The Perfect Mother (22 page)

‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘we can hide our feelings from ourselves. And it’s perfectly normal to envy people whose lives are different from our own.’

‘But I really don’t think I felt that. I never wanted to be a power-suited career woman.’ I realise too late that Jane Watson doubtless has a wardrobe full of pristine tailoring. ‘I was happy with my life.’

‘And Richard? What about you?’ she says. ‘How did you feel about this—Catriona staying at home? I find that some men today can quite resent it.’ A half-smile curves
her lips, softening what she’s saying. ‘That they want their wives to be out in the workplace bringing in lots of money.’

‘It was fine,’ he says. And then, as though aware this sounds rather lukewarm, ‘Catriona was always a wonderful mother.’

‘OK. Well, let’s move on a bit. I’d like you both to tell me a little about your childhoods and family backgrounds.’ She says this as though it is the easiest thing in the world. ‘It’s always important, I think, to have a look at the past and see how it may have shaped us.’

I try to keep my face still, but I can feel the sweat on me.

‘Richard, perhaps you could go first,’ she says.

‘It was mostly OK,’ he says. ‘Though I hated boarding school. I went when I was eight. A ghastly place—some of the staff were sadists. I mean, trust me, that’s no exaggeration.’

Her face seems to open when she looks at him. ‘I know the kind of thing,’ she says.

‘I was homesick as hell at first,’ he says. ‘But you get used to it.’

‘And your parents are still alive?’

He nods. ‘They’re in their seventies now—but yes, still going strong.’

‘And, Catriona? What was your childhood like?’

‘OK. An ordinary childhood. Nothing remarkable.’

I feel unreal suddenly, my body long and thin and etiolated. As though I am too tall for the room, as though I could reach to the ceiling: but so flimsy, fragile, a cardboard cut-out body, easily blown away.

‘My mother was on her own. My father left when I was a baby—I never knew him.’

She has the look of a hunter, eager and alert.

‘So you must have been aware, growing up, of being in a rather unusual family, of feeling different, perhaps of missing out?’

‘I suppose so. Though it was what I was used to.’

The palms of my hands are wet.

‘And your mother—how often do you see her now?’ she says.

I clear my throat.

‘My mother is dead,’ I tell her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Richard turn towards me. I will him not to say anything.

Jane Watson leaves a small respectful silence.

‘And how long ago did she die, Catriona?’ she says then, serious, gentle.

‘Oh, quite a few years now. It was a heart attack. She never saw Daisy.’

I’m walking on ice, listening out for splintering.

‘That must be a deep source of sadness for you.’

I nod. Richard says nothing.

There’s another pause, acknowledging my grief. These silences chill me.

Richard clears his throat, and my heart pounds. I am so afraid he will speak. But he says nothing.

She leans back in her chair.

‘Well, I think we should maybe leave it there for today.’

Relief washes through me. I cover my mouth with my hand, afraid it will show in my face.

She turns off her voice recorder. ‘Now, what I’d like you to do for next week is to maybe talk together about your childhoods. To see how what happened then may have affected you as parents. I always find that a valuable exercise. In our parenting, so often we do as we are done to.’

We walk out through the waiting room, where there are faded armchairs and copies of
Hello.
I can still smell her perfume and it catches at my throat.

‘She seems good,’ says Richard as we get into the car.

I’m in the driving seat as I’m dropping him off at the station. But I don’t start up the car.

‘Yes, I thought you liked her.’

‘A clever woman, I thought,’ he says.

‘I didn’t think that was what impressed you about her.’

‘She’s quite attractive, of course,’ he says. ‘But I did think she was pretty much on the ball.’

‘But what use can any of this possibly be to Daisy?’

‘They know what they’re doing. They handle this kind of thing all the time.’ He frowns. ‘You should have been straight with her,’ he says. ‘About your mother.’

‘No, Richard. No.’ I’m appalled. I grasp his sleeve. ‘I don’t want her to know. She mustn’t ever know.’

He shrugs. ‘Well, if that’s what you want,’ he says, as he said before. ‘But I’m really not happy with it.’

‘I don’t trust her.’

He shrugs. ‘No. Well, you never trust women, of course.’

We drive to the station in silence.

CHAPTER 26

T
here’s something on my patio, something that shouldn’t be there. I’m in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil when Sinead has left for school, looking out into the garden where the paeony buds are fattening, ready to flower, when I see it. At first, with a slight sense of surprise, of something being out of place, I think it is a forgotten thing, abandoned or flung down, an item of clothing or cuddly toy that one of the girls has left there. I go to the window, hear my quick inbreath. It’s a fox, dead, in a pool of blackish blood, lying there quite precisely in the middle of my patio; and it enters my
mind that there’s a deliberateness to the placing of it, as though it has been put there, as though it has some profound and disturbing significance. I push the thought away.

I take the washing-up gloves and a rubbish sack and go out to the garden. There’s a smell of rottenness, rich and meaty and foul. The fox is quite small—smaller than the foxes I usually see in the garden—just a cub really. There’s a trail of blood that leads back round the side of the house: it was knocked over by a car perhaps and slunk round here to die, looking for a hidden dark place, but only reaching this far. Its face is contorted by its death throes, the mouth pulled back from the teeth, and its legs are stuck out stiffly as though it keeled over where it stood and died before it fell.

I put on the washing-up gloves, holding my breath as I approach so I won’t breathe in the smell. Even with the gloves on I don’t pick it up directly, I hold it through the plastic of the rubbish bag. The body is rigid as wood. When I’ve manoeuvred it into place, I tie up the bag and put it in the dustbin. You can still smell it, but faintly, and the dustmen come tomorrow. I get some Cif and scrub away the blood; it leaves a paler bleached mark there in the middle of the patio. I throw away the rubber gloves and the scrubbing brush and go inside and wash and wash my hands. It leaves me with a troubled feeling; as though it’s a malevolent act, something that has been done to me.

There’s a knock at the door. I wipe my hands and go to open it, expecting the postman; or Nicky, on her way back
from school, perhaps; or even Monica from next door, to fix up that coffee we’re always going to have.

It’s Dr Carey. She’s wearing a decorous little jacket with buttons bright as coins.

‘I just thought I’d drop in on spec,’ she says. ‘I was visiting in Ferndale Road, and I thought I could fit in a quick visit and see how things were going.’

She’s studiedly casual and friendly, as though this is the most natural thing, for her to call on me.

I stand aside to let her in. ‘You’ll be able to see Daisy, she didn’t make it into school today.’

‘Right,’ she says.

I take her into the living room. It’s fresh in the morning light that falls through the wide windows, and there are irises on the mantelpiece, in the Chinese vase.

She looks round appraisingly, eyes widening.

‘It’s a lovely house,’ she says.

I can tell this room and its elegance have impressed her: as though my tasselled tie-backs and pelmets edged with plum-coloured braid have somehow strengthened my case. I despise her for this, but I’m also grateful for it.

‘Well, we’re lucky to live here,’ I say.

Her eyes skim over everything, come to rest on my drawing on the wall, the one I’ve just put up: the children who peer between bars that are woven from a texture of spiky lines like briars.

‘Who’s the artist?’ she says.

‘I am,’ I tell her. It’s some unexamined impulse, to show there are things I can do, wanting to say, Look, I can
draw, I have another life, there’s a bit of an artist in me, I’m not just a demanding hostile overprotective mother.

‘I wondered,’ she said.

She has her head on one side, looking at the picture.

‘It’s very dark,’ she says. Though whether she means the colour or the subject, I don’t know.

‘I paint all sorts of things,’ I tell her. ‘Gardens mostly. Flowers.’

‘Really, it’s quite sinister in a way,’ she says. ‘The children look so scared. What’s the meaning of it, would you say?’

‘The meaning?’

‘You know—what do you think you were trying to say?’

‘I don’t really think about it like that.’ I’m struggling to find the right words. ‘I mean, I don’t plan it. The picture just comes to me kind of complete, in my head.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I see.’ She looks as though she wants to say more, as though she’s trying to formulate a question that evades her. She shakes her head a little. ‘To be honest,’ she says, ‘art isn’t really my thing.’

She looks at the picture for a moment longer. I start to feel uncomfortable.

‘Let me get Daisy for you.’

She turns to me. ‘Let’s not disturb her,’ she says. ‘If there isn’t any change. Really, it was you I wanted to see. Just to find out how things were going…You went to see Dr Watson?’

I nod.

‘And how did you get on?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘She seemed pleasant.’

‘She’s very approachable, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘She’s extremely well respected in child psychiatry circles,’ she says. ‘She has some inpatient beds at the Jennifer Norton Unit. That’s a psychiatric unit for children—you might have heard of it?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ I tell her.

‘It’s very well regarded,’ she says. ‘Dr Watson has done some notable work with anorexics there.’

‘Right.’

‘So, Mr. Lydgate came as well?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘Yes, he was happy to come.’

I sense that she wants to talk about our marriage, like when I first took Daisy to see her, but she doesn’t know how to start or what to say. Here, on my own territory, the balance has shifted a little: I see how uncertain she is. It’s different from the surgery, as though the normal rules of courtesy operate here.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr Lydgate,’ she says.

‘Well, he isn’t often ill.’

She nods and waits. She wants me to say more. We sit for a moment in an awkward silence.

‘Oh,’ she says then. ‘By the way. That letter from Dr McGuire.’

‘The receptionist rang me,’ I say.

‘You managed to read it, did you?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘We didn’t ever find it,’ she says. ‘Never mind. We got another copy from Dr McGuire’s secretary.’

She picks up her black bag and goes towards the door. There’s a vague dissatisfaction about her, as though she hasn’t got what she came for.

Outside, at the top of the steps, she turns towards me. I wonder if she can smell the stench of decay from the dustbin. Her face looks harder, older in the brightness of the light.

‘It’s crucial for you to be straight with me, Mrs Lydgate,’ she says. Her eyes are narrowed against the sun and I can’t read her expression. ‘You see, I really can’t help you and Daisy unless you’re straight with me…’

She turns and goes before I can reply.

CHAPTER 27

I
see, driving there through the grey afternoon, how lavish all the borders are, after so much rain and sun, how even the tidiest gardens look overgrown.

I stand on his doorstep and ring the bell and the grey warm air wraps round me. There’s a musky, intimate smell, where the hawthorn has been rained on. I’m suddenly afraid: there’s part of me that hopes there’ll be no answer. I’m turning round to go when he opens the door.

He’s wearing one of those baggy shirts, and his hair is unruly, as though he’s just run his hands through it. He looks at me; he doesn’t smile. He doesn’t seem surprised.

I suddenly feel I have no right to be here. ‘I’m sorry—are you busy?’

‘I’m writing a rather worthy piece on the politics of coffee.’

‘I won’t come in, then…’

‘Of course you’ll come in,’ he says, standing aside to let me through. ‘Trust me, I can handle this kind of interruption.’

I follow him through to the back room. On this clouded afternoon, it seems more ordinary and smaller than before.

I go to the window. Jamie and a friend of his are somersaulting on the climbing frame. Everything’s further on since last I came here. There’s a ragged mist of thistledown on the lawn, and in the borders under the prunus a tangle of docks and bluebells; the flowers are a soft faded blue, as though they’ve been soaked in water.

‘It all needs cutting back,’ he says. ‘There are things in that lawn that really shouldn’t be there.’

‘I like it as it is.’

He smiles at me and pushes up his shirt-sleeves. I’m very aware of his skin, of the fine fair hairs on his arms.

‘This is great timing,’ he says, as though my presence here is the most natural thing. ‘I was going to give you a ring—I’ve got that name for you.’

‘The doctor?’

He nods. ‘A gastro-enterologist who specialises in children. You’ll have to get your GP to refer you.’ He rifles through a heap of papers on top of the bookcase. ‘Here.’

He’s written the name on an envelope, someone from Great Ormond Street. I put it in my bag.

‘I’m really grateful,’ I tell him.

‘It seemed the least I could do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘We’ll have some wine,’ he says.

I notice that he doesn’t ask if I want it, as though we already have our rituals, the ways we usually do things. As though he knows what I want.

He goes to the kitchen, brings a bottle and glasses. As he hands me mine our fingers touch around the cool bowl of the glass.