This Perfect World

by Suzanne Bugler

  I found myself unable to stop staring at this hair, and was busy trying to decide if the colour was natural or accidental when she introduced us to her bag.

  ‘This is my bag,’ she said, patting the very large weekend holdall beside her. ‘In here,’ she proudly told us, ‘I have everything you will ever need for breast-feeding.’

  Now I was a little surprised by this because I had been under the impression that I already had everything I would ever need for breast-feeding, right there, inside the front of my shirt. After all, surely one of the big, big advantages of breast-feeding is that it doesn’t need any paraphernalia or gadgets at all. But the cabbage-leaf woman had other ideas.

  Out of that bag came a large packet of circular pads – sanitary pads, in effect, for the leaking nipple. And let’s face it, once baby was born, there were going to be leaks springing out from all over. Next came a plastic sombrero-type cap, much like the one the Mexican mouse in Tom and Jerry wore on his little head, which we all passed around to get a feel for. This I was to wear on my nipple, should baby and me not much like the flesh-to-mouth contact. Then there was the ice-cube tray for us to look at, just in case any of us were not familiar with such a thing. This we were to fill with our expressed milk, which could conveniently be frozen and stored, ready to pop out and defrost when required. Naturally one would have to take care not to pop a cube out into one’s husband’s gin in place of the ordinary ice, but the cabbage-leaf woman did not deem it necessary to mention this. The contraption for getting the milk out of the breast and into the ice-cube tray still ranks at about 8.5 on my list of real and imagined torture implements: the breast-pump, with its candy-pink plastic trimming, a bit like a sex toy, but with a nasty twist. The funnel went over the nipple, the pump went in the hand, the bottle hung off at an angle, waiting to be filled, all worked by vigorous battery.

  ‘I had one of those!’ laughs Juliet. ‘I used it all the time!’

  ‘I didn’t need one,’ boasts Fiona. ‘I expressed perfectly well by myself.’

  ‘Well, I just couldn’t get the hang of it,’ I say. ‘I clamped it to my nipple and I pumped and pumped with my hand rattling from the vibration, until my whole breast was pointed and twisted like a Mr Whippy ice cream. And after half an hour of agony I’d squeezed out only a dribble of milk. It’d take me a week to fill one cube in the ice-cube tray.’

  The girls are laughing simultaneously now, and cringing, and begging me to stop.

  ‘The woman was like a travelling salesman,’ I say. ‘She got these bras out of her bag next. Honestly, you should have seen them.’

  Now everyone knows that you need a decent maternity bra, but would it be too much to hope for one that was even slightly attractive? Apparently so.

  The cabbage-leaf woman had two choices in design to recommend to us. God knows where she’d got them from. The first was designed to cover you up from just below the neck to a good few inches down the ribcage, and was done up at front and back by a series of hooks and eyes, much like an old-fashioned girdle. The bucket-like cups allowed room for natural expansion, and the front hooks could be undone, with patience, for what the cabbage-leaf woman took for easy access.

  The second bra was similar in material and coverage, but involved a series of straps that had to be tied around the body so that the bra was fixed in place all day, with just the front flaps being opened and shut when feeding was required. The positioning of the straps meant that you could not put this bra on unaided. You’d have to enlist your husband’s help with the strapping in the morning before he went off to work, and the unstrapping in the evening, when he came home. And I presume that you just had to hope for the best that he didn’t notice too much the difference between this gargantuan ensemble and the lacy black items that he had previously helped to remove.

  As she showed us these bras, I felt a little hormonal hysteria bubbling up inside me. I saw my womanhood flying out the window, my femininity and my sexuality competing in the race to escape my new lot.

  And if by any chance your marriage did manage to survive the keep-off scream of armour-thick nylon, the cabbage-leaf woman had one final trick up her sleeve. You’ve guessed it: the cabbage leaf.

  ‘Oh no, not the cabbage leaf!’ squeals Juliet.

  Well actually, she had a whole cabbage in her bag. It was a big, light-green one with the outer leaves curling away slightly, though I imagine any variety would do. She took the cabbage out of her bag and held it in the palm of her hand, as if weighing it.

  ‘This,’ she announced, ‘is what you need for engorgement.’

  ‘But it works!’ interjects Fiona.

  ‘I thought she was going to tell us that we had to eat the cabbage,’ I say. ‘Which would have been bad enough, and I was thinking that perhaps a few lightly dressed salad leaves would do the same job. I didn’t realize you had to put it inside your bra!’

  ‘Not the whole thing!’ cries Fiona. ‘Just a leaf!’

  I look around as the girls erupt into laughter, and I laugh too. After all, what is the point of such experiences if one cannot turn them into entertainment for one’s friends? In this moment of social success I am almost tempted to believe that they might have forgotten my unfortunate appearance in the local paper. Almost.

  ‘I can just picture your face!’ Tasha shrieks.

  ‘I know it’s supposed to help with engorgement,’ I say. ‘But can you imagine it? Your husband comes home from work to untie you from that hideous contraption of a bra, and finds you smelling of sour milk and cabbages! What would that do for your marriage?’ I sip my champagne. ‘And really, what kind of woman tells another woman to stick cabbage leaves in her bra?’

  ‘Oh, all those sleepless nights!’ Tasha moans now. ‘I’m dreading it.’

  ‘You’ll have help, won’t you?’ says Fiona. ‘You’ll get a nanny or something.’

  And Tasha says, ‘Rupert says we’ll get a live-in, now we’ve got the room.’

  ‘I wish we’d had a nanny,’ Juliet says. ‘We could easily have put one in the loft. But Andy wouldn’t have it. Didn’t want to have to stop walking around naked in the mornings.’

  And so we move on to talk about our husbands. We all have them, even those who we all know would rather not. It is better to be dead than divorced in some circles.

  It’s a competition, like everything in our lives. Strip away the fancy tops and the highlights and we’d be vultures in any other jungle. Tonight we’re vying for the wittiest-story award, and social success is such a sweet prize. I eat my large piece of it, choking myself up on the sweetness, so nearly lost.

  And if I remember what it was really like to feel so alienated by women bearing cabbage leaves, I keep that very much to myself. I keep to myself also how I started crying the minute I got home from that final NCT meeting, and carried on crying, on and off, for a worrying time after Thomas was born. They ripped him out of my body in the end, two weeks after he was supposed to come. Scissors and knives and pliers and forceps and weird rubbery suction pads and every implement known to medical man was used to separate Thomas from me. The shock of it still haunts me.

  For months I walked round and round my house with the horror of it eating me up. I’d have my lipstick on when James came in from work, but Thomas would be crying, either in his cot or in my arms, and I would be crying too. I felt like I’d died and was stuck in that last inch of purgatory before hell. My self was lost. My self was ruined and ripped out with the baby.

  I wanted James to understand. I wanted him at least to acknowledge what I’d been through. But he pulled away, and I felt like I was letting the side down with my endless tears.

  ‘Do you think you should see a doctor?’ he said to me. ‘Maybe you could get some pills.’

  Tonight I laugh along with the girls, but there is a lizard of chill up my spine. I didn’t go to the doctor; instead I shut up crying eventually and shoved my mask back into place. But imagine if I had, imagine if I’d done as James said and got some pills to
blot me out.

  I could be stuck in St Anne’s now, side by side with Heddy.

  ELEVEN

  Of course Mrs Partridge gets the local paper, and sees my little piece.

  She phones up, about a week later.

  ‘Don’t often get a chance to read the paper,’ she tells me. ‘It comes through the door, but mostly I just save them up and give them to next door for the guinea pigs. Mrs Day told me we were in it: knocked specially, she did, and showed me. I must say I was most surprised.’

  I can tell by her tone that she’s trying to sound pleased, but then she pauses for a moment and I am so embarrassed I can’t think what to say. I mutter something about people needing to know about Heddy, and people like her, but I feel like a complete fool.

  Then Mrs Partridge carries on, and says, somewhat tentatively, as if she doesn’t want to offend me, ‘But do you think it’ll do any good, dear? Do you think they read the Recorder over at St Anne’s?’

  The thing is, how to help without actually being involved?

  I don’t want the Partridges’ problems becoming my problems. It isn’t fair and it just isn’t possible. I need to find a way of helping from a distance, as it were. Though, really, I don’t see there’s much I can do. People have to help themselves, in the end.

  I decide to write a letter to the doctor. Not to the doctor we saw at St Anne’s that Tuesday, but to Dr Millar, as he’s supposed to be in charge of Heddy. It must be down to him in the end, what happens to her.

  My desire to be free of the Partridges makes the letter all the easier to write. I tell him quite simply that a mother’s place is with her child and that to keep Heddy separated from her son can only be making things worse. After all, that is what seems to be the most immediate problem: Heddy’s combined longing and inability to be a mother to her child. Surely that longing could be used as an incentive? Couldn’t it be made clear to Heddy that if she behaved in whatever way she was supposed to behave, she could soon be back at home, with Nathan?

  It seems to me that she is in the worst kind of vicious circle at the moment, and that cannot be sustained indefinitely. Something has to change. So I write to the doctor and say that, for Nathan’s sake, something must be done while the child is still a child.

  It makes me feel actually sick to think of him yearning for her, and her yearning for him. I try not to think at all, and get back to practicalities.

  I ask what is actively being done for Heddy, in the long term. What is the prognosis, so to speak? When will it end?

  I half don’t expect a reply, but I get one. Almost by return of post.

  Dr Millar is delighted and encouraged by my interest in Heddy, but all cases are confidential, he tells me, and can only be discussed with next of kin.

  He does, however, assure me that his aim is to have Heddy back at home as soon as possible and that he and his staff are working 100 per cent to achieve this. He understands my concerns, but her welfare, as his patient, has to be his primary concern. And he is sure that my support will be of great benefit to Heddy.

  Obviously any letters will have to be written through, and signed by, Mrs Partridge in future. I can feel them all, sucking me in.

  Still, I have other things to tend to, right now.

  My cleaner has decided to quit, which means I have to spend the entire morning cleaning the house myself. Nothing is guaranteed to piss me off faster than scrubbing my own bathrooms and sweeping my own floors, especially as I was planning on spending the morning shopping. But the place is such a tip that it has to be done.

  Tasha and Penny are sympathetic over lunch. This is, after all, the kind of problem they can relate to.

  ‘You’ve got to have a reliable cleaner,’ Tasha says, all understanding. ‘I’d offer you mine, but I know she’s all booked up. I could ask her if she knows anyone.’

  ‘I’ll ask around too,’ Penny says. ‘It’s one of the three essentials in life: a good cleaner, a good hairdresser, and a good bra.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ Tasha says, subtly patting her enviable breasts, ‘these little fellows are growing already. At least there’s one advantage to being pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure Rupert’s very happy about that,’ Penny says, and we all giggle for a moment, behind our hands.

  ‘And talking of hairdressers,’ I say, ‘I’m getting my colour done soon, and I was thinking of going for something a little warmer this time.’ I pull a few strands of hair forward towards my face, so that I can see them. ‘A little more honey-coloured, perhaps. What do you think?’

  Thus I launch us into the endlessly riveting topic of hair colour, which leads us on to skincare, and then shoes, and fashion in general. And so we lose ourselves in the saccharine conversation of the fortunate ones, and everything is giddily fine again, so long as I keep to the rules and steer clear of mentioning nutters.

  But mention her or not, the nutter and her mother are there, hooked onto the inside of my life like a pair of circus-grade tapeworms. An irritation, I tell myself. An irritation, nothing more.

  It is the Monday of half-term. I’ve just dropped Thomas at Fiona Littlewood’s to play with Milo. Arianne and I are going out to buy new ballet shoes, and we’ve just popped home to pick up the old pair, to compare them for size. In the few minutes we’re home, the phone rings and, like an idiot, I answer it.

  It’s Mrs Partridge, in a total panic. I can barely make out what she’s saying. Arianne is coming down the stairs swinging her ballet shoes by the ribbons and singing ‘Old Macdonald’ at the top of her voice. I shush her to be quiet and take the phone into the living room.

  ‘She wouldn’t take her pills,’ Mrs Partridge wails into my ear. ‘And she’d got hold of the ring pull off a Coke can. Said she’d slit her wrists if they made her take her pills. And I feel so wretched . . . all my fault . . . I took her in that Coke . . . always so careful to take away any rubbish; I have to be, you know . . . don’t know how she got hold of the ring . . . They’ve sedated her, you know, in her arm, but she made a terrible fuss . . .’

  Arianne has followed me into the living room and is staring at me with wide blue eyes and swinging her ballet shoes round and round above her head like lassoes.

  ‘I’ve got to go and see her,’ Mrs Partridge is saying and I’m cursing myself for forgetting to take the old ballet shoes out with us in the first place. We should have gone straight to the shops after dropping Thomas, and then I’d have missed this call. ‘I’ve got to see her, but I’ve got Nathan at home . . . Asked Mrs Day next door if she’d have him for a bit, but she’s got to go out herself at eleven. I’ll never be back by then . . . Don’t know what I should do . . .’

  ‘I’ll have Nathan.’ The words are out before I even think. There is definitely some god playing chess with me.

  ‘Oh, would you, dear?’ Mrs Partridge erupts into gratitude. ‘I could get the bus if I go now . . . Mrs Day can have him till eleven, if you could—’

  ‘I’ll pick him up from there. I’ll leave now.’

  And that’s it, sorted.

  ‘Damn!’ I snap as I put down the phone.

  Arianne stops swinging her ballet shoes and her eyes grow wider.

  ‘The ballet shoes will have to wait,’ I tell her, and before she can start protesting I add, ‘Nathan’s coming to play.’

  ‘Who’s Nay-fun?’ Arianne asks. And I reply with the first thing that comes into my head.

  ‘He’s my friend’s little boy.’

  And so it is that Arianne and I go to collect Nathan from the turquoise house attached to the Partridges’.

  I have never had to knock at this house before and I cannot tell you how nervous I am. When I was a child, this house was even more frightening to me than Heddy’s. I never knew who lived here, I only knew that they had the most vicious-sounding dog on earth locked behind their front door. And no matter how quietly I crept up the Partridges’ pathway to call for Heddy, that dog would hear me, and bark and growl and slaver like mad, hurling it
self at the inside of that door, trying to break out and get me.

  I do not even know if it’s the same people who live here now, and there’s no sign of any dog so far. Even so, as I walk up to the front door I’m tense, on the alert, waiting for the dreaded thud of animal against wood, and for the attack to begin.

  Arianne is oblivious to my fears. She’s fascinated by that awful car stuck up on jacks, never having seen such a thing before. She’s crouching down in the weeds, trying to get a look underneath it.

  ‘Don’t touch,’ I say, but she finds herself a stick, and starts poking it in the rust holes around the wheel arches.

  The doorbell doesn’t seem to work, so I do my best to rattle the letter-box flap instead; it’s stiff and I have to really force it back and slam it down for it to make any sound at all. It occurs to me how farcical this whole situation is. I could not have dreamed it up, not in the weirdest of dreams.

  The door is opened by a plumpish woman of uncertain age, whom I presume to be Mrs Day. I have to say she doesn’t appear to be in too much of a hurry for someone who is about to go out. She’s wearing a quilted pink housecoat buttoned down to the floor and there are heated rollers hanging in the ends of her lemon-yellow hair. She’s smoking a cigarette, which she must have stuck in her mouth while she opened the door, and now she takes it out and smoke clouds out of her face and into mine.