30. IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

There's a funeral in the offing.

Because of her relative youth and the odd circumstances of her death, there was a post mortem examination of Helen’s body, carried out by a surgeon who specialised in determining cause and effect in cadavers. Usually it had to do with finding out what was involved, drink or drugs being among the possibilities. But this one was different.

His report, when it was delivered to the police, showed there were no suspicious circumstances in the death of the poor woman, though he did draw their attention to a particular peculiarity which he elaborated in his written report.

There was little doubt that her death was by suicide and that she had thought it would be better for her to die than suffer imagined prejudice in the future. Maybe her opinion had been influenced by the opinions of Wallace’s birth mother almost twenty years earlier, but she had a deep psychological fear of being an unmarried mother.

But not everything is what it seems to be.

“It’s the first time I’ve experienced this,” he told the officers when he delivered his report, “and I hope it’s the last,” he added, “read my notes carefully. They might be educational.”

That ought to have been all that the mourners at Helen’s house had to put up with, but there was more: a great deal more in the form of the moralising ego she had called a boyfriend, for it was he more than anyone who had driven her to fear the future. He would obviously play no part in the family he had helped to create. She would be alone, painfully and very alone, with Wallace moving away to start a life of his own with Maureen and their baby.

But that same moralising ego had one more card to play.

Richie Donne called round to the sombre house where Helen was in her coffin, waiting to be laid to rest.

Nobody could begin to understand why Helen had both spent a moment of her life with the man, and even slept with him on more than one occasion. But she had, and it had been her undoing because he reflected the very worst elements of a pseudo-moral attitude to the misfortunes of others but not, apparently, relating them to to his own appetites.

“She brought it on herself,” was his opening comment as he pushed past Wallace into the house, a sneer on his face. Wallace thought there and then it might be best to grab him by his collar and yank him out of the house before he said anything else that might be hurtful because Amy and Maureen were there and the air was heavy with their emotional sadness.

“What do you mean?” asked Amy, beginning to bristle.

“The way she lived, the things she did. With men.” There was spite in his last two words.

“What do you mean, with men?” demanded Amy, “dear Helen’s life was like an open book and easy to ready, and the only mistake she made was finding time to spend with a man like you, of all the wretched creatures on this Earth!”

“But pregnant!” he spat, “it goes against everything I believe in! A woman should be chaste outside of marriage, and she obviously wasn’t!”

“Before I grab you by your shirt tails there are two things you should know,” hissed Wallace, fury replacing the sorrow that had lain heavy on his heart since Helen’s suicide.

“I know more than two things,” scoffed Richie meanly, “Anyway, I’ve come to see if she left me anything. You know, in her will. She ought to have done, the money I spent on her, and I can’t forget that she killed my child when she killed herself, and that’s downright criminal!”

That was enough for Wallace, and he had grown to be a strong enough man to find the objectionable Mr Donne any problem.

“Then before I break your neck I’ll tell you,” he hissed, “she wasn’t actually pregnant you’ll no doubt be happy to learn, so there’s no case of anyone’s unborn child in any way hurt by anything she did, and secondly, I never managed to work out how come the first man she spends some time with after the death of her husband all those years ago has to be a creature like you, who cares for nobody but himself. Now get out before you get damaged!”

“What do you mean, she wasn’t pregnant?” demanded the offensive Donne, not moving towards the door, “I saw her belly and I know a pregnant stomach when I see one! It’s that what made her into a w***e in my book, and a w***e she’ll stay, forever in Purgatory, begging for holy forgiveness but never receiving it!”

It was Amy’s turn to defend her sister, and she fought against an overwhelming desire to hiss and scratch at the man she was addressing.

“There was a post mortem examination that showed that she had something called a pseudocyesis,” she said, beginning to sob again at the memory of what the pathologist had reported, “and it was most likely your fault,” she added, sounding stouter than she felt.

“Pseudo-whatsit? What you doing, trying to whitewash her before she’s in the ground with fancy words?” sneered Donne, “I saw her belly and I know what I saw. You must think I was born yesterday.”

“Then you’re a more stupid man that I thought you were,” grated Wallace, taking over from Amy who was clearly too upset to argue any more with a boor like Richie Donne. “Pseudocyesis is what doctors call a phantom pregnancy, and that’s what she had. No baby in there, but her body mimicked what it would be like if there was one. And so she believed that she was expecting. Apparently a phantom pregnancy can be caused by the psychological fear of being pregnant, maybe a deep and abiding fear that the creature who did it to her might father something as repellent as himself!”

“That doesn’t stop her from being a w***e...” said the other defensively, “being pregnant out of wedlock...”

“And who would have put her in that condition if it had been real?” asked Amy, “a woman can’t impregnate herself, you know. There’s an old saying that it takes two to tango, don’t you know? But enough of this talk. You know the facts now, so go, and don’t darken this doorway again or I’ll call the police!”

“And her will?” asked Donne, “am I remembered?”

Wallace didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He was too busy man-handling Richie Donne and finally pushing him through the door with enough violence for him to fall flat on his face.

“Well, let;s hope that that is that,” he said grimly.

Maureen, who had been quiet during the row with Richie Donne, spoke up.

“Is what he said about unmarried mothers true?” she asked, holding her own stomach, which was beginning to swell.

“Not these days,” her mother assured her, “and anyway, you won’t be an unmarried mother, will she Wallace?”

Wallace nodded his head violently. “No way,” he said, “You, my lovely, will be married to me!”