This Perfect World (3 page)

Honestly, you’d think she’d said she was planning to take
a lover, the way the others react. Bags are dropped and sweatshirts
and jackets abandoned half-put-on as they clamour
around, almost shouting over each other in their efforts to
get their recommendations heard.

Selina says get the top-of-the-range, definitely; you never
know when muffins and buns might be needed.

Felicity says it’s the bread that matters, not the buns. And
so a debate ensues: do we want buns, do we not want buns?
I find myself caught up in it all, strangely fascinated, and
lose a good five minutes trying to escape.

‘It all comes down to the rise,’ Steph declares at last, and
everyone agrees with this. ‘Other features are all very well,
but what you really need to be sure of is a good rise. Mine’s
excellent,’ she says. ‘I just bung in the ingredients before I
go to bed and I’m guaranteed a nice, big, hot loaf in the
morning.’

I never saw so much excitement after a yoga class.

Then when I finally get to John Lewis’s haberdashery
department I find all the grey fake-fur has gone, which sends
me into a panic. I mean, why can’t Thomas just go as Mowgli
in a pair of red pants, for God’s sake? Why does he have to
be Baloo? Why does the school have to go and pick
The
Jungle Book
for its theme this year?

The assistant suggests that I buy grey felt, and some white
fake-fur to sew onto the tummy, but I’m not so sure about
this. I can’t remember seeing Baloo the bear with a white
furry tummy, but she assures me it’s what other people will
be doing.

‘There’ve been loads of them in since the grey fake-fur ran
out,’ she tells me cheerfully, ‘and it’s what I’ve suggested to
all of them. Little bit of white fur on the tummy will make
a nice bear.’ And it would have to be just a little bit of white
fur, because that’s running low now too, and so is the grey
felt.

John Lewis’s haberdashery department is packed with
women I recognize from the playground. We must keep the
department in business, with all these costumes we have to
make. If it’s not concerts, it’s book week; if it’s not book
week, it’s hat parades. I sometimes wonder if the teachers do
it for a laugh. Clearly they think we have nothing better to
do all day than sit at home and sew.

I just have time to grab a sandwich from Costa, which I
eat in the car on the way to Liz’s because I’m starving, and
I promised Arianne we’d go straight on to the playground
when I pick her up from nursery, and Thomas has got a
tennis lesson after school.

And in the evening James will come home to his supper and
ask me how things are in Ashton. He loves to hear about
the little social intrigues that go on here during the day. And
the distance between the school playground and Sainsbury’s
can be quite a hotbed of domestic drama. There’ll always be
something to tell him, something to make him chuckle and
smile fondly.

How easy it must be to look so affectionately upon the
little world when you don’t have to be in it all day.

To James, life in Ashton is a pleasant diversion from the
real world where important things happen, the world of city
finance and city law and city men. This is his little escape,
his weekend retreat, and to listen to me recounting tales
about my little day in my little world is easy entertainment
indeed.

I didn’t tell James about Mrs Partridge phoning last night.
I didn’t tell him about Heddy. Instead I told him about
Belinda and her French songs and about the madness of
French classes for three-year-olds. He laughed, as I knew he
would. And tonight I’ll tell him about the excitement at yoga
over the bread-making machines, and he’ll laugh about that.
And he’ll probably say something like ‘Don’t you ever get a
bread-making machine’, and then I’ll laugh too. But sometimes,
just sometimes, I think the laugh might be a tiny bit
on me.

I’d like to say I don’t even have time to think about Heddy
and Mrs Partridge in my busy, busy day. I’d like to believe
I’ve forgotten all about them. I’ve certainly convinced myself
that Mrs Partridge won’t ring back, but she does. On the
dot of half-past seven. The phone rings and before I even
answer I know that it’s her, just as I know, then, that she
won’t give up.

‘Violet Partridge here, dear,’ she says. ‘I do hope this is a
convenient time?’

And what can I say to that? I think she’s got it worked
out already: seven-thirty, I’ll be here.

She carries on, ‘I was wondering, dear. Have you had a
chance yet to speak to your husband?’

‘Well, not really, no,’ I say. ‘Mrs Partridge, he is very busy.’

‘Only I was thinking it might be better if I popped over.
We could have a proper talk then, you know. It might be
easier for you, dear.’

‘Mrs Partridge, really, there’s no need—’

‘Oh, it’s no trouble, dear,’ she says. And then I stand there,
frozen, with the phone clamped against my ear while she tells
me how she’s already worked out the bus route to Ashton
and that she’ll only need to change twice. ‘It won’t take me
long, dear,’ she says. ‘Hour and a half at the most, and I’m
used to the buses. So perhaps if you could just tell me your
address, dear, and which day might be convenient . . .’

I cannot imagine Violet Partridge on my doorstep, in my
house. It cannot happen. Yet she knows my name, my phone
number, the town in which I live. How difficult would it be
for her to track me down? I picture her, walking the streets
of Ashton, knocking on doors until she finds me. I picture
this, and panic has me saying, ‘No, Mrs Partridge, please. I’ll
come to you.’

And two minutes later I’ve arranged to go to her house,
the following Thursday.

Violet Partridge’s house is just as I remember it. I pull up
outside in my car and sit there for a moment, looking at it.

I’m surprised at how nervous I feel. It’s always odd, going
back, revisiting the past, so to speak, but this is doubly unsettling
because I never liked being here. I never wanted to come
back here, to this house, in this dreary little road. I never
thought I’d be here again.

Memory suddenly flashes up of the last time I was here,
some twenty years ago now, but I force that memory back,
right back. I just can’t bear to think about it. And I can’t bear
to think about Mrs Partridge remembering that time too,
though she does. Of course she does. That’s why I’m here.

At least, that’s part of the reason.

The house looks strangely empty. It’s a bright, beautiful
day already, but the windows are all shut and darkened by
heavy net curtains in great need of a wash. The paint on the
upstairs window frames is badly blistered and peeling; I can
see it flaking from here. Both cottages are pebble-dashed, but
the people next door have painted theirs an unlikely turquoise
colour, in harsh, brutal contrast to Mrs Partridge’s original,
time-darkened grey. A large crack is spreading down from
under the guttering, starting in the middle of the two houses
and then veering off down Mrs Partridge’s side. I try to
remember if it was always there, but I can’t.

It must be hard for Mrs Partridge to look after the house
by herself. It must have been hard for her back then, too,
when Heddy’s dad was alive but sitting in that chair all the
time, slowly fading away. I can’t imagine Heddy’s brother
ever doing much to help.

There’s a car outside next door, up on jacks, where the
garden used to be. It’s one of those big American cars, black
and mean-looking, with its bonnet propped open and rusting,
like a wide-open mouth. They’ve taken their half of the front
fence away, to get this car in, but the gate post is still there,
complete with gate standing closed and idle on its own. I
wonder if their dogs would still bark at me, but when I open
the car door there is silence except for the twittering of birds
and the distant, dull hum of traffic.

Mrs Partridge’s garden is overgrown; mostly it’s concreted
over, with a square patch in the middle planted with shrubs
and bushes whose unpruned stalks have grown tall and thin
and now thrust out at random, sparsely leaved, fighting for
air with the weeds and stinging nettles. The gate is stiff and
catches on the concrete when I push it open. I give it a hard
shove and glance down, and see millions of ants swarming
in and out of the cracks on the pathway, a shocking burst
of activity in this unnerving stillness.

I press the bell at the front door, but it doesn’t chime the
tune I’m expecting, the tune I remember so well. Instead it
just gives a short, flat buzz – as if it would have been a ring,
only the batteries have worn right down.

She opens the door straight away as if she’s been watching
me, and this unnerves me even more. I’d half-convinced myself
no one was home.

‘Come in, dear,’ she says and steps back, into the darkness.

The plastic strips have gone. I walk straight into the hall
and it’s the smell that hits me, it’s always the smell. We had
a boy next door to us when I was a girl, Andrew; two years
older than me he was, and sensible. He went on to be a
policeman when he grew up. Neighbours the other side of
him left him in charge of their cat when they went away and
he took me with him once to feed it. I remember how strange
their house smelled, and how I didn’t like it.

‘It’s just their family smell,’ Andrew said. ‘Every family has
its own smell.’

Ours didn’t, I was sure. I never smelled it.

Mrs Partridge’s house smells of her whole life. You could
pick it apart if you were an expert, some sort of smell-pathologist.
You could trace every meal eaten, every circumstance,
every celebration and counter-celebration. Every
moment recorded by Mrs Partridge’s cooking, the food and
the odours from the people eating the food. The smell of their
clothes, their hair and their bodies, the cigarettes they smoked.
The smell of their emotions, of their stillness in rest, of their
fear, all trapped within the closed-window timelessness.

I follow her into the living room. She’s a thin, trousered
figure, smaller than I remember and very slightly stooped.

‘Do sit down, dear,’ she says, gesturing to the sofa, and I
get to see her face then, for the first time. It’s just as it always
was, only older of course, more wrinkled, the skin stretched
paper-thin above the hollows of her cheeks. Mrs Partridge
is one of those people who always look old. Her hair has
been grey for as long as I can remember and she’s still wearing
it in that same short, rollered old-lady style. It’s somewhat
thinner now, though; I can see the white of her scalp
through the curls. And there are angry red blotches on her
forehead, looking sore, as if she’s been picking at them. The
eyes are just the same: dark, over-round. Like Heddy’s, only
sharper.

It’s the same sofa, I’m sure it is. The same or nearly the
same. Brown, everything is brown: the sofa, the carpet,
the colour of the air. I bend to perch on the edge and the
cushions give beneath me. I remember lying right here with
my face pressed against the back of the sofa, I remember the
dusty, biscuit smell of the material. I remember the shame,
the terrible shame, and I feel it all over again, now.

I can’t meet Mrs Partridge’s eye. She hovers before me,
bony hands busy, twitching, pulling her tunic top down over
her thin hips, fussing, straightening out the cloth. She’s staring
at me. I half-expect her to say
My, how you’ve grown
, but
isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t all this ridiculous? She’s as nervous
as I am, standing there, pulling at her clothes.

‘How are your parents?’ she asks.

‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘Thank you. The move went well. They’re
settling in nicely, enjoying the Devon life.’ I ramble on, knowing
I ought to be asking her back
How’s Heddy?
But I can’t,
not in that flippant, chit-chat way.

Then she goes off to make coffee and I am alone in that
room. Mr Partridge’s chair is still there in the corner, just as
if he might come back and sit in it sometime. The room is
eerily quiet without his cough and the TV blaring out. The
TV is still there, but it’s been turned to face the sofa now.
There’s a little vase of plastic flowers standing on top of it.
There are things everywhere, all sorts of things: a Spanish
fan opened out, propped up behind an ashtray on the mantelpiece
over the gas fire; a small carriage clock, not working,
next to that; and a pair of china cats. And in between these
things there are photos, so many photos. I push myself up
from the sofa to look at them. They are of children, lots of
children. Or are they of the same two or three children taken
in different times, different places? It’s impossible to tell.
They’ve all got the same round, dark eyes. I look carefully
at their faces, to try to link them. There’s a school photo of
a boy and a girl together, another one of just a boy. But that
baby could be any one of those three or someone else; that
toddler the same, grown now into the boy right next to him,
captured at a different time, in school shirt and toothless
grin. Other people’s lives, captured in snapshots, but distorted
too, misleading.

I can hear Mrs Partridge in the kitchen. She’s a long time
making that coffee and I move away from the fireplace to
the sideboard, which is next to the small dining table,
near the front window. The big photo there catches my attention,
the one in the middle. It’s of Heddy, unmistakably.
Heddy on her wedding day. Heddy in a white puffy frock
with her heavy hair pulled back from her face. She’s smiling.
Like the cat that got the cream, she’s smiling. And next to
this, among more pictures of unknown children, I find Heddy
again, still smiling, though not as much, holding a baby in
her arms. Her fat arms; I am shocked to see how fat she is.

I hear Mrs Partridge behind me, coming rattling into the
room with a tray in her hands. I turn around, uncomfortable
at being caught snooping.