‘Poo!’ says Arianne, who has stopped poking at the car and come to see who’s opened the door. She jumps up and down between me and Mrs Day, flapping her arms around to disperse the smoke.
‘Mrs Day?’ I say. ‘I’m Laura Hamley. I’ve come for Nathan.’ I give her my most charming smile because she looks as though she needs it. She doesn’t, however, return it, possibly because Arianne is still jumping about, trying to wave the smoke back inside the house and running off a stream of observations, out loud.
‘That lady’s got her nightie on,’ she says, pointing, ‘and it’s got tatty round the end.’
‘It gets a bit much, all these last-minute emergencies,’ Mrs Day says, through another puff of smoke, as if this is somehow my fault. ‘I do have commitments of my own.’ Then she tips her head back slightly while still looking at me and calls out, ‘Nathan!’
Out of the shadows behind her comes this small boy. I find myself straining to see him better and realize I know nothing about him. He skulks in the darkness behind Mrs Day’s pink form; from what I can see he is no bigger than Thomas.
Arianne is intrigued. Children are always curious about other children. She pushes herself round the side of a somewhat affronted Mrs Day, to get a better look.
‘Is that Nay-fun?’ she says to me.
‘I think it must be,’ I reply. And to the little boy I say, ‘Hello, there.’
He creeps a little nearer, until he is up beside Mrs Day. She doesn’t provide much refuge, but steps to one side, leaving him exposed to our stares. He’s a stocky little thing, with black hair falling over dark, solemn eyes.
‘Well, here he is, then,’ she announces with some displeasure, and it is very plain that she wants to be rid of us all.
I think he might have some things with him, things he might need for the day, but he doesn’t. There’s just himself, in his football T-shirt, jogging bottoms and trainers.
‘How old are you, Nathan?’ I ask cheerily as he gets into the back of the car, beside Arianne.
‘Seven,’ he says, and sits staring at the seat in front of him while Arianne prods him and tugs at his sleeve.
‘I’m three,’ she tells him proudly. ‘And Thomas is six.’
In the mirror I watch as he ignores her. Poor little boy; he doesn’t know who we are.
‘Thomas is Arianne’s brother,’ I tell him. ‘You might meet him later.’ I watch for his response in the mirror – there is none. ‘He’s out at a friend’s today, so we’re having pancakes for lunch. They’re Arianne’s favourite. Do you like pancakes, Nathan?’
He shrugs, but says nothing. His hair is in bad need of a cut, hanging right in his eyes and making him blink. It’s thick, black hair, forward-falling, like Heddy’s. Designed to hide the face. He scratches his head a lot, the sides, the back, the top. I see him scratch in the mirror, and my heart sinks.
And he smells slightly, it’s a biscuit smell, like Jacob’s cream crackers. I can’t help noticing it, in the confines of the car. It reminds me of Heddy, and the names we called her. I think of their bath, with the cactus plant and the sewing machine in it, and I think of wet beds.
And again, I wonder how on earth I ended up in this nightmare.
*
Arianne is a very sociable child. She shows Nathan her marble run and her farm and lets him play with her Duplo. He sits on the floor with his legs crossed and lets her boss him around. He’s got a Duplo horse in one hand and a little house in the other. He puts the horse in the house and takes it out again, then in again, then out. And every few seconds he lets go of the horse altogether, and scratches his head.
I sit on the sofa and watch them. And every time one of them leans forward too much and it looks like their heads might touch, I find myself acting like a jack-in-the-box and leaping between them to keep them apart.
After lunch, which Nathan eats quickly and without saying a word while Arianne chatters away non-stop, we have to go and get Thomas from the Littlewoods’. The Littlewoods live a short drive away, just off the High Street. This time I put Nathan in the middle seat in the back of the car so that Thomas can just hop in beside him. But then I find myself checking in the mirror every two seconds that his head isn’t too close to Arianne’s.
Normally Arianne and I would go into Fiona’s house for a while, and perhaps stay for a quick coffee and a chat, but today I leave the children in the car outside. I can feel Arianne’s little face staring at me, somewhat miffed, as I walk up to the door.
Fiona opens the door, immaculately clad in unrumpled linen. The baby Minka is clamped to her hip and sucking on a carrot.
‘Come in, come in,’ she says. ‘The boys are in the playroom.’
‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ I tell her. ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Oh,’ she says, hoiking Minka up a little. ‘Where’s Arianne?’
‘In the car.’
Fiona peers past me and looks at the car. ‘Doesn’t she want to come in?’ She jiggles Minka, who is struggling dangerously with that carrot. ‘We were looking forward to seeing Arianne, weren’t we, Minky-Mink?’
Minka appears to be holding her breath and is going a little blue around the mouth. Suddenly she shudders and retches and shoots out a large lump of carrot, which Fiona deftly catches in her free hand.
‘Well done, Minka!’ Fiona applauds at this very strange achievement. To me she says, ‘It’s so important to give them finger foods, I think. Helps them to learn how to eat.’
So long as they don’t die in the process, I think, but I smile in agreement. The colour is coming back into Minka’s somewhat dazed face in raspberry-pink blotches.
Then Fiona says, ‘Who’s that in the car with Arianne?’
‘I’m looking after a friend’s boy,’ I lie, and to stem her curiosity I say, ‘Look, thanks for having Thomas. I really ought to be going.’
‘Oh,’ Fiona says, curiosity not stemmed in the least. ‘Right. I’ll call the boys, then.’ She has another quick look at the car, then calls down the hallway, ‘Thomas! Mummy’s here! Milo, Julius, Cornelius, come and say goodbye to Thomas.’
Thomas, Milo and the three-year-old twins, Julius and Cornelius, come bounding from the playroom dressed as Robin Hood, a wizard, a cowboy and Captain Hook, respectively. There is no end to the wonders of the Littlewood dressing-up box.
‘Darlings, how wonderful!’ exclaims Fiona as they screech and whoop up and down the hall. ‘Oh, they’ve had such fun! Haven’t they, Minky-Mink? They’ve had such fun!’
I try to find this sweet, but really I just want to get going. I can’t leave the others in the car forever. Agitatedly I wait as Thomas gets back into his own clothes, finds his shoes and the goodbyes are said. I can’t help noticing that there are still faint lines on Milo’s cheeks where Thomas scratched him. Funny how the most embarrassing wounds always take the longest to heal.
‘Who’s he?’ Thomas demands as he gets into the car.
‘This is Nathan,’ I say in my jolliest voice. ‘He’s come to play with us.’
‘Why?’ Thomas does up his seatbelt and stares at Nathan suspiciously. Nathan stares down at his knees.
‘We’re looking after him today,’ I explain, patiently as I can, as I start up the car.
‘Why?’ Thomas says again. ‘Where’s his mummy?’
This is just the sort of question I was dreading. I decide to take the honest route. ‘Nathan’s mummy is in hospital,’ I say brightly, making it sound like a fun day out. ‘She’s not feeling very well at the moment.’
I look in the mirror and think perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. Nathan is still staring at his knees and his face is almost completely hidden by his hair. My children are both staring at him and I’m wondering what they’re going to say next.
‘Has she got a sore tummy?’ Arianne asks. ‘I went to hospital when I had a sore tummy.’
‘And I went to hospital when a bee stung my cheek,’ Thomas boasts proudly.
‘Did a bee sting yo
ur mummy?’ Arianne asks Nathan.
Nathan says nothing. I glance in the mirror again as he lifts up one hand and starts scratching his head.
Nathan is playing with the Duplo again, putting that horse in and out of the house.
Thomas has set up a race track for his cars, with bridges and bends and all kinds of hazards, and he’s whizzing his cars one by one to a spectacularly noisy end. Arianne has built an entire village out of Duplo and her little people are heading home now after a busy hour or so at the shop, the park, the school. But Nathan just sits on the floor and puts that horse in and out of the house.
He seems closer to Arianne’s age than Thomas’s, but really he is worlds away from either of them. He’s Heddy’s boy all right. I look at him and I see it, the same slow blankness.
It’s nearly six o’clock. I’ve given the children tea and soon I will need to put Arianne and Thomas to bed. I watch Nathan sticking that car in and out of that house and I think it can’t be much longer before Mrs Partridge phones and I can take him home again.
By seven o’clock she still hasn’t phoned and I am getting anxious, and more than a little annoyed.
The toys are tidied up, Thomas and Arianne are getting tired and fractious, and Nathan is still holding on to that horse, though I’ve told him he’ll have to give it back before he goes.
I am toying with the idea of returning Nathan to Mrs Day’s, though that does seem a little unkind, and of course she may not even be in. But I want to get my children to bed, and James will be home at eight-thirty. I decide to phone the hospital, to see if I can find out what’s going on. I’ve just got out the phone book to look up the number of St Anne’s when, at last, the phone rings.
But it isn’t Mrs Partridge. It’s Ian.
‘Laura!’ he calls down his crackly mobile, just like we were old friends. ‘Ian here, Ian Partridge. I’m on the M40, just past Oxford. Mum phoned me from the hospital, said Heddy’s in a bad way. Headed down, straight from work. Should be there in an hour or so.’
His voice is tinny in my ear. I picture him as a boy, pudding face salivating at the prospect of sweets, or cake, or a better look at me.
‘Mum says you’ve got Nathan,’ he shouts over the crackle. ‘I’ll pick him up later, when I take Mum home.’
Sheer horror forces me to think quickly. I cannot have Ian Partridge and Mrs Partridge turning up here at God knows what hour. I’d have to invite them in. I cannot bear it, the thought of them here, in my house.
‘Well, that’ll be late—’ I start to say, but he butts in.
‘What? Can’t hear you,’ he shouts in my ear. ‘The line’s breaking up.’
‘It’ll be too late,’ I shout back, determined to be heard. ‘Nathan can stay here. I’ll bring him home in the morning.’
‘You sure?’ he yells at me. ‘That’s great then, Laura. Thanks a lot.’
I put down the phone slowly, reeling from the shock of yet another Partridge barging into my life.
They’re in the playroom, all three of them squashed onto one sofa, watching TV.
‘Guess what?’ I say, like I have fantastic news. ‘Nathan’s staying tonight!’ I say it like it’s the biggest treat since Christmas, but they all look at me with tired, doubtful eyes.
‘Where’s he sleeping?’ Arianne asks.
‘In the spare room,’ I say. ‘He’ll be nice and cosy in there.’
‘Where’s his pyjamas?’ asks Thomas.
‘He can borrow some for tonight,’ I say in my cheeriest, jolliest voice, knowing what’s coming next.
Sure enough, ‘He’s not borrowing mine,’ Thomas says, scowling at Nathan.
‘We’ve got plenty of pyjamas,’ I say. ‘I’m sure we can find a pair for Nathan.’
I wish I’d anticipated this and got Mrs Partridge to pack him a bag of clothes, just in case. But if I had anticipated it, there’s no way I’d have ended up in this situation at all.
I’ve only an hour before James comes home, so I put Thomas and Arianne in the bath together, to save time. Nathan watches from the doorway, seemingly fascinated as they splash and play. Then the bath is emptied, and refilled, and it is his turn.
I leave him to it as I see Thomas and Arianne into their pyjamas and beds. I find spare pyjamas, plump up the pillows on the bed in the spare room next to Arianne’s, then whip Nathan out of the bath, even though he seems to be having a lovely time, wallowing on his front and making whale noises into the water. I wrap him in a towel and rub him dry. The skin on his body is white and slack already; in a year or two he’ll be fat.
Then James phones. Fortunately for me, his train has been cancelled and he is stuck at Waterloo. This means I can gather the children into Arianne’s room and read them a story, which is fine until Thomas notices that Nathan is wearing his Superman pyjamas.
‘He’s got my pyjamas on!’ Thomas accuses in outrage, pointing his finger at Nathan, who is sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and staring at his knees.
‘He’s just borrowing them for tonight,’ I say placatingly, but Thomas will not be appeased.
‘No he’s not!’ he storms. ‘I want them back!’
‘You can have them back tomorrow,’ I say. ‘Now let’s get on with the story.’
‘I want them back now!’ Thomas yells, and throws himself into a full-scale rage. He launches himself off the bed and at Nathan, and starts tugging at his pyjamas.
‘Thomas!’ I shout, pulling him away from poor Nathan, who just sits there, bending his head down further, his face turning scarlet.
‘He’s stinky!’ Thomas yells. ‘And he doesn’t live here. I want him to go home!’
‘Enough, Thomas!’ I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s just a child, he doesn’t mean to be cruel. But as I drag him out of Arianne’s room and put him into his own with a thorough telling-off, I don’t know who I am most embarrassed for, Nathan or myself.
Amazingly, the children are all asleep by the time James eventually gets home. I hear his key in the lock, then he swings open the door and flings his briefcase down in the hall, breaking the silence.
‘Bloody trains!’ he says, by way of greeting. He shrugs off his jacket and more or less throws it at me, as if I were a coat hook. ‘I have had a bloody hard day and I do not need to finish it waiting at Waterloo station for nearly an hour because of some stupid signal failure!’
He continues moaning throughout supper. I watch him eat and listen to him complaining. Then he goes into the living room and watches the TV, and falls asleep the minute the news is finished. He comes to bed after me. I hear him padding up the stairs, and listen to the pause as he glances first into Thomas’s room and then into Arianne’s, oblivious to the fact that we have a visitor fast asleep in the spare room.
I wake in the night, hearing something.
James hears it too. ‘Oh, what now?’ he moans and turns over, dragging the duvet up around his ears.
‘One of the children,’ I whisper. ‘I’ll go.’
Quickly I slip out of bed and out of the room, closing the door behind me. The landing light is on, turned down low on a dimmer switch. I turn it up a fraction and see Nathan, standing in the doorway of his room. He’s crying, his little shoulders jerking up and down inside the borrowed pyjamas as he sobs. He’s making an awful noise, crying like only a boy can, from low down in his throat. He sees me, and cries louder.
‘Sshh!’ I whisper, thinking he’ll wake the others, but already Arianne’s door is opening wider and out she comes, dragging her beanie doll behind her.
‘What’s the matter with Nathan?’ she asks, her voice thick with sleep, and loud.
‘Sshh!’ I say again, to her this time. ‘I don’t know.’
I’m thinking he’s probably wet his bed or something, which is the last thing I need, but when I bend down nearer to him I see his pyjamas are dry, thank God. But there’s a huge snot bubble growing out of his nose.
‘What’s the matter, Nathan?’ I ask him quietly, but he just keeps
on crying, and the snot bubble is getting bigger. I can’t stand to look at it, so I take him by his hot little hand and lead him into the bathroom.
Arianne follows us and watches, squinting in the bright light as I tear off a strip of loo roll and wipe his nose. ‘Go back to bed,’ I say to her. ‘He’s probably just had a bad dream.’
She stays where she is and stares at him, not convinced.
‘Go on,’ I tell her. ‘He’ll be fine in the morning.’
Reluctantly, she goes back to her room. Now Nathan’s face is clean I can touch him; I put my hand against his forehead. He’s hot from crying, but there’s no temperature. I’m pretty sure he isn’t ill and so, as he isn’t telling me what’s wrong, I tell him.
‘Just a bad dream,’ I confirm.
He’s still crying a bit, but it’s under control now and, armed with a length of tissue, I take him back to his room. I pull back the duvet and obediently he climbs into bed.
‘You’ll be all right now,’ I tell him, wanting just to get back to bed myself now. I’m about to leave him when at last he speaks.
‘I want my mum,’ he says, and the crying starts up again, even harder.
I sit down on the bed beside him.
‘I want my mum!’ he wails again, and his little body is jerking up and down on a torrent of tears. Somewhat rigidly I put my arm around his shoulders; instantly he yields and turns his face into my body. Shocked, I hold him. His arm comes up and clings to my neck; soon he is on my lap. With one hand I stroke his hair, with the other I hold him to me. Gently I rock him.
‘Sshh,’ I say, ‘sshh,’ as I stroke his hair.
He cries into my breast and I hold him. I hold him until he cries himself to sleep, this poor, poor little boy. I rest my face against his head and I am crying, too. I hold him long after he is asleep, then I tuck him into his bed and kiss him goodnight.
This Perfect World Page 14