The Perfect Mother

by Margaret Leroy

  In front of me the women shift and move. I see Fergal, just ahead of me, the unruly fair hair at the back of his head, the dark wet gleam of his jacket. He has a large umbrella that says Assisted Evolution.

  I edge forward. He turns and sees me, eyes widening with recognition. I admit to myself that this is what I meant to happen. He makes a slight beckoning gesture with his head. With a huge sense of inchoate relief I move in under his umbrella.

  ‘Catriona.’ He smiles. I feel that something in me amuses him.

  We have to stand close to stay out of the wet. He’s chewing gum: I can smell his wet hair and skin. I’m suddenly aware of how pink my face must be, of my hair all plastered down, that I’m wearing my oldest coat and the cuffs are fraying.

  ‘I don’t often see you here,’ he says.

  Maybe, I think, he has been looking for me. I remember that fantasy I had, of moving my hands across his face and his head. My skin is suddenly hot.

  ‘I’m not here very often,’ I tell him. ‘Daisy’s ill.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody seems to know.’

  He’s listening, waiting.

  ‘Richard tells me not to worry—he thinks it’s just flu—you know, some kind of virus.’

  He looks me up and down, taking me in.

  ‘It makes it harder really,’ I tell him. ‘I know this must sound stupid—but the more he says I mustn’t worry, the worse I seem to feel.’

  ‘Poor kid,’ he says. ‘Poor you.’

  He puts his hand on my arm, leaves it there perhaps a second too long. A hunger opens out in me. I would like to peel back my wet sleeve and feel his hand warm on my skin.

  We stand there for a moment, watching the children, while the rain beats down like a drumming of many fingers.

  ‘By the way,’ he says then, ‘I know why I know you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I feel that I am falling.

  ‘Aimee Graves,’ he says. His tone is easy, as if it’s the most natural thing.

  He hears my quick intake of breath.

  ‘I’m right, then,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry—perhaps I shouldn’t have talked about it here.’

  He turns toward me: he has a frown like a question.

  For a moment, I don’t answer, I don’t know what I think. There are two things at once: this fear that makes my pulse so thin and fast and jagged, and a strange voluptuous sense of relief, of wanting to open myself up to him completely.

  ‘You know her?’ I say.

  ‘I met her once,’ he says. ‘It was a story I was researching.’

  ‘She’s alive, then, she’s OK?’

  ‘She’s OK,’ he says.

  ‘So you know all about me,’ I say, quite lightly.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he says.

  I can see Daisy coming; it’s the end of the conversation. Daisy is with Megan, who has her arm around her. She looks so pale, so different from the other girls. She says goodbye to Megan and comes to me. I hug her, she sinks her face into me. Fergal pulls away a little, but holds his umbrella above us.

  ‘OK?’ I say, my mouth in her hair.

  ‘Mmm.’ She’s trembling a little.

  I take her bag, as you might with a much younger child. She doesn’t protest at this indignity.

  ‘Catriona, if you want to talk some time,’ says Fergal. ‘I mean, I could explain.’

  I nod. He moves off to find Jamie.

  The rain is easing up now. There’s a gleam of sunlight between the patchy clouds, and a rainbow flung across the sky behind us. I point out the rainbow to Daisy, but she doesn’t turn.

  We walk back to the car. I feel shaken.

  I open the car door for her. ‘Look, I brought Hannibal for you. He’s missed you,’ I tell her.

  ‘Honestly, Mum, he’s a cuddly toy,’ she says. ‘And what if somebody sees?’

  ‘Nobody can see,’ I tell her.

  She tucks him under her arm.

  I watch her in the mirror.

  ‘So was it OK today?’ I ask her.

  ‘My stomach hurt,’ she says. ‘I wanted to come home but Mrs Griffiths wouldn’t let me. She said, “Well, what should I do? I can’t send you home when you’re hardly ever here.”’

  We drive to the doctor’s through the white shine of the puddles.

  ‘Did anything interesting happen?’ I say.

  ‘We had to do our New Year wishes,’ she says.

  ‘So what did you put?’

  ‘I put world peace and a cat. We all put world peace, and Kieran put, “For my Dad to get his new kidney.” Mrs Griffiths said if we put world peace we should put it first, but when we came to Kieran she said, “Well, which do you think is the more important?”’

  There’s a lump in my throat, but I don’t know why. There are so many things to cry for.

  CHAPTER 7

  I have never seen Dr Carey before; she must be new, or a locum. She’s wearing a crisp red jacket with shiny buttons, and she has short elfin hair and upward-tilting eyebrows. She seems earnest, conscientious, pretty in a wholesome schoolgirl way—someone who’d always be top of the class and make lots of neat notes.

  She greets Daisy as well as me. She has an open smile. I immediately like her.

  We sit by the desk, Daisy in an armchair, clutching Hannibal. It’s pleasant in here, for a surgery: the walls are blue, and there are toys on the window sill, and on the doctor’s desk a jug of marbled lollipops in cellophane, bright-coloured as balloons.

  Dr Carey looks at me expectantly.

  ‘Daisy’s been ill for four weeks,’ I tell her. ‘She went to school today, but that’s only the second time this term. It started with flu and she’s never really recovered.’

  ‘Oh, dear. How horrid for you,’ says Dr Carey to Daisy.

  Daisy shrugs, embarrassed.

  I breathe out a little; I feel that we are cared for. This doctor is kind, gentle, warm to Daisy. This time at least we will be understood.

  ‘Well, Daisy,’ she says, ‘we’d better have a look at you.’

  Daisy lies on the couch and Dr Carey feels her lymph glands and her stomach.

  ‘Well done,’ she says. ‘That’s excellent. That’s absolutely fine.’

  Then Daisy stands on the scales and is measured and weighed.

  Dr Carey sits back at her desk, gets out a weight chart. A little frown pinches the skin between her eyes. I suddenly imagine how she’ll look when she is older, with stern lines round her mouth and glasses on a chain.

  ‘Daisy’s really rather underweight,’ she says. ‘She’s on the lowest percentile.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ She turns the chart towards me, points at it with her pen. ‘The average is here,’ she says, ‘and Daisy’s right at the bottom.’

  ‘She must have lost lots of weight since she’s been ill,’ I tell her. ‘She isn’t eating—she feels too ill to eat.’

  Dr Carey leans towards me. Her immaculate hands are tightly clasped together.

  ‘What does she eat exactly?’

  ‘Today, she had a piece of toast for breakfast and she didn’t have any lunch.’ I know—I’ve looked in her lunchbox. ‘Yesterday was better. She had a bit of rice and some gravy for tea.’

  I want to make it clear I’m not a worrier: that I know that children are tougher than we think, as the other GP told me; that rice and gravy really isn’t too terrible.

  Still the pinched little frown.

  ‘Just rice?’ she says. ‘She should be eating meat. She needs her protein.’

  ‘Of course she does. But rice and gravy was better than before.’

  ‘We’re fortunate to have a nutritionist working in this practice,’ she says. ‘I think I should refer you to her for advice about what Daisy should be eating.’

  ‘But I know what she should be eating. Of course I do.’ I think of all the books I’ve bought on bringing up children, books with cheerful covers and energising titles—E
co Baby, Creating Kids Who Can. ‘It’s just that she won’t, she can’t. She feels too sick to eat. She hasn’t eaten properly since Christmas.’

  She shakes her head a little. I feel this conversation slipping away from me.

  She turns to Daisy, looks at her; there’s something she’s working out. She fiddles with the wisps of hair that grow in front of her ears.

  ‘Daisy, I wonder if you could tell me a bit about school?’ she says then. ‘Is it all right? D’you like it?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Daisy.

  ‘Is anything worrying you?’

  Daisy shakes her head.

  ‘You’re sure?’ says Dr Carey. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to talk about these things.’

  Daisy frowns. I see how she’d like to help, to give the answer that Dr Carey wants, but she can’t think of anything. She twists her fingers in Hannibal’s greying wool. He’s dirty; she’ll never let me wash him in case he loses his smell. Here in this blue sterile place, I find his greyness embarrassing. I worry that Dr Carey will think that I never wash things properly, that I am messy, sluttish, not a proper mother. Daisy doesn’t say anything.

  Dr Carey turns to me. ‘You know, Mrs Lydgate, I’m wondering whether we should treat all this as psychological. ’ She says this with a kind of finality, as though it is an achievement.

  Panic seizes me.

  ‘But nothing traumatic has happened to Daisy. It started when she had flu.’

  ‘But, you see, she looks so miserable,’ she says. ‘She looks all pale and hunched up.’

  ‘She’s unhappy because she’s ill,’ I tell her.

  Dr Carey ignores this, leans a little towards me. ‘Tell me, Mrs Lydgate, is everything all right at home?’ Her voice is hushed, confiding: as though she thinks that Daisy won’t be able to hear.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’re living with your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how do you both get on?’

  ‘We get on fine,’ I tell her.

  My coat is damp from the rain: I am chilled through.

  ‘You’re sure? You don’t have awful shouting matches in front of Daisy?’

  ‘No, we don’t. We don’t have awful shouting matches at all.’

  I’m trying not to get angry; I know that if I get angry she won’t believe what I say.

  ‘Because if you do,’ she says, ‘Daisy’s sure to react.’

  ‘Really,’ I say again, ‘we get on fine. It’s nothing like that. I just know Daisy’s ill.’ I take a deep breath, try to keep my voice level. ‘I want her to be referred to the hospital.’

  There’s a pause, as though this is entirely unexpected. She looks unsure; I see how young she is.

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘She isn’t eating, she always feels so tired. I think we should see a paediatrician.’

  ‘All right, then,’ she says, but with reluctance, as though she’s been constrained.

  She’s writing in her notes now. ‘I’ll refer you to Dr McGuire at the General,’ she says. ‘They’ll write to you with the appointment. I’m afraid there’s quite a waiting list. In the meantime, we’ll get all the blood tests done. You can come in on Thursday and the nurse will take the blood.’

  As we go she gives Daisy a lollipop from the jug on her desk.

  We walk back to the car, which is parked down the end of the road. There are green fresh smells of spring but the rainbow has faded.

  ‘She was really nice, wasn’t she, Mum?’ says Daisy.

  ‘I’m glad you liked her.’

  ‘I did,’ she says. ‘She was kind.’

  She starts to unwrap the lollipop; I have to take Hannibal. We stop for a moment because it’s hard to do; the paper is firmly stuck to the sugary surface. The lollipop is veined with purple and red, the colour intense as nail varnish. I think of additives but don’t say anything.

  She rips off the last scrap of cellophane.

  ‘There,’ she says with satisfaction.

  She takes one careful lick. We walk on for a bit, the lollipop held in front of her, like some precious thing.

  ‘Is it all right if I leave this, Mum?’ she says then.

  ‘Of course.’

  As we pass the bus stop she drops it in a bin.

  CHAPTER 8

  Daisy can’t sleep; she says she feels too sick. I sit her up, and prop her against the pillows and smooth her hair. ‘We’ll crack this,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll get you better. I promise. Soon it’ll be over.’

  I read to her from the fairy-tale book, the story of Rapunzel, who was trapped in a tower by the witch, her mother, and let down her hair to a prince. Sometimes Daisy spits in a tissue.

  Sinead comes to the door. She needs me to test her on her homework.

  ‘It’s false friends. For crying out loud. How can any word of French be your friend?’

  ‘I’ll come when Daisy’s asleep,’ I tell her.

  I read till Daisy’s head is drooping, as you might with a very young child. Her eyelids are shut, but flickery, tense; she could so easily wake. Sinead looks round the door again. I put a warning finger to my lips. She mouths melodramatically, ‘My vocab, my vocab.’ I whisper she’ll have to wait. Eventually Daisy’s breathing slows and she sinks down into the pillows. I slip off my shoes and creep out like a thief. I sit with Sinead and test her on the words. She isn’t very confident, but it’s nearly ten, she’ll never learn them now. I tell her to go to bed.

  Richard has his meeting and he won’t be back till late. I pour myself some wine, and try to imagine him there. When I think of it, this world of his that’s so mysterious to me, I always see men in suits all sitting round a shiny mahogany table, and heaps of papers in front of them covered in cryptic figures, and the coffee brought in by Francine, his glamorous PA. I met Francine once at a party at Richard’s office; she was wearing a rather impressive dress, demure in front, right up to her neck, but almost completely backless.

  I take my wine into the living room. It’s cold in here tonight: the heating’s been off for most of the day, and the house won’t seem to warm up. I pull the curtains, shutting out the night, but chill air seeps up through the gaps in the floorboards.

  I don’t turn on the main light, just the lamps on the little tables on either side of the fireplace. There is darkness in the corners of the room. The masks we brought back from Venice are lit from below, so the lines of the pottery are etched in shadow. I chose them because they charmed me, with their hints of a seductive world of carnival and disguise. But when Daisy was little, and mothers and children were always coming for coffee, I had to take them down; children seem to be often afraid of heads apart from bodies—it’s probably something primal—and there were toddlers who’d burst into tears if they saw them. The black one is a little macabre, sinister in an obvious way—it’s the fairytale crone, Baba Yaga perhaps, the glossy surface recreating the sagging folds of old flesh—but tonight I see it’s the white one that is more frightening: it’s simpler, almost featureless, a face that is an absence.

  I sip my wine and go back over the conversation with Dr Carey. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t take Daisy’s illness seriously. I must have done something wrong. Should I have cried? Should I have sounded more desperate? Maybe I was too assertive; or not assertive enough? Perhaps there’s a code I don’t know about, some goodmother way of behaving. I once heard a famous female barrister speaking on the radio. If she was defending a woman accused of murder, she said, she’d urge her to wear a cardigan to court, ideally angora and fluffy, so no one would think her capable of committing a terrible crime. Maybe there’s a dress code for taking your child to the doctor that’s unknown to me: a frock from Monsoon perhaps, with a pattern like a flowerbed, or a tracksuit and pink lipstick.

  There’s a clatter from the hall—Richard closing the door behind him, putting his briefcase down. Relief washes through me: I’m always so glad when he’s home. He comes in, and I see he’s tired; he’s somehow less vi
vid than when he left in the morning, as though the dust of the day has settled on him and blurred him. He’s brought me flowers, blue delphiniums, wrapped in white paper, with a bow of rustling ribbon. He’s good at choosing things—orchids, silver bracelets; his gifts are always exact.

  ‘Thanks. They’re so lovely.’ They’re an icy pale blue, like a clear winter sky, the flowers frail, like tissue. I hold them to my face; they have the faintest smoky smell.

  He kisses my cheek.

  ‘There’s pollen on you,’ he says. He rubs at my nose with a finger.

  ‘Was the meeting OK?’

  He shrugs. ‘So so,’ he says.

  I’m not sure this is true: he looks strained, older.

  ‘D’you want to eat?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I tell him.

  ‘Thanks. Scotch would be good. Just tonight.’

  I smile. ‘It was that bad?’

  He shakes his head. ‘It was fine. Really.’

  He has a still face; he’s always hard to read. I don’t pursue it, don’t know the right questions. There are parts of his life that are opaque to me.

  I get him a large glass of Scotch, with ice, the way he likes it. He doesn’t sit, he’s restless—as though the uneasy energy that’s built up through the day won’t leave him. He leans against the mantelpiece, sipping his drink.

  In the silence between us I hear Sinead upstairs, the clumping of her slippers and water from the shower running away. I’m worried she will wake Daisy. I’ve become alert again to all the noises of the house—like when you have a baby and skulk round like a conspirator, and every creak on every stair is marked on a map in your mind.

  ‘We went to the doctor,’ I tell him.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘How was it?’

  ‘We saw someone new. A woman. She was rather young, I thought.’

  ‘And was it OK?’

  ‘Sort of. Well, Daisy liked her.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he says. ‘There. I told you it would be all right.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I wasn’t happy really.’

  ‘What is it?’ he says, solicitous. ‘What’s wrong?’