Perfect Day

Bank. Her lipstick is freshly applied, and she smells like his mother did when she was out for the evening — a quick top-up squirt of Chanel No. 5 in the Ladies giving her confidence to face the world, over the ever-present acridity of tobacco.
    The woman’s face is concerned, curious, tentative, but when his eyes meet hers she pretends not to have been looking at him at all. She clutches her small leather bag more closely against the buttons of her coat. The heels of her expensive shoes tap hurriedly on towards the north side of the river.
    Did she think he was going to jump?
    He looks again at the water. Liquid so dark it looks solid.
    The woman’s footsteps grow fainter.
    He has a sudden irrational desire to run after her and tell her that he wasn’t going to jump. He wants to tell her how he almost died this morning through no fault of his own, and how, through no merit, he survived; how he was tempted to do a most wicked thing, and how he resisted. He wants to tell her that it is more frightening to live and more difficult to be good. He wants her to wish him courage.
    He listens to the metallic tapping of her shoes until he’s not sure whether he can hear it any longer or not. Her perfume lingers in his nose.
    He stares at the space she just occupied, at the crisscross of iron girders which separates the pedestrian bit from the railway line, at the old puddle on the uneven surface of the walkway.
    He sees his mother standing in the kitchen of the house in Kentish Town , wearing a huge purple Aran sweater over an old, brushed-cotton nightie . The sweater hasn’t been washed for a while and the undersides of the sleeves are slightly greasy. She’s grinding fresh basil with a pestle and her chest is concave with the effort of it, and even though she’s dying, she’s determined to demonstrate that she’s still capable of producing fresh pasta sauce more delicious than anyone else’s.
    It’s the first time Alexander’s been alone with her since they arrived from Italy the day before. Nell has just taken Lucy to buy a car seat. He watches them walking up the street. Nell’s long fair curtain of hair falls forward as she bends over the buggy, chatting to Lucy, putting every dirty dustbin and bumpy paving stone into words for her. A natural teacher. A natural mother.
    It’s the first opportunity he’s had to ask his mother, ‘Well, what do you think?’
    He’s spilling over with pride in his beautiful partner and their beautiful child, and the only possible ^ response is that they are beautiful, that he is a lucky man. But he suddenly knows that his mother is not going to say anything like that.
    First there’s the horrible effort of a false smile and then she says, with sneering contempt, ‘I’m surprised you’ve chosen someone so good.’
    The word in her mouth contains all the things she despises: piety, blandness, boredom. For a moment he’s stunned, and then he laughs bitterly, and says, ‘How perverse of you to take a dislike to someone on the grounds that they are good. And how typical.’
    But she does not attempt to take her remark back, nor to contradict him. She does not even see that he’s hurt; instead she smiles, enjoying the trade of banter with her clever son, like old times. He knows that this is the point where he should become a grown-up and defend Nell. But he is a coward. He does not want to quarrel with his mother when she is dying.
    She goes to hug him, but he steps back from her embrace, leaving her stranded in her ugly jumper with the slimy green pestle held aloft.

    After that, they only went through the motions of conversation, saying nothing of any significance to each other. A few days later, she died.
    He’s never been able to forgive her, nor himself, and perhaps he’s never forgiven Nell for unknowingly separating them at death.

    Good.
    Such a benign little word.
    Why did it annoy him so much? Why has he never been able to talk to Nell about it? Was there something about his mother’s description that rang true?
    When Nell arrived in Tokyo his impression was of an infuriatingly capable girl. A nice girl. The kind of nice middle-class girl who played tennis. The only feeling he had for her was a vague desire to put her down, especially when she became Mends with the poisonous Frances .
    It was only when he bumped into her by chance in the Philippines that he saw something different. Standing in the dim red light of a dodgy bar, she was a person he recognized