This Perfect World

by Suzanne Bugler

  I follow her into the living room. She’s a thin, trousered figure, smaller than I remember and very slightly stooped.

  ‘Do sit down, dear,’ she says, gesturing to the sofa, and I get to see her face then, for the first time. It’s just as it always was, only older of course, more wrinkled, the skin stretched paper-thin above the hollows of her cheeks. Mrs Partridge is one of those people who always look old. Her hair has been grey for as long as I can remember and she’s still wearing it in that same short, rollered old-lady style. It’s somewhat thinner now, though; I can see the white of her scalp through the curls. And there are angry red blotches on her forehead, looking sore, as if she’s been picking at them. The eyes are just the same: dark, over-round. Like Heddy’s, only sharper.

  It’s the same sofa, I’m sure it is. The same or nearly the same. Brown, everything is brown: the sofa, the carpet, the colour of the air. I bend to perch on the edge and the cushions give beneath me. I remember lying right here with my face pressed against the back of the sofa, I remember the dusty, biscuit smell of the material. I remember the shame, the terrible shame, and I feel it all over again, now.

  I can’t meet Mrs Partridge’s eye. She hovers before me, bony hands busy, twitching, pulling her tunic top down over her thin hips, fussing, straightening out the cloth. She’s staring at me. I half-expect her to say My, how you’ve grown, but isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t all this ridiculous? She’s as nervous as I am, standing there, pulling at her clothes.

  ‘How are your parents?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘Thank you. The move went well. They’re settling in nicely, enjoying the Devon life.’ I ramble on, knowing I ought to be asking her back How’s Heddy? But I can’t, not in that flippant, chit-chat way.

  Then she goes off to make coffee and I am alone in that room. Mr Partridge’s chair is still there in the corner, just as if he might come back and sit in it sometime. The room is eerily quiet without his cough and the TV blaring out. The TV is still there, but it’s been turned to face the sofa now. There’s a little vase of plastic flowers standing on top of it. There are things everywhere, all sorts of things: a Spanish fan opened out, propped up behind an ashtray on the mantelpiece over the gas fire; a small carriage clock, not working, next to that; and a pair of china cats. And in between these things there are photos, so many photos. I push myself up from the sofa to look at them. They are of children, lots of children. Or are they of the same two or three children taken in different times, different places? It’s impossible to tell. They’ve all got the same round, dark eyes. I look carefully at their faces, to try to link them. There’s a school photo of a boy and a girl together, another one of just a boy. But that baby could be any one of those three or someone else; that toddler the same, grown now into the boy right next to him, captured at a different time, in school shirt and toothless grin. Other people’s lives, captured in snapshots, but distorted too, misleading.

  I can hear Mrs Partridge in the kitchen. She’s a long time making that coffee and I move away from the fireplace to the sideboard, which is next to the small dining table, near the front window. The big photo there catches my attention, the one in the middle. It’s of Heddy, unmistakably. Heddy on her wedding day. Heddy in a white puffy frock with her heavy hair pulled back from her face. She’s smiling. Like the cat that got the cream, she’s smiling. And next to this, among more pictures of unknown children, I find Heddy again, still smiling, though not as much, holding a baby in her arms. Her fat arms; I am shocked to see how fat she is.

  I hear Mrs Partridge behind me, coming rattling into the room with a tray in her hands. I turn around, uncomfortable at being caught snooping.

  ‘I was looking at the photos,’ I say, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘They’re lovely.’ I point to Heddy in her white frock. ‘She looks lovely.’

  ‘Yes, dear. Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Partridge puts the tray down on the little coffee table, beside a big crystal ashtray, one of those old-fashioned round things with five or six ledges cut out around the edge, for communal smoking. There is one solitary cigarette butt in the middle of the ashtray, squashed down and fallen over, onto its side, in its little pool of ash. The milk is already in the cups with the coffee, but she’s put sugar in a bowl and biscuits on a plate – custard creams – arranged in a circle. Instantly, I am embarrassed.

  ‘She was very proud. We were all very proud,’ Mrs Partridge says, and she rubs her hands up and down the front of her hips again. She gazes across at that photo, distracted for a moment, eyes fixed, thoughts elsewhere. On Heddy’s wedding, probably.

  I feel like I ought to sit down, but suddenly I’m not sure where to sit. Are we to perch, side by side on the only sofa, one at each end, and talk across the gap in between us? Mrs Partridge seems to pick up on my indecision; she snaps up her head suddenly and stares directly at me. ‘He wasn’t a bad man, John, Heddy’s husband,’ she says, and then she does something very odd. She goes over to Mr Partridge’s chair and, with the force of her slight body behind it, she pushes it round to face the coffee table and the sofa. Then she sits in it, a tiny person, shrunk against the curved, high back. It’s awkward, from that position, in that chair, for her to reach over across the table, but she does. She takes my coffee cup off the tray with her skinny arm stretching right out, and the cup clatters precariously in its saucer as she puts it on the table.

  ‘Coffee?’ she says and I sit down on the sofa, back where I should have been, where I should have stayed when she was out in the kitchen. ‘Biscuit?’ she asks.

  The sofa has sunk so far beneath me that it’s a struggle to wriggle forward and take one, but I have to; she’s holding out the plate. I haven’t had a custard cream in years and I couldn’t eat one now; my insides are tight, plaited up. I take one and put it on the saucer and immediately I hate myself. What must she think of me, taking her biscuit and just sticking it on my saucer like that? What must she think of me?

  What did she ever think of me?

  What indeed? She watches me with her dark, knowing eyes.

  ‘Yes, she got married.’ There’s an edge to her voice, a defensive edge. ‘When she was twenty.’

  My mind races back – did I know this, did I know that Heddy was married? I must have done. My parents would have mentioned it, I’m sure they would. But at twenty I was away at university, having one boyfriend after another, having a great time. Why would I have given a second thought to someone – anyone, not just Heddy – getting married? Married, for God’s sake, at just twenty years old.

  ‘He worked for the gas board.’ She picks up her cup and saucer, then lifts the cup and sips. The coffee is way too hot still and her lips pucker. ‘He was a good man,’ she says, and I can tell she’s said this a thousand times, if only to herself. ‘A good man.’

  I’m about to say something kind, something nice about the gas board, or about marrying young instead of going to university – not that Heddy Partridge would ever have gone to university – but she puts her cup back down suddenly with a clatter. ‘She put on weight when Nathan was born. Before that. But it was hard to lose, you know. She always had trouble with her weight, always wanted to lose a few pounds.’

  She is staring straight at me and I place my cup, still full, back down on the table.

  ‘She was depressed.’ She says it like she’s been told to say it. Like she doesn’t really understand the word, but she’s practised saying it, over and over. ‘She was pregnant before Nathan, but she lost the baby, late on, at five months. Awful, it was for her, awful.’

  She rummages in the pocket of her tunic, agitated, and pulls out her cigarettes and a lighter. ‘You don’t mind, do you, dear?’ she asks and I shake my head, though really I do mind. She sticks a cigarette between pursed lips, lights it and draws deeply, audibly. I try not to shudder. She leaves it in her mouth and it bobs up and down as she says again, ‘She was depressed, after that. She wouldn’t go out, not for ages. And she put on a lot of weight, just sitting at home all
day. Then after Nathan was born we all thought she’d feel better, but she didn’t. She became . . . unreliable.’

  She takes the cigarette out of her mouth and taps the ash into the ashtray, taps it and taps it. ‘She started doing things. To herself. Harming herself.’ She shakes her head vigorously then and takes another long draw on that cigarette. ‘I don’t think she would ever have done anything to that baby, but . . . I made her go to the doctor. I took her there myself. He said she was depressed, he said it can happen sometimes – with the hormones, you know. He gave her some pills, but they didn’t help, not really.’

  Again she draws on the cigarette, and taps the ash while she exhales like a dragon, through her nostrils. I pull back a little, trying to avoid the smoke, though there isn’t much point really. It’s like a fog, wrapping itself around us.

  ‘It wasn’t easy for her, on her own all day. With a new baby.’ She stares at me through the haze. ‘John wasn’t a bad man,’ she says again, anxious that I understand this, ‘but they bought that house. In Barton Village. A nice little house.’ Another drag and a sip of coffee this time too; she sips as the smoke comes out of her nose. I pick up my cup again, grateful for something to do, even though it means half-standing for a moment from the dip of the sagging sofa. ‘They had money worries. I don’t blame him,’ she says and her eyes are startlingly bright.

  Don’t blame him for what, exactly? And where is he now? Why isn’t he looking after Nathan? There’s more, I know there is. She’s picking her words carefully.

  ‘He did his best I’m sure,’ she says, but I wonder if she really means it. ‘It was hard for both of them. She was depressed,’ she says, again and again. ‘She was depressed.’

  I can’t break away from her stare. She’s like a hawk, clinging on.

  ‘She started doing things,’ she says, and my mind is racing ahead, thinking What things? ‘In public. With Nathan there too.’ She sucks on her cigarette again and this time I notice that her hand is shaking. ‘They took her in, once or twice, gave her more pills, you know, and she’d seem all right for a while, but then . . . She kept doing it. It got worse. She was . . . cutting herself. People don’t like to see it, you know.’ The ash has built right up again, but instead of tipping it, this time she grinds the butt into the ashtray, down and down until the shank bursts and frayed tobacco curls into the ash. ‘Then they kept her in,’ she says simply, letting go of the butt. ‘That last time. They kept her in.’

  I sit on that sofa, stricken. Stricken with the awful awareness that Mrs Partridge is on the verge of crying; stricken that I am there at all, hearing this stuff. I think of Arianne at nursery. I think of her learning her letters and her numbers. I think of her playing alongside Belinda’s daughter, Tasha’s daughter, and all the other daughters from our safe Ashton world. I think of Thomas at school, and of the cakes I have to make for the cake sale on Friday and of the new wellies needed for next week’s school trip. I think of these things because I want them to pull me back into my own life, away from here, but it doesn’t quite happen. Instead they just highlight the strangeness, the total surreality of my being here at all.

  Desperately I try to think of something to say, to ease the tension.

  ‘Are these all your grandchildren?’ I ask, nodding towards the photos on the mantelpiece, and I would have got up and gone over to have another look at them, but I’m so buried in that sofa, and anyway Mrs Partridge doesn’t suddenly perk up the way I’d hoped she would. She puts her cup back down with a sigh and gropes up her sleeve for a tissue, which she then screws up tight and rolls between agitated fingers. She doesn’t even turn her head to look at the mantelpiece.

  ‘Ian’s children, mostly,’ she says at last. ‘He’s got three. Two boys and a girl. Twins, the youngest two. And another one on the way. They live up near Birmingham. Near his wife’s family.’ She sighs again. ‘I don’t get up to see them much these days, which is a shame. It’s good for Nathan to see his cousins, you know, to be with the young ones. To be part of a proper family.’ She chews on the inside of her lip as she talks, and the tissue is getting twisted up so tight that bits of it shred off, onto her lap. ‘But Heddy needs me here. I can’t leave Heddy. Ian comes down when he can, does what he can, but’ – she shrugs her thin shoulders, resigned – ‘Linda’s having a difficult time with the pregnancy. She needs him up there.’

  I try to follow all this. I try to imagine Ian Partridge as a family man, but it’s impossible. All I can think of is the big slob of a boy who used to slouch on the sofa gawping at me whenever I had to come in here to wait for Heddy. I can’t imagine how anyone would want to get busy having his babies.

  ‘This is Nathan,’ Mrs Partridge says, ‘Heddy’s boy.’ Still clutching that tissue, she put her hands on the arms of the chair and pushes herself onto her feet. She takes a school photo down from the mantelpiece and hands it to me. Of course it’s Nathan. Of course it’s Heddy’s boy, with those eyes and that thick, dark hair.

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. He looks nice hardly sounds appropriate, so I say nothing and just look at the photo for a while, feigning interest. I’d have given it back to her, after a suitable time, but she sits back down again and gets herself another cigarette out and lights it, so I’m left holding the photo, left looking at Heddy reincarnated.

  This is all too weird. And time is getting on; I’m supposed to be meeting Penny for lunch. I’m beginning to think that Mrs Partridge just wants someone to talk to, and I’m beginning to hope that the only help required of me is to sit here and listen.

  ‘I worry for that boy,’ Mrs Partridge says through a cloud of smoke. She leaves the cigarette in her mouth while she puts her lighter back in her pocket, and her lips purse around it, deep lines creasing downwards. ‘Oh, I do my best for him. He goes to the school here, where you and Heddy went. He’s settled in well, considering, but’ – she takes another slow drag on her cigarette and holds it in for a long, long time before the smoke weaves slowly out from her nose – ‘he hasn’t seen his mother for two months. Two months.’ Her eyes are bright with emphasis and I look back down at the photograph again to escape the glare. ‘It’s hard for him,’ she says. ‘Very hard.’

  She taps the cigarette over the ashtray now, and keeps on tapping it, after the ash has fallen. ‘It’s hard for Heddy, too. Stuck in that place. I took him to see her once,’ she says, and I look up, curious, in spite of myself. ‘But she’d trashed her room. Trashed it.’ It’s strange to hear a word like ‘trash’ coming from a woman like Mrs Partridge; suddenly I have this weird image of American TV, of rock stars, of guitars smashing against hotel mirrors. ‘It was awful,’ she says. ‘Awful for him, and for her. They had to hold her down – I’ll never forget how she screamed and screamed – they held her down and gave her something, you know, in her arm, to put her to sleep. He saw it all.’

  She stares at me and I stare back now, appalled. I have the strangest feeling, sitting on that sofa, sinking into those cushions, that this is all some kind of mental sinking mud, gluing me in.

  ‘I need to get her out of that place,’ she says and she holds my gaze. I cannot pull away. ‘I need to get her out, but the doctors, they just gave her pills and more pills. They put her in there. She needs to get out. She needs to be with her son.’ She puffs on the cigarette. It seems as if more smoke is going in than coming out: two inhales for one exhale. I watch. I’m counting. I have to concentrate on something.

  ‘I need to get her out,’ she says again. ‘But I can’t do it on my own. I’ve tried, but . . . I need help. Your husband, he might know what to do . . .’

  She knocks the ash off her cigarette, then grinds the butt into the ashtray, squeezing it out, dead. I think perhaps I’ll quote James now, say Go to the Citizens Advice, and get myself off the hook, but then she stares directly at me and says, ‘You’ll help us, won’t you, dear? You understand; you had a little problem once yourself, I remember. You’ll help poor Heddy, dear, won’t you?’

/>   She sits there staring at me, letting me know that she remembers my little problem, as she calls it, making me remember it too, but I don’t want to remember. Anyway, it’s more an embarrassment than a problem. It’s history.

  I want it to stay history.

  ‘Of course I’ll help, Mrs Partridge, if I can,’ I say, because what else can I say? ‘But I’m afraid I really have to go now. I’ve got an appointment.’

  Disappointment crosses her face, followed by panic. She shoots forward in her chair, sticks an arm out across the table and grabs me by the wrist. ‘So soon?’ she says. ‘There’s more, there’s . . . other things.’

  I’m not sure I want to hear these other things. I try to extricate my arm, but she’s holding on to me, tight. Suddenly I can’t breathe for the smoke and the gloom and the weight of Heddy’s problems and Mrs Partridge’s problems – and God help me if my problems are dragged up now, too. I have to get out. I have to get back into the real world, into my world.

  But there’s more, Mrs Partridge tells me. Much more. And I’ll need to know it all if I’m to help. She’s gabbling now, still clutching my arm with her bony fingers, and bombarding me with information about hospital dates and psychiatrist’s reports and the downward spiral of medication. She shakes my wrist in her agitation.

  ‘Perhaps you’d come with me, dear. See her for yourself. You could talk to them – to the doctors.’

  Just the thought of it fills me with horror. I’ve got to get out of there, but she’s still holding my arm. And she’s staring at me with those dark, desperate eyes.

  ‘Mrs Partridge, please . . .’ I manage to free myself from her bony fingers and I pick up my bag, getting ready to leave. My heart is pounding now, hard. Carefully I start pushing myself out of the sofa. ‘Look, I really have to go.’

  She stands up too, jumping up quickly, and we almost bang heads. ‘Tuesday,’ she says. ‘That’s the doctor’s day. Oh, they come and go on other days, of course, but always on a Tuesday . . .’