From Here to Maternity (17 page)

Imogen looked at me as if I were a little unstable. ‘Barking sound?’

‘Yes, we’re very proud of him.’

Before she could commit me to a mental institution, Thomas charged through the door with a stick in his hand and walloped Yuri on the head.

Silence… Then bloodcurdling screams. Mine and Yuri’s. For once, I didn’t hold back. ‘You little shit! How dare you?’ I grabbed Thomas by the arm and wrenched the stick out of his hand.

‘Ow! You’re mean and horrible! I hate you!’ he cried, as Imogen pushed me away from her precious son.

‘How dare you speak to Thomas like that?’ she screeched. ‘Poor little Tom-Tom. Show Mummy your sore arm. Really, Emma, there’s no need to behave like a savage! It was an accident.’

I looked down at the big bump on Yuri’s forehead and hissed, ‘It was no accident! He’s a brat who needs discipline, not bloody horse-riding lessons.’

Mrs Hamilton chose that moment to enter the room with a tray of sandwiches and tea, thus preventing Imogen and me scratching each other’s eyes out. Which was a pity, because I felt I had the advantage on her. Granted, she had muscly arms, but I had blind fury on my side, so I reckon she would have come off worse.

Later that evening, when they had left and Yuri had finally gone to sleep, James and I were getting ready for dinner with his parents. I was still furious about the bump on Yuri’s poor little head. ‘The little shit! God, James, I nearly hit him. He could have killed Yuri, or knocked him unconscious. Jesus, they should lock him up and throw away the key. I won’t have him near Yuri again.’

‘Come on, darling, calm down. Yuri’s fine. It’s just a bump. Kids are always pushing each other about, and Thomas didn’t mean anything. It was just high spirits.’

I snorted at this lame excuse. ‘He’s a horrible little boy. I told you this weekend was going to be a disaster. Look at poor Yuri’s head.’

‘It’s not a disaster. This was one incident and you saw how pleased Mother and Father were to meet their grandson. They couldn’t have been more doting or generous.’

He was right. They’d been thrilled. ‘Fair enough, they have been wonderful, but I don’t want to see Thomas for the rest of the weekend. I don’t care what you have to do or say to Henry, but he is not to be anywhere near me or Yuri because, I’m telling you, James, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

‘OK, Tiger. Now, breathe deeply and unclench your jaw. I want my parents to see how motherhood has mellowed you.’

‘Has it?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t noticed a dramatic change so far, but I live in hope.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ I said, laughing. ‘We can’t all be the voice of reason.’

The next day Yuri’s bump had gone down and he was in good form. He had only woken up twice during the night so I was very proud of him. We spent a lovely day with James’s parents, going for a long walk across wonderfully unspoilt countryside, and Yuri loved being out in the fresh air. He behaved very well, too, except for a small incident when he flung a large amount of mayonnaise over Mr Hamilton’s good tweed jacket. Still, in fairness, his grandfather took it in his stride and laughed it off.

That evening was Mr Hamilton’s birthday dinner and we were going out with Henry and Imogen to a restaurant in the nearby town. A babysitter had been booked for Yuri, so I decided to take him up early and try to settle him before she arrived, in case he freaked when he saw yet another new face. Yuri, however, overtired from all the fresh air and exercise, had other ideas. Every time I tried to put him down, he began to roar. And I mean screaming at the top of his voice. It sounded as if he was being tortured, not merely put into his travel cot. I tried six times, but he kept freaking out, and I was afraid to leave him crying for ten minutes – as I would have done at home – because I thought James’s parents would be shocked. Each time I picked him up, he stopped, but time was ticking by and I was desperate to have him asleep before the babysitter arrived.

Every time I tried to put his dummy into his mouth, he spat it out. The crying and spitting out went on for over an hour until I was at the end of my tether. I looked around for something to help and my eyes fell upon James’s tie.

I looped the tie into the ring on the end of Yuri’s dummy, I then secured it by tying it in a knot at the back of his head. The dummy was now pasted to his mouth so he couldn’t spit it out. I laid him down in his cot. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it’s only two minutes while I shower,’ I said, feeling like a very bad mother. ‘Come on, now, calm down and go to sleep.’

He sat up and stared at me. I looked at my watch. We were leaving in twenty minutes. I ran into the bathroom and had a speedy shower. When I got back to the room – literally two minutes later – Mrs Hamilton was standing at the cot, looking shocked.

‘Emma, what on earth… Is he all right?’ she asked. ‘Is that what they do, these days?’

‘Oh, ha-ha – no, not really, it was just for a minute to try to calm him down… I was just… you know… um… well…’ I was at a loss for words. How on earth could I explain it to her? I bent down to undo the tie. Yuri spat the dummy on to the floor and let out the most almighty roar. I picked him up as Mrs Hamilton muttered something about leaving me to it.

A few minutes later, James came in. ‘What on earth is going on?’ he asked. ‘My mother just told me that she found Yuri with a dummy tied to his head?’

‘Well, it wasn’t quite like that. He wouldn’t stop crying – which I notice you completely ignored while you sat downstairs having pre-dinner drinks with your parents – so I had to resort to slightly desperate measures.’

‘Like gagging him?’

‘No, I just needed him to calm down so I secured the dummy in his mouth for a minute.’

‘He could have choked.’

‘He was breathing perfectly well through his nose. If you were so concerned you should have come up and helped me.’

‘My poor mother came down shaking. We had to feed her a stiff brandy.’

‘Well, I’d like a stiff drink myself, but, oh, no, while you and your dad quaff gin and tonics and talk about rugby, I’m left trying to settle a screaming child so that the babysitter won’t take one look at him and turn on her heels.’

‘Actually, Dad said he thought it sounded ingenious,’ said James, beginning to laugh.

‘But your mother thinks I’m certifiable.’

‘Well, she did say she’d never seen anything quite like it before.’

‘What did you say? That I’m just a lunatic, I suppose.’

‘No, I said it was family trick your mother had passed down and I used it regularly on you to great effect.’

Chapter 19

A week after we got back from England, I went to meet Lucy and Jess for drinks – well, fizzy water for me, drinks for them. They both commented on my bump, which had suddenly sprouted. I’m not sure if it was the baby or that my appetite had come back with a vengeance. I was permanently starving. With nineteen weeks still to go, at this rate I’d be the size of a house by the time the baby was born. The really worrying thing was, that all I craved was chips, toast lathered in butter, and ice-cream. I had heard of women who craved carrots or liquorice but unfortunately I seemed to need grease in truckloads.

‘So, how many weeks are you?’ asked Jess.

‘Oh, God, not the weeks thing,’ said Lucy. ‘I hate the way pregnant women do that. Everything’s about weeks. For us plebs it just means we have to divide everything by four to try and work out how pregnant you are. Why do months go out the window when you’re pregnant? Everyone talks about nine months until they get pregnant and then it’s all about forty weeks.’

She had a point – and it was something I used to moan about too.

‘Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten how annoying it is.’ I grinned. ‘I’m twenty-one weeks – so, just over five months.’

‘You’re very neat,’ said Jess.

‘I won’t be for much longer if I keep eating at the rate I am. How much weight did you put on?’ I asked Jess.

‘For Sally I ate like a horse and put on nearly four stone, which took me over a year to shed. With Roy I was a lot more careful and only put on two.’

‘How much is considered normal?’ I asked.

‘They say two stone is about right,’ said Jess.

‘Is it really hard to lose?’

‘Nightmare.’

‘God, I really had better stop eating so much, then,’ I said.

‘On the positive side, your boobs are sensational,’ said Lucy, nodding at my now almost
Playboy
-sized breasts.

I had always had a fine pair of boobs, but they had increased considerably in the last few weeks. I was heading towards Dolly Parton territory. ‘I know – they’re huge.’ I giggled. ‘I’ll have to get new underwear – I’m spilling out of all my bras.’

‘I’d love to have good boobs,’ said Lucy, looking down at her fried eggs.

‘Yeah, well, I’d love to have your figure,’ I said. ‘By the way, when will I start blooming?’ I asked Jess. ‘I’m as pale a ghost and I look like death at the moment. Or is it just bullshit?’

‘I found from five months on much more enjoyable and your energy levels go up.’

‘Well, if they went down any more I’d be horizontal. I’m permanently tired. I miss energy.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ve had a double whammy with Yuri coming along at the same time. You should get that book
What To Expect When You’re Expecting.
It’s really good – everyone in my mother-and-baby group has it,’ said Jess.

I was a bit wary of her books after the ones she had lent me on child-rearing – and as for her mother-and-baby group…

‘I’m not sure about the information thing,’ I said. ‘I totally overdid it with the research when I was trying to get pregnant and I don’t think it did me any good – I was completely obsessed. I’m kind of avoiding all the pregnancy books. I think they’ll just make me over-analyse it. I think I’m a less-is-more type of person. And by the way Jess, no offence, but those women in your baby group were hard going.’

‘They sound like a bunch of bitches to me. Women with too much time on their hands are dangerous,’ said Lucy, who had had a blow-by-blow account of the morning from me, and been furious on Yuri’s and my behalf.

Jess bristled. ‘They aren’t all women with too much time on their hands, Lucy, they’re just full-time mums, like me. I admit Sonia can be a bit hard to take, but she means well. She’s just got an abrupt manner.’

‘Emma said they were all dressed in designer gear at eleven o’clock in the morning,’ said Lucy, landing me in it.

‘What’s wrong with wanting to look nice when you spend most of your time in old clothes covered with dribble? It’s fun to dress up once in a while.’

‘They were pretty insensitive about Yuri, especially that idiot Maura,’ I said, getting a bit hot under the collar as I remembered how rude she was about him being adopted.

‘You’re the first person they’ve met who has adopted and they’re not used to the idea. They didn’t mean any harm. Anyway, it’s not as if you didn’t make your point. Maura was quite upset about it.’

‘Gee, poor old Maura! Maybe next time she won’t be so bloody insensitive. What about my feelings, Jess? They were implying that Yuri was some kind of charity case. How the hell do you think I felt?’

‘I know you were annoyed – I stuck up for you, remember? But you have to accept that adoption is probably something Maura has never thought about. She was just uninformed as opposed to being deliberately cruel. And you
are
a bit sensitive about it – understandably so,’ she said, backtracking when she saw my face darken.

‘Pfff, they sound like a bunch of losers to me,’ said Lucy.

‘They’re friends of mine, Lucy,’ said Jess. ‘I don’t slag off your workmates.’

‘That’s because my colleagues are interesting and don’t sit around all day talking about their Filipina maids and designer shirts. Those women spend far too much time drinking coffee and being dissatisfied with everything. You’ve told us before that they talk a lot about material things.’

‘Sometimes they do go on about cars and clothes but, believe me, it’s light relief after a week of sitting on the floor reading
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
over and over again, changing nappies and watching
The
sodding
Tellytubbies’

‘Fair enough. That does sound pretty dull,’ admitted Lucy.

I decided to change the subject. We were treading on dangerous territory. Both Lucy and Jess had had a good few drinks and they were singing from different hymn sheets, and probably always would be, on the issue of non-working mothers. Besides, I’d never see those women again, so there was no point in falling out with Jess over them. She was welcome to them and their mindless chit-chat. ‘Can we talk about sex for a minute?’ I piped up.

‘Anytime, anyplace, anywhere,’ said Lucy, encouragingly.

‘Well, the thing is, between the sleep deprivation with Yuri and my pregnancy, my sex drive seems to have somewhat diminished.’

‘Define “somewhat”,’ said Lucy, cutting to the chase.

‘Vastly,’ I replied.

‘That’s completely normal,’ said Jess, who hadn’t had sex with Tony for eight months after Sally was born.

‘It just seems a bit strange, because we’ve gone from having sex twenty-four-seven when I was trying to get pregnant to having it sporadically.’

‘It was the same when I was pregnant with Sally. Although when I was expecting Roy I was a lot randier,’ said Jess.

‘It’s the tiredness I’m most worried about. It’s zapping me.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve had a really emotionally, not to mention physically, draining few months,’ said Lucy.

‘I fell asleep in the middle of it last night,’ I blurted out, blushing at the memory.

‘
What!
’ they squealed, and laughed as they saw me squirm.

‘Details, please,’ said Jess.

I explained that the previous day I had realized that James and I hadn’t had sex in ages, not since New Year’s Eve, more than eight weeks ago. The problem was that the relief I felt when I finally collapsed into bed was so enormous that nothing could have enticed me to give up a second of sleep. Not even George Clooney could have persuaded me to offer up sacred sleep. But this was bad: all the books and magazines said it was important to keep up a healthy sex life after having children. I didn’t want us to turn into one of those couples where the husband goes around leering at other women because he’s starved sexually at home.