This Perfect World

by Suzanne Bugler

  Heddy’s in a room on her own. There’s a small round window in the door, which I’d have liked to look through before going in, as a sort of easing-in measure, but the window’s too high for Mrs Partridge, so she pushes the door right open and in we go.

  She smells of shit, faintly. That’s the first thing I notice when I walk into Heddy’s room, that and how fat she is. How incredibly fat. Puffed up and bloated and swollen. There’s a large piece of gauze taped onto the flesh where her neck would end and her chest begin, but on Heddy they all blend into one, chin, neck, chest. The back of the bed is tilted upwards so that she can sit, propped up by pillows. Yet she gives the impression of being boneless, of sinking into herself. The dressing on her neck serves to hold up her face, else it would slide down into the rest of her, and her body’s held in place by the blanket tucked up tight around her. It’s a big baby blanket, yellow and holey, pulled tight across the mass of her body. Her arms are out on top, lying straight down, as if they’ve been placed there, as if they have no movement of their own. The fat cuffs her wrists in folds. All down her arms there are crisses and crosses, much like my own, only newer, redder, more clumsily done. How bizarre that we should wear the same pattern on our skin, Heddy Partridge and me.

  Mrs Partridge goes to the side of the bed and takes hold of Heddy’s fat, limp hand. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you, dear,’ she says, patting that hand with her own skinny one. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘here’s Laura Cresswell. You remember Laura Cresswell, don’t you, dear? Of course you do.’

  I stand at the end of the bed and I pray to God that Heddy Partridge doesn’t remember me. ‘Hello, Heddy,’ I say, kinder than I’ve ever said it before. But I do not know if she hears me or even sees me; Heddy’s eyes are open, but she is somewhere else. Her eyes are wide, stark, like a rabbit’s before it dies.

  There’s a bit of dribble, bubbling out at the corner of her mouth. Mrs Partridge takes the tissue from her coat pocket and dabs at Heddy’s face. It’s a tender act; I watch, transfixed. While she’s there, up close, she checks the fixings holding down the dressing on Heddy’s neck, the strips of plaster stuck onto her flesh. She loosens her gown a little, easing it away from Heddy’s skin where it is starting to chafe, along the edge. It’s a hospital gown. ‘She’s got nighties, of course she has,’ Mrs Partridge tells me, ‘but this is easier, you know, for washing her, and tending to her needs.’

  Heddy’s breasts roll down her body underneath the cotton, like the vast slide-down of a cliff, one mound barely discernible from the mound beneath. I have never seen anyone so fat. Not in real life. Not outside of magazines and modern-day freak-show documentaries on TV. And then how superior we feel, looking on, how oh-my-God-how-awful titillated and gloriously repulsed. I mean, how could anyone let themselves become so obscene?

  By sitting out endless days in a hospital bed, that is how. Unable to move. Body static, dead but not dead.

  Mrs Partridge is busy now, unpacking the contents of her bag, the towel and the wash-things, and placing them on the small wheeled table at the end of the bed. She takes a hairbrush from the washbag and starts to brush Heddy’s lank, greasy black hair away from her face and over her shoulders. Lovingly she brushes it, as if it wasn’t plastered flat and unwashed to her head at all. She brushes it much the way I brush Arianne’s hair and the similarity shocks me, horrifies me. She pushes that brush just as I would through Arianne’s springy, baby-soft curls. I baulk at the tenderness. How would I feel if this was Arianne – in however many harsh and damaging years’ time – numbed out and bloated by the life I’d given her, worn out, yet still my baby?

  Suddenly, ridiculously, the effort of not crying overrides everything else. There is a lump in my chest the size of a washing basket and I feel my whole head about to dissolve. I cannot believe I am here, pulled up like this, made witness to this tragedy.

  At eleven-thirty lunch arrives on its white plastic tray. Mrs Partridge takes it and mashes it up with the fork, like baby food. Shepherd’s pie it is, apparently, and carrots and potato. She mashes it up and spoons it into Heddy and, like a good girl, Heddy gobbles it up. There’s sponge pudding for afters, with custard. Heddy gobbles this up, too. Mrs Partridge scoops up the spill that runs down Heddy’s chin and spoons it back in, just like she’s feeding a baby. Heddy eats it all up, loose mouth sucking it in. She registers no difference in taste.

  And then comes the toileting, as Mrs Partridge calls it. The minute lunch is finished, the tray is put aside and it is all hurry, hurry; a bedpan is found and there is much shifting of blankets and much shifting of Heddy. Mrs Partridge is panting from the exertion. She calls for a nurse, but the nurse doesn’t come. I should help. I know I should, but I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.

  Heddy flops over as she moves sideways, off the bedpan, and she moans then, a low guttural sound. I go to Mrs Partridge’s aid, I have to – she’s struggling to put the bedpan aside without tipping it, and at the same time trying to hold on to Heddy. I go round to the other side of the bed and push Heddy back up into the middle. She’s very heavy, and her skin is warm and soft under my hands. I think of all the times over the years when I have avoided – successfully – having to touch Heddy Partridge.

  Mrs Partridge presses the bell to call the nurse again, twice. ‘It’s always the same,’ she complains, red in the face, anxious. ‘Always. They don’t have the staff, that’s the trouble. Poor Heddy would be left to herself half the time if it wasn’t for me.’ She rearranges the pillows as I hold on to Heddy; between us we get her back in place. I’m still holding on to her shoulders when she makes that moaning noise again and looks up at me. She seems to be coming round, coming back from wherever she’s been, and I can feel her trying to place me. Her eyes are close to mine, filled with fear and confusion, and I pull back.

  ‘Nathan?’ she asks and her voice is deep, not at all as I remember it. But how would I remember it? When did I ever hear Heddy say anything? Our shared childhood whizzes through my head and all I can hear is my own shrill voice, sneering, jeering, putting her down.

  ‘Nathan?’ she calls again, louder, and she’s staring at me, as if I might have Nathan hidden behind my back, ready to produce him at any moment.

  I stare back at her, helpless. Mrs Partridge is at her side, shushing her, and stroking back her hair and tucking it behind her ear. Then the nurse does come in, carrying a tray bearing a little dish with two pills in it with one hand, and checking the watch pinned to her dress with the other.

  ‘Nathan!’ Heddy barks, at the nurse now, and Mrs Partridge hushes her again. And water is poured into a cup and the pills popped into Heddy’s mouth, followed by the water, which spills out a little, over her lip.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, these pills . . . I don’t know, I don’t know . . .’ murmurs Mrs Partridge as she mops up Heddy’s mouth. The nurse is inspecting the dressing on Heddy’s neck, peeling it back, peeping inside, and sticking it down again. Then she’s checking Heddy’s pulse, fingers probing Heddy’s swollen wrist, her lips moving silently as she counts out Heddy’s heartbeat against her watch. Heddy is starting to cry in short, snuffling sobs. Thin tears slide out of her eyes and snot bubbles up from her nose. It makes me feel sick to look, but I can’t turn away. I am useless.

  I am useless as Mrs Partridge fills a dish with warm water from the sink and gently washes Heddy’s face and hands with the flannel from her bag, and pats her dry with the towel. I am useless as, between them, Mrs Partridge and the nurse shift Heddy forward a little and loosen her gown and things are done with talcum powder. And all the time Mrs Partridge murmurs soothingly, a comforting stream of There, there, dear, hush, now, dear and All better now, all better. I listen to Mrs Partridge’s words, wanting them to comfort me. My arms hang like heavy weights from my sides; I cannot lift them. I cannot do a thing. The lump in my chest has grown to the size of a laundry room. I can barely breathe, I certainly cannot speak.

  Finally they are finished and Heddy is settled bac
k down, tucked up. The nurse yanks the pole on the side of the bed and Heddy is horizontal, willed into sleep. All three of us watch her for a minute, looking at her waxy face and closed eyes, as if waiting to be sure they don’t open again. It is like looking at a corpse, checking to see that it’s dead.

  Then Mrs Partridge starts rolling up her towel and gathering up her hairbrush and things and putting them in her bag. The nurse mops something off the floor with a length of blue paper towel yanked violently from the dispenser by the sink. There’s a bin by the door, a bright-yellow bin bag suspended inside a metal frame; she stamps her heavy black shoe down on the pedal at its base and the lid flips back with a clank. In goes the paper towel. Then she rips off another sheet, smaller this time, and drapes it over Heddy’s bedpan. She stacks the bedpan on the brown tray alongside the plate and bowl and cutlery that Heddy ate her lunch from, and starts heading for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Mrs Partridge snaps. The nurse stops at the door, tray in hand, and I am startled out of my mute and horrified stupor. ‘I want to see Dr Millar now, please.’

  The hard mass in my chest vanishes and my heart kicks off on a fast, panicked tattoo. I glance at my watch. It’s twenty to one. I don’t want to see the doctor now. I just want to get out of here and go home.

  ‘Dr Millar’s not available,’ the nurse says, and relief flushes through me. The nurse turns back to the door and raises her free hand to push it open.

  ‘Now listen here,’ Mrs Partridge says, and there is a sharp crackle to her voice. ‘This lady’ – she points in my direction, jabbing at the air with her bony finger – ‘has come all this way specially. We’re not going till we’ve seen the doctor.’

  I feel a scene coming and I don’t want it. I just want to go. ‘Really, Mrs Partridge, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure—’

  ‘It does matter,’ Mrs Partridge interrupts me. She’s starting to tremble; I can see it, her little body vibrating inside her clothes. My racing heart starts racing even faster. ‘You’ve been so good to us, all of your family. Always been so good to us. Now here you are, given up your time. I can’t have you going home without talking to the doctor.’

  Something like guilt, only thicker and deeper and disturbingly cold, builds inside my stomach. The crackle in Mrs Partridge’s voice has turned into a crack, and the muscles in her cheeks and around her mouth are quivering and twitching at a startling pace.

  The nurse watches Mrs Partridge, and me, that tray balanced on her arm as if she is a waitress. Her face is carefully impassive. ‘Well, you can’t see Dr Millar,’ she says. ‘It’s his day at the Mordon. Dr Wolf’s doing Mitley today. He’s down the corridor. You can talk to him if you like.’ And out the door she goes.

  I imagine her pasting a smile on her face, gliding among non-existent white-linened tables and serving up the dish of the day from that tray upon her arm.

  We find Dr Wolf down the corridor, just as the nurse predicted. He is writing up his notes, having just finished with the patients who are awake and who are walking round and round, or sitting, or rocking, in the two glass-walled lounges at the far end of Mitley Wing. To get to him, we have walked past a few closed rooms like Heddy’s, and one main ward with many beds, some with discernible lumps in them, some without.

  He is a tall man, blond, with floppy hair that falls down into his eyes. He is young, too young, as far as Mrs Partridge is concerned. I can tell this by the way she starts muttering and mumbling as we approach him.

  ‘Always the same,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Always the same. Not enough staff. Nobody cares. What am I to do? What am I to do?’

  The clack of our shoes echoing on the tiled floor alerts him to our approach. He raises his head from his notes, tilting it to one side, and smiles a tired doctor’s smile.

  ‘Mrs Partridge,’ he says kindly, putting out his hand. ‘And you are Mrs—?’

  ‘Hamley,’ I say, and one by one we shake his hand, then follow him back down the corridor to the small office at the start of Mitley Wing. He walks in big strides with his doctor’s coat flapping out behind him, and Mrs Partridge and I trot along like lambs in his wake.

  Inside the sparse, unkindly, drab office Dr Wolf perches on the edge of the chipped teak desk and Mrs Partridge and I sit in the only two chairs, instantly at a disadvantage.

  ‘Ladies,’ he says, and then he pauses, pretending he’s got time for us, when I can see in his eyes that he hasn’t. ‘How can I be of help?’ He has a faint accent: German, I think, or maybe it’s Dutch. I was never any good at accents.

  ‘We wanted to see Dr Millar,’ Mrs Partridge says to Dr Wolf’s knees, which are only a little below her eye level. Her voice is quiet, perfectly audible but pinched, halfway to being defeated.

  Suddenly I see how professional and how subtle it is, this smooth intimidation of troublesome little old ladies.

  ‘I am Dr Millar’s colleague,’ he says. ‘Please.’ He gestures with his hand for Mrs Partridge to speak. His face is all sympathetic encouragement, the frowning eyes, the smiling mouth. Mrs Partridge opens her mouth to speak, but then his bleeper goes. He looks at it to read it, spends a moment pressing in a quick reply, pops it back in his pocket, then he’s back with us again, frown and smile sliding simultaneously back into place.

  ‘I want to take my girl home,’ Mrs Partridge mutters, and then she clamps her mouth shut tight, sticking out her chin, like there’s nothing more to be said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ the kind doctor says, and both the frown and the smile deepen. ‘That is only natural. But we must do what is best for Helen.’ He pauses for a second, then adds, ‘That is what we all want, is it not?’

  I am finding him increasingly irritating. ‘When do you expect Helen to be ready to go home?’ I ask. It feels strange to call her by her proper name. She’s always been Heddy to me. As in Heddy P smells of wee.

  The doctor raises his shoulders and his hands in an exaggerated shrug, as if such knowledge is beyond him. He drops the smile, too, and backs up the shrug with an extended bottom lip. He has very full lips for a man – some people would think them attractive. ‘That depends on Helen,’ he says enigmatically.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  He stares at an area above my head for a moment, concentrating hard as if searching for words that I might understand. When he’s found those words he looks at me and says, ‘Helen’s cooperation is vital to her recovery. At the moment we do not have that cooperation.’

  ‘She wants to go home,’ I say. ‘It’s obvious she does. She wants to be with her son.’

  ‘It is not just a matter of patching Helen up and sending her home again,’ Dr Wolf says, as if I was so stupid as to think it was. ‘Helen has issues that need to be worked through.’

  ‘How can she work through anything if she’s sedated all the time?’ I can hear myself starting to sound fractious. He is infuriating me with his controlled patience. Now he nods his head to one side as if conceding my point, and is about to reply when Mrs Partridge butts in.

  ‘We were managing all right at home,’ she mutters, to no one in particular.

  Dr Wolf raises his eyebrows at this, and there is a short, uncomfortable silence. Then he looks at his watch. Pointedly, I look at mine too. I am in just as much of a hurry as he is.

  ‘We need to be sure this will not happen again,’ he says and there is a definite full stop after his words. We are being dismissed. He stands up from the table; we stand also. He puts out his hand; in turn we shake it once again, and then he opens the door and holds it for us as we trot out after him.

  ‘Try not to worry,’ he says with a last, economic smile. ‘We are doing our very best for Helen.’ And then he is off, marching back down the corridor with his coat flapping out behind him.

  We stand in that corridor, Mrs Partridge and I, and watch him disappear. When I turn to look at her, she is still staring into the distance, coat zipped up to her chin, shopping bag in hand, just like she’s waiting for a bus.

&nb
sp; ‘We have to go,’ I say. ‘The children . . .’

  ‘Yes, dear. Of course, dear,’ she says, and turns and starts hurrying towards the exit, so that I have to walk quickly to keep up with her. I was afraid she’d want to go in and see Heddy again, before we left, but she pushes straight out through those swing doors and back along the endless labyrinthine passages towards daylight. She doesn’t speak again until we are outside, both of us flinching as the brightness spears our eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Laura,’ she says then, and she says it so formally I wonder if she’s been rehearsing it in her head as we walked. ‘For all your help, for your kind interest in Heddy—’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I interrupt, wishing she wouldn’t go on. But she does, of course.

  ‘For bringing me here, and giving up your valuable time. You have always been most kind to Heddy, you and all your family.’

  She is so sincere and I am so ashamed. ‘Really, Mrs Partridge, it’s the least I could do,’ I say, and for the moment, at least, I mean it.

  On the way back Mrs Partridge lights up a cigarette inside my car, and I haven’t the heart to tell her to put it out. It’ll take me days to get rid of the smell, and James will do his nut if he notices. I open my window and try to breathe sideways.

  There is something I just can’t understand.

  ‘Why does she do it?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if she knows they’re going to stick her in hospital, away from Nathan, why does she do it?’

  ‘My Heddy’s been unhappy for a long time,’ Mrs Partridge says quietly, breathing out smoke on a dragon’s sigh. ‘Since long before Nathan was born.’

  This isn’t the answer I’m after. Heddy’s unhappy face was a fixture of my childhood, as predictable and as necessary as Christmas. The guilt would knock me over if I let it.