This Perfect World (27 page)

Yet the damage lives on and on.

Finally, I drive round past our old junior school, and from
there to the little lane going up to the graveyard. Outside
the school there are crossing places now, traffic lights and
speed bumps, all new. The road bends and narrows into the
old part of the village, to where the church is, and opposite
that the lane down to the graveyard. I haven’t been down
here for years, not years and years. My mother wanted me
to get married in this church. She thought it appropriate.
‘This is where you grew up, after all,’ she insisted.

Exactly, I thought. And I picked a registry office as far
away from here as possible.

The road is too narrow really for me to stop, but I pull
up opposite the lane to the graveyard for just a moment
anyway, and park half up on the pavement, with my hazard
lights flashing. There’s a sign up at the entrance to the alley
now, telling you where it leads to, the opening hours of the
graveyard, and that no dogs may crap on this land. But other
than that it is as creepy as it ever was, going nowhere other
than to death.

I sit in the false safety of my car and I just look. Wild
horses wouldn’t drag me down there, now.

It’s late when I get home, and James is in a sulk and the children
are whingeing, all because I wasn’t there to get tea.

I stand in the doorway of the kitchen and watch James
as he slams cupboard doors open and closed, as if hunting
for clues, and I feel strangely detached and misplaced. James
huffs and he puffs, and he pulls out a packet of spaghetti,
and a tin of baked beans, and bangs them down on the
counter. Yum, yum, I think, but I resist the urge to take over.
Instead I turn to Arianne, who has come grizzling into the
kitchen to wrap herself round my legs.

‘Thomas is being horrible,’ she wines.

‘Thomas, don’t be horrible,’ I say automatically.

Thomas comes into the kitchen too, shoving past me. ‘I
don’t want baked beans,’ he says.

‘Well, you’re getting baked beans,’ snaps James. ‘As there
doesn’t appear to be anything else.’

I almost laugh, but Arianne starts to cry, and so does
Thomas. I say, ‘They are your children too, you know, James.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me that,’ James replies, clattering
all the cutlery in the drawer as he searches for the can opener,
which he doesn’t need because there’s a ring pull on the tin.

‘There’s a ring pull on the tin,’ I say, and James turns and
glares at me.

‘Thank you, Laura,’ he says. ‘I think you’ve made your
little point.’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was making a point.’

A thin stain of red rises under the ridges of James’s cheekbones.
‘You could have phoned,’ he says.

And childishly I say, ‘You could have phoned me.’

James stands there with the tin of baked beans in his hand,
and he is staring at me as if he really doesn’t know me at
all. Which, I realize, he doesn’t. And he never really will, not
if we stay together for another forty years.

When you are born blonde and clever and pretty like me,
you have it all. You are Mary at Christmas, year in, year out.
Then you’re the May Queen in summer. Because you’re good
at sports as well, you always come at least second in all your
chosen races at sports day, and when you start secondary
school there’s no question that you’ll be captain in netball.
You’ve got to be good
and
popular to be captain. And so
you have the power of picking the team. And you pick the
team like you pick your friends: from the prettiest down.
The same way you pick your boyfriends when you’re older,
the same way that I picked James.

I can picture him now: the first time I met him in the
student-union bar, with all his friends fawning around him.
Good-looking, popular, clever. It was like looking in a mirror.
It was like seeing who I am: the top of the box, no need to
dig any deeper.

On Monday, the stripes are back on Milo Littlewood’s face.

Arianne and I walk into the playground at half-past three
just as the children are spilling out of the double doors, and
see that Mrs Hills is holding Thomas back. I mean literally,
holding him back. It is taking both her arms and a lot of
effort to restrain him. He is furious.

‘No, I won’t say I’m sorry! I’m not sorry!’ he shouts for
everyone to hear as he struggles against her, and my heart
sinks. I grip Arianne’s hand and walk steadily towards them,
trying to appear calm.

Fiona Littlewood – who
always
arrives early for pick-up
– is standing to the left of the doors, clutching Milo dramatically
to her side. Milo is sobbing loudly with his mouth wide
open, his cheeks all pink and freshly scratched. Fiona glares
at me as I approach, her face tightened up with anger, and
my heart starts to thump. As soon as I’m near enough she
takes two steps towards me and says, ‘Really, Laura, this is
too
much,’ in a voice that whips out sharp across the playground.
And then she flounces off, still with the wounded
Milo clamped to her side.

Thomas starts crying too, now that he’s seen me, and the
sight of his desperate little face makes my own eyes smart.
‘What’s the matter with Thomas?’ Arianne pipes up beside
me, and I hush her, quickly, with a tug of the hand. Mrs Hills
loosens her hold on Thomas and straightens herself up. She
is hot, and flushed, and clearly not amused.

‘Mrs Hamley, I am sorry to have to tell you that there has
been
another
incident,’ she says, and again I have to listen
to her complaining about my son’s unacceptable behaviour
with regard to name-calling and cheek-scratching and Milo
Precious Littlewood.

I do what I have to do. I look shocked. I say, ‘Thomas,
what on
earth
is this about?’ in the most appalled voice I
can manage, so that Mrs Hills, and anyone else listening,
knows that we certainly don’t approve of violence in the
Hamley household.

‘It’s your fault,’ Thomas cries and lunges at me, pushing
me in the stomach.

‘Thomas, for heaven’s sake!’ I grab hold of him and he
falls against me then, and clings on.

‘He said you’re a twisted fuck-head,’ he cries into my skirt.
‘And he kept saying it. He said his dad said it, so it must be
true.’

I’m looking at Mrs Hills over the top of Milo’s head as
he says it, and I see the colour drain out of her face. We
stare at each other, stunned to hear these words come out
of my son’s mouth. I stare at her the longer, stunned that
they came out of Peter Littlewood’s mouth. Part of me wants
to laugh at the very idea of Peter Littlewood calling someone
a twisted fuck-head, but I can’t laugh because that someone
is me. I stare at Mrs Hills and I’m blinking and blinking my
eyes, but I can’t think what to say.

She speaks first. ‘Would you like to sit down, Mrs Hamley?’
she says in a gentler voice than I’ve ever heard her use before,
and I guess I must have gone even whiter than she did. I
shake my head. I just want to get out of there.

‘I think we’d better go home,’ I manage to say, to which
she agrees, and nods her head a little too keenly. I feel her
watching as we make our way out of the playground, we
three, with me in the middle trying to hold on to my dignity.

I haven’t been called a name like that ever before in my
whole life. Not ever.

I’m still reeling, hours later. I’ll be reeling for days. When we
get home we sit on the sofa together, Thomas, Arianne and
I, watching
Scooby-Doo
. I give them fish fingers and ice
cream for tea, and see Thomas looking at me wondering why
he’s getting such treats when he was expecting a telling-off.
But I can’t find it in me to tell him off. I mean, who am I
to criticize his behaviour when it stems from me? The best
I can do is say, ‘There is no excuse for violence, Thomas.’

And when Thomas complains that he hates Milo Stupid
Littlewood, I say, ‘I know you do. But can’t you just try to
be nice?’

Oh, irony of ironies.

All that I am and all that I have done: the past lives on
within me like a measured ghost.

‘Mummy,’ Arianne says, like she’s been mulling it over,
‘what does fuck mean?’

And when I don’t answer she asks Thomas. ‘What does
fuck mean, Thomas? Thomas, what does fuck mean?’

And Thomas, in his six-year-old wisdom, says, ‘It means
bum.’

I’m crying when James gets in. He dumps his briefcase in
the hall, walks into the kitchen, sees me sitting there at the
table and stops. Horribly, I am reminded of those days after
Thomas was born, when he’d come home and find me crying.
He has that same look on his face, the look that says he
wants to turn around again and walk straight back out.

‘Now what is it?’ he asks with trepidation, as if he really
doesn’t want to know. And he stands there, and I know damn
well that all he wants is his dinner, and to be left alone.

Slowly I say, ‘Peter Littlewood has been calling me a
twisted fuck-head. I know this because his son told our son
at school today. And so I’m feeling a little upset.’

I see him wrestling with himself. I see the fact that he
thinks maybe Peter Littlewood has a point cross his face,
followed swiftly by outrage, the pumped-up, don’t-insult-my-wife-or-you-insult-me obligatory outrage of the husband.
And let’s face it, I am in James’s eyes not so much an extension
of himself as an
attachment
, you know, like I’m an
ambassador when things are going well, and a parasite when
they’re not.

What we have is a marriage, after all.

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ he asks, throwing it
back at me.

I shrug.

‘Do you want me to go round there and thump him?’

And he would; he’d go round there and thump him. He
would, my fine, handsome husband. He’d go round there
and thump Peter, and say
Leave off my wife
, and then come
back here and blame me for making a thug out of him.

We have a marriage, but it’s a thin and fragile thing.

I look at him and he swims in a sea of tears. ‘I don’t know
what I want,’ I cry. ‘But I don’t want this.’

He almost rolls his eyes. ‘What do you mean by
this
,
Laura? Do you mean this little mess you’ve got yourself into,
or do you mean more than that? Do you mean me,
us
? Our
children, our home, our
lives
?
What?
I mean, if you don’t
want
this
, then what is it that you do want, Laura?’

The question hangs in the air. James’s voice is too loud; I
see it cross his mind just as it crosses mine:
Don’t wake the
children.

‘I don’t
know
. . .’ I stare at him and he stares right back,
his blue eyes stone-hard. I blink and blink again, breaking
the focus. ‘It’s just living here, the way we live, the way everything
that should matter doesn’t matter and everything that
shouldn’t does . . . Don’t you ever wonder why we do it,
James? Don’t you ever wonder why we live here like this?’

‘Then where would you have us live?’ James asks, and he
kind of laughs, dismissively,
coldly
, like he hasn’t got a clue
what I’m on about. ‘Would you like me to give up my job
and go and become a postman in rural Scotland or something?
Would that make you happy?’ Again he laughs, shaking
his head as if he thinks I am
mad
, and I hate him for it. ‘This
is life, Laura,’ he says. ‘This is what I
thought
you wanted.
And anyway, what makes you think it would be different
anywhere else?’

Once, I nearly told him, about the cuts on my arm.

He asked me about them, and I got this sudden confessional
urge – something I’d never had before and I’ve never
had since – something to do with being in love maybe, softening
my head, letting my defences down. We’d not been
together long, and you know what it’s like when you’re on
that high. You get carried away. You want to find trust.

It was a Sunday afternoon, late, just as the daylight was
dipping and fading out. We’d been to the cinema, then gone
back to his place, and back to bed. And we were lying there,
half-dozing, half-dreaming, cocooned in shadows. He asked
me out of the blue, asked me like he’d been wanting to ask
me for some time.

‘What happened to your arm?’ he said, trailing his fingers
over my scars. And just for a second I nearly told him. But
then this warning voice came bolting through my head: what
if he already knows or thinks he knows, and what if he really
wants me to tell him otherwise?

So I did. ‘I cut it falling through a glass door, years ago,’
I said, and it was the right thing to say, because he accepted
it, just like that.

I knew I’d never tell him then, but no matter. It was from
a different life, gone.

Fuck-head means nutter, everyone knows that.

I lie in the dark, curled away from my husband’s sleeping
body, and I want to be gone, far, far away.

Round here, I’ve no choice but to brave it out.

I deliver and collect my children from their daily obligations
as usual, and I shop, and I run, and I go to yoga, with
a smile etched upon my face. And I watch as the little groups
of women in this place huddle and split and re-form again.
Tasha and Fiona are suddenly best friends, though they never
spoke to each other before – they’ve got something in common
now: me. And so Penny’s put out and has to jockey for position,
which she does by shoving Liz out, and so Juliet spots
an opportunity and homes in on Liz, and round and round
it goes.

And James comes home with a pissed-off look on his face
and tells me nothing of his day. And he goes off to his football,
but when he comes back he creeps in beside me in the
dark, and although I’m awake he no longer shares with me
the pub talk, the secrets of the men in this little town.