This Perfect World (35 page)

And I think of Mr Partridge, grey-faced and wasting on
his slow slide to death; I think of that bed in their house with its stained and sunken mattress and Mrs Partridge
sitting on it, clutching at its history with her thin and desperate
hands.

I stand there in the bright sunshine as my parents walk
away from me and I am filled with a lifetime’s anger and
guilt.

But who am I to judge? We’re all culpable.

I sit down on the grass and have to spit, several times, to
clear my mouth. I am breathing too fast and too hard and
my heart is pounding. I try to calm myself. I draw up my
knees and link my hands around them so that I am hugged
into a ball. The sunshine is warm upon my back and there
is silence now, except for the birds in the trees and in the
distance the faint hum of a lawnmower. I breathe deeply and
smell the grass, the flowers, the soft morning air, and I feel
that I will choke.

On the day of Mr Partridge’s funeral I came home from
school to find my parents in the kitchen. I remember the
weirdness of bounding in to see my dad sitting at the table
in his black suit and tie, with his shoulders all hunched over
and his head resting in his hands. My mum was there too,
standing by the sink. She’d been saying something, but she
shut up as soon as she saw me, and so I walked into this
sudden, strange silence.

I stood there, and I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t
think
what
to say. The first thing I came out with was, ‘Mrs
Cookson kept us all in at break because some of the boys
were mucking around, but
I
wasn’t, so it wasn’t fair.’ And
still there was this silence, with me in the middle of it. My
dad didn’t even look up. So I started saying it again. ‘Mrs
Cookson kept us in and it wasn’t fair . . .’

It was nerves making me talk. Nerves making me say
whatever came into my head. Anyone could have seen that.
I was too freaked out by the sight of my dad sitting there
with his face in his hands. But behind me my mum snapped,
‘Laura!’ to shut me up, and my eyes smarted with tears.

‘
Dad
. . .’ I wailed and he looked up then, at last. And
he looked terrible, all pale-faced and his eyes were bloodshot
with dark smudges underneath them, like bruises. I
didn’t want to see my dad looking like that. I didn’t want
to see him looking at me like that. ‘What’s the matter?’ I
said. ‘It was only Mr Partridge . . .’

And what I meant was that Mr Partridge was just someone
we knew a bit. He wasn’t family. He wasn’t even a friend. I
couldn’t understand why my dad would be so sad.

But my dad closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to look
at me any more, and my mum snapped ‘Laura!’ again, followed
by, ‘Go upstairs! Now!’

‘Don’t worry!’ I shouted back, stung by the unfairness.
‘I’m going!’ And off I flounced, slamming the door behind
me.

But in the hall I stopped, and I listened. And I heard my
mother saying to my dad, ‘For heaven’s sake, David, you had
no choice.’

To which my dad replied, ‘Oh, but I did, Rita. I did have
a choice.’ Followed by the even scarier, ‘What kind of a man
am I?’

What kind of a man indeed?

I press my face into my knees, and so I sit, and I cry like a
child.

Here it begins, and here it ends.

Nothing will ever justify what I did to Heddy. Nothing
will excuse the taunts and the jeers and the goading. But I
see my father, always turning away from me, haunted by a
greater guilt. I see shame and secrecy, poisoning its way down
the line.

And hurt engenders hurt.

They are in the kitchen. My father is sitting at the table
looking woefully defensive. His hands are clasped on the
table in front of him, like in a prayer. My mother is standing
to the left of him, midway to putting the kettle on for tea.
They were talking, and now they stop, and so I walk in to
a hostile, loaded silence.

I am reminded of the day of that funeral. And of the
secrets kept from me, the damage done. And now that
those secrets are out, we are stripped bare, all of us. We are
parasites, feeding off the weak.

‘People like the Partridges don’t matter,’ I say. ‘They can
be manipulated, disposed of at will.’

‘Laura, you are being ridiculous,’ my mother says, and she
turns away from me, the colour rising in her face. She holds
the kettle under the tap, which she then flicks on hard so
that it blasts noisily, water against metal.

‘But people like us, we mustn’t lose face.’

My mother plugs in the kettle and takes two mugs from
the cupboard and slams them down on the counter. Two, not
three.

My father grips his hands and ignores me. I look at him,
and I see so much deceit that I can’t think what is real and
what isn’t, in anything he has ever said to me. I think of that
day when he carried me bleeding into the Partridges’ house,
and laid me down upon their sofa. I think of Heddy wishing that she had a father like mine, and of him saying to Mrs
Partridge
How are you? How are you managing?

I swallow, but the lump in my throat is a solid, hard mass.

‘How can you bear it?’ I say. ‘Knowing what you did.’

He doesn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to. He closes his
eyes, the better to shut me out. But what does he see there
inside his head? What peace does he find?

Over by the counter my mother has gone very, very still.

‘You used me,’ I say. My father’s eyelids flicker, but he
keeps them shut. ‘You expected me to somehow make up for
what you had done.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ my father whispers.

And my mother says, ‘Laura, please.’

‘But how could anyone make up for what you had done?
I made it worse. I hated Heddy Partridge and I hated myself,
too. And the reason that I hated Heddy and hated myself
was because of the guilt that you dumped on me.’ I speak
fast. My throat is burning. ‘Your guilt.’

I leave them in the kitchen. For half an hour I sit on the
single bed in their little spare room, too numb to do anything.
There is no going back from this. There’s a line through my
history, striking it out.

The house is silent. I gather up my things.

‘I’m going now.’

They are in the kitchen still, both of them sitting at the
table now, the empty mugs in front of them. My mother gets
up when I walk in, and starts fussing; she takes the mugs to
the sink, then picks up a tea towel and starts folding it in
her hands.

‘You don’t want to leave James any longer,’ she says, to which I say nothing. She shakes out that tea towel, and folds
it again. ‘And I expect you’ll want to avoid the traffic.’ She’s
relieved to see me go. They both are. It’s hardly surprising.

I look at my father. His face is tensed and closed.

‘We ought to tell them,’ I say. ‘The Partridges. We ought
to tell them what happened. They have a right to know.’

For seconds no one speaks. No one moves. Then my mother
puts the tea towel down and slowly wipes her hands on the
front of her skirt. It’s a similar gesture to the one Mrs Partridge
was always making; I can’t help but notice.

She says, ‘For heaven’s sake, Laura, what good would it
do now?’

My father looks up now, and I see the anguish in his eyes.
‘You do not know,’ he says, ‘how desperate I was. I was going
to lose the business. If I lost the business, we’d lose the house.’
He stretches his hands out in front of him as he speaks and
clutches at the air and lets it go again, repeatedly, clutching,
clutching, letting go. ‘You do not know,’ he says, ‘because
you were a child. Wanting your ballet lessons, and your parties,
and your pretty clothes.’ These last words he spits out, and
I stare at him, stunned. I think of my childhood with its best
of everything, and all of it spun from deceit. ‘I had a family
to feed,’ he says. ‘Bills to pay. I was desperate.’

‘But what about Mr Partridge?’ I say. ‘He had a family too.’

‘Do you not think I know that? Do you not think I regret
what I did, every single day of my life?’ He pushes his hands
into his hair now, and stays like that, with his head bowed,
elbows resting on the table. And I stand there and I look at
him, and feel my heart stripped raw.

We won’t tell the Partridges, of course. We all know that.
My mother is right: what good would it do now? It wouldn’t
bring absolution. Just hurt, on top of hurt.

To break the silence my mother says, ‘Let’s hope that
your next visit will be more pleasant, Laura.’ But then she
turns quickly away, as if realizing the improbability of her
words.

They come out to see me off, though. Both of them. And I
can’t help but be amazed at how they slip their social faces
back into place. There are one or two neighbours out and
about enjoying the sunshine now – my mother waves, my
father calls out
Morning!
No one would notice the slight
croak to his voice. I see them looking at me, these neighbours,
and I find myself holding my back up straight and
keeping my face pleasantly blank. How we perform, how we
always perform.

I get into the car. My mother taps on the window so that
I have to wind it down. She leans in and says, ‘You go home
now and make things up with James,’ and thus she attempts
to sweep all other matters back under the carpet, where she
can deal with them best. ‘I’m sure everything will be fine.’

Things won’t be fine, though. Of that I’m sure. Nothing
will ever be fine again.

And then my father comes shuffling up, and my mother
steps aside. He bends down so that his face is close to mine,
and when he sighs I feel it against my skin. For a long while
he doesn’t speak, and I just sit there and watch him struggling
for words. This is my father. There are tears in his eyes.
I see his jaw tensing, fighting for control.

‘I did a terrible thing,’ he says. ‘And I’ve had to live with
it ever since.’ He leans his hand on the car door, just below
the window, and I see that he is shaking. ‘Believe me, Laura,
I am sorry. Truly, truly sorry. For what I did to them . . . and
to you, too.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘But it will never be enough, will it?
It will never make things right.’

And in my father’s eyes I see the damage that we have
done, both of us. I see the limits of what we are.

With thanks to Sara Menguc, Jenny Geras and the
staff at Macmillan, my husband Nick, and my family
and friends for their support and enthusiasm.

First published 2010 by Macmillan

This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-53613-4 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-53612-7 EPUB

Copyright © Suzanne Bugler 2010

The right of Suzanne Bugler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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