This Perfect World (34 page)

But my mum just says, ‘That’s good. Mrs Partridge has
had a hard life and I’m sure it’ll be easier for her if she’s
near her son.’ I see her glance at my dad. I see him deliberately
avoid her eye.

Then my dad says, a little too bluffly, ‘Are they all right
for money, the Partridges?’

And quick as anything my mum says, ‘I’m sure they’re
fine.’ Then, as if she realizes she spoke too sharply, she adds,
‘We can’t go helping everyone who’s short of money. We’d
have nothing left for ourselves.’

‘We’re not talking about
anyone
,’ my dad snaps back.
‘We’re talking about the Partridges.’ And he goes back to his
little tree, snapping off the unwanted leaves with a hard,
quick flick of his wrist. My mum glares at him, chewing on
her lip.

The anger in my blood picks up a gear. ‘The Partridges,
the Partridges,’ I say sarcastically. ‘Here they are back in our
lives once again.’

My parents are not amused. My dad abandons his precious
tree and stomps off around the side of the house, where there
are, no doubt, more needy plants awaiting his attention.

My mum, in a voice that could crack glass, says, ‘Don’t
you think that it’s time you phoned James?’ And what she
means is: don’t come here causing trouble.

‘I don’t want to speak to him at the moment,’ I say evasively,
and my mum purses her lips in disapproval.

‘Marriage isn’t always easy, Laura,’ she preaches. ‘Believe
me, I should know. You have to work at it, constantly. But
James has a right to know where you are.’

And how could she ever understand that my marriage is
part of the box that I’d wrapped myself into, lacing myself
up to keep the demons away? Painting myself perfect, lest
the truth might show through.

And that life is all undone now.

My mother finds some quiche and salad for me to eat for
supper, which I do, with little conversation. And later, when she has given me a clean towel and a spare toothbrush and
settled me into the spare room at the ridiculously early hour
of nine o’clock, and my dad has stayed pottering around on
the sidelines and so avoided having to speak to me again
himself, she comes into me with the house phone and says,
‘I’ve James on the line.’

At least she has the grace to leave me again.

‘So now you get your mother to phone me,’ James states
down the line, and this is it, then. I hear the coldness in his
voice; the ties that bind us stretch and thin and tear.

‘I didn’t get her to phone you. She took it upon herself.’

‘And what the hell are you doing there anyway?’ he shouts
in my ear. ‘I’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning. What am
I supposed to do with the children?’

Oh, the things that really matter. I feel him drifting away.
‘I’m not coming back tonight, James,’ I say.

‘For God’s sake, Laura, what kind of a mother walks out
on her children?’

‘That’s a cheap shot, James. I didn’t walk out on my children.
I left them with you.’

And so he turns. ‘In the eyes of the law, you walked out,
Laura.’

I almost laugh. ‘Are you threatening me?’ And when he
doesn’t answer, but just leaves me hanging on with his loaded
silence spelling out all kinds of doom down the phone, I say,
as calmly as I can, ‘I’ll be back sometime tomorrow, I expect.
For our children. I’m sure you can look after them until then.’

Still that silence. And then, sorrowfully, and as if it should
really hurt me that he could think this, he says, ‘You’ve
changed, Laura. You’re not the woman that I married.’

And I say, ‘Thank goodness for that.’

*

I wake up early and put on yesterday’s clothes. My parents
are in the kitchen and they greet me a little stiltedly. Surprises
don’t fit well in a carefully planned existence, and what a
surprise I am, turning up unannounced like this. Allowing
them no time for preparation, no opportunity for performance,
for cushions to be plumped and cakes to be baked, for
the choreography of outstretched arms and cries of delight.

I’ll get all that when I come back next time, with the children.
But this time, I just get the bones.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ my dad says more or less straight
away as if I
want
to be left to it, and off he goes, into the
garden. And so I am left with my mum again, and that oh-so-tangible air of disapproval. I remember just before I got
married, a month or so beforehand, when the whole ordeal
of flowers and napkins and place-settings just got too much,
and it felt as if the most important thing about my wedding
was whether we were going for violet or blue. And I remember
saying as much to my mother, during yet another overstressed
conversation.

‘Of course it’s important,’ she snapped back. Followed
with, ‘Don’t you dare go changing your mind now, or I will
never forgive you.’

And I wondered if she was talking about the colour scheme,
or the wedding itself.

‘And how are you feeling this morning?’ she asks me now,
a little coolly.

And I say, ‘Fine. Thank you’, because I realize there isn’t
much point in saying anything else. To my mother, this is all
about a silly argument with James. ‘I’ll be heading back in
a while.’ She nods in approval, and I see her visibly relax.
‘But I’ll just go and have a quick chat with Dad first.’

*

I find him poking about down the end of the garden, as far
away from any possible histrionics as he can get. He starts
telling me about his plans to grow vegetables, and then we
just stand there, side by side, staring out across the fields to
the sea, picture-book blue in the distance. I think he can
sense that there’s something I want to say; there’s something
between us, some charge. My heart is beating slow and hard.
I think of Heddy saying
Your dad loved you whatever you
did
. I think of that time in the car when we had to give
Heddy a lift to the Forbury High disco; I think of him hitting
me again and again and again.

And I blurt out, ‘Heddy Partridge was in hospital because
she kept cutting up her arms.’ I wonder if he already knows
this – if he does, he doesn’t let on. His face is controlled,
impassive. ‘I went to see her . . . lots of times. I saw her scars,
just like mine.’ My voice is stark and clumsy in the soft,
honeyed air.

My dad lays down his garden trowel and slowly wipes his
hands on the front of his thighs. I can hear the steady rise
and fall of his breathing.

I carry on before I lose my nerve. ‘And before they moved
she said something about her dad dying . . . and about you,
about that day, when you took me in there, when I—’ I stop.
I just cannot bring myself to say it.

The silence is blistering.

And then he says, ‘Is that what this is all about? Bring
back bad memories, did it?’

I shake my head. ‘No. It’s not just that. Dad, I was so
cruel to her when we were kids.’ I see his face cloud with
disappointment, just like it always did, shutting me out. But
I won’t stop now. I can’t. ‘But you forced us together, all the
time. I couldn’t understand why.’ My voice is getting shrill; I can’t help it. ‘I felt like you shoved me at her constantly,
and constantly I let you down.’

‘Was it really so hard for you to understand the concept
of being nice to someone less fortunate than yourself?’ he
starts in that weary voice that he has used on me so often
–
so
often – but I’m not having it. Not this time.

‘But why did I have to be so nice to her? Why did I even
have to know her? Why couldn’t we just have been the
strangers that we wanted to be?’

‘Laura? What’s going on?’ I can hear my mother, coming
striding across the lawn. ‘Laura!’ she calls, her voice sharp
with suspicion.

‘Heddy’s father worked for me a long time ago. I felt a
degree of responsibility towards them,’ my dad says quickly
and turns away from me, as if that is an end to it.

‘Do you know how judged I felt by you all the time? And
it seemed to me that she was the cause. I was caught in a
vicious circle. The more
disappointed
you were with me, the
more I hated her; and the more I hated her, the more disappointed
you got.’

‘Laura! I don’t think we want to be talking about this
now!’ my mum barks, joining us now, her face flushed from
her march down the garden.

But I carry on. ‘I was so cruel to her. The things I did—’
My voice cracks now. ‘That time Heddy broke her wrist. It
was my fault. I persuaded her to come to the graveyard after
school to meet some boy, and she got frightened and she ran
and fell over. It was my fault, and I just left her there.’

There, I have said it. My words fall like rocks in the
morning air. My parents stare at me in shock, and the flush
on my mother’s face drains clear away.

She recovers first, though. And she starts off on an outrage. ‘Well, you must tell them. You must apologize to Heddy and
to her mother straight away. I don’t care how long ago this
happened—’

‘I did,’ I say. ‘But Mrs Partridge knew already. She always
knew.’

Suddenly my dad sits down, right there on the grass, and
puts his head in his hands. ‘My God,’ he mutters, ‘what have
we done?’

‘We’ve done nothing,’ my mum snaps, ‘except do our best
for that family. Laura, you bring shame on us.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that? Don’t you think I’ve
hated
myself for the things that I’ve done? I hated Heddy,
but I hated myself too. Surely you could see that?’ My voice
catches and I’m breathing too fast. I feel like I am five years
old again, excluded from understanding. My mother glares
at me, her thin mouth working silently, dragging up the
words with which to condemn me again.

But my dad speaks before her. ‘Heddy lost her father,’ he
says, ‘and I felt responsible.’

I see him sitting down there, looking so old suddenly, and
so pale.

‘But why would you feel responsible for that?’ I ask.

And my mum says, ‘David!’ warningly, and to me, ‘Laura!’
– like who is she trying to stop? She looks from one to the
other of us, arms folded across her chest, fingers digging into
her skin.

Slowly my dad stands up. His hands hang by his sides,
helpless, dragging his shoulders down in a slope. ‘Mr Partridge
worked for the firm,’ he says and his voice is strained and
tired. ‘As a carpet fitter. He’d worked there for years, long
before I took over. When his Heddy was born same year as
you . . . well, he was so proud. He brought photos of her into the shop, showed them to everyone.’ He sighs, then
comes back to the point. ‘We got a big job in, at an office
block in Fayle,’ he says, ‘replacing all the flooring.’

‘It was still your father’s business then, David,’ my mum
butts in quickly. ‘Don’t you forget that.’

‘Yes, but I was in charge of the office.’ My dad’s face is
grey and pinched. ‘It was me that gave the instructions. It
was my decision. Go on in, I said, rip it all up.’ He gestures
with his hand, swiping at the air.
Rip it all up
.

I wait for him to continue. Suddenly, I am afraid to breathe.

‘And there was asbestos,’ he says simply. ‘In the old floor.’

I gasp. I can’t help myself.

‘But didn’t you check?’ I say. ‘Before he started?’ You always
check for asbestos,
always
. Even I know that, carpet-shop
owner’s daughter that I am. It’s the procedure. You check.
You
assume
, until you know otherwise.

‘I took a chance,’ he says shiftily. ‘We were in a hurry.’

Now maybe I am being really slow here, but I don’t quite
follow this. ‘But you must have known . . .’

My dad hunches his shoulders. He avoids my eye. ‘We
needed to get the job done quickly. The business was struggling.
There were bills to be paid.’

‘You mean you covered it up?’ I stare at him in disbelief.

‘Your father did what he had to do,’ my mother says curtly.
‘For the sake of the business.’

‘So you didn’t tell them, the Partridges? They didn’t know
about it?’

‘Of course not,’ my mum says. ‘What good could possibly
come of that? Your father would have lost the business!’

I can’t believe she says this. I think of Mr Partridge, confined
to his chair, and coughing himself slowly to death. ‘So you
watched him die?’ I say, and my father flinches. ‘You sacrificed Mr Partridge for the sake of a few pounds, and then
you watched him die?’ My mouth is filled with saliva and I
think I’m going to be sick. I swallow and swallow, but my
stomach is knotting into cramp.

‘Laura!’ snaps my mum, and then she looks round, sharply,
as if realizing she has spoken too loudly. She drops her voice
to an angry whisper. ‘What would you have us do, then?
Ruin
both
of our families? And the man smoked forty cigarettes
a day, don’t forget. For all we know, it might have been
them that killed him!’

I am too stunned to reply. I turn to my father for some
kind of explanation and he looks back at me reproachfully
with hurt, hangdog eyes, as if somehow he is the victim in
this.

‘I tried to make it up to them over the years,’ he says and
his voice is short with indignation. ‘I did what I could for
them. Helped them out when I could. And all I asked of you,
young lady, was that you be kind to their daughter.’

And thus he absolves himself. He speaks to me in that
accusatory tone, shifting, twisting the blame. He asked me
to be nice and I wasn’t. I let him down.

My mother – so visibly, quietly angry with me – says, ‘And
now there is absolutely nothing more to be said.’ And then
she links her arm through my father’s and starts steering him
back towards the house.

And so they pull away from me, as ever they did. As
always, a united front. I see my mother, glancing round
anxiously now lest anybody might have overheard. I see my
father, small and fallible and weak.

My parents, such pillars of the community.