I smile as if I am pleased to see her, and unaware of my so obvious isolation.
She smiles back, short, tight, just a clenching of the cheekbones and the eyes.
‘I’m organizing the end-of-term celebrations,’ she says, as if I didn’t know, and her cheekbones tighten further, ‘and gathering volunteers. But I won’t be asking you, Laura. I think we all know now that you have different priorities to the rest of us.’
And then she walks away again, back to the others, and I am left standing there, grinning like I couldn’t care less, which, quite frankly, I couldn’t.
It is James’s football night. He comes in from work, he winds up the children, and he goes out again. He barely speaks to me, just the coolest of hellos as he passes me on the stairs where I am bent picking up the discarded socks and Lego bricks and other various items scattered there by his children.
I am glad he is going out, and taking his cold shoulder with him. There is nothing I hate more than the feeling of being judged, especially by my own husband.
As soon as I have finished resettling the children, and tidying up, and picking up wet towels from the bathroom floor, I pour myself a glass of wine and slap some bread in the toaster for my supper. And my mother phones.
‘How are you?’ she asks.
And I lie, ‘Fine.’
‘And the children? How are they?’
‘Fine too, thank you.’
And then we have the usual conversation in which she says too much and I say too little. News from the village, and the advice she has given to various committees on various issues; the advice she gives me now on Arianne’s teeth and Thomas’s boisterousness (well, he is a boy), et cetera, et cetera. My toast pops up and goes cold.
And then she asks if there is any more news on Heddy Partridge.
‘Not really,’ I say, somewhat woodenly. The last thing I want to talk about is Heddy Partridge.
‘Will you be seeing her again, do you think?’
‘I expect so.’ I can hear my own voice sounding tight and a little huffy, as if I am a child again, wanting approval.
‘That is good,’ says my mum, and there we have it: approval given.
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I say, just a little sarcastically.
‘Of course it’s good.’ And then she gets to the bit that really matters: ‘Your father will be pleased. He sends you his love. He’d come to the phone, only he’s in the greenhouse repotting his tomatoes.’ And before she goes she adds, ‘It used to trouble him greatly, you know, your . . . unfriendliness . . . to Heddy in the past.’
Oh, I know that all right. I hang up the phone and there is a tightness in my chest. I think of my father too busy with his tomatoes to come and talk to me himself. It is always best for my father to be too busy with something.
There was a disco for us up at the secondary school, a sort of advance welcome. Everyone was going – and not just us, but the new intake coming up from the other two junior schools too. It was the biggest deal – and my dad went and offered Heddy a lift.
Not only that, but he didn’t even tell me until we got to the end of our road and turned left, instead of right.
‘Where are we going?’ I so innocently asked from the back.
And my dad said, ‘We’re picking up Heddy.’
‘We’re what?’
‘We’re picking up Heddy,’ he said again, calm as anything.
‘We can’t’ – panic had me bolting forward in my seat – ‘we’re picking up Jane.’
‘Well, we’re picking Heddy up too.’
I stared at the back of his neck in disbelief. ‘But why?’
‘Because Mrs Partridge doesn’t want her walking home alone in the dark.’
‘We’re not bringing her home too?’
‘We are.’ He spoke in this infuriating, fake-reasonable voice, but I knew he wasn’t reasonable at all. I knew he was sneaky and mean and he’d deliberately not told me before; he’d deliberately given me no warning, no way to duck out.
‘Dad, I can’t go in with her,’ I pleaded, starting to cry.
‘Yes, you can,’ he said. ‘You can all go in together.’
‘Dad, I can’t.’ I was really panicking now. We were mere moments from Heddy’s house. ‘Dad, I won’t!’ I leaned forward, grabbed hold of his arm. ‘Dad, I won’t go in with her!’
‘Let go, Laura,’ my dad said, and he tried to shake me off, but I hung on, pulling at his sleeve. ‘Laura, let go!’
But I wouldn’t. I pulled at him and I pushed at him, crying and pleading and begging him not to ruin my life, and my dad snapped.
He spun around so that the car started swerving across the road, and he slapped me once, twice, three times, his hand slamming down on me, on my arms, my legs, whatever bit of me he could reach. His face was scarlet and spit sprayed out of his mouth as he shouted, ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ And down came that hand, down and down as I screamed and tried to coil away from it, and the car zigzagged down the road.
We stopped outside Heddy’s house. My dad had both hands on the steering wheel now, and he was staring out the windscreen, breathing heavily. I was curled up on the back seat in a ball with my knees drawn up, and was shaking uncontrollably. It seemed as if we stayed like that for ages, but Heddy Partridge must have been eagerly looking out from the house for us, because suddenly there she was, opening up the car door and plonking herself in beside me where Jane should have sat, smelling of chips and old fried eggs.
My dad unlocked his hands from the steering wheel, and started up the car. Slowly, I uncurled my legs. I couldn’t stop crying; I pressed myself back into the seat and turned my face to the window, trying to sniff quietly. I could feel Heddy staring at me. No one said a word. Then we got to Jane’s house, and Jane got into the front seat, and she kept turning around and staring at me too. But still no one said a word; not until we pulled up outside Forbury High School and then my dad actually had the nerve to say, ‘I’ll pick you up at nine-thirty. Have a nice time.’
Have a nice time, indeed. I didn’t even go into the disco. I spent the evening in the toilets, crying my eyes out and watching the bruises coming up on my arms. I don’t know what Heddy did all evening, and I really didn’t care.
I don’t remember my dad ever speaking to me properly again after that, and I certainly haven’t ever spoken properly again to him.
SIXTEEN
I force myself to go and see Heddy again on Saturday, and this time I don’t make up excuses about hairdresser appointments or anything else, and this time James doesn’t even ask.
I try to tell myself that I am doing this so that I can get Heddy and her family back out of my life, so that things will all go back to normal. But it isn’t that. Not any more. The normal that I had wrapped up and painted so perfect and so nice is fast unravelling. I don’t think it ever really existed.
And I find myself thinking more and more what it must have been like for Heddy. I don’t want to think about her, but she creeps into my head anyway, and the guilt is starting to swamp me. It pulls at my limbs; it drags me down.
It’s the young Irish nurse on again today, and she lets me in with a smile.
‘Oh, hello there,’ she says, like we are old friends now. ‘You’ll find Helen a lot better today. A lot better.’ She puts her hand on my arm; her fingers are small and very white, as though they have been scrubbed to death. ‘It’s a grand job you’re doing there,’ she tells me so sincerely. ‘Your visits have made a massive difference to Helen. Massive. Doctor was saying so just yesterday.’ And then she pats my arm and she’s off again, shoes squeaking down the corridor.
A massive difference, the nurse says, but how could anyone ever tell when Heddy says nothing, does nothing, just sits there with her eyes so black and empty? She’s propped up on top of the bed wearing what is either a dress or a nightie, shapeless over her own shapelessness, a ghastly purple colour and made of the sort of material that would go up with a crackle and a bang if you s
tood too close to a fire. It reminds me of that old party dress she wore all those years ago. Someone must think that purple suits her. And I don’t know, maybe it does, but who’d ever look properly at Heddy to see?
She watches me as I close the door behind me, and carries on watching me as I pull over the chair and position it midway between the bed and the door. I sit down, and I am close to her feet, which are naked and splayed wide on top of the covers. Her dress comes halfway down her calves, revealing the mottled and lumpy skin of an old lady, and on her feet the bunions and sores. Her vulnerability disgusts me; it is too close, too real.
‘Hello, Heddy,’ I say, and still she watches me with those dark, slow eyes. How can I ever know what she sees and what she doesn’t see? What she remembers about me and what she doesn’t? ‘I hear that you are much better today,’ I say, and I start on my lecture, going over and over the same stuff: how she must make the effort, take charge of herself and her life, and be there to be a proper mother to her son. And on and on. I hear my own voice, sharp, preaching at her, and I hate it. She must hate it.
My God, how she must hate it.
Again I wonder what I’m doing here. And I think just how desperate Mrs Partridge must have been to ask for help from me, of all people. Half an hour is all I can do – half an hour of breathing in that air that stinks of cabbages and shit, and repeating the same old stuff over and over until my throat is dry; but I would die, and I mean die, rather than drink from the same water jug as Heddy Partridge, however many spare paper cups there are piled up on the side.
Half an hour drags like a very long time. And all that time Heddy watches me. I say, ‘Do you want anything? Can I get you a drink or anything?’
She doesn’t answer, of course. I look around the room to avoid her gaze, but there isn’t much to look at. It’s a bright day outside and sunlight is forcing its way through the slats of the blinds, but once inside the room it wastes into greyness. I drift away from Heddy, and start thinking about the mess of my own life; about the school playground come Monday morning and how I must walk into it, and that I am the one nobody wants to talk to now. And I’m thinking How can it even matter? It cannot matter. And yet it does, it does. You have your kids and there you are, forced back into the playground whether you like it or not. And then that stupid old saying comes grating back into my head: what goes around comes around. And the irritation, and the monotony, and the whole awfulness of all of this have me snapping, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Heddy, do you not think we’d both rather not be here?’
And then Heddy moves her foot. Her right foot. She turns it in an arch so that it is pointing inwards instead of outwards, and then she kicks it back out again. I glance at the foot; I glance up at her face, and panic jolts in my chest. She is staring at me with those same dark eyes, but then she squeezes them shut, screwing up her face. She shakes her head, she opens her eyes again, and they are flooded, inky with seeing.
‘Why are you here?’ she says, and I am so used to her silence that it throws me completely.
‘To help your mum,’ I reply, and my heart is starting to pound.
‘Why?’
‘Because she asked me.’
‘But why?’ she says again.
I cannot hold her gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, and stand up to leave, but I stand too fast and the blood rushes in my ears. For seconds I have to just stand there, holding on to the back of the chair until the sparks leave my eyes. Then I drag the chair back round to the other side of the room, pushing it up against the wall, and when I look back round at Heddy her eyes are shut again.
I tell myself she is asleep. I want her to be asleep.
She fancied Christopher Chapman. You could see it all over her face. You could see it in the way she followed him around with her big, dopey eyes, and the way she went bright pink if ever he looked at her.
Christopher Chapman and Heddy Partridge? What a joke! Christopher was the most popular boy in the class.
Back then, there was this weird system where we lived that meant we didn’t move up to secondary school until we were twelve, coming up thirteen, and in the last year of junior school we were a bad mix of hormones and boredom. We played this game – and really, it was just a game – where we took it in turns to get off with each other, whenever we had the chance. We played it at school, that last summer. At lunchtime we’d go down to the far end of the school field and lie in a row, boys on top, girls underneath, and snog. Not everyone, of course, just the popular ones. In class we’d circulate the list, choosing who would be getting off with whom. That’s how you knew if you were popular – someone would put your name on the list. One day, someone wrote Heddy Partridge next to Christopher Chapman. And the list went round and round, and everyone who saw it laughed or gagged or pulled a face like they’d just eaten shit, while poor Heddy just sat there staring at her desk with her face gone scarlet and her fat chin wobbling.
Christopher didn’t laugh or gag when he saw it, though. In fact he got really annoyed and snatched the list away, then screwed it up and shoved it into his desk.
That’s what gave me my idea.
I set Heddy up. I wrote her these letters, pretending they were from Christopher. I made my writing square-shaped and untidy like his; it was easy enough to do.
Take no notice of anyone else, I wrote. You’re the only one that matters. And, When anyone is mean to you, it really hurts me. I care for you deeply.
Jane and I thought it hilarious. I tucked the notes under Heddy’s pencil case at break time, and watched her reading them when we came back in, secretive, with her head bent down and her greasy hair falling forward like a shield. She got this ridiculous soppy-coy look on her face, like she’d got a sweet in her mouth and was trying not to suck it.
‘Ah, look,’ whispered Jane. ‘She’d almost be pretty if she wasn’t so ugly.’
Please don’t reply, I wrote. Our feelings must stay secret. I don’t want anyone to laugh at us again.
‘Brilliant!’ said Claire, and it was brilliant.
Heddy lapped it up. On our way out to assembly she stood back as Christopher walked past her, and he noticed, and looked at her. And because Heddy Partridge never made eye contact with anyone if she could possibly avoid it, but here she was staring right at him with this big, hungry smile on her stupid face, he looked at her, and looked at her again.
It worked like a dream. Especially as Christopher had stopped playing the snogging game now, since we’d all laughed. She must have thought he was saving himself for her.
I want to see you alone so we can talk properly, I wrote. Meet me in the graveyard after school. I’ll be waiting by the statue of the Virgin Mary.
‘Where’s the statue of the Virgin Mary?’ Claire asked.
‘Don’t know,’ I said.
‘Is there one?’
‘I don’t know that, either.’
Claire clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
‘She won’t come,’ Jane said, and I have to say, I did wonder if I’d gone too far. None of us were allowed near the graveyard on the way home – some man had strangled his girlfriend there years ago, and the horror of it still had the whole town freaking out. But I wanted to see just what I could get Heddy Partridge doing for love, and besides, it was the only place I could be sure of us being alone.
Claire and Jane wouldn’t come, though.
‘No way,’ Claire said. ‘My mum will kill me if I don’t go straight home.’
‘You can’t go,’ Jane said. ‘She’ll never turn up.’
But I was on a roll now. I knew that Heddy Partridge would turn up, and I wanted to see it. Besides, if I backed out now I’d just look stupid.
Jane did come with me in the end, though she said just for five minutes. We got out of school quickly and ran on ahead. Heddy was always last out, lumbering along behind everyone else. The graveyard was opposite the church on the road out towards the river, about ten minutes from school. It was down its own little lane and you co
uldn’t see it from the road at all. You’d never go there unless you had to – I mean, unless you were being buried or something. It was the creepiest place and went on forever, basically field after field full of dead people, and the graves near the entrance were the oldest, all slipping and sliding into the loamy earth, the tombstones crumbling and the grave beds opening up from the force of the tree roots underneath. Here lies Eliza Wood, I read, but it didn’t look much like she lay there any more with her grave cracked wide open; you could see right inside, right into the blackness, down into the ground.
‘This is scary,’ Jane bleated. ‘I want to go back.’
I shushed at her to be quiet. Our voices were too loud, too out of place. It was a humid, sultry day, and away from the street there was no sound apart from the birds in the trees and the whisper of overgrown grass against our legs, and the snapping of twigs, underfoot. You wouldn’t believe how stuff grew in there: trees, brambles, stinging nettles and grass as tall as our thighs in places, and so much ivy, tangling itself around the gravestones, all thriving on so much human nourishment.
‘What would a Virgin Mary look like?’ Jane hissed.
‘I don’t know. Like an angel, I suppose.’ We’d gone quite far in, but so far it was all crosses and slabs.
‘I don’t want to go any further,’ Jane said.
‘Just a bit,’ I said, leading onwards through the bumps and dips in the ground.
‘She’ll never come.’
‘She will.’
And then suddenly there it was, the perfect Virgin Mary. You couldn’t miss it; she was standing high on square steps with her head bowed, much taller than all the other gravestones. Heddy wouldn’t miss it. Just to make sure, I took off my red school jumper and draped it over the statue’s head, so that Heddy would see it and think that it was Christopher’s. Then Jane and I hid and we waited – and sure enough, just a few moments later, along Heddy came.
This Perfect World Page 19