by Kathy Lette
8.00: Ring Rory. ‘The kids are driving me insane.’
‘Hmm. Obviously you’re still carrying a little residual anger over the whole breech-birth thing, pet,’ is his reply.
‘Come. Home. Right. Now,’ I beseech, burping the lids on the Tupperware.
‘But I’m just taking the dead dog owner for a beer to cheer him up. Turns out I forgot to get him to sign a consent form for surgery. I’m going to slip it under his nose when he’s had a few. You don’t want him to sue, do you?’
‘Oh great. Which pub?’
‘The Hobgoblin.’
‘Isn’t that the pub with the super wide-screen TV? God, there’s not a match on, is there?’
‘Won’t be long. Love you.’
I groan. A pub with a wide-screen TV is the earthly equivalent of the black hole in space. Once a man goes in, he won’t be coming out for an eternity. ‘Rory! Rory! No, don’t hang up on—’
9.00: Try to get Jenny to pack her school bag. Can’t get her off the phone. Actually, can’t remember what she looks like without half a phone growing out of her ear.
9.15: Give daughter phone-ectomy. March her into the bathroom to clean teeth.
9.30: Ring Rory again. Finally he answers, sounding inebriated. ‘I know kids are hard work but they really are so rewarding, kitten. Just get them to bed earlier and you’ll have loads of time. Even better, I won’t be there to annoy you. Lovely peace and quiet, eh?’
‘But Rory, I—’
9.45: Through bribery (what Jazz calls ‘rewards’), I manage to get the kids into bed. Ironic how you can’t get kids out of their beds in the morning, but can’t get them into their beds at night. Pour glass of wine. Finally settle down to write Self-Assessment form.
9.50: Piercing scream from Jen’s room. Steeplechase furniture and gallop upstairs in athletic spasm. Having run out of clean linen, I’d made her bed up with her brother’s old Batman sheets. The fluorescent illustrations of the Joker and the Riddler, all grinning maniacally, has induced the world’s first linen-related nightmare. Try to replace the single Batman duvet cover with one of my king-sized ones, but get lost inside it. Feel like an Arctic explorer, having a white-out. Give up. Put her in our bed.
10.00: Settle down to decode Scroope’s obfuscatory educational jargon when suddenly remember I must record The Six Wives of Henry VIII for Jamie’s school assignment.
Japan’s revenge for losing the war is to manufacture goods with indecipherable booklets; a psychological torture more painful than bamboo shoots under the nails. While lying on stomach on floor prodding various VCR buttons, I notice tumbleweeds of dust. If only houses could be like ovens and self-clean – but with the weekly cleaner not due till Friday it’s down to me again. I spend the next hour scrubbing and scouring. Remember how diligent I was as a new bride. When Jamie was born everything had to be sterilized. By the time Jenny arrived, I sterilized the dummy by sucking on it – the old saliva disinfectant process. A decade later, my domesticity has dwindled to using a grey flannel to wipe down anything that doesn’t talk back.
At 11 p.m. I make school lunches to save time in the morning. Take meat out of the freezer for next day’s dinner. Put on a load of washing. Iron clothes for meeting with Head. Talk to pot-plants, which are wilting. Feed menagerie of animals. Make shopping lists. Put away Monopoly. Load dishwasher. Finish fairy costume for A Midsummer Night’s Dream onto which tinsel refuses to bloody well stick bloody bloody bugger it! Just knuckling down to work – when Rory swaggers in.
‘You see? How peaceful. Aren’t you glad I stayed out of your hair all night? Don’t worry about getting me any dinner either. I ate out. Got the surgery consent form signed too. Let’s go to bed and celebrate, shall we?’ He winks.
Oh great. The perfect way to top off my horror movie of a day – The Hand.
Then I remember that Jenny’s in our bed. Phew. Safe. It’s the first time Rory had been right in ages: Children really can be so rewarding at times.
Wednesday
‘So?’ Jazz asks me over lunchtime coffee at the deli near school. It’s Wednesday, halfway through my week, thank God. ‘How did it go with the Head?’
‘Slept in.’
‘What?! I thought Rory was going to take over last night?’
I shrug. ‘Some surgery emergency.’
‘Stop concocting excuses for that lazy pig. It’s hard to make a comeback, Cass, if you haven’t been anywhere.’
I watch in alarm as Jazz extracts a packet of fags from her bag. ‘Since when did you take up smoking?’
‘I haven’t.’ She lights up. ‘I’m just faking it, so that when I wear my HRT patch, you still get periods you know. I can tell everyone it’s an anti-smoking device.’
‘If only they made Husband Patches, so that we can slowly withdraw from them,’ I say, blowing on my toupee of cappuccino froth.
‘How true, sweetie. Husbands are becoming less and less relevant. They’re probably going to devolve – like tonsils and appendixes.’
The Incredible Shrinking Spouse. As there’s no way I can be late again for my Deputy Head interview, and Rory’s busy with his seminar, I decide to take matters into my own hands. I’m deluding myself of course. But still, a girl never knows what’s she’s incapable of, until she tries. . .
Thursday morning
Having made the kids sleep in their uniforms, I pack them off in a minicab to breakfast at the McDonald’s near their schools, meaning I’m out of the door by 7.45 a.m.
8.00: Finally find car. Somewhere near Wales.
8.03: Start engine. Dashboard making funny, blinking signs. Unfortunately my car only speaks to me in Japanese. Using all my powers of mechanical genius, deduce that flashing light signals empty petrol tank. Bloody Rory. He’d promised to fill it up for me last weekend.
8.08: Fill up at garage. Go to pay. Computers down.
8.15: Sprint to cash machine opposite. Five people in front of me. We’re all waiting behind a man who is probably a shoe bomber. He is shoving his card upside down into the slot. He looks at the card. He looks at the slot. He looks up to God. Ignores offers of help. Shoves card back into slot and pushes in the wrong number – three times. And the machine gobbles up his card, prompting him to scream and curse and no doubt shortly reach for his backpack detonator. Proof of my deranged state is that all I can think is that at least if he is a suicide bomber it will mean I won’t have to make up another lame excuse for being late.
In desperation, I leave my car in the garage forecourt and run the rest of the way to work. My Headmaster is cut from the same tweedy mixture of snobbery and violence that supplied the warp and weft of the colonial empire. When I barrel into the admin block, eight minutes late, sweaty chest heaving asthmatically, he breaks off his chatty little conversation with my rival, Perdita Pendal, raises a thick pelt of eyebrow and says thinly, ‘This lateness of yours is getting to be a habit, Ms O’Carroll.’
‘Well, I’ve tried being early, but the trouble with being punctual, of course, is that there is usually nobody there to appreciate it,’ I wheeze.
He gives one of his meagre little smiles. What will follow will be a softening of his voice which all his staff, me included, find very menacing as it usually precedes one of his furious tirades.
‘Do you think these issues with time management make you Deputy Head material?’ he says quietly. ‘Mrs Pendal is always perfectly on time.’
Perdita Pendal is not only punctual but also well connected. Seems to me that the only way to survive in England is to pick an ancestor, whack on some fertilizer i.e. bullshit, and simply grow an extra branch of your family tree. Perdita doesn’t just have a family tree, she has a forest, including a father who has been Chief Inspector of Schools. I, on the other hand, come from a long line of felons. My ancestors were transported to Tasmania for stealing a lace hanky and a stale loaf of bread . . . oh, and for dealing in A-grade narcotics. Perdita is the sort of woman who has coasters, matching hand towels, padded hangers, fish knives
and a special little dish for the butter. She also has a well-off husband. In the staffroom one day she was actually heard to say, ‘Oh, I’m completely exhausted! I’ve spent the entire week agonizing over which au pair to take skiing.’ The female staff members could have killed her then and there. And do you know what? A jury of working mothers would have acquitted us.
‘And your excuse this time?’ The Head seems to be taking grim enjoyment from my discomfiture.
‘Um . . .’ During my time at North Primrose Primary School I’ve run through the pantheon of excuses. Unbeknownst to my relatives, most of them have met a premature demise. My children’s illnesses have ranged from diarrhoea and diphtheria to whooping cough and weasel bites (married to a vet means I can occasionally resort to the zoological). I glance up at my boss. His eyebrows are raised in anticipation of my answer. When he waggles them, they look like copulating caterpillars. I wrack my brain for a fresh excuse. I think about telling him that my cult leader kept me back for throat-slitting practice . . . Well, it may not get me the promotion but it will definitely get me early retirement on full pay. Then, genius strikes!
‘Actually, I was up so late relishing your Threshold Assessment form which, by the way, is scintillatingly insightful, that I slept in a little this morning,’ I lie. ‘It was just so penetrating, so, well, stimulating that I just couldn’t sleep.’ I really should stockpile Chapsticks so I can kiss yet more ass, I think to myself, but it does take the wind out of his vitriolic sails.
‘Oh. Yes. Well. Right. Do you have it on you?’
‘I have mine. Brilliant title, by the way. To Teach Is To Learn!’ Perdita chirrups unctuously, handing in her form.
I think about explaining to Scroope that a job application is just a piece of paper with lies written on it. But settle instead for, ‘Oh! Gosh. In all the rush of being late, I must have left my form behind,’ I ad-lib. ‘First thing tomorrow morning I could—’
‘You could give Mr Scroope a verbal assessment,’ Perdita suggests sweetly.
Shit. Out-foxed by a Chalk and Talker.
‘Excellent idea,’ Scroope says heartily. ‘Normally I would see you separately, but as you’ve missed so many appointments, Ms O’Carroll, I’ve had to squeeze you into Mrs Pendal’s preliminary session. Would you say that you . . .’ the Head reads from Perdita’s sheet, ‘consistently and effectively use information about prior attainment to set well-grounded expectations for pupils, and monitor progress to give clear and constructive feedback relating to the curriculum?’
‘Curriculum?’ I cling to the only word that computes in his entire sentence. ‘The inner-city London school curriculum? Oh, you mean how to read, write and do a drug deal?’ I bluff. ‘Oh well, at least it teaches the kids how to do metric.’
My smile is not reciprocated. In fact, my Headmaster’s response would make a piece of granite look animated.
Perdita then volunteers to give her self-assessment verbally, enabling her to sing her own praises for approximately eternity, before running through the history of her illustrious family since, oh, the Crusades.
‘Excellent. Well, Ms O’Carroll, Mrs Pendal and I have had a meaningful dialogue about what I’m looking for in a Deputy Head during this probation period . . .’
I’d like to have a meaningful dialogue with Perdita too – armed with a cricket bat.
‘But as I now have school assembly, perhaps you could take the time during your lunch-hour to write me out your Teacher Appraisal, listing your strengths . . .’
‘Not punctuality, obviously,’ Perdita slips in so she can share a little conspiratorial chuckle with the Headmaster.
Trying to explain what makes you a good teacher is like nailing jelly to a wall. ‘My best qualification, Mr Scroope, is that I adore my pupils and love my job.’
Strangely, the Head seems unconvinced of my genius. He pushes to his feet. ‘Thank you, Mrs Pendal,’ he dismisses Perdita with a smile. ‘But Ms O’Carroll, if I could just have a quick word . . . You may have been at this school for longer than Mrs Pendal,’ he tells me when we’re alone, ‘but you know she did get a first-class Honours degree. And she’s written a thesis – “Control and Structure in the Classroom”,’ he parrots approvingly.
My most accomplished skill as a teacher is knowing who is pulling faces behind my back and which kid’s dog really did eat the homework. Not things they can really teach you at college.
‘Tell me, why did you choose primary-school education?’ he says finally.
‘Well, I suspect that educating high-school kids is probably more rewarding than primary-school teaching because the kids are tall enough to headbutt,’ I joke, ‘but kidding aside, I actually like teaching younger children because of their sense of humour. Just last week little Rosie Myttas-Perris wrote in her geography lesson that what joins the Red Sea to the Med is the Sewage Canal! And when I asked Adi Greenberg to count from one to ten backwards, she turned her back to me and started counting.’ I laugh, cutting it short when I realize I’m the only one who is amused.
Mr Scroope draws in a fractious breath. In the staffroom we often joke that our Head would have been discharged from Saddam Hussein’s hit squad for being too brutal. When he loses his temper, which he does daily, one suspects he’s missed his vocation. The man should definitely have followed the career path marked US Postal Worker.
‘ARE YOU SERIOUS ABOUT THIS PROMOTION, MS O’CARROLL? MR DUNDEE IS LEAVING AT THE END OF THE SUMMER TERM AND I WILL NEED TO REPLACE HIM WITH A CAPABLE AND CONSCIENTIOUS TEACHER. YOU ARE THE MOST SENIOR APPLICANT, AND THE INSPECTORS AND THE CHILDREN LIKE YOU, TRUE, BUT I AM NOT SEEING LEADERSHIP QUALITIES IN YOU.’
As he rants on about ‘re-engineering priorities’ and ‘downsizing’ and ‘rightsizing’, I study his comb-over. It looks like limp spaghetti draped over a hardboiled egg. Examining the coffee-cup rings on his desk as he interrogates me about what I’ve allegedly written on my forms, I contemplate asking him what he writes on his passport under Hair colour, seeing as he is, you know, borderline BALD.
Behind him I see Perdita sashaying across the playground in her twinset and pearls, rested, relaxed, poised and, well, perfect. Ah, I think, there but for the grace of a househusband, go I.
Friday
What teachers drink in the staffroom tells you a lot about them. Most stagger into school clutching Starbucks hard-core espresso. Mr Scroope is a milky tea, two sugars type. Perdita – a rosemary-infused herbal. The rest of the day we boil the old kettle full of limescale and drink randomly from ironically sloganed mugs – Teachers Do It With Class, Teachers Make You Do It Till You Get It Right. Perdita’s tea mug, on the other hand, was sacrosanct. It was also emblazoned, ominously, with Best Teacher.
I slump onto a threadbare sofa which resembles a yak that has been dead for some time and sip a cup of staffroom coffee. It tastes as lukewarm as I feel. I dwell dispiritedly on my past week. Like tidemarks left around the bath, like toenail clippings abandoned on bedside tables, the evidence has begun to mount up that Rory has truanted from the How To Be A Good Husband School.
Whoever said, ‘Life is just one thing after another’? For working mothers it’s just the same thing, again and again and over and over. But at a very fast pace. Like jogging in quicksand. For working mums, every day is a lot like holding a live hand-grenade with the pin pulled half-out.
No matter how much I wanted to be one of those women who can change a nappy with one hand whilst whipping up a soufflé with the other at the same time as I’m taking a conference call, what I had become, instead, was a cliché. When I heard those homilies coming out of my mouth like, ‘Where were you born? In a tent?’ it’s as though I’ve been secretly brain-washed during my sleep by suggestive tapes entitled Wifely Clichés, Vol. 2.
Was it any wonder that by Friday night I’d developed the demeanour, aching legs and mood swings of a long-haul flight attendant? Maybe Jazz was right after all. Maybe I was angry with Rory, which was why I didn’t feel affectionate towards him in bed.
Oh great. Now I had to add sulking to an already over-booked schedule.
I also had the feeling that it was time for a coup in the Holy State of Matrimony.
7. Ladies Who Lynch
In my opinion, advice is like syphilis. It’s better to give than to receive.
Should I leave my husband? That was the typed question blinking out at me from my computer screen in the staffroom as Jazz and I emailed each other a week later.
I quailed. It was one of life’s unanswerable questions, equivalent to why ‘monosyllabism’ is such a long word.
But I was not going to contaminate her with my influence. I looked around the shabby staffroom at the rest of the female staff. Two divorcees. Three separated. Four unhappily married. The trouble is, women marry without a Matrimonial Safety Drill. No one ever said to us, ‘Your exits are here, here and here.’ But I was not going to be the one to ever tell a girlfriend to parachute into the unknown.
Another message zapped up on the screen.
Jazz: When Studz got home last night from Haiti I told him how and why he’d broken my heart. The Great Healer’s advice? To take two aspirin and lie down. With him. He put my constant crying down to ‘excessive lachrymonal activity’.
Cassie: Sensitive bastard.
Jazz: He said that the awful reality of trying to stitch together landmine victims has made him numb. He said that war has chloroformed his compassion, and that the grim sights on his operating table have left him etherized . . . And that he only has affairs to feel alive again.
Cassie: Ironic, as you’re about to kill him! What a conman! As he’s taking Viagra, that makes him a hardened criminal. (Pathetic, I know, but the best I can do, having taught science all morning.) What else did he say?
Jazz: He asked if I wanted him to sleep in another bed. I said yes, preferably in another hemisphere.
Cassie: Is he going to stop seeing those other women?
Jazz: He said that obviously affairs fulfill some need that isn’t being met within the marriage and, as long as that need continues to be unmet, so the dissatisfied partner will continue to be unfaithful. Rather than destroy the marriage, he said it was kinder to look elsewhere for things that are missing. According to him infidelity is a strategy for maintaining our marriage. It is an act of preservation, rather than destruction. That’s how he justifies being a repeat cheat.