Bad Mothers United

by Kate Long

  I said, ‘Haven’t you another student to see?’ And he said no, he had a meeting but he’d decided he’d have a more interesting and productive time talking to me instead.

  By the time he’d finished going through the list, my brain was alight with ideas. I wanted to run to the library and start straight away.

  ‘I can lend you the Mandeville,’ said Martin, reaching for his bookshelves. ‘My own copy. Keep it as long as you need it.’

  I took the book reverently.

  As I flicked through the pages he smiled. ‘Not that I’m putting any kind of pressure on you to stay, Charlotte.’

  ‘Course not. I haven’t been bulldozed at all.’

  ‘I’m glad you see that.’

  The Adagio finished; we were back to the brisk and busy Allegro.

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘One last thing. Since we’re speaking so honestly.’

  ‘Uh huh?’

  ‘Do you mind if I don’t drink the coffee any more? Only it tastes like bitumen.’

  He laughed and patted the back of my chair. Then he turned the music up and we sat for another couple of minutes in companionable silence.

  I’d have stayed there the whole day if I’d dared.

  For once it wasn’t raining. I crossed the playground and went out through the gates, a right turn onto the main street with its unlovely mix of Victorian and 1960s architecture. All my history was laid out in the length of this village, like the Bayeux Tapestry. Here was the top of the road where Steve nearly ran me over on his push bike so that I dropped my satchel and my pencil case burst open and my O level science book fell in the mud. Here was the chip shop I used to visit on a Friday night when I was first married. This building on the right was the library where I’d come during the day when Charlotte was a baby, to try and keep warm. Because, God, we were skint in those days. We had this rented room over the newsagent’s, and the gas fire would go on for three hours each evening and that was it; getting up to feed Charlotte at night was freezing torture. Everything we owned came from car boots or charity shops, although even charity shops were sometimes too dear. Our cupboards were stocked with value labels, and I’d often buy a bag of stale rolls off the baker at the end of the day and freshen them in the oven. One particular memory I have is of me crying as I tried to wrap Christmas presents with cheap paper off the market so thin it ripped if you looked at it twice. I even used to squash the toilet rolls out of shape so they released fewer sheets per tug. That’s how poor we were.

  Here was the chemist where later on I’d queued endlessly for Mum’s prescriptions, and the Wool Shop, also one of her favourites, and now the post office where a pre-teen Charlotte once stopped to stroke an evil-eyed Westie, only to have it nearly bite her finger off. I caught sight of my reflection hovering over a display of Hallmark cards, and paused. My face wasn’t actually too knackered from a distance, but when I moved in closer I could see there were two deep worry-lines between my eyebrows. I forced my muscles to relax and the lines grew fainter. That wasn’t bad, if I could stay like it. Mum always said people ended up with the face they deserved.

  Five minutes later found me pushing at the saloon door of the Feathers. Eric I spotted immediately. He was at the bar, denim jacket hanging open and brick dust staining his T-shirt.

  I nodded at the state of his front. ‘I see you’ve brought some work home with you.’

  ‘That’s me, always do a thorough job. What are you having to drink?’

  I went mad and ordered wine. The air in the pub felt close and thick, and I had to pick up a menu and fan myself with it.

  ‘Aye, it is warm,’ said Eric.

  I watched as he peeled off his denim jacket. Builder’s arms he certainly had, lean and brown and nicely muscled. Manly arms, the kind of arms which could fold you in and hold you tight. The hairs on the skin above his watch were golden rather than dark, which was surprising. Perhaps he’d been working outside and they’d bleached in the sun. On his left-hand middle finger he wore a signet ring. There was a white scar across the knuckle of his right thumb, a recent cut at the base of the palm.

  ‘– and out of nowhere this damn bucket landed on my foot,’ he was saying. ‘So there’s mortar spilling everywhere, me hopping about. Don’t think I’ll lose the nail, but it wouldna be the first time.’

  ‘Oh, no, awful.’ I was going to have to pay attention. ‘Don’t you wear special boots?’

  ‘If I remember to load them in the van.’

  The drinks arrived and we took ourselves to a corner table.

  ‘You’re very nice today, very summery,’ said Eric.

  I blushed. ‘Normally it tips down here eleven months of the year, but we seem to have had an amazing run since you moved in.’ God, now I was talking about the weather. It was stupid of me to get wound up. We’d chatted easily enough before, with Kenzie and Will ferreting about in the background. If only this room wasn’t so hot.

  ‘Nothing to do with me, hen. I grew up in Dumfries and Galloway. I tell you, Scotland can out-rain England any day of the week.’

  ‘Bet it can’t. Year Five were doing the water cycle this morning. I had to help them stencil weather symbols and I thought to myself then, there ought to be a special cloud with a scowling face on it for Lancashire rain.’

  ‘Do you enjoy being a teacher?’

  ‘Classroom assistant.’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. It pays a lot less, for a start, but then I work fewer hours and I don’t have all the marking and planning to bother with. Which at the moment is a blessing, admittedly. I would still like to be a full-time teacher, get on a training course, see if I could pass the right exams. But you know what life’s like. Fate tends to knock you off your tracks.’

  Eric tutted as if he knew exactly what I meant. ‘I bet you’re good, though. With the wee kiddies. I bet you’re patient. More patient than me, anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t claim that.’

  ‘Ach, I ended up shouting at Kenzie this morning. He wouldna put his shoes on, wanted me to do it and I know he can manage perfectly well himself, I taught him over the summer. It’s as if he wants babying, as if he’s going backwards. And I canna be waiting on him hand and foot.’

  ‘Well, it’s hard when you’re on your own.’

  ‘It is.’

  Our table-mats and cutlery arrived.

  I said, ‘Do you mind if I ask: is there no sign of Maria coming back? Has she not been in touch at all?’

  ‘Nah.’ He cast his eyes downwards. ‘It just happened out the blue. Told me one day I wasna right for her, she wanted more, then the next day she’d packed up and gone. No forwarding address. Trying t’explain to the lad . . .’

  My indignation flared again. What kind of mother just drops her child as if he’s an inconvenience? She ought to be hunted down and hauled home.

  ‘That must have been awful.’

  ‘To be honest with you, Karen, it cuts me up to be talking about it.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘Kenzie’s such a sweet boy, as well. It’s lovely to watch him play alongside Will. He likes colouring in, and drawing, doesn’t he? He did me a beautiful sun the other day. Will just scribbles. He’ll scribble on anything if you don’t watch him – magazines, letters, the skirting board. His own legs one time.’

  ‘You wait till he discovers scissors. Kenzie’s done for my shaver cable. Two minutes, I was out the room. Mopping up a drink he spilled.’

  At the edge of my vision I could see two middle-aged women very obviously checking Eric out. They swivelled in their seats and leaned together, whispering. One of them had maroon-streaked hair and the other needed her roots bleaching; both wore skirts like pelmets. I thought, Well, at least I’m not dressed like mutton. I look ‘nice and summery’: he said so. I sat up straighter and smoothed my blouse.

  ‘No, you can’t afford to take your eyes off toddlers for a second,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you something, it�
��s worse when the child you’re in charge of isn’t your own. It puts you in an impossible position. I’ve lost track of the number of things I’m supposedly doing wrong with Will. The latest is, Angel Delight’s not a fit and proper pudding, even though Charlotte ate her way through vats of it when she was his age and I don’t recall her being struck down with nutritional deficiency. And I cut his hair too short, that’s another bone of contention. What I say is, she can take over when she comes home for the summer, she can be the one to hold him down in the barber’s chair while he screams his head off and chokes on his own clippings.’

  Eric was nodding like a man who understood.

  ‘Although, as it stands, our Charlotte’s not even speaking to me,’ I went on.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Oh, a stupid misunderstanding. Something she heard over the phone. I’m not stressing about it. She’ll come round. Basically the problem is, she wants control over Will but she’s not here to enforce it.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Eric. ‘She should be on her knees thanking you for what you do.’

  ‘Ha! Dream on. Anyway, next on the horizon it’s potty training. Charlotte’s read up on the topic, reckons if you stay firm then it’s a doddle. But I remember what a demon she was at that stage, and how many pairs of knickers we’d get through in a day.’

  ‘Our Kenzie still wets the bed.’

  Now that doesn’t surprise me, I thought. Nervous little scrap. I wondered if it had started when his mum left.

  Our dinner arrived and I found I was very hungry. Eric watched me tucking into steak and ale pie. ‘I like a woman who enjoys her food,’ he said. I suspected he might be eyeing up my cleavage, but I was well into my second glass of wine by then so my judgement maybe wasn’t pin sharp. I did notice that when he got up to go to the Gents, several women clocked him cross the room, clocked the neat bum in faded jeans, the slight swagger of a man happy with himself. Yes, ladies, he’s with me, I thought. Get over it. I remembered Sylv, suddenly, and felt mean: maybe I should go out with her sometime. A spot of salsa might get the blood pumping again. You need to loosen up, she’d said. At the same moment I realised I had sky-blue poster paint all round the nail-bed of my little finger. How had I missed that? I put my finger in my mouth to see if I could suck it clean. I didn’t want Eric to think I was growing mould.

  And as I nibbled, a different memory popped into my head, of Steve licking my fingers after we’d eaten Chinese ribs one night: that was in the months after I became a grandma and I’d almost had him back. I was glad now I’d held out. Even at the time I knew I was just feeling sorry for myself. I half-closed my eyes and tried to imagine that it was Steve who’d any minute be walking across the saloon towards me, how I’d feel, how those women sitting at other tables might react. I doubted he’d provoke much interest from any quarter. He wasn’t an ugly man, my ex, but he was skinny, slouched his shoulders as though he was permanently battling through hail, and then there was that damn moustache.

  There was a time in my early thirties when it seemed a terrible embarrassment that I’d ended up divorced and single. So I’d run around dating various gits and losers, while Charlotte sniggered from the sidelines. The year Will was born there’d been that funny half-flirtation with my boss, Leo, only in the end I’d walked away because however kind someone is, if you don’t fancy them then the relationship’s going nowhere. Last year there’d been a bit of excitement when I was asked out by one of the dads at school. Twice we went for a drink and once he took me to Rufford Old Hall Gardens for afternoon tea. And he was OK in himself but his son was a little sod, loathed by everyone in the staff room. I couldn’t bring myself to hook up with a man whose child liked to smear his own face with Pritt Stick and then press his chin into pencil shavings.

  Since then there’d been naff-all in the way of romantic activity, unless you counted a dozen or so fumbles with Steve. Which I didn’t.

  And now here was Eric, dropping into my life out the blue, landing practically on my doorstep, with his easy manner and interested face. I couldn’t help being stirred. He just had that way with him.

  I sneaked a glance across at Maroon-Streak and Brown-Roots. They were out on the pull, they obviously felt entitled to a sex-life. The trouble was, ordinary routine swallowed you up, made you dull and mumsy. Grandmumsy, in my case. There didn’t seem much left over for erotic adventure. Or was I being defeatist? Was I all washed up, or only in my prime?

  By the time he came back I was on my third glass of wine and I’d unbuttoned my blouse a notch.

  ‘How old are you, Eric, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘Thirty-two. Why?’

  Thirty-two! Thirty-two was OK. ‘No reason, really.’

  ‘Aye. I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth, as my granny used to say. Have to keep checking I’ve no bald patch coming.’ He patted the top of his scalp cheerfully. ‘So far so good. Although if Kenzie keeps on misbehaving I might start losing a few hairs.’

  I said, ‘Not every man could have coped in your situation. You do better than you think. You do, I’ve seen you with him.’

  ‘He’s not a bad kid. I wish he was tougher, though. Like your Will, y’ ken? Nothing fazes him.’

  That was true. You wouldn’t have caught Kenzie poking an Alsatian with a stick, or taking off on his own across Menses Park after a stranger’s football. ‘No, but he’s two. He’s fearless because he’s immature. A bit like Steve and his ruddy bike.’

  Eric sipped his pint, studying me.

  ‘Do you see much of your ex, Karen?’

  ‘Not a lot. Not since he turned into Easy Rider.’

  ‘You get on OK, though?’

  ‘He’s all right.’ I thought about it. ‘Yeah, he is.’

  ‘When did you split up?’

  ‘Oh, ages ago. When Charlotte was tiny. It was me, really, Steve would have stayed the course. But we were too young and we had no money and I suppose I blamed him. Not that I’d call myself materialistic, but it grinds you down when you haven’t enough to cover the basics. He kept walking out of jobs, mucking about. It was just a grim start to a marriage and it spoiled things between us. I hadn’t even wanted to get hitched in the first place, it was my mother who persuaded me. “Make a stable home for the baby,” she said.’ I pictured Mum standing on the doorstep that day I’d come home, her hands clasped against her bosom. ‘Not that I blame her. She meant well. After the split it was Mum who took us in and looked after us. And it did come right eventually. Because no matter how bad a break-up is, you get through it in the end.’

  It must have been the wine talking because I suddenly heard myself say, ‘Can you ever see yourself dating again?’

  Eric put down his glass thoughtfully. Even through the veil of drink I could see I’d been less than subtle.

  ‘Well, there’s a question,’ he said. ‘Put it this way: I hope one day I’ll find someone I can trust again, who won’t let me down, who talks to me if she’s unhappy instead of bottling it up. Someone who’ll be nice to Kenzie, who he likes. It’s the thought of that keeps me going.’ He gave me a lovely conspiratorial smile, one single parent to another. ‘But that’s for the future. Let’s say for now, I’m not quite on the market yet.’

  And there we were. Wherever that was.

  Across the room, Brown-Roots raised her eyebrows at me. I just looked away.

  After I’d seen Martin, I went back to the house and did two hours’ straight revision. Then I took Roz into town for a spot of window shopping. I thought that was better for both of us than sitting in our rooms and brooding. Lately she’d been either clingy with me or miserably aloof – I never knew which I was going to get when we met each morning over the toaster. Meanwhile Gemma and Walshy were wild to know what was up with her, and I kept having to pretend I didn’t know. It was a crap place to be.

  ‘So what is the plan?’ I’d asked her two days ago. She knew straight away I meant about the baby. ‘I’m keeping it,’ she�
�d said. ‘I’m telling Gareth next week.’ I’d given her a hug and she’d had a little cry. Since then she’d been like my shadow.

  Now we were cruising down the baby aisle in Boots, and Roz was goggling at all the shelves of gear stretching along both sides. In the milk section alone there was Cow & Gate, Aptamil, SMA and HiPP, in cartons, bottles, tins, travel sachets; there were sterilisers and warmers and breast pumps, teats and spouts and cleaning brushes and trainer cups, pouches and pots of baby food, soft plastic spoons and grip-base bowls. Bibs came in rigid plastic or floppy cloth, singly or in multipacks, alongside wipes featuring mice, rabbits, hippos, chicks and crocodiles. There were banks of nappies in all sizes, and cotton-wool pads and scented plastic sacks and self-seal bins; shampoo and lotion and bubble bath in Gentle, Calming, Sensitive and Regular. Roz paused in front of the Baby Safety display. She reached past a rack of thermometers and picked out a socket cover.

  ‘It looks bloody complicated, having a baby,’ she said, her voice wobbling a little.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s a lot to do at first, when they’re newborns. But you get loads of support. It’s not like you’re dropped and left. I mean, with me, the baby’s dad wasn’t great . . .’ Understatement of the century, that was.

  ‘I’ve no idea how Gareth’s going to be.’

  ‘No, but what I’m saying is, other people always step in. In the first weeks I had Will, my mum changed more nappies than I did . . .’

  I trailed off because of the look of horror crossing her face. Obviously she hadn’t broken the news to her folks yet, either. ‘Plus there are professionals queuing up to help, midwives and health visitors and your GP. Someone pops round every few days, and they’ll answer any questions or worries you have. You won’t be on your own, I promise you.’

  Roz nodded bravely, but I could see the terror in her eyes. For a distraction I pointed at a photo of a model pasted on the wall near the tills. ‘Hey, have you seen? Doesn’t she look like Gemma?’