The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  Sinead was allocated to me, in the face of some competition for she was a perfect subject—an appealing child with emotional problems that were interesting but manageable. She played for hours with Playmobil figures on the steps that led down to the catalpa tree: acting out intricate stories, never speaking. I sat by her, sometimes moving an animal, joining in a little, and she started to let me in, to talk in a hushed monotone, so I could share in these tales of hers, entangled histories that had their genesis in the traditional storybook world of kings and witches and magic, but were far too full of losses and reversals. As the sunlit days spilled one into another, and the hollyhocks flowered then faded in the beds behind the sandpit, she started to sit nearer me; sometimes she hummed a little scrap of song. The plastic figures spread out onto a wall and a pathway; and one or two other children, sensing she might now notice them, appeared, forthright and curious, at the edges of her game. Her stories changed. The princesses became dogmatic and triumphant and accomplished amazing feats of daring; the queens and kings were reconciled, though they lived on opposite shores with between them wastes of ocean; and there began to be comfort in her games, small animals that were soothed to sleep in shoeboxes or under the fallen satiny petals from the catalpa tree. Till one day, when I was for a moment drawn away inside the playroom, I turned to see her careering round the garden with three of the rowdiest boys, waving a stick, noisy, engaged, connected: showing the first signs of that casual exuberance that’s so much part of her now. I knew she didn’t need me any more.

  Mostly the nanny collected Sinead from school; sometimes it was her father. There was a late summer day, a day of thick heat and white sky, when he arrived a little early, and came out into the garden to find her. She rushed to him and leapt into his arms. I saw how he bent his head to her, only half heard what he said, but heard my name.

  Sinead came across to me, where I was sweeping by the sandpit. ‘My Daddy needs you,’ she said. She took me by the hand, led me to him. I felt his gaze on me. I was aware how scruffy I was, bare-legged and my feet bare too because of the sand in my trainers, wearing a short denim sundress I had, that only seemed decent on the very hottest days. I saw how his eyes widened.

  ‘Oh. It’s you,’ he said.

  I smiled, and noticed how I pushed my fringe away from my face with parted fingers—not exactly deliberately, yet knowing that the sunlight would shine through my hair.

  ‘I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for Sinead,’ he said. His eyes holding me, speculating. ‘She thinks the world of you.’

  I smiled, shrugged a little, not knowing what to say.

  ‘We could go and have an ice cream, perhaps,’ he said. ‘You and me and Sinead.’

  ‘I haven’t finished clearing up,’ I said.

  He waited, sitting on one of the little walls with Sinead. Even without looking, I felt his eyes on me.

  We went out to the street, to his car. It was big but not ostentatious. Inside it smelled of leather, a rich complicated male smell, like whisky or cigars; the smell excited me, filled me with a sense of astonishment about what was happening to me that was like a sexual high. The engine had a velvet sound and cool air lifted my skirt.

  We went to a café in Fulham Road and sat in the window. He bought ice creams, chocolate for Sinead, pistachio for me, served in glittery glasses with silver spoons. I ate hungrily—I was always hungry then—scraping every last sweet drop from the bowl. Richard drank black coffee. Sitting so close, I saw how much older he was than me, his face quite worn, a web of lines at the corners of his eyes.

  Sinead finished first. She knelt up on her chair with her back to us, and leaned against the window, looking out into the street.

  ‘Could you have dinner with me?’ he said, his voice hushed so she wouldn’t overhear.

  I laughed a little. ‘Today?’

  He nodded. He didn’t laugh.

  ‘In this dress?’ I said, feeling all bare legs and bare shoulders.

  ‘I like the dress,’ he said.

  We went back to his flat to leave Sinead with the nanny. It was in a cobbled mews where cars like his were parked between tubs of geraniums; inside, there were shiny antique tables and curtains with fringed heavy pelmets and a mantelpiece of pale marble with an over-mantel mirror in a gilded frame. It was polished and perfect, but somehow too quiescent, with the closed-off feel of houses where everything is covered in dust sheets—in spite of Sinead, who moved through these elegant spaces as though she were a trespasser, leaving only small marks of her presence: a toppling pile of picture books, a single butterfly painting stuck to the bathroom door. His ex-wife, I sensed, was a powerful woman: there was a feeling of absence about the place, as though some vital energy had been withdrawn. I saw so clearly then how Sinead had been rendered mute by her going. Yet there were many lovely things there; he showed me botanical drawings, Doulton, African carvings.

  ‘I’m quite acquisitive,’ he said, ‘as you’ll discover.’ Talking as men sometimes will, as though it’s already decided. ‘When I see something beautiful, I want to make it mine.’

  On the low table in the window there were three Chinese vases, patterned with birds and mountains and sprigs of blossom, light and lovely; the pictures in a way like children’s drawings, simple with flat perspective, yet at the same time somehow old and wise. There was one that was all blue—distant blue hills, and clouds, and cherry trees that grew by a river, and a narrow bridge with three little figures crossing over towards the cherry trees; they were hunched like people who’ve been on a long hard journey, they had conical hats, one had a parasol. And I thought, I am like them: I am walking across the water towards the blossoming shore.

  He took me to a restaurant called Mon Plaisir, with red checked tablecloths and baskets with several different kinds of bread and louche waiters who spoke only minimal English. It was chic but casual: my denim dress felt fine. I took ages to decide what I would eat. This amused him.

  ‘You choose so carefully,’ he said.

  ‘I want it to be perfect,’ I said. And looked across at him and saw how much he liked that.

  We had steak and champagne and he told me about himself, his work, his parents, his childhood at a repressive boarding school. And he told me about Sara, his ex-wife: how it had started going wrong a long way back; how independent she’d been, how she hadn’t had time for Sinead; how they’d scarcely ever made love since Sinead was born. This had made him unhappy: sex was pretty crucial to him, he said, his eyes searching mine. In the end he’d moved out of their bed, slept on the futon in the spare room. Looking back, it was the most open he’s ever been with me. Perhaps it was easier because we were strangers still, as people in a railway carriage will share astounding confidences. And then—well into my third glass of champagne—I said, ‘I need you to know this now,’ and I told him about myself: what I had never before told anyone. Told him about my mother, about The Poplars, about Pindown: sensing what kind of person he was, and what he liked in me—that my vulnerability would be acceptable, appealing even, to him. That after Sara, who had never seemed to need him, my neediness might be welcome to him. That I might make him feel he had something to give.

  ‘There’s something so hurt in you,’ he said. ‘I can feel that.’ And I thought, Maybe he says that to every woman he wants. Yet really I didn’t care, it was certainly true for me.

  When the dessert arrived and I eyed his greedily, wondering whether the crème brûlée I’d chosen, though silkily delicious, could really compete with the clafouti with frosted blueberries on his plate, he reached across and fed me some of his portion with his spoon. Watching me, his gaze moving across my mouth and my eyes. It was the nearest he’d come to touching me.

  He drove me back to the flat in Garratt Lane. He didn’t kiss me.

  The next week he invited me out again. He told me he didn’t much like the dress I was wearing—it was the only other dress I possessed, ankle-length and lacklustre, from the bargain rail at C & A—an
d he took me to a hushed boutique off Sloane Square and bought me another. It was in a rather obvious style, strappy, made of silk, but the colour of it was wonderful and subtle, red with a blackish bloom, like mulberries.

  The third week we went again to Mon Plaisir.

  ‘Sinead is with her mother tonight,’ he said, his eyes holding mine. ‘We could have coffee at my flat. Would you like that?’

  I nodded, I understood.

  We drove there in silence. I wondered how it would be. I worried that he saw something almost virginal in me, something that was an illusion, a kind of innocence—a product perhaps of my diffidence and rounded open face and ignorance of the urbane world he inhabited: that he would therefore be disappointed in me.

  He took me into the living room.

  ‘I’ve bought you something,’ he said.

  It was a long thin box. I felt unsure: I’d never been out with the kind of man who buys you jewellery. But he’d chosen well, it was easy to be pleased; it was charming, a silver chain with a stone the colour of cornflowers. I had no way of knowing what kind of gem it was. Precious stones were a mystery to me then, like Rolexes or makes of car or expensive bottles of wine.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, and made to put it on.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. And when I looked at him quizzically, ‘I want it to be perfect.’ As I’d said in the restaurant, taking care over my choice.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. He stood me in front of him, in front of the over-mantel mirror. I thought he was going finally to kiss me. He put his hands very lightly on my shoulders, turned me to face the mirror, started to ease the straps of my dress down off my shoulders.

  ‘Someone might come in,’ I said.

  He pushed the front of the dress down over my breasts, doing it very slowly, in this concentrated way, yet scarcely touching me, so I felt only the slight brush against my skin of the warm tips of his fingers.

  ‘No one will come in,’ he said.

  I saw how my face looked older, more knowing, in the lamplight. I made to help him undo my zip; he moved my hand away.

  When he’d taken off all my clothes, he took the pendant and fastened it, still standing behind me, watching us in the mirror. I seemed somehow more naked with the chain around my throat. The metal was cold against my skin, and I felt a quick taut shock of desire. Though I had done so many things, some of them things I now regretted, the men who’d fucked me hastily in cars or riskily in public places or with their wives downstairs, I felt the shock and thrill of it so keenly. I think it was the sense of exposure, him looking at me and taking me in so completely, when we had as yet no sexual connection, when he’d scarcely touched me.

  He looked at me for a long time. Then he lifted up my hair and kissed the back of my neck above the clasp, still watching me in the mirror, and pulled me down and made love to me on the rug in front of the fireplace. And it was good, but more ordinary, pleasant but predictable.

  CHAPTER 11

  We went to Venice for our honeymoon. His choice; I loved it too. It was so beautiful—like walking through a fairy tale, at once enchanting and confusing, so I never quite knew where we were. It was almost as though the patterning of the streets and alleyways changed—shifted from day to day, from hour to hour; so that what this morning had felt familiar, this afternoon, in a new light—grey, with mist coming in from the lagoon, and sad with the cries of seabirds—started to seem strange. Alone, I’d have been permanently lost, needing a pocketful of pebbles or a ball of white wool to trail behind me, marking out my path. But Richard could invariably find our way, and I let him take over, take charge: liking this, that I could be so dependent, that I didn’t have to struggle.

  Our hotel room looked out on the Ponte della Libertà. The room was wide, high-ceilinged, as though devised for people much larger than me. There was a bed, vast as adult beds seem to a child, a long mirror, a padded window seat, and out of the window the shimmer and lilt of the water.

  Our days fell into a pattern. In the morning we’d wander the city, exploring some mossy basilica of a church, or walking beside the canals, where the little waves lapped at the steps of the crumbling palaces, stuccoed dull pink or purple like rotting fruit. After lunch in some hushed restaurant, we’d go back to our room, and he’d take off my clothes and make love to me on the window seat, so if the curtain moved in the breeze I worried we might be visible from the street. And at night we’d make love in the big bed, and again perhaps at three or four, when the yowling of cats woke us.

  As a lover he was sure, quiet, definite: a man who knew his mind, who never spoke, except to say what he wanted. But now that we were married and away from the flat where he’d lived with Sara, I found him less reserved, more adventurous. Or perhaps it was something to do with the staginess of Venice itself, the self-consciousness it inspired, so even the most intimate act seemed to require extravagant props, red ropes or velvet handcuffs, and to be acted out with a certain panache as though for a secret audience. I was very willing, and intrigued, and he never hurt me. But it wasn’t quite how I’d imagined marriage. I’d thought this kind of thing was for mistresses, not wives. That marriage was a safer, quieter place—that it wouldn’t have quite this urgency, nor all this apparatus of desire.

  He liked to buy me things. I wanted a souvenir, so in a little dark shop by the Rialto, where everything smelt of the fishmarket, he bought me the masks that hang now on our wall. But mostly he bought me clothes or jewellery: a filmy dress, pearl earrings, silver chains; and a long fringed scarf of white silk with a pattern like frost on a window. When we made love he liked to see me in the things he’d bought me: the silver chains he twisted round my ankles or wrists when he made love to me in front of the long mirror; and the white silk scarf he sometimes liked to tie around my mouth.

  The sex—the memory of it, the anticipation—was always there, so the smell of him seemed to permeate my skin. Yet in some ways we were almost formal still. There were subjects that were closed between us; we never talked again about his marriage to Sara, or my childhood. Mostly we talked about art or classical music. He knew a lot and taught me, and I liked that. Sometimes I looked at him and felt I scarcely knew him. Yet mostly it was happy and we were at ease with one another.

  On our last day we had our first and only disagreement, and about something so trivial. We were in a café near St Mark’s, sipping coffee from tiny gold-rimmed cups, when I was aware of him watching a woman at the next table. She had high strappy heels, a dress that was tight and shiny. She was perhaps fifty-five, and plump: she bulged in her glossy clothes. As she got up to go he raised his eyebrows at me, made a disparaging gesture.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, a little sharply.

  ‘Old women shouldn’t dress like tarts,’ he said.

  ‘I thought she was just fine,’ I said. ‘She was enjoying those clothes, enjoying her life.’ There was an edge to my voice. ‘Why shouldn’t she wear what she wants?’

  He looked across at me, surprised. Then he patted my arm. ‘Darling, why does it matter so much?’

  I smiled apologetically, feeling I’d been over-emotional, getting too upset, as women will. ‘Well, it doesn’t really.’ Wanting to seal this crack, to make it all as it was.

  But I didn’t like what he’d said. I thought, I too will be old one day.

  On our way back to the hotel, he must have taken a wrong turn: the street grew narrower, the houses almost meeting overhead. Washing lines were stretched across the street with washing hanging from them, and we could hear what sounded like a Western on someone’s television. We came to a dead end, a promontory with water on three sides, and opposite us over the water a tall strange house, each window with a window box, but nothing much grew in them, just a few plants, herbs mostly, straggling, untidy; and there were little plastic windmills stuck in the earth in each window box, like the windmills that children stick in sandcastles, yet they didn’t quite have the cheeriness of toys. They were all yellow but in many different shap
es, a star, a flower, a sickle-moon, and others less obvious, serrated, sharp, like parts of a great machine. The shadow of the house reached out across the water, and over to where we stood. Where the sun was shut out, the canal looked different. Without all the surface flicker and luminescence, you saw how dirty the water was, how full of mud and rubbish.

  He had his arm round my shoulder and he felt my hesitation.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ I said.

  He seemed amused. He pulled me to him and kissed me lightly, sliding his hand down under the hem of my skirt, easing a finger up the inside of my thigh.

  Something made me look up. Over his shoulder I saw a woman right at the top of the house, leaning out to water one of the window boxes. She paused for a moment, looked down at us with a hard, cold, curious stare, then pulled back into the darkness inside the house. A cool wind stirred the windmills, so the whole house seemed alive, and the windmills turned like Catherine wheels, spinning so fast they made new shapes, the serrated circles becoming whole, entire, making a buzzing sound like the whirring of insect wings. I shivered. And then it passed as suddenly as it had come. We found our way back to our room, and he took off my clothes and made love to me, tying my wrists to the bed with the white silk scarf, and I forgot my feeling of unease.