This Perfect World

by Suzanne Bugler

  It’s exhausting, but only what I expected.

  Then Arianne lets it out, about Nathan.

  We’re walking across the field behind the village, coming back from feeding the ducks. My mum and Arianne are up ahead, with Thomas bounding alongside, and my dad and I, somewhat quietly, bringing up the rear.

  My mum and Arianne stop and turn, and wait for us to catch up, and when we do my mother says, ‘Arianne tells me you’ve had a little boy to stay because his mother is ill.’ There’s something slightly accusatory about the tone of her voice, as if she’s offended that I hadn’t already told her such news myself. Arianne seems to notice this too and she’s looking at me a little guiltily, a little confused. But it is typical of my mother to take one of the children aside in this way and quiz them for information. ‘She tells me that the little boy lives in Forbury, Laura. Is the mother anyone I know?’

  I wonder if she knows. She can’t know. She can’t have put two and two together that quickly.

  But who else do we all know who still lives in Forbury? Lie, and I’ll be digging myself a hole, I know it.

  So I say, ‘It’s Heddy actually.’

  I carry on walking, looking at the view, looking at Thomas with his stick, looking anywhere rather than at my parents, who are both staring at me now.

  ‘Oh?’ asks my mum.

  I shrug. I say as little as possible. Just, ‘Mrs Partridge phoned and needed help. She had to go and see Heddy in hospital, so I looked after Nathan. Heddy’s son.’

  I hope that will be enough, but it isn’t, of course. They want to know everything, and though I tell them as little as I possibly can, it’s still as if the Partridges are right there with us. Heddy and me, lumped together again like in the old days, so that once again I can be judged and found failing.

  ‘You will do what you can for them, Laura?’ my dad asks and there it is, that same old warning in his voice.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I say a little hotly. I don’t want my father speaking to me like that. I am thirty-six years old for heaven’s sake.

  But he just says, ‘Good,’ and nods his head. ‘Good.’ And somehow this really, really annoys me. I feel like I am being reminded of my manners.

  My mother, she says, ‘I’m glad that you are being so mature about this, Laura, and putting your past differences with Heddy aside.’ And this is big of her. We don’t talk about awkward things in our family. And Heddy Partridge is one of the awkward things in our family. Another is what I did to my wrist when I was fifteen, of course. We don’t talk about that, either.

  We leave early on Friday. I say I want to beat the traffic and we’re on the road before eight. I try not to look too hasty, but really it is just such a relief and those four hours stuck in the car back to Ashton are probably the most stress-free that I have had, and will have, for quite some time. Even the children don’t complain.

  I use the journey to do some thinking. And that evening, as soon as the children are fed, and bathed, and tucked up in their beds, I phone Mrs Partridge.

  The phone rings for a long time before she eventually answers, with a very anxious-sounding hello. I suppose she must dread the phone ringing, always afraid it might be the hospital, phoning up with more tales of woe about Heddy.

  ‘It’s Laura,’ I say, and then I have to wait as she clears her throat. It’s a horrible sound. I can hear voices shouting in the background, the screeching of breaks, and a car blasting its horn. I realize it must be the television.

  ‘Just a minute, dear,’ she says when she’s finished coughing, and there’s a clunk as she rests the phone down. For a second or two I hear the TV so clearly I can make out the words, then there is a short scraping sound and the voices become muffled, but don’t fade altogether. She must have the phone in the hall. I didn’t notice it when I was there, but I recognize that scraping noise as the sound of the living-room door catching over the carpet as it is pushed to. I picture her in that hall, having come out stiff from watching the TV. I picture the hall itself with the bit of plastic on the floor to protect what’s left of the carpet, the overloaded coat rack and the narrow stairs that disappear up into the dark. I picture it as it seemed to me as a child, every time I had to go in there to wait for Heddy, and I feel the same mixture of revulsion and dread tightening in my stomach.

  If anything, this sharpens my resolve.

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ she says when she picks up the phone again and, stating the obvious, she adds, ‘Got the telly on a bit loud. It’s Nathan. He likes to watch the car chases.’

  ‘How is he?’ I ask, and she replies as if I was some distant stranger to him, which I don’t think I am, now that I’ve looked after him, and held him on my lap, and comforted his tears.

  ‘Oh, fine, fine. He’s growing up fast,’ she says, which strikes me as the most ridiculous thing to reply.

  ‘And Heddy?’ I ask. ‘How’s she?’

  Mrs Partridge launches into a weary account of Heddy’s troubled week. I hear about the tears and the pills and the toing and the froing and the doctors who are always too busy and the endless, endless gloom. To me it is all starting to sound more than a little monotonous. The whole miserable situation will go on forever if I don’t do something to break it.

  I butt in with my plan.

  ‘I thought I might go and see her,’ I say, interrupting Mrs Partridge, who is complaining that Heddy got roast beef for her dinner yesterday and that’s no good at all, because you can’t mash up roast beef and Heddy can’t chew, not in her state of mind.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I say, loudly, because I really don’t want to hear about Heddy’s inability to chew. Of course she can chew. She’s got teeth. She’s not helpless. I ignore the memory that is pushing up in my head of Heddy’s vast body, inert in that hospital bed, obliterated way out of functioning normality by drugs, and pain. I am on a mission. I won’t be diverted.

  ‘I thought I’d go and see her tomorrow. Because it’s a Saturday. And you can’t.’ I want this to come out right. I want her to believe that I am helping. I am helping. ‘I thought if I went to see her, sometimes, on my own, on the days that you can’t, I might be able to talk to her.’ I pause for a second. There is silence, apart from the faint and distant murmur of the Partridges’ TV. So I carry on. I’ve got to do this. I can’t not, now that Heddy Partridge has been pushed into my life, overgrown and unwanted. I’ve got to push her back out again. ‘I thought it might help,’ I say. ‘What do you think?’

  The silence lingers for a moment, and I am willing Mrs Partridge to agree. Thank God she does. Her voice comes thin, and suddenly tired. ‘That would be nice, dear. Very nice. Poor Heddy would like that very much,’ she says, and I realize that this is what she wanted all along. Exactly what she wanted.

  She thinks that I want to do whatever I can to get Heddy out of hospital. And she’s right. I do.

  I’ll do whatever I can to get Heddy Partridge out of hospital, and out of my life for good.

  I wish I hadn’t thrown those clothes away.

  I wish I hadn’t thrown them away because now I’ll need to find another outfit to sacrifice to hospital visiting, and this time I’ll wear it and wear it and wear it, until I am absolutely sure that I will never, ever need to wear it again.

  I pick out another pair of black trousers. There are so many black trousers in my wardrobe that really I don’t suppose I’ll miss them. And I pick out two tops, a white wrapover blouse (nice, but the collar sticks out a little further than I’d like) and a printed long-sleeved T-shirt (pretty, but very last-year). I’ll alternate these tops. After all, there won’t be many times that I’ll be needing them, surely?

  Fatalistically, I decide on the same shoes. I’ve never liked them, since I replaced them the first time. They remind me of Heddy too much. Every time I look at them I can practically hear them squeaking on the hospital floor.

  I tell James I’m getting my hair done.

  I tell him this with some irony, because he never notices when I’ve
had my hair done. In fact he is so grateful for the hint to tell me I look nice when I get back that he doesn’t even complain at being left with the children, even though Chelsea are playing on TV.

  It only takes me forty minutes to get to St Anne’s, taking the direct roads instead of following Mrs Partridge’s out-of-the-way bus route, but parking is harder than last time. Saturday is obviously prime visiting time, and the hospital grounds are crowded with cars queuing for spaces, and with couples huddling under umbrellas and families with children weaving their way through the traffic, trying not to get themselves run over. I end up parking in a side road, a few minutes from the hospital. I think how this would please Mrs Partridge, as it means I don’t have to pay.

  It’s raining, but I don’t have a jacket as I did not want to have to sacrifice one for this cause, and mules are not the best shoes to be dodging puddles in. I make a dash for it under my umbrella, getting somewhat wet-toed in the process, but I don’t care. I can afford a little discomfort. It’ll be worth it, to get Heddy off my back.

  I stop to buy some flowers at the stall just outside the main entrance. They’re typical hospital flowers, going limp already and wrapped in damp, crumpled paper. I tip them upside down to shake off the rain. Heddy won’t notice them, but they’ll make me look like a better visitor.

  Walking along the corridors I feel confident, and decisive, in a very glacial, one-dimensional sort of way. In fact I feel the way I always felt when I was about to tell Heddy what to do. Go away, I’d say, and she’d go. Get lost, and she’d stare at me with those hurt dumb-dog eyes, but off she’d shuffle. This is not so very different. Pull yourself together, I’ll say, and she will, because I told her to. Pull yourself together, and disappear. I haven’t thought up exactly what I’m going to say, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t need to pretty up my words for Heddy Partridge. I’ll tell her what to do, and she’ll do it.

  The nurse who lets me into the ward is small, Irish and very young. She seems pleased that Heddy has a visitor.

  ‘We’re schoolfriends,’ I tell her, giving her my most winning smile.

  I follow her to Heddy’s room. She has the brisk, optimistic walk of the newly qualified. I wonder what it must be like for her, dealing with people like Heddy all day. I suppose some people are just naturally kind.

  The door to Heddy’s room is open today and the nurse walks straight in, and over to the bed where Heddy is half-sitting and leaning to one side, face turned away from us. I stop just inside the doorway, holding the flowers in front of me like a shield and trying not to flinch at the smell of Heddy’s unwashed body. She smells of milk, left out in the sun, and gone off.

  ‘You’ve a friend come to see you, Helen,’ the nurse says brightly, plumping up the pillows behind Heddy and gently shifting her round so that she’s facing straight ahead. She’s very strong for such a small woman. ‘Not doing too badly today, are we, Helen?’ she says. ‘Not bad at all.’ When she’s finished straightening up Heddy, she smiles at me and puts her hand out for the flowers. ‘I’ll put these in a vase out in the corridor,’ she says. ‘That’s where we keep our flowers.’ Then she mouths, ‘Health and safety, you see,’ in case I hadn’t realized, which, of course, I hadn’t.

  When we are alone, I put myself right in front of Heddy, so she can see me. And she can see me all right. She looks at me with dull, red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Hello, Heddy,’ I say, and I hold her gaze. She knows who I am, I’m sure of it. It occurs to me that I can say whatever I like. There’s no one else here to listen. And Heddy won’t tell. She never did. It’s the school loos all over again.

  ‘Your mum wants me to help get you out of here, but I can’t do that. The only person who can do that is you. You’ve got to help yourself. You’ve got to stop cutting yourself up.’

  There. I’ve said it. It’s pretty straightforward really. I break away from her gaze and look around the room, at the bleakness, at the walls painted a washed-out hospital blue, at the window, closed to fresh air and half slatted out by the metallic blind, cranked up wonky on one side. I can hear Heddy breathing, in and out, slowly, heavy in the chest. Suddenly I feel this horrendous depression, bearing down. This is my payback, but for what am I paying? For my meanness to Heddy, or for what I did to myself, all those years ago, for what I did to my arm? The walls were this colour then, I remember, at Redbridge A & E. I remember opening my eyes from my play-death and staring at the wall beside me, at paint the colour of old bras gone blue in the wash. And I remember the sound of that nurse’s voice, the high, tinny pitch, the vowels dragged wide as a Saturday night.

  ‘You’re all right, love, we’ll soon patch you up. But what d’you go and do that for, eh? What d’you want to go and do a silly thing like that for?’

  I shudder and bring myself back, and focus again on Heddy, just lolling there in her vastness, staring at me. I want to slap her, for doing this to me.

  I stare at her and she stares back with those dark, nightmare eyes. What does she see, what does she feel, and why do I even care? Like a wall coming down, I revert to type. ‘It’s not very nice here, is it?’ I say and I hear myself, prissy, bitching up. Her eyes are so blank I want to hurt her all over again. ‘I can’t think why you’d rather be stuck in here than at home with your son. But maybe you prefer it. It’s a weird choice, Heddy, but it is your choice. Every time you go cutting yourself again you’re choosing to be here instead of with your son.’

  There is a bad, bad feeling, like power, creeping up inside me. I’d be lying if I said it was a new feeling. It’s an old feeling, like coming home, like knowing who I am.

  Oh yes, this is me all right, bitch that I am, that ever I was. My feet slide into the shoes and I find they fit, easy as ever.

  ‘But tell me, Heddy, what kind of a person does that make you?’ I say. ‘I mean, what kind of a person would choose to be stuck in here like you are, instead of being at home, being a decent mother to her only son?’ I pause and if there’s a little voice in my head telling me that I may be oversimplifying things just a little, I bat it away. From where I’m standing, things need to be simple.

  ‘He sat on my lap,’ I say. Heddy’s eyes are black, limpet-wet. ‘He sat on my lap and I held him while he cried. Your son, Heddy. The other night, when he stayed at my house because your mother was stuck here with you. He sat on my lap, Heddy, crying for you.’

  Do I see a flicker in those eyes? Do I?

  I talk at her, on and on. I talk like I will talk until I have rammed it home. Like I will talk week after week, for as long as it takes for her to get the message, for her to wake up and pull herself together, if not for herself, then for the child out there that needs her.

  That that child’s been with me, I’ll use.

  That that child will be with me further still, I’ll use.

  And I’ll see Heddy screwed up with that knowledge until it has her fighting herself and out of here.

  THIRTEEN

  Now here we are, seated around my glass-topped dining table, the Littlewoods, Juliet and Andy Borrel, and James and me. There’s a big mirror on the wall in my dining room and in it I can see us all, and I think what an advert we women are for André’s with our uniformly blonde hair. I bet you couldn’t tell us apart from the back. Suddenly I wonder if at André’s the stylists only do one style. Probably they do. Probably among themselves they call it ‘the housewife’, and slap it on us if we want it or not. I mean, how would we know if we wanted it or not? It’s just what happens. It’s what we are.

  ‘Glass is so lovely,’ Juliet said as soon as we sat down. ‘Oh, I’d love a glass table. But don’t you find it impractical with the children? I mean, how do you keep it clean?’

  ‘I make them eat on the floor,’ I said, and Juliet laughed uncertainly, and wiped her fingers back and forth across the glass, leaving behind a nice little smear.

  They gobbled up Nicola Blakely’s monkfish in a citrus crust with honey-glazed vegetables.

  Fiona was m
ost impressed. ‘This is wonderful, Laura,’ she declared, more than a little surprised. ‘You must give me the recipe.’

  Even James said, ‘Mmm, this really is good, Laura.’ Somehow he managed not to notice the knock on the back door at seven o’clock, and the lack of chaos in the kitchen.

  And now we’re talking about schools. I keep trying to steer us off the subject, but as soon as I think I’m getting somewhere, Juliet has us reined in and back again. It’s driving me senseless. I mean, what would we talk about if we didn’t have children at the same school? Would we even be here, like this? Would we know each other? Would we even want to know each other?

  There must be something else. But with Juliet it’s all: the kids, the kids, the kids – in which category she includes her husband. Once I asked her what she was doing at the weekend and she breezed back with, ‘God, we’ve got so much on. Two parties on Saturday and another on Sunday.’ And I was thinking Lucky you and feeling a little miffed about all these parties going on and me not being invited – when I realized she was talking about children’s parties. She was just doing the chauffeuring. That was it. That was her weekend. And the thing is, she was happy with that.

  Now she’s going on about the fund-raising committee for the simulated rainforest in the sensory garden at school, and that gets Fiona’s husband joining in with his oh-so-slightly-superior but hey-I’m-down-with-the-mums inside knowledge on the subject. He’s a governor. Well, he would be. And Fiona of course practically is the PTA.

  They refer to the headmaster by his first name. I can’t do that. It makes me cringe. But they’re in the know, you see. First-name terms with the lord of it all. It’s a status thing. Clocking up points. It’s all about catchment areas and who’s in and who’s out, and who ought to be in and who ought to be out. Elbows to the fore, folks, it’s all shove, shove, shove around here. It’s years until any of our children will be going to secondary, but the battle started at birth. Let’s face it, the options around here are private if you can afford it, Catholic if you can’t. And if you can’t manage either of those, it’s all-out war, charging your kid through music lessons to try to get them into Elmsmead. And if you can’t even get into Elmsmead, you’ll have your personal PR campaign working overtime trying to convince everyone else that you really wanted little Freddy to be getting down and under with the locals at Watts Lane High.