The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  Spring comes to our garden. There are lilacs, and flimsy purple irises round the pond, and a single waterlily, its petals thick and perfect as though it is fashioned from wax, and a blue smoke of rosemary flowers in the herb bed. But everything is neglected; I never seem to get out there any more. The daffodils need tying up, their leaves are brown and broken, and there are weeds in the rose bed.

  One afternoon when Daisy is off school I wrap her up in her fleece—she always seems so cold—and we go into the garden. There’s a smell of wet earth and lilac. She sits on the patio step, her arms wrapped round herself. Her hair is dull, tangled.

  I pull up the couch grass under the rose bushes; it’s tough—it hurts your hands. She’s watching me.

  ‘There was this man who was cutting his hedge,’ she says, ‘and he found a gold ring.’

  ‘Wow. Is that really true, d’you think, or just a story?’

  ‘It’s true. I saw it on Antiques Roadshow.’

  There are tiny rust-coloured spiders on the paving slabs. She pokes at one with a stick. If you crush them they leave a reddish smear, like dried blood. ‘It was really really old,’ she says. ‘It came from the Anglo-Saxons. His wife thought it was a ring from a Christmas cracker.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ I say. ‘Imagine just poking around in your hedge and finding a beautiful thing.’ I’m trying to pull up a dock, but its tap root is deep; it hurts my hands as I pull. ‘Some people have all the luck,’ I say, thoughtlessly.

  Daisy looks at me. She is so pale, so serious.

  ‘Why can’t I be lucky?’ she says.

  I wish I hadn’t said what I said. I sit back on my heels; I struggle with this, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Maybe luck kind of comes in cycles,’ I tell her. ‘I mean, you’ve had a horrid time this year, but maybe soon you’ll have good times again with lots of luck.’

  ‘I don’t need lots of luck,’ she says. ‘I just want to wake up in my bed and feel fine.’

  One day when I go down to make my morning coffee, Richard hands me a letter. There’s a wariness about him. He looks me up and down.

  I take it. It’s from the hospital.

  An appointment has been made for you to discuss Daisy’s illness with Dr Jane Watson, Consultant Child Psychiatrist. This appointment is for Mr and Mrs Lydgate only, without Daisy. All patients are given individual appointment times so please arrive in good time. If you arrive late it may not be possible for the clinician to see you. On arrival, please report to the receptionist in Outpatients, who will direct you to the clinic.

  He turns back to the mirror, smoothing out his tie.

  ‘I’ve had a look in my diary,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something in for the morning, but I’ll get Francine to sort it out. It’s such a help to have a really efficient PA.’

  ‘You mean—we’re just going to go along with it?’

  ‘Well, what else do you suggest?’ It’s his work voice—cool, brisk, as though he’s chairing a meeting.

  ‘But, Richard—what if they find out about me, about my childhood?’

  ‘I don’t for a moment suppose they’ll bother with that—I mean, that’s all in the past.’

  ‘But surely you see.’ I wonder if I should have shown him the book I bought. But it’s never seemed the right moment. ‘They think that if you have that sort of childhood it means you must be disturbed. That you can’t be a good parent.’

  ‘You worry so much,’ he says, routinely. He slips on his jacket. I notice that he’s wearing a different aftershave. It has a rather thick aromatic smell, like a cold cure.

  ‘They mustn’t know,’ I say. ‘They must never ever find out.’

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘If that’s what you really want.’

  He goes. He doesn’t kiss me.

  CHAPTER 25

  It’s a bare grey room: thinly upholstered armchairs arranged with studied casualness, a clock on the wall with a loud metallic tick, a desk with a few framed photographs. In the corner there’s a rubber plant, so glossy and symmetrical it seems to be made of plastic, although in fact it is real. There’s nothing on the table in the space between the chairs except a box of tissues. The air is thick and warm.

  She is quietly dressed, in a sweater and skirt. She has elegant pale legs and high boots made of snakeskin.

  ‘I’m Jane Watson.’ She’s shaking hands with both of us; her hand is cool and firm. ‘Thank you for coming in. Are you happy if we use Christian names?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Richard.

  Her hair is blonde and neatly tied, and she’s wearing a sandalwood scent, and she has a vivid, practised smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. We sit, and she crosses her long pale legs. Her skirt is short; it eases up her thigh.

  ‘I like to tape my sessions with clients,’ she says. ‘Are you happy with that?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Richard again. He’s affable, relaxed; he seems at ease here.

  The clinic is in an annexe at the edge of the hospital site. The windows are thick; you can only hear the faintest sound of traffic—the outside world seems very far away.

  She turns on her cassette player and leans back in her chair; her elbows are on the arms of the chair, the fingertips just touching. The whole room smells of her scent.

  ‘We’re here to talk about you and Daisy,’ she says. Her voice is sleek as Vaseline. ‘To try and find out whether there are any psychological issues here, that might be making her ill.’

  ‘I really don’t think there are,’ I say immediately, then wish I hadn’t spoken. Be careful, be careful, says something inside me. I take a slow deep breath. I say to her what I said to Dr McGuire. That Daisy’s happy at school. That there haven’t been any big changes in our lives. That no one’s died or anything…

  She looks at me appraisingly. Her eyes are green as ferns. She has a quiet casual beauty, the sort of beauty that makes a man think, Only I have seen this.

  ‘But you see, children do react differently to adults,’ she says. ‘Children can be very sensitive to atmospheres, for instance.’

  ‘Could you explain that for us, Jane?’ says Richard. I’m aware of the warmth in his voice.

  ‘Well, if perhaps there’s tension in the home,’ she says. ‘Maybe quite subtle tensions in the family. Sometimes children pick up on atmospheres and somatise their feelings—that means, they turn them into physical symptoms. To take a common example—today’s children are very aware of the possibility of divorce.’

  ‘But we get on fine,’ I tell her.

  She doesn’t respond. My protestation hangs in the air between us, glaring and conspicuous. I feel my face go hot.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me who is in the family,’ she says. ‘I believe there are the two of you and Daisy, and also your daughter, Richard, by your first marriage?’

  Richard nods.

  ‘In one of our later sessions,’ says Jane Watson, ‘I may want to see you together, the whole family.’

  ‘I’d rather not, really,’ I tell her. ‘I’d rather not put Daisy under any more stress.’

  ‘So you would agree that Daisy is under stress at the moment—for whatever reason?’

  I feel a hot red flicker of rage. ‘Only because she’s ill.’

  The anger is there in my voice. Richard glances at me.

  ‘Yes. Well, of course, that’s what we’re here to try and understand,’ Jane Watson says in her soothing Vaseline voice.

  She settles back in her chair and uncrosses her legs, the narrow pale thighs sliding over one another. Out of the corner of my eye, I see how Richard watches.

  ‘Perhaps we could go back to the beginning, when you became pregnant with Daisy,’ she says. ‘Perhaps you could tell me how you felt when you found you were pregnant?’

  ‘I was thrilled,’ I tell her.

  Her green eyes rest on me.

  ‘It’s strange when you say that,’ she says, her voice so emollient, so understanding, ‘because what I notice is that you don’t sound thrilled, you sound a littl
e unsure.’

  The tick of the clock is loud, intrusive, as though it’s right inside me. I can’t work out what to say.

  ‘Well—it’s a long time ago now,’ I say. ‘But really, I was very happy. I wanted to be pregnant more than anything.’

  ‘And Richard, what about you?’ she says.

  ‘We were both delighted,’ he says. ‘Though, quite honestly, Jane, I guess I’m not much good at showing things like that. I’m just your average emotionally impaired male. You know—I need to retire to my cave from time to time.’

  A brief smile flickers across Jane Watson’s face: she likes this. But then she turns to me again.

  ‘And so, Catriona, did you feed her yourself?’

  The coyness of this surprises me.

  ‘Breast-feeding, you mean? Yes. I loved it.’

  ‘Can you tell me what you loved especially? What was so special for you?’

  ‘Being so needed,’ I tell her.

  Her look is acute, intense. I know that she is filing this away.

  ‘It’s very special for you to feel needed?’ she says gently.

  I nod, but have a sudden doubt, a fear that I have said something rash, dangerous.

  ‘And of course later that would have changed,’ she says, ‘as Daisy grew up. As she became more independent, and went to school. And perhaps you found that she didn’t need you then in quite the same way…’

  ‘Of course. Well, I enjoyed that part of it too.’ I hear the shake in my voice.

  ‘Now, a baby’s arrival always means big changes in the family,’ she says. ‘How did that affect you, would you say? I mean, there will always be losses as well as gains.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of any losses,’ I tell her.

  ‘There’s such an expectation today that parenthood will be a fulfilling experience,’ she says. ‘It makes it difficult to acknowledge that there were things that were hard.’

  I try to think of something. I see Daisy and me on our afternoons at the farm park, Daisy in a knitted hat that she had, petting the goats and laughing at their insistence, her face glowing, healthy, everything sunlit, tulip-coloured. A feeling like grief tugs at me.

  ‘Darling,’ says Richard. He reaches across and rests his hand on mine. It slips into my mind that this gesture is really aimed at her, to show how empathic he is. ‘You were quite tearful in the days after Daisy was born. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘But everyone’s like that.’ There’s an edge to my voice. I move my hand from under his. ‘That’s perfectly normal—it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘I think Richard is trying to help you here, Catriona,’ says Jane Watson.

  ‘But I mean—the baby blues,’ I say. ‘Everyone has that. It’s just a hormone thing. I adored her right from the beginning.’

  ‘Perhaps I could give you a little feedback here,’ she says. ‘Because when you spoke to Richard then, I saw you move away from him a little. And now you’ve got your arms crossed in front of you, as though you’re defending yourself from something, or protecting yourself. I’m wondering what you feel you need to protect yourself from.’

  I uncross my arms. Be careful, be careful, says the voice in my head. ‘I just think my reaction was perfectly normal,’ I tell her.

  ‘It may very well have been,’ she says. ‘I don’t deny that. What I do see is how you react when Richard reaches out to you. Sometimes it’s very hard for us to accept help.’

  I don’t know what to say to this. There’s nothing I can say.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me about your childcare arrangements when Daisy was little. Now—what work were you doing before you had Daisy?’

  ‘I worked in a nursery school.’

  ‘And after Daisy was born?’

  ‘I’ve never gone back to work.’

  ‘It can be very demanding,’ she says. ‘Spending all day with a small child. Children can be very demanding.’

  ‘I always enjoyed it,’ I tell her. ‘I didn’t want to work. I never considered going back, to be honest. I thought I was just incredibly lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’ She looks at me quizzically.

  ‘It was what I’d always wanted.’

  I see myself on the carpet at The Poplars, the smell of disinfectant all around me, and Lesley sitting there with her self-esteem tree drawn out in coloured felt tip, asking what I would choose if I could wave a magic wand. I remember the picture as I saw it in my head: the lawn, the lily pond, the laughter of children. And how when I met Richard, when we came to the house with the seven stone steps and the green front door—and then, when Daisy was born—I knew the answer to her question. I thought, This. This is what I would choose, what I have always wanted.

  ‘Daisy wasn’t demanding at all,’ I tell Jane Watson. ‘She was just always good fun. I like being with children—I think they’re often more interesting than adults. You know, the things they come out with: I love that.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘we can hide our feelings from ourselves. And it’s perfectly normal to envy people whose lives are different from our own.’

  ‘But I really don’t think I felt that. I never wanted to be a power-suited career woman.’ I realise too late that Jane Watson doubtless has a wardrobe full of pristine tailoring. ‘I was happy with my life.’

  ‘And Richard? What about you?’ she says. ‘How did you feel about this—Catriona staying at home? I find that some men today can quite resent it.’ A half-smile curves her lips, softening what she’s saying. ‘That they want their wives to be out in the workplace bringing in lots of money.’

  ‘It was fine,’ he says. And then, as though aware this sounds rather lukewarm, ‘Catriona was always a wonderful mother.’

  ‘OK. Well, let’s move on a bit. I’d like you both to tell me a little about your childhoods and family backgrounds.’ She says this as though it is the easiest thing in the world. ‘It’s always important, I think, to have a look at the past and see how it may have shaped us.’

  I try to keep my face still, but I can feel the sweat on me.

  ‘Richard, perhaps you could go first,’ she says.

  ‘It was mostly OK,’ he says. ‘Though I hated boarding school. I went when I was eight. A ghastly place—some of the staff were sadists. I mean, trust me, that’s no exaggeration.’

  Her face seems to open when she looks at him. ‘I know the kind of thing,’ she says.

  ‘I was homesick as hell at first,’ he says. ‘But you get used to it.’

  ‘And your parents are still alive?’

  He nods. ‘They’re in their seventies now—but yes, still going strong.’

  ‘And, Catriona? What was your childhood like?’

  ‘OK. An ordinary childhood. Nothing remarkable.’

  I feel unreal suddenly, my body long and thin and etiolated. As though I am too tall for the room, as though I could reach to the ceiling: but so flimsy, fragile, a cardboard cut-out body, easily blown away.

  ‘My mother was on her own. My father left when I was a baby—I never knew him.’

  She has the look of a hunter, eager and alert.

  ‘So you must have been aware, growing up, of being in a rather unusual family, of feeling different, perhaps of missing out?’

  ‘I suppose so. Though it was what I was used to.’

  The palms of my hands are wet.

  ‘And your mother—how often do you see her now?’ she says.

  I clear my throat.

  ‘My mother is dead,’ I tell her.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Richard turn towards me. I will him not to say anything.

  Jane Watson leaves a small respectful silence.

  ‘And how long ago did she die, Catriona?’ she says then, serious, gentle.

  ‘Oh, quite a few years now. It was a heart attack. She never saw Daisy.’

  I’m walking on ice, listening out for splintering.

  ‘That must be a deep source of sadness for you.’

  I nod. Richard says nothing
.

  There’s another pause, acknowledging my grief. These silences chill me.

  Richard clears his throat, and my heart pounds. I am so afraid he will speak. But he says nothing.

  She leans back in her chair.

  ‘Well, I think we should maybe leave it there for today.’

  Relief washes through me. I cover my mouth with my hand, afraid it will show in my face.

  She turns off her voice recorder. ‘Now, what I’d like you to do for next week is to maybe talk together about your childhoods. To see how what happened then may have affected you as parents. I always find that a valuable exercise. In our parenting, so often we do as we are done to.’

  We walk out through the waiting room, where there are faded armchairs and copies of Hello. I can still smell her perfume and it catches at my throat.

  ‘She seems good,’ says Richard as we get into the car.

  I’m in the driving seat as I’m dropping him off at the station. But I don’t start up the car.

  ‘Yes, I thought you liked her.’

  ‘A clever woman, I thought,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t think that was what impressed you about her.’

  ‘She’s quite attractive, of course,’ he says. ‘But I did think she was pretty much on the ball.’

  ‘But what use can any of this possibly be to Daisy?’

  ‘They know what they’re doing. They handle this kind of thing all the time.’ He frowns. ‘You should have been straight with her,’ he says. ‘About your mother.’

  ‘No, Richard. No.’ I’m appalled. I grasp his sleeve. ‘I don’t want her to know. She mustn’t ever know.’

  He shrugs. ‘Well, if that’s what you want,’ he says, as he said before. ‘But I’m really not happy with it.’

  ‘I don’t trust her.’

  He shrugs. ‘No. Well, you never trust women, of course.’

  We drive to the station in silence.

  CHAPTER 26

  There’s something on my patio, something that shouldn’t be there. I’m in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil when Sinead has left for school, looking out into the garden where the paeony buds are fattening, ready to flower, when I see it. At first, with a slight sense of surprise, of something being out of place, I think it is a forgotten thing, abandoned or flung down, an item of clothing or cuddly toy that one of the girls has left there. I go to the window, hear my quick inbreath. It’s a fox, dead, in a pool of blackish blood, lying there quite precisely in the middle of my patio; and it enters my mind that there’s a deliberateness to the placing of it, as though it has been put there, as though it has some profound and disturbing significance. I push the thought away.