by Lucy Lawrie
‘It’s boys,’ I explained. ‘They make the baby girls look all dinky.’
Before we’d even taken the hypno-birthers’ coats, Jody arrived with Tom (possibly – we still didn’t know the man’s name) and the baby. Shona was next, with her husband Paul following behind carrying little Elgin. She was looking radiant. Before she’d even got her coat off, she enthused about how fantastic it was to be back at work.
‘I’m defending a groundbreaking medical negligence case,’ she announced, as she swept into the living room. ‘God, I can’t tell you how good it is to get my teeth back into something.’
Paul, following in her wake, weighed down by Elgin and his changing bag, raised his eyebrows at me in a comical, long-suffering sort of way. He’d begun married life as an accountant, and had then left to become an out-of-work actor, so had pretty much been forced to assume the role of stay-at-home dad to Elgin when Shona went back to work.
After a while I left them all to it, and went into the kitchen to help Dita prepare all the sausage rolls. Jonathan followed me and begged to be allowed to join in. ‘It’s enough to put me into a coma,’ he complained. I just threw a bag of rice cakes at him and told him to start doling them out to the babies.
‘I must say,’ said Dita, after Jonathan had left the room. ‘I feel rather embarrassed after the last time. You know – when I mentioned vaginas. I think I will just stay out of the way, if that is all right with you.’
‘No!’ I said, shocked. ‘You can’t stay here in the kitchen like a servant. Come through and say hello, at least.’
So we went through. Surveying the living room, I did feel a little weak at the knees. Cameron was crumbling up the rice cakes and grinding them into the carpet with his little fists. Vichard was dangling his beaker upside down, dribbling (surely sugar-free?) cranberry and acai berry juice over the cream couch. A strong smell of poo pervaded the air. Sophie was bawling, stranded in the corner, whilst Jonathan tried to hand out cups of tea, although all our visitors appeared to be oblivious to this. I went over and rescued her. I picked her up and pointedly held her up, pretending to sniff her nappy area. ‘Oh dear,’ I said in a loud voice. ‘Has somebody got a dirty nappy?’ Nobody took the hint, however, so I sat down next to Shona, and bounced Sophie on my knee.
‘So what’s your case about?’ I asked her. As a fellow lawyer, I felt it was appropriate for me to feign interest.
‘Oh, well,’ she began, lightly clapping her hands. ‘I’m defending the GP of this woman.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. This woman had been to her GP dozens of times in the previous twelve months with various imaginary complaints.’
I hooted with slightly overdone laughter at this. ‘Ha ha! A total nut-job, then!’
Shona looked at me, surprised. I quickly realised that this was not the basis of the litigation, and put on a serious, inquiring expression.
‘Anyway, eventually she became convinced there was an alien growing inside her. She went to the GP eight times, insisting he had to do something because the alien wanted to take over. The GP tried to refer her for psychiatric assessment, but she wasn’t having any of it.’
I giggled again. ‘So why was she suing the doctor?’
‘Oh, it was her family that was suing. Not her – she was dead by then. Because she was right, in a way, about the alien. She had a tumour growing in her liver. It was too late by the time they found it.’
I felt sick with panic. I excused myself, saying I had to check on the sausage rolls. When I got back, after taking several deep breaths in the kitchen, I went to the opposite side of the room and planted myself firmly next to Dita, judging her to be the person in the room least likely to be having conversations about fatal tumours and inattentive GPs. As if on cue, a wave of dizziness came over me. I tried to ignore it and concentrate on what Dita was saying to Shona’s husband Paul.
‘So Paul,’ Dita was saying. ‘Cassie was telling me that you are an actor. How interesting!’
Paul nodded, his expression grim.
‘Is that something you might be able to continue doing part time once Elgin is perhaps in nursery?’
‘Ooooh, yes,’ chipped in Jody, overhearing. ‘Maybe you could apply to be a presenter on CBeebies. There are quite a few male ones. Some of them are quite dishy. I’ll freely admit I have a bit of a crush on Little Cook Small from Big Cook, Little Cook.’
‘Really?’ I queried. ‘I would have thought Big Cook Ben was more appealing. At least he is a normal height, and doesn’t have to ride on a wooden spoon to go and collect the ingredients.’
Suddenly Paul stood up.
‘You know what?’ he said, his voice shaking. Everybody stopped talking and looked at him. ‘This is all complete and utter crap. You’re all sitting here eating your sausage rolls and drinking your tea, pretending life has never been better. Why doesn’t somebody just come out and admit it? Our lives are basically over. I love Elgin, but I can’t DO anything any more. From the minute he wakes up until the minute he goes to bed, I can’t do anything. I can’t have a cup of coffee or read a bloody newspaper. I don’t even have time to take a piss. And do you know what? I hate puréeing vegetables. I hate sterilising breastpumps. I hate CBeebies. I hate being covered in baby sick. I hate parent and baby groups and Babycraft get-togethers. I hate that we can’t go out for meals. I hate that we can’t go anywhere decent on holiday. I hate that I’m so fucking tired I can’t even sleep.’
My pulse was racing. It was a strange feeling, listening to Paul. As though a door was opening just a crack, letting a slice of light fall across the floor of a darkened room.
Jody whispered across to me, her hands clamped firmly around Vichard’s ears. ‘He’s finding it tough. You know, he was on the verge of landing a part in River City when Shona got pregnant and he had to turn it down. After years of working up the ladder, you know, he had to give it all up just when he was reaching his peak.’
‘But do you know what the worst thing is?’ Paul went on, tears catching at his voice now. ‘There is no fucking escape. There’s no end in sight. There’ll be nothing left of me, for as long as I love him. And I’ll love him for as long as there’s anything of me left.’
Perfect sense. It made perfect sense to me. I wanted to go up to Paul and wrap my arms around him. But nobody moved. Nobody said a word. Finally, Molly’s husband Dave broke the silence.
‘Listen, mate,’ he said gently. ‘Have you tried Bach Flower Remedies?’
The tea party went downhill after that. Shona ushered a tearful Paul, and a (by that time) tearful Elgin, out of the house with courtroom-style briskness. She blamed a recent attack of flu, saying Paul wasn’t quite himself, but that he’d be fine after a good night’s sleep. But when would he be likely to get that?
The others made their excuses too, and left. Within ten minutes, the house was empty of guests. I closed the front door and leaned my hot forehead against the wood for a moment or two before going into the living room to find Jonathan.
‘Poor Paul,’ I began. ‘I really felt for—’
He shook his head, his expression a mask of withering contempt. ‘Appalling,’ he said. ‘Just appalling. A terrible, incontinent outburst. He needs to stop wallowing in self-pity and face up to his responsibilities. The human race would grind to a halt if everyone succumbed to that kind of self-indulgent attitude. We all just need to knuckle down and get on with it.’
He swept out of the room bearing plates of sausage rolls and rice cakes. I sank onto the sofa and put my head in my hands.
Dita came in and sat down beside me with a sigh. She patted my knee. ‘I think if it’s all right with you, Cassie dear, I will steer well clear of these gatherings in the future.’
*
The next morning, daily activities felt arduous, effortful. Getting Sophie dressed, trying to pull clothes onto her thrashing arms and legs, took an age. By the time I’d cleared the breakfast dishes and put on a load of washing it was nearly lunchtime. I felt a s
udden, surprising flash of anger towards Dita, who’d gone away to Linlithgow that morning to stay with friends overnight.
But this feeling, this heaviness, wasn’t Sophie’s fault – or Dita’s. Something had been creeping into the edges of my mind for months, and now it was time to face it, just for a moment. I gave myself just a tiny space to think about whether Jonathan and I would make the distance.
Since Sophie’s arrival, I’d soothed my worries by telling myself that we just needed to learn how to communicate better, that if he seemed like a stranger sometimes, then I’d just have to make the effort to get to know him. But nothing I said seemed to get through to him – every conversational opening was brushed aside with a jokey comment or a change of subject, or stopped in its tracks with a heavy, irritated sigh.
He had no idea how closely I’d identified with Paul’s frustration and his loneliness, or how relieved I’d been to hear that he, too, had found himself imprisoned in a cage of stifling, relentless, terrifying love.
And he had no conception of how worried I’d been by the anonymous note – how my pulse raced when I glanced out of a window or went for the post. He didn’t see that I’d only just grown comfortable with the house again, after it had shifted in some indefinable way with Sophie’s arrival. He couldn’t see that it was now changing into something else again. I hated how it felt when I came home to find it empty, with its pockets of silence and still, dead air.
‘Well, Mum’s here most of the time, isn’t she?’ he’d said when I tried to explain. His tone of voice seemed to add the question – What more do you want me to do?
Perhaps worst of all, he was still having the same nightmares, still calling out for his father in the night, but denying in the morning that there was any problem. He wouldn’t let me get inside his world, and he didn’t seem to have any interest in getting inside mine.
I took Sophie to John Lewis – wanting to be around people – but the trip wasn’t a success. She hadn’t had her nap, and was very grumpy. She didn’t want to sit in her buggy, yet didn’t want to be carried. She kept throwing her beaker on the floor in the café and screamed when I took her to get her nappy changed.
As I cleaned her up in the baby change room and disposed of her nappy in the foul-smelling bin, I acknowledged that even my connection with Sophie could get buried, a little, when I felt exhausted. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I loved her. So maybe simple tiredness could explain away this grey, flat feeling towards Jonathan, maybe it was nothing to worry about.
But that didn’t change the fact that I craved something more meaningful than a puzzled frown, or an uncomprehending grunt whenever I tried to express my feelings. I wanted him to leap on any observations I made, I wanted his eyes to flare with recognition, I wanted him to finish my sentences, the way Helen used to do.
The thought made me long to talk to her. Once again, the time difference precluded a phone call, but I sat down to type an email when Sophie finally went down for her nap, back in the cool quiet of the house.
Hi Helen,
How are you? I wish I could chat with you properly and hear all your news. I miss talking to you. Things are a bit ropey here, to be honest. It’s not Sophie – she’s getting on really well. She’s trying to crawl, bless her – rocking backwards and forwards on all fours, as though she’s going to launch herself off like a rocket. But she can’t manage it yet – she just kind of flumps on her tummy and looks cross!
No, she’s wonderful.
It’s just that everything else seems to be going wrong. Maybe it’s the tiredness, I don’t know. But Jonathan and I are hardly communicating at all, and
I imagined Helen’s look of surprise. As far as she knew, Jonathan and I were as solid as a rock. It seemed too much, too late to be telling her all this, in one big ugly lump. A low-voiced conversation over a glass of wine would have been one thing, but to see it down there, in black and white . . .
Malkie’s turned up again, and I’m wondering if I’ve married the wrong person.
I hovered the mouse over the ‘delete draft’ tab – this wouldn’t do at all. But suddenly a wild scream tore out of the baby monitor, which was resting on the table by my elbow, and I accidentally pressed ‘send’ instead.
‘Bugger!’ I hurried up the stairs to Sophie – I’d have to email Helen later and explain.
But Sophie cried for nearly an hour, by which time it was time to start making her tea, then feed her, then mop the kitchen floor (splattered liberally with puréed butternut squash), then watch In the Night Garden, and then get her in the bath and off to bed. By the time I sat down to email Helen again, she’d already replied – she must have checked her emails before her early morning beach run.
Cassie – WHAT??? Malkie? Are you serious? We are talking about the commitment-phobic, chain-smoking, vodka-swilling git who dumped you FOUR TIMES?!!
I’m worried about you. Can you try talking to Jonathan? How about getting some help in the house, or a nanny to help out with Sophie? How about a night nurse, so you can get some more sleep?
Is there anything I can do?
Yes. Move back to Edinburgh. Get pregnant and have a baby, even though you’ve never wanted one. Come over for coffee so Sophie and I don’t have to be alone in this house. Walk round the Botanics with us and feed the ducks. Make me laugh at Murray Radcliffe and Annabel Masters so I can stand up to them. Keep telling me that I’m not doing everything wrong, and that the Babycraft lot talk out of their arses most of the time. Keep telling me I don’t really love Malkie. Just come back.
*
It was nearly eight o’clock by the time I’d emailed Helen back with reassurances (‘I’m fine - really! I was just tired . . .’), and Jonathan still wasn’t home. I tried his mobile. He was clearly in a bar somewhere. I could hear music and talking in the background, and the signal was patchy.
‘Didn’t you get my message?’ he shouted over the music. ‘I’ll be home around ten—’
The line went dead. Where was he? What was he doing? Why was he in the pub when I was sitting at home alone?
I did a third circuit of the house, checking the doors and windows were locked, then sat down on the sofa with the landline phone and my mobile beside me, along with the baby monitor and keys for the back and front doors. I switched on the television and flicked through the channels for something reassuring and familiar, something to disperse the silence. I settled on Midsomer Murders – I’d never managed to stay awake through a whole episode. But I was still sitting upright, hugging my knees, when Jonathan’s key turned in the lock at quarter past eleven.
‘Hi, Cassie-girl,’ he called out from the hall, on his way into the kitchen.
The atmosphere in the house corrected itself instantly – like the lights going up at the end of a film. The tension ebbed out of me and I had to make an effort to gird myself up for the confrontation I was determined to have with Jonathan. After ten minutes or so, he came into the room carrying a plate of cheese-on-toast. He had pulled his tie loose and the top few buttons on his shirt were undone. He looked good, and I felt a stab of possessiveness.
‘I made some for you,’ he said, coming over to sit next to me. ‘I’m sorry I’m late home, kiddo.’
‘Are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing?’
‘I took Paul out for a drink.’
‘River City Paul?’ I was so surprised that I forgot to maintain my icy tone. ‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Someone had to.’
‘After yesterday’s appalling, self-indulgent outburst?’
‘Look, Cassie, that’s not exactly fair. The guy’s obviously under a lot of pressure. I just thought maybe he might need someone to talk to, okay?’
‘So you were nice to him? You didn’t tell him he was incontinent and wallowing in self-pity and all that?’
‘Cassie, what are you talking about?’
I looked at him in astonishment. ‘That’s what you said!’
‘Well . . . I can’t
remember. Maybe I did. I was just a bit wound up that he’d spoiled your party when you’d put so much work into it all.’
‘Ten packets of sausage rolls? Hardly.’
‘Yes, but I know how tired you’ve been, with Sophie not sleeping. I know it’s been tough on you.’
‘So what did you say to Paul?’
‘He’s finding it hard, that’s all. He was really into this acting thing. He’s had to put it all on hold – indefinitely. And it’s not easy for him. Being a stay-at-home dad, there aren’t the same support networks. Not like you have with all the other mums.’
I thought dubiously about the Babycraft girls, my support network. More like a web, entangling me in sticky despair about my non-breastfeeding and other failures.
‘He told me something awful,’ went on Jonathan, after a pause.
‘What?’ I said, wide-eyed. Did Shona beat him or something?
‘He takes Elgin to Oceanic Experience every day. You know, that big aquarium.’
‘What do you mean, every day?’
‘He says there’s nothing else to do,’ said Jonathan, shaking his head. ‘And Elgin seems to quite like looking at the fish.’
I paused in horror to contemplate this. Oceanic Experience, every day. ‘That simply cannot be,’ I said finally.
‘It’s true. Shona takes the car to work and it’s the only thing within walking distance. He says he can do the walk in around forty-five minutes on a good day, when Elgin stays in the buggy. But it can be quite windy crossing the Forth Road Bridge.’
Jonathan spread himself out on the couch and slung his arm round me. Then he began flicking through the channels.
I snuggled against him, filled with affection at the thought of his attempt to reach out to Paul. But, from this more comfortable place, I still wondered about the strength of his negative reaction to Paul’s outburst yesterday.