much.”

“Too true.”

“A lot of them were in on this,” he confessed. “My cousin Jerry runs an undertaking business in the next village. He supplied the coffin.”

“And a corpse?” I said, appalled.

“A couple of sandbags.”

“You’re a prize bastard, Danny Fox.”

He chuckled at that. “Aren’t I just? And the prize is in the bank.”

“What you did is sick.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Who loses out? Only the insurance company. I had to pay huge premiums.”

“There were people in that church who genuinely grieved for you.”

“Horseshit.”

That hurt. “I grieved.”

“Jesus — what for?” His eyebrows jutted in genuine puzzlement.

I started to say, “If you don’t remember—”

Danny cut me off with, “All that was thirty years ago. And then it was only—”

“Night exercises,” I completed the statement for him.

“What?”

“Night exercises. That’s what you thought of me, didn’t you?” I stood up and faced him. “Admit it. Say it to my face, you skunk.”

There was a pause. The night had virtually closed in. Danny up-ended his last can of beer. “All right, if that’s what you heard from Merle, it must be true.” He laughed. “Let’s face it, Susan — that’s what you were. P.O. didn’t stand for Pilot Officer in your case, it stood for pushover.”

I said, “That’s unbelievably cruel.”

Unmoved, Danny told me, “If you really want to know, I couldn’t even remember your name that day we met in Brighton. I remembered your car, though.”

That was one injury too many — even for a coward like me. The precious flame I’d guarded for thirty years was out. Our relationship had been the one experience in my life that I thought I could call truly romantic. Nothing since had compared to it. Danny had made me feel beautiful, desired, a woman fulfilled.

He knew the pain he had just inflicted. He must have known.

“Danny.”

“Yes?” He looked up.

By that time Mallory Dock was deserted except for us. The water there is deep enough to moor a cruise liner.

The body of the middle-aged male washed up on Key West Bight a week or so later was identified as that of the man who sometimes danced on the dock at sunset. Nobody knew his name and nobody claimed the body for burial.