Bad Mothers United (24 page)
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
Mum’s voice in my head:
No rest for the wicked
. Mum wrapping a worming tablet in mince for Chalkie. Mum boiling up rhubarb on the stove; explaining how to roll pastry; showing me
how to put on my first pair of grown-up tights.
Cat going mental. Where’s the damn bedside light switch gone? Who’s moved it? There! Nothing. Bulb’s gone. All I bloody need. Push cat off bed, thud.
Peace. Lovely.
No. Dazzled! Someone must be holding a floodlight over my head. Ow, ow, too bright. Have to shade my eyes to be able to see.
And it’s the damn cat again, jumped on the windowsill and pushing the curtain open. Sun breaking over the horizon right in my face, full on. I’ll never sleep like that. Bloody,
bloody animal. Off to the RSPCA with you tomorrow, lad, get you re-homed. You can go ‘meringue’ at someone else.
Stagger up, flailing, grab for the curtain. Only, what’s this? What’s going on in my garden? Who in the name of Jehovah is that lurking by my fence?
I might be a rubbish girlfriend but by God I’m a good mum. I am.
I pulled back the curtains on what looked like another sunny day. Amazing how warm it’s been, actually. The cleaners from the Working Men’s Club set up deckchairs on the car park
yesterday.
Next I helped Will dress – no nappy today, we’re living dangerously – and carried him downstairs. I set him on the kitchen floor while I went to splash cold water on my face
and rinse my mouth with Listerine. When I came out again he’d broken into the bottom cupboard and was cradling the biscuit barrel hopefully.
‘Come here,’ I said, and took it off him. I prised up the lid, snapped off a sliver of digestive and handed it to him to gnaw while I made his porridge. Smart mums compromise (I
read that in a magazine).
I have to say, it’s a sight easier navigating our kitchen since Nan went, but it’s also less exciting. No chance of finding sausages in the bread bin, or half the morning’s
post stuffed inside the toaster. This neat drawer where Will’s cutlery and bowls live used to contain sachets of ancient bread mix and wildflower seeds, hair nets and plastic rain hoods,
Atrixo, crepe bandages, mousetraps, drawing pins and half a draughts set. The little pantry, which was where Nan stowed her laundry paraphernalia, now houses Mum’s herb pots and features a
gingham café-style curtain and a set of much-prized Cath Kidston tins. I know Mum would love to go the whole hog and rip out the old kitchen, have fitted units in a nice farmhouse pine,
but she won’t part with her savings. ‘They’re ring-fenced for your education,’ she says in tones that range from martyred to downright angry.
‘I’m not going to put that sort of pressure on you,’ I said to Will, who was busy smearing biscuit paste across his clean-on-five-minutes-ago top. ‘Although if you
could let me know about the potty today, that would be good.’
‘Yuk,’ he said, dragging at his T-shirt.
‘Potty?’
‘Nah.’
We’d see. If the books were right, I’d most likely have him continent by the end of the week. And that meant, hooray, no more changing mat and nappy sacks and zinc oxide cream and
air freshener and hand sanitiser and trips to the wheeliebin in the middle of the night. End of an era, in fact. Nothing stays the same in motherhood. You just get your head round one routine and
then it’s all change. This toddler-porridge I was making (half a cup of water, stir hard, stick dish in microwave) would be replaced by something else in a month or two. I’d come home
from uni and find Mum was feeding him Frosties or scrambled eggs or possibly even Kit Kats and milk in a bowl.
I turned to look at Will where he sat, legs spread out in front of him on the lino, the top of his head lit by a ray of sun. He was so beautiful. The morning was beautiful.
‘Hey, you,’ I said. ‘Come outside.’
The best mums see an opportunity and just take off. I hoisted him up – he’s a bloomin’ weight these days – and settled him on my hip. Then I opened the back door onto
the glistening lawn. By now it was properly light, the ridge tiles on Eric’s house and one side of our hedge illuminated red. Over the other side of the sky, the pale moon sank towards
Rivington.
‘See?’ I said, giving Will a squeeze. ‘See how amazing the world is. There are glow worms and thunderstorms and live music and the seaside, hot-air balloons and magicians and
Toblerones and mosaics and snowboarding. Loads of cool stuff. And it’s all out there, waiting for you. There’s so much you can do, there’s so much you can be. There’ll be
change, and loss, people you care about who’ll leave you, but you mustn’t be scared. You must run out there and jump straight in. You must go after what you want. Because you’ll
always have me behind you, supporting you. I love you so much. Do you know that? Do you understand?’
Will snuffled against my neck. His body felt hot next to mine. How do I ever manage to go away from you? I thought.
‘Because you’re everything to me, and I promise, promise I’m going to make your life better than mine. We’ll have so much fun together. I’m going to take you by
the hand and lead you through all the happy times and the sad ones. Whatever unfolds, I’ll be right by your side, and I’ll rejoice in your joy and not whinge for no reason and get
disillusioned and start to pick holes in everything you do. You can be who you want to because I’m not going to force you into any kind of mould. You were always a blessing, not a
millstone, and I’ll never make you feel anything other than a hundred per cent wanted. Whatever wrong turnings I’ve made, you were never one of them. I really need you to know that.
And if I ever do make mistakes, I’ll ’fess up straight away and try and make it right again. I make you that vow. I’m going to come at you with a great towering wall of love, a
tidal wave of it, and you won’t have any choice but to love me back and be happy.’
Out of the blue, a memory of Daniel jogging round the garden with Will shrieking on his shoulders . . .
There was a clunk as the back door opened and I heard my mother’s voice.
‘You know you’ve knackered the microwave, don’t you?’
I let Will slither gently to the ground. ‘What?’
‘You set it for thirty minutes, not thirty seconds. His porridge exploded. His ladybird spoon’s melted. This is what happens when you go round half-asleep.’
She marched up to us and peered into my face. ‘Where’s your red scarf gone?’
‘What red scarf?’
‘You were wearing a red scarf.’
‘When?’
‘Five minutes ago. I saw you from upstairs.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I don’t own a red scarf.’
Her colour was high, and there was gunk in the corner of her eyes. I wondered if she was going a bit mad. She’s so near the edge these days.
‘I
saw
you,’ she said. ‘You were rooting about in the bushes.’
‘You must have dreamed it.’
‘I ought to be able to come up with better dreams than that.’
There’s no arguing with her when she’s in a mood. I said, ‘I was showing Will the sunrise. Isn’t it fantastic? I couldn’t let him miss it.’
She dismissed the glorious sky in a glance, then pointed triumphantly at a dark patch on the side of my T-shirt.
‘Looks like you did a good job, anyway. He’s wet himself with excitement.’
Within three hours we’d had a sight worse than wee. Thank God his trousers had elasticated ankles. Of course by this time Madam’s swanned off for her driving
lesson, so it was all for me to deal with.
I took him to the bathroom, in fact I stood him in the bath, and peeled off his lower clothes. Lord, where to start.
‘Why didn’t you ask for the potty, Will? It was right by you, under the table. Mummy showed you.’
He cast his eyes round the room as if he was considering.
‘Will?’
‘A big crocodile lives there,’ he said, pointing at the plughole.
‘What? Who told you that?’
‘Mummy. It goes snap! Snap! Snap!’
Oh brilliant, I thought. That’ll be another screaming fit round about bedtime.
‘Don’t be silly, love. How would it get through that tiny hole? Crocodiles are big. Bigger than you. Could you fit down there?’
‘Snap!’
‘You couldn’t fit down there, could you?’
‘Snap you up for dinner.’
‘Can you stop jigging about, at least?’
I set to work with the toddler wipes but it was hard going. There was poo on his socks, for heaven’s sake. How could one small child produce so much? And as I scrubbed and flushed,
scrubbed and flushed, I was thinking, You know, I’ve done all this once. My life’s moved on. My time for this is past.
‘Snap! Grandma. Snap your leg.’
‘So next time you’re going to say, aren’t you? Next time you need the potty. Don’t wait. You know where it is, you can just go.’
‘A lion in there.’
‘What?’
‘In there. Rarrrrr.’
In the airing cupboard now. Well, that was great. What other beasts had Charlotte installed around the house for him to panic about? As if we didn’t have enough tension in the air without
generating imaginary stress factors. ‘No, there isn’t. Hey, those trousers are getting pretty thin on the knees. We’ll have to buy you some more. Shall we do that? Nice new
trousers?’
‘He comes out at night.’
‘Who does?’
‘Lion.’
I began to dry off his legs with a towel. ‘There’s no lion in the cupboard, Will. I promise you.’
‘Mummy said.’
‘Mummy made a mistake. Look, we’ll open the door now, shall we? You can see for yourself.’
I lifted him out of the bath, gave him a quick dust of talc and set him on the mat. He’d become distracted by a silver moth which had flown out of the curtain and was dithering about by
the mirror. But I didn’t want to let the lion business go. I knew it would rear up again, and the very last thing we needed during the trauma of potty training was for him to develop a phobia
of the bathroom.
‘Shall we see?’
Will shook his head.
‘It’s fine, love. There’s nothing there.’ I pulled open the airing cupboard and stuck my head in as far as I could get it, which wasn’t that far because of the
lagged bulk of the boiler. ‘Will, look. Are you looking? Now, how could a lion fit in here? There isn’t even room for Pringle-cat.’
Frowning, he strained forward and nodded at the tank. ‘In there.’
‘No. No lions in there, love. It’s full of water. Lions can’t live in water. And there isn’t a way in or out. Only this thin pipe. A great big lion couldn’t get
through a little narrow pipe. It couldn’t, could it? And this water gets very hot. The lion would be cooked. He’d be boiled, like your egg.’
I thought this barrage of logic would have convinced him, but I forget he’s not even three. In the World of Two, anything’s possible. ‘There,’ he said, pointing to the
shelf above the tank.
‘That’s towels.’
‘He lives there.’
Bloody hell, I thought, I’m going to strangle your mother when she gets home.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Wait.’
I nipped back through to the lounge and picked up a chair. This I carried to the bathroom and placed in front of the cupboard. Then I clambered up onto the seat and started pulling out the
towels one by one. At first I tried to throw them so they landed neatishly across the sink, but they soon slipped off on to the floor. Will watched for a moment, then jumped into the middle of the
pile.
‘Can you see,’ I called down to him as he rolled about, ‘no lions. Not one. No animals at all, unless you count a little spider.’ Just a battered tenor horn case right
against the wall, and a box of candles and a possibly antique first aid kit. I climbed down again, intending to hoist him in my arms so he could inspect the space and declare it lion-free. Only
he’d wrapped himself in towels like a mummy and didn’t want to be freed, so I had a bit of a battle on there, and then in all the kerfuffle he did another wee, and I was just starting
to get to crisis point when the front doorbell rang.
I left him where he was and ran to peep out of the window. It was Eric on the step.
‘Hang on,’ I yelled into the hall, then scuttled back to the bathroom. While I was away Will must have rolled against the sink pedestal because he was sitting up with a red mark on
his forehead, crying. He was still entirely naked from the waist down. His stinky trousers, socks and pants festered in the bath waiting for me to deal with them. I didn’t dare check myself
in the mirror; I had a fair idea of the state I was in.
‘Right, you.’ I picked up my grandson, gave his head a quick rub and then dragged him into the lounge where his potty was. ‘Sit there for one minute, don’t move, and you
can have a Kit Kat. Yes?’
He sat without argument. I dashed back to the bathroom and picked out the dirty clothes. For a moment I considered hurling them into the washing machine, but really they needed a scrape and also
I couldn’t cope with the smell any longer. So I nipped out the back door and just slung the lot in the bin. Then I came back inside, gave the place a frantic blast of air freshener, stuck my
hands under the tap and finally went to greet Eric.
‘Are you busy?’ were his first words. Kenzie clung to his hand.
‘I’ve one or two things on.’
Eric pulled a pleading face.
‘Do you need me to look after him?’ I said.
‘Would you? Would you really? You’re such a star, Karen. I wouldn’t ask only it’s a job, y’ ken, and you can’t keep turning down work, can you? Not these
days. But we should be done in a couple of hours – say, by midday.’ He relaxed his grasp and Kenzie stepped confidently inside.
‘OK.’
‘And then,’ he paused for effect, ‘I’m taking you out.’
‘Out?’
‘Pub lunch.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s nice.’
‘My treat. You deserve it. Although I’m thinking, we’ll have to go somewhere with a playbarn, that place on the bypass, so we can get a bit of peace while we eat.’
I knew the pub he meant. We’d been to a birthday party there. They had a plastic ball pit and slides and a soft play area for under-threes. Weary mums and dads sat at nearby tables and
forked out an endless stream of cash for sweets, slushies, Simpsons keyrings, hairbands, helium balloons, Postman Pat rides. Pop music boomed from all sides, cranking up the hysteria. Meanwhile the
kids flung themselves about and every ten minutes there’d be some collision requiring the mopping of tears and the buying of further junk. It’s torture for adults, basically.