This Perfect World (4 page)

‘I was looking at the photos,’ I say, somewhat unnecessarily.
‘They’re lovely.’ I point to Heddy in her white frock.
‘She looks lovely.’

‘Yes, dear. Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Partridge puts the tray
down on the little coffee table, beside a big crystal ashtray,
one of those old-fashioned round things with five or six
ledges cut out around the edge, for communal smoking.
There is one solitary cigarette butt in the middle of the ashtray,
squashed down and fallen over, onto its side, in its little pool
of ash. The milk is already in the cups with the coffee, but
she’s put sugar in a bowl and biscuits on a plate – custard
creams – arranged in a circle. Instantly, I am embarrassed.

‘She was very proud. We were all very proud,’ Mrs Partridge
says, and she rubs her hands up and down the front of her
hips again. She gazes across at that photo, distracted for a
moment, eyes fixed, thoughts elsewhere. On Heddy’s wedding,
probably.

I feel like I ought to sit down, but suddenly I’m not sure
where to sit. Are we to perch, side by side on the only sofa,
one at each end, and talk across the gap in between us? Mrs
Partridge seems to pick up on my indecision; she snaps up
her head suddenly and stares directly at me. ‘He wasn’t a
bad man, John, Heddy’s husband,’ she says, and then she
does something very odd. She goes over to Mr Partridge’s
chair and, with the force of her slight body behind it, she
pushes it round to face the coffee table and the sofa. Then
she sits in it, a tiny person, shrunk against the curved, high
back. It’s awkward, from that position, in that chair, for her
to reach over across the table, but she does. She takes my
coffee cup off the tray with her skinny arm stretching right
out, and the cup clatters precariously in its saucer as she puts
it on the table.

‘Coffee?’ she says and I sit down on the sofa, back where
I should have been, where I should have stayed when she
was out in the kitchen. ‘Biscuit?’ she asks.

The sofa has sunk so far beneath me that it’s a struggle
to wriggle forward and take one, but I have to; she’s holding
out the plate. I haven’t had a custard cream in years and I
couldn’t eat one now; my insides are tight, plaited up. I take
one and put it on the saucer and immediately I hate myself.
What must she think of me, taking her biscuit and just sticking
it on my saucer like that? What must she think of me?

What did she ever think of me?

What indeed? She watches me with her dark, knowing
eyes.

‘Yes, she got married.’ There’s an edge to her voice, a
defensive edge. ‘When she was twenty.’

My mind races back – did I know this, did I know that
Heddy was married? I must have done. My parents would
have mentioned it, I’m sure they would. But at twenty I was
away at university, having one boyfriend after another, having
a great time. Why would I have given a second thought to
someone – anyone, not just Heddy – getting married?
Married
,
for God’s sake, at just twenty years old.

‘He worked for the gas board.’ She picks up her cup and
saucer, then lifts the cup and sips. The coffee is way too hot
still and her lips pucker. ‘He was a good man,’ she says, and
I can tell she’s said this a thousand times, if only to herself.
‘A good man.’

I’m about to say something kind, something nice about
the gas board, or about marrying young instead of going to
university – not that Heddy Partridge would ever have gone
to university – but she puts her cup back down suddenly
with a clatter. ‘She put on weight when Nathan was born.
Before that. But it was hard to lose, you know. She always
had trouble with her weight, always wanted to lose a few
pounds.’

She is staring straight at me and I place my cup, still full,
back down on the table.

‘She was depressed.’ She says it like she’s been told to say
it. Like she doesn’t really understand the word, but she’s
practised saying it, over and over. ‘She was pregnant before
Nathan, but she lost the baby, late on, at five months. Awful,
it was for her, awful.’

She rummages in the pocket of her tunic, agitated, and
pulls out her cigarettes and a lighter. ‘You don’t mind, do
you, dear?’ she asks and I shake my head, though really I
do mind. She sticks a cigarette between pursed lips, lights it
and draws deeply, audibly. I try not to shudder. She leaves
it in her mouth and it bobs up and down as she says again,
‘She was depressed, after that. She wouldn’t go out, not for
ages. And she put on a lot of weight, just sitting at home all
day. Then after Nathan was born we all thought she’d feel
better, but she didn’t. She became . . .
unreliable
.’

She takes the cigarette out of her mouth and taps the ash
into the ashtray, taps it and taps it. ‘She started doing things.
To herself. Harming herself.’ She shakes her head vigorously
then and takes another long draw on that cigarette. ‘I don’t
think she would ever have done anything to that baby, but
. . . I made her go to the doctor. I took her there myself. He
said she was depressed, he said it can happen sometimes –
with the hormones, you know. He gave her some pills, but
they didn’t help, not really.’

Again she draws on the cigarette, and taps the ash while
she exhales like a dragon, through her nostrils. I pull back
a little, trying to avoid the smoke, though there isn’t much
point really. It’s like a fog, wrapping itself around us.

‘It wasn’t easy for her, on her own all day. With a new
baby.’ She stares at me through the haze. ‘John wasn’t a bad
man,’ she says again, anxious that I understand this, ‘but they
bought that house. In Barton Village. A nice little house.’
Another drag and a sip of coffee this time too; she sips as
the smoke comes out of her nose. I pick up my cup again,
grateful for something to do, even though it means half-standing
for a moment from the dip of the sagging sofa.
‘They had money worries. I don’t blame him,’ she says and
her eyes are startlingly bright.

Don’t blame him for what, exactly? And where is he now?
Why isn’t he looking after Nathan? There’s more, I know
there is. She’s picking her words carefully.

‘He did his best I’m sure,’ she says, but I wonder if she
really means it. ‘It was hard for both of them. She was
depressed,’ she says, again and again. ‘She was
depressed
.’

I can’t break away from her stare. She’s like a hawk, clinging
on.

‘She started doing things,’ she says, and my mind is racing
ahead, thinking
What things?
‘In public. With Nathan there
too.’ She sucks on her cigarette again and this time I notice
that her hand is shaking. ‘They took her in, once or twice,
gave her more pills, you know, and she’d seem all right for
a while, but then . . . She kept doing it. It got worse. She was
. . . cutting herself. People don’t like to see it, you know.’ The
ash has built right up again, but instead of tipping it, this
time she grinds the butt into the ashtray, down and down
until the shank bursts and frayed tobacco curls into the ash.
‘Then they kept her in,’ she says simply, letting go of the
butt. ‘That last time. They kept her in.’

I sit on that sofa, stricken. Stricken with the awful awareness
that Mrs Partridge is on the verge of crying; stricken
that I am there at all, hearing this stuff. I think of Arianne
at nursery. I think of her learning her letters and her numbers.
I think of her playing alongside Belinda’s daughter, Tasha’s
daughter, and all the other daughters from our safe Ashton
world. I think of Thomas at school, and of the cakes I have
to make for the cake sale on Friday and of the new wellies
needed for next week’s school trip. I think of these things
because I want them to pull me back into my own life, away
from here, but it doesn’t quite happen. Instead they just highlight
the strangeness, the total surreality of my being here at
all.

Desperately I try to think of something to say, to ease the
tension.

‘Are these all your grandchildren?’ I ask, nodding towards
the photos on the mantelpiece, and I would have got up and
gone over to have another look at them, but I’m so buried
in that sofa, and anyway Mrs Partridge doesn’t suddenly perk
up the way I’d hoped she would. She puts her cup back down
with a sigh and gropes up her sleeve for a tissue, which she
then screws up tight and rolls between agitated fingers. She
doesn’t even turn her head to look at the mantelpiece.

‘Ian’s children, mostly,’ she says at last. ‘He’s got three.
Two boys and a girl. Twins, the youngest two. And another
one on the way. They live up near Birmingham. Near his
wife’s family.’ She sighs again. ‘I don’t get up to see them
much these days, which is a shame. It’s good for Nathan to
see his cousins, you know, to be with the young ones. To be
part of a proper family.’ She chews on the inside of her lip
as she talks, and the tissue is getting twisted up so tight that
bits of it shred off, onto her lap. ‘But Heddy needs me here.
I can’t leave Heddy. Ian comes down when he can, does what
he can, but’ – she shrugs her thin shoulders, resigned –
‘Linda’s having a difficult time with the pregnancy. She needs
him up there.’

I try to follow all this. I try to imagine Ian Partridge as a
family man, but it’s impossible. All I can think of is the big
slob of a boy who used to slouch on the sofa gawping at me
whenever I had to come in here to wait for Heddy. I can’t
imagine how anyone would want to get busy having his babies.

‘This is Nathan,’ Mrs Partridge says, ‘Heddy’s boy.’ Still
clutching that tissue, she put her hands on the arms of the
chair and pushes herself onto her feet. She takes a school
photo down from the mantelpiece and hands it to me. Of
course it’s Nathan. Of course it’s Heddy’s boy, with those
eyes and that thick, dark hair.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.
He looks nice
hardly sounds appropriate, so I say nothing and just look at
the photo for a while, feigning interest. I’d have given it back
to her, after a suitable time, but she sits back down again
and gets herself another cigarette out and lights it, so I’m
left holding the photo, left looking at Heddy reincarnated.

This is all too weird. And time is getting on; I’m supposed
to be meeting Penny for lunch. I’m beginning to think that
Mrs Partridge just wants someone to talk to, and I’m beginning
to hope that the only help required of me is to sit here
and listen.

‘I worry for that boy,’ Mrs Partridge says through a cloud
of smoke. She leaves the cigarette in her mouth while she
puts her lighter back in her pocket, and her lips purse around
it, deep lines creasing downwards. ‘Oh, I do my best for him.
He goes to the school here, where you and Heddy went. He’s
settled in well, considering, but’ – she takes another slow
drag on her cigarette and holds it in for a long, long time
before the smoke weaves slowly out from her nose – ‘he
hasn’t seen his mother for two months. Two months.’ Her
eyes are bright with emphasis and I look back down at the
photograph again to escape the glare. ‘It’s hard for him,’ she
says. ‘Very hard.’

She taps the cigarette over the ashtray now, and keeps on
tapping it, after the ash has fallen. ‘It’s hard for Heddy, too.
Stuck in that place. I took him to see her once,’ she says,
and I look up, curious, in spite of myself. ‘But she’d trashed
her room. Trashed it.’ It’s strange to hear a word like ‘trash’
coming from a woman like Mrs Partridge; suddenly I have
this weird image of American TV, of rock stars, of guitars
smashing against hotel mirrors. ‘It was awful,’ she says. ‘Awful
for him, and for her. They had to hold her down – I’ll never
forget how she screamed and screamed – they held her down
and gave her something, you know, in her arm, to put her
to sleep. He saw it all.’

She stares at me and I stare back now, appalled. I have
the strangest feeling, sitting on that sofa, sinking into those
cushions, that this is all some kind of mental sinking mud,
gluing me in.

‘I need to get her out of that place,’ she says and she holds
my gaze. I cannot pull away. ‘I need to get her out, but the
doctors, they just gave her pills and more pills. They
put
her
in there. She needs to get out. She needs to be with her son.’
She puffs on the cigarette. It seems as if more smoke is going
in than coming out: two inhales for one exhale. I watch. I’m
counting. I have to concentrate on something.

‘I need to get her out,’ she says again. ‘But I can’t do it
on my own. I’ve tried, but . . . I need help. Your husband, he
might know what to do . . .’

She knocks the ash off her cigarette, then grinds the butt
into the ashtray, squeezing it out, dead. I think perhaps I’ll
quote James now, say
Go to the Citizens Advice
, and get
myself off the hook, but then she stares directly at me and
says, ‘You’ll help us, won’t you, dear? You understand; you
had a little problem once yourself, I remember. You’ll help
poor Heddy, dear, won’t you?’

She sits there staring at me, letting me know that she
remembers my little problem, as she calls it, making me
remember it too, but I don’t want to remember. Anyway, it’s
more an embarrassment than a problem. It’s history.

I want it to stay history.

‘Of course I’ll help, Mrs Partridge, if I can,’ I say, because
what else can I say? ‘But I’m afraid I really have to go now.
I’ve got an appointment.’

Disappointment crosses her face, followed by panic. She
shoots forward in her chair, sticks an arm out across the
table and grabs me by the wrist. ‘So soon?’ she says. ‘There’s
more, there’s . . . other things.’

I’m not sure I want to hear these other things. I try to
extricate my arm, but she’s holding on to me, tight. Suddenly
I can’t breathe for the smoke and the gloom and the weight
of Heddy’s problems and Mrs Partridge’s problems – and
God help me if my problems are dragged up now, too. I have
to get out. I have to get back into the real world, into
my
world.