Confessions of a Bad Mother (18 page)

As for magazine articles, like ‘
Put the spice back into
your sex life
’, they make me want to refuse to do it ever again.
What do you mean? Pepper? And they’re very keen on lacy underwear. Well,
when Ann Summers starts a section called ‘Post-Partum Party’
they’ll know there’s a demand for it.

Still, I do miss it. Not as much as an amazing orange-flavoured bread
and butter pudding I had in 1992 in Bristol, which I still think about. But
quite a bit. And I’m just slightly concerned that Peter has started to
refer to it with the same nostalgic fondness he used to reserve for flying
boats and the Age of Steam. He hasn’t actually complained, but I think
he’s relegated it to our Former Life, along with reading a whole section
of the Sunday newspapers and talking without interruptions on the phone. I make
a decision. I’m going to Consider His Needs. I won’t change my
pants, as it were, but I will
initiate
. I picture him at work.
I’ve always found offices quite sexy. I had sex with a guy on his desk
once. Apart from a sore back because of the stapler, it was quite good. Mind
you, these days the arousal threshold is lower. When your life is dominated by
two year olds, just being near a man in a suit is quite thrilling. And the
phrase ‘
Let’s do lunch
’ is practically foreplay.
Right! I’m focused now. I’ll ring up and get him in the mood.
Pip-pip-pip-pip
(that’s me dialling).

‘Hi … I just thought you should know, that –
I’d really like to fuck you sometime.’

‘Actually, can I call you back? I’m in a meeting.’

And by the time he does get home all we want to do is eat, drink and go
to sleep. That leaves early morning – the only part of the day where
energy and quiet are available at the same time, except that at the moment the
kids wake nearly every day at five. A few days later, however, we get our
chance. It’s 6.30 and they’re still asleep.

‘Shall we?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘What if they wake up?’

‘They’re very quiet.’

‘D’you think something’s wrong?’

‘We should check on them.’

‘Yeah, but that’ll wake them up. It did last
time.’

‘OK, go on.’

‘I think I heard something.’

‘No, no. Hurry up, they’re fine.’

Sex! Quick, quick, boy! An ecstasy of fumbling. I pull off the non-lacy
pants and hurl them across the room. But it’s harder to throw off the
guilt. I remember when my friend Claudia unplugged the baby monitor to put in a
cappuccino machine. As we drank we made up headlines: ‘
Tragic Tots
Died So Parents Could Have Frothy Coffee.
’ Some bit of me is
absolutely convinced that if I let them go out of my head, even for a minute,
something bad will happen. Still, I’ve got the pants off now. Fifteen
minutes in, when we’ve forgotten that we even
have
any
children:

‘Da-a-a-a-d-e-e-eee!!!’

We stop dead, look guiltily at the door.

‘Maybe they’ll go back to sleep.’

‘D-A-A-A-
DDE-E-E-E-EEEEE!!!
’

‘Coming!’ Ha, bloody, ha.

We go into their room. Lawrence is halfway over the bars of his cot with
an expression of pained self-righteousness, like Jack Klugman in
Twelve
Angry Men
. Lydia is rattling hers and shouting incoherent abuse, like the
alcoholic prostitute in the flats near where I used to live. Peter has a
brainwave.

‘Hey, what about a video?’

‘Thanks, but if I can’t have sex myself, the last thing I
want to see is someone else having it.’

‘Not you:
them.
’

‘Yes,
please
!!’ says Lawrence.

‘Minamin!’ This is Lydia’s name for Thomas the Tank
Engine. I don’t know why.

‘Right! Where is it?’

‘Downstairs.’

‘Come on everyone! Quick!’

A straggly procession makes its way downstairs, taking ages because
Lawrence has to stop for a wee, which he’s just learned how to do, and
Lydia gets halfway then has to go back for her favourite purple scarf.

‘Sit down, everyone. Not there!’

Lawrence has sat on my non-removable-covered little armchair, the only
one in the house I mind about, and since starting toilet training, his
favourite. Peter holds up
Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends
, which is
only fifteen minutes: not long enough. Well, not for me anyway.

‘Get
Rescues on the Railways
. That’s the
longest.’

It’s thirty-four minutes – long enough even for me. But we
can’t find it. We search frantically, chucking tapes all over the
place.

‘Don’t throw things,’ says Lawrence.
‘You’re very
naughty
.’

We have three episodes of
Homicide
, two copies of
Saving
Private Ryan
– why do people keep giving us that? – a selection
of documentaries about penguins and other marine life and one about
women’s rights in Afghanistan – a very short one, ha-ha.
Rescues
on the Railways
remains elusive.

‘Hey, look:
The Big Sleep
!’

‘
Great.
I thought it’d gone forever.’

‘You said I never packed it when we moved. I did.
See?
And
you didn’t believe me, you said—’

‘Wait, what’s this?’ It’s
Spooks and
Surprises
– late period Thomas with ghost trains, crashes and
explosions, with beautiful special effects. And it’s a whopping
fifty-three minutes long.

‘I love this!’ shouts Lawrence.

‘Minamin!’ cries Lydia. ‘Oh, look – it’s
the one with the boulder!’

‘OK, they’re hooked. Let’s go.’

‘It’s rolling along the track – like
Raiders of the
Lost
Ark
!’

‘Darling …’

‘Look, look: it’s going to explode!’

‘Oh
ye-eah
…’

We both know the moment has passed. Well, I don’t know about you,
but I find the switching back and forth a challenge. When you’re meant to
be Nurturing all the time, you can’t just suddenly reboot. If
you’re still feeding, it’s too weird; it’s not as though your
breasts get new software. And the brain needs time. It’s harder than
decimals when new pence came in, and that took five years.

But we don’t give up. That evening we find
Rescues on
the Railways
behind some poster paints and instead of dinner, rush
upstairs. In the afterglow, we smile dreamily at each other.

‘Darling?’

‘Mmm.’

‘How long d’you think before they’ll want to see
Saving Private Ryan
?’

So, if you thought sex was a thing of the past, like reading the papers
properly, here’s my Handy Table of Sexual Activities for some of the
videos you’re already likely to have around the house (NB TV series are
per episode unless otherwise stated):

Pingu
– A snog, or, if from the UK, parts of Northern
Europe or Australia, foreplay.

Fireman Sam
,
Balamory
,
The Tweenies
– Oral
sex (for him) or, if from the UK, parts of Northern Europe or Australia, full
sex.

Dumbo
,
Mary Poppins
, etc. – Oral sex (for her),
full sex and cigarette.

Lord of the Rings Parts I
,
II
and
III
– I
think I’ve made my point.

Sex is just the beginning. A whole vista of possibilities has opened up.
Soon, we will be able to do something we’ve
really
missed, like
sleep in till eight o’clock.

September comes. Lawrence has already been to nursery, so it’s not
as though this is a challenge. We won’t have any hysterics, like you get
with these boys who’ve never been away from their mums. You know the
ones: their hair’s always too long and for some reason they wear
dungarees. There’s only one teensy problem. He hasn’t been to the
school since July, six weeks ago. I say, ‘You’re going to
school!’ And he says, ‘I’ve
been
to school,’ as
if it’s a one-off, like going to the opera.

He’s unbothered, but I feel immediately that I don’t fit in
and no one will want to be my friend. Thank God I’ve brought
Katarina.

The other mummies seem to fall into two groups. They’re either
dressed for takeover bids and leaving their child with a guilt-free peck on the
forehead before departing for the City by helicopter, or they’re coolly
shepherding hordes of dogs and older children back into their UN-issue,
All-Terrain Personnel Carriers while memorizing the contents of the notice
board. Even a child mislaid, or found in the woods with its head down a badger
hole, doesn’t faze them.

‘Come
out
, William …’ is the most stressed
response I hear. None of them looks weepy, or even nervous. Some of them even
roll their eyes at each other and exchange knowing looks. What
is
that
Look? What are we
doing
here?

On the way in, the children are to have their pictures taken with their
mummies. But at the crucial moment Lydia tries to escape, and as I grab her,
the teacher leaps forward and photographs Lawrence with Katarina by mistake.
There is now incontrovertible evidence that I Have Help. But as Peter always
says when I moan about something trivial, ‘What you need is a Bigger
Problem.’ And I soon get one.

Today is just the first day of a two-week settling-in period, with the
new children left for an hour the first time, and then longer each day. An
hour, or even two, is hardly enough time to do anything. As a result, for days
on end the village is full of women wandering around looking at their watches
every two minutes and saying, ‘I must get back to the South
Circular,’ like Robert Shaw in
The Caretaker
.

‘Is this really necessary?’ I say to the teacher.
‘Lawrence has been to nursery before. In fact, we’ve moved house,
and
he went to hospital. He can cope with anything!’

And sure enough, he coasts along perfectly until the first full day,
when I kiss him and walk cheerily to the door. He follows me and clings to my
legs, shouting. It feels
terrible
. I try to be frightfully British. It
feels like
Sophie’s Choice
but I’m trying desperately for
Brief Encoun-
ter
: ‘
Separation Anxiety? Nonsense, Dr
Freud! I have some
shrapnel in my eye.
’

In full view of the Teacher, the Classroom Assistant and the Student, I
am crying before I reach the hall. Lawrence follows me; I bring him back. Three
times. Finally they peel him off me like leg wax and I stumble away. I’m
all the more humiliated because I’m the only one. I tell Mira back in
north London. Hers go to a place where they don’t even let you in the
door; you have to dispatch the child at arm’s length, like plutonium. She
says: ‘He was probably set off by the others crying.’

But, no: it’s just me and him. They say he stops soon after I
leave, and he does. I know, because I double back through the cloakroom and
listen. Even so, at the end of a torturous week, the teacher calls me to one
side.

‘It might be better if someone else brings him. Katarina
perhaps?’

I feel as though I’ve just been sacked.

In the end we take turns. I’m half relieved to share the burden,
and half determined to show I’m not so inadequate I can’t take my
own child to school. There is one more thing. The teacher mentions that
Lawrence has kicked the Head. I ring up, expecting him to be expelled.

‘He’s done
what
?’

‘I am sorry …’ she begins.

‘
You’re
sorry?!’

‘We had to take him to the staffroom for a little
while.’

‘How’s your
leg
?’

‘Oh, I’m fine!’

‘I feel terrible.’

‘Now, you mustn’t. We simply took him aside for a little
while, till he calmed down.’

Jesus.

‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to
say.’

‘Everything’s quite all right. It’s very nice of you
to ring.’

At least I won’t have this trouble with Lydia. She can’t
even talk yet, and she’s already trying to sit on the mat with the
others. She’s like an automatic car; I just have to let my foot off the
gas. That night she picks up the ray gun Peter brought me years ago from Tokyo,
his idea of a romantic present. She waves it and says her first clear word:
‘
Bang!
’

In the Nativity Play Lawrence is going to be a shepherd, another
Learning Experience for me because I wanted to be the star of everything and
always assumed my children would too. But he doesn’t mind. He has one
line which Peter is helping him to practise.

‘I’m the Angel Gabriel. I’m bringing Great News! What
is it?’

‘Biscuits!’

The play is fine, but the holidays wear us out. Getting dressed, sitting
down for supper, starting supper, finishing supper, going upstairs at
teeth-time, getting into pyjamas, getting into bed –
everything
is
a battle. Peter and I keep snapping at each other, and it doesn’t blow
over. We’re like two repelling magnets. I wish I’d never got
married, or had children. In my notebook I write,
I
feel like Oprah
Winfrey in
The Color Purple.
My spirit is
broken.

At bedtime on the Monday, after three really bad days, I tell Lawrence:
‘If you don’t put on your pyjamas, I’m going to walk down the
road and stay there. I just can’t stand it.’

‘Don’t go, Mummy!’

I am now officially the Worst Mother in the World. But I still wish
he’d just put on his fucking pyjamas.

On the Tuesday I bribe him with biscuits to leave for nursery on time,
and afterwards, he shows me his entry in the Golden Book:
For coming into
school every day with a
smile.

‘That’s lovely, darling! Well done!’

So the school gets the Jekyll and we get the Hyde. But I am a bit
proud.

We go to play with with his friend Milo from Treetops, which Lawrence
thinks is for his benefit, whereas it’s for mine, because his mother Lucy
is the only person round here I can tell when everything turns to shit.
She’s no more outwardly in control of things than I am, and has a new
baby as well, but also enough energy to make flapjacks. Her kitchen smells of
golden syrup. I take refuge there, and ask her: ‘Why are children so
fucking difficult?’ And she says: ‘God knows. Have another
flapjack.’