This Perfect World (21 page)

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.’