The Only Boy For Me

by Gil McNeil

  They were happily settling back into Mr and Mrs Land, when I rang with my thrilling news. He said they’d agreed they weren’t having kids, and he didn’t want one popping up now, thank you very much. And then he got a new job in Toronto. Facker, as Kate would say. But at least he didn’t bugger about pretending to be interested and then never turning up. I truly think I’d stab anybody who did that to Charlie. And once I got over the initial shock of finding myself going solo, it worked out fine. My sister Lizzie was great, and her partner Matt offered to have a crack at the male-role-model thing because I went on about it so much: he even offered to buy an electric drill if I thought it would help. Mum and Dad were pretty thrown by it at first, but ended up being very reassuring, and Mum spent hours knitting. My friend Leila opened a platinum account at Baby Gap, and then the sheer magic and terror of being pregnant took over, and I spent so long worrying that the baby would have flippers, or hate me on sight, that I stopped obsessing about Adam and started obsessing about scans and due dates instead.

  I even dragooned my poor sister into coming to NCT classes with me, and they all thought we were a lesbian couple for the first few weeks and nobody would sit next to us. Lizzie thought it was hysterical, and kept putting her arm round me. The newspapers seemed to be full of articles saying that children from single-parent families are doomed; but then I read a brilliant piece which said if you took out poverty as a factor and compared like with like then children from single-parent families actually do slightly better than their two-parent counterparts. That cheered me up for weeks. And at least I earn enough to support us both. Working as a freelance producer in advertising does guarantee me a healthy income, and I can do a lot of work from home, even if it gets a bit frantic at times. God knows how I’d cope trying to live on benefits.

  I’m still sporadically haunted by the idea that somewhere out there is a perfect dad for my boy, who would teach him to play football and do things with wood. But so far he doesn’t seem bothered. He hates football, and seems perfectly happy with Lego. I’ve shown him photographs of Adam, but he only glanced at them and then asked if we could watch a Star Wars video. I do get really jealous of women with perfect loving partners who cook and can entertain under-fives for hours with horse impressions. But I know that for every one of them there are at least six women whose partners rarely make it home before bedtime, and can be heard at weekends shouting, ‘Christ. Can’t you get him to stop doing that.’ I must try to remember this next time I’m feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. In other words, tonight.

  Safeway’s is hateful – full of ghastly people going round and round saying, ‘That’s only forty-three pence in Asda.’ Why don’t they all bugger off to Asda then and get out of my way? As usual I’ve forgotten my list so I trot round trying to visualise what is in the fridge and remember what vital bit of bathroom kit we’ve just run out of. Get home to find we now have seven packs of Flora. But no coffee. I’ll have to go to the village shop on the way to school, so I can avoid taking Charlie in on the way home. I can’t face entering a heated debate, yet again, as to why holding your finger over the 8 does not mean an 18 video magically turns into a 1, and is therefore suitable for rental.

  Arrive at school to find the other parents are ahead of me, yet again, and the line of parked cars stretches almost to the other side of the village. I park and jog back to the school, and I’m still clinging on to the fence trying to breathe normally when the doors open and all the kids rush out trailing their bags. There’s no sign of Charlie’s class, but then I remember they’ve gone swimming which means that the coach could arrive at any time during the next hour and a half depending on the mood of the driver. It’s pointless to stagger back to the car as I know from bitter experience that just as I sit down the coach will whizz past, and I’ll fail to catch up with it in time to stop Charlie getting off and looking bereft when he can’t see me. So I stand freezing in the playground with all the other mothers, and a couple of dads.

  One of the dads is an Older Father, a regular. He’s very genial and on the parish council, so he’s made a huge fuss of by all the mothers trying to stop their neighbours getting planning permission to build extensions. The other father is young and not a regular, and is also wearing a suit, so he’s left to stand on his own in the furthest corner of the playground. One woman spent half a term stuck there in exquisite clothing, until she switched to jumpers and jeans like the rest of us and was asked to join the zigzag rota. She now stands at the gate longing for someone to park on the yellow zigzags painted on the road, so she can rush over and stick a rude leaflet under their windscreen wipers.

  Where you stand in the playground can be vital. Too close to Mrs Harrison-Black and her gang, and you’ll be down on a list to bake a coffee sponge before you know it. And standing in a playground trying to flog slices of your rather flat cake to people who can make much nicer cake themselves, thank you very much, is no fun. I slide into my usual place, skulking by the bushes, with Kate and Sally. Sally, mother of William, who is Difficult, and Rosie, who is Not, points out that Mrs Harrison-Black is lurking by the gate with her clipboard and so we go on red alert.

  Mrs Harrison-Black is a large woman, chairman of the PTA, and formidable. She usually wears blouses tucked into pleated skirts with elasticated waists, which make her look like she’s sitting on top of a smallish marquee. Her sidekick, Mrs Jenkins, the treasurer, has taken to dressing in a similar manner. They have matching padded waistcoats, and both drive Volvo estates with ‘I slow down for horses’ stickers in the back window. I’ve always thought those stickers should actually say ‘I slow down for horses but speed up for ramblers’, since invariably this is what they do. A determined-looking mother who does cooking with Year 3 (Hell. Grey pizza, burnt fingers and it takes hours to scrape the dough off the floor) is making a beeline for us, and we are madly avoiding making eye contact and trying to think up watertight excuses when the coach miraculously appears.

  Today’s coach driver is a new one, looks to be about twelve, and is practising his Formula One driving technique. The coach races round the bend on two wheels, and screeches to a halt, catapulting all the children forwards in an extremely dangerous manner which they all naturally adore. Miss Pike manages to stagger off but looks to be in deep shock. She doesn’t normally do swimming, but Mrs Oliver, who usually goes with them, is off sick. I suspect the coach driver may have finally finished her off after what must have been a very trying afternoon. The parent helpers then get off the coach looking like they have just had roles as extras in Titanic: soaking wet, shivering, pale-faced and traumatised.

  The children on the other hand are Lively, and I bet they’ve been eating sweets on the coach as they all leap off and begin running round and round the playground screaming, and whirling swimming bags above their heads. We parents split up into our usual groupings, identifiable by different parenting techniques. The Come Here Wayne or I’ll Hit You division win hands down at getting their children into the car quickly. The Hello Darling Was Swimming Lovely I’ve Got Something Interesting to Tell You in the Car approach works fairly well, combined with determined eye contact and firm holding of hands, and Kate, Sally and I are off, madly inventing interesting things to talk about. But the dithering approach of Stop That George mixed with attempts to chat to other parents means that a fair number of people are in for a long night.

  ‘So, was swimming lovely, darling?’

  ‘Yes, but Miss Pike said I’m never to go in the deep end again, which is totally not fair as I’m a very good swimmer now and that man should not have got me out.’

  ‘What man, darling?’

  ‘The man who sits on the ladder thing. He put a long pole in the water next to me and told me I had to hold it, but I didn’t want to. And then I think he said a swear word, and anyway I did hold it and he pulled me back to the side and said I had to stay in the shallow end until I was a bit bigger.’

  ‘Oh, Charlie, you know you shouldn’t go in the deep end. What was M
iss Pike doing?’

  ‘Oh, she was helping Laura who’d swallowed a lot of water and was coughing, and Jack Knight’s dad took our group swimming and me and James swam off on our own and it was great and then the man stuck the pole in but I was fine. And then Jack’s dad said, “Thank Christ,” and got me and James and made us go right down the shallow bit and James said he was a sod, but he said it quiet so I don’t think he heard.’

  ‘Well, James was being very rude. Jack’s dad was quite right to keep you safe.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Well, he was.’

  Oh God, I’ve just remembered I’m on the swimming rota next week. A tactical error in the playground: I stood too close to Mrs Harrison-Black without back-up, as Kate was late. Probably emergency sausage shopping.

  ‘Anyway, next week I’m coming swimming, so I’ll be able to keep an eye on you.’

  I can hear distinct sounds of muttering involving swearing, but decide to ignore it as we’re nearly home. If we get caught up in an argument now we may have a replay of last week when he refused to get out of the car, and demanded to be driven to the local branch of the NSPCC, because ‘Cruelty to children must stop, you know, Mummy’. All because I had suggested we might do homework before television. I was reduced to screaming through the window, ‘Yes, but what about cruelty to parents?’, and then a woman came round collecting for the Red Cross and gave me a very funny look.

  ‘I’m very starving. What’s for tea?’

  ‘You can choose. Tuna, or pasta.’

  ‘Sausages.’

  I come up with an inspired plan and make tuna sausages by mixing tuna with mashed potato and squidging the resulting mess into sausage shapes. Covered in grated cheese and grilled for a couple of minutes, they’re a huge success. Actually they taste rather revolting, but Charlie eats without complaint. Then we move on to a mad homework sheet on fractions, and I come up with a very clever idea of drawing a cake and then dividing it up into quarters etc. Which really helps until we get to sixteenths and then it all gets rather fraught and I snap my pencil in half. I manage to avoid a huge tantrum on my part when I’m told I should just sit quietly and let him get on with it, because ‘To be honest, Mummy, I don’t think you really know what you’re doing’. I could have told him this for free, almost from the minute he was born. But instead I lie on the sofa sulking, and he finishes off his worksheet without my ‘help’.

  We embark on the required twenty minutes of reading with his school reading book. There’s nothing quite so nice as having your small child read to you, even if it is from the most boring school reading book in the world.

  Bathtime goes well, without the usual bathroom flooding. In retrospect, having a submarine and a battleship as bathroom toys was not a good idea: the battles always involve huge tidal waves that threaten to float the bath mat along the corridor. While we’re putting on his pyjamas, doing his teeth and generally trying to waste as much time as possible before going to bed, he starts his Random Chatting Routine – always guaranteed to take up at least half an hour.

  ‘I think it’s a good idea that the Gherkins get pensions now, Mummy. It was on the news, don’t you think it’s good?’

  ‘The Gherkins? Who are they, sweetheart?’

  I’m frantically trying to imagine why pickles are now getting pensions, whereas I, according to my financial woman, will get nothing if I don’t start chucking 150 per cent of my income into a pension starting yesterday, and will have to recycle string and live on cat food.

  ‘You know, those soldiers.’

  ‘I think you might mean Gurkhas.’

  ‘Yes, them. It’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes, marvellous, darling. You don’t need that much toothpaste, you know, it will fall off. You see, just like that. Now that’s wasted.’

  ‘No it’s not. Look, I’ve got it back on.’ He shoves his toothbrush down the plughole so it bends alarmingly, retrieving a tiny bit of toothpaste. ‘And anyway I hate this toothpaste, it’s too tingling. James has nice toothpaste.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, sausage flavour.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mummy, his is strawberry.’

  ‘Well, you said the strawberry tasted like sick.’

  He ignores this, as he does all contradictory factual evidence.

  ‘If I have a terrible dream tonight, can I come in your bed?’

  ‘Yes, but start off in your own bed.’

  ‘But sometimes I’m so scared I can’t get up. Isn’t that awful, Mummy, to be so scared you can’t get up?’

  He pauses for the full horror of this to register.

  ‘It would be much better if I started off in your bed and then I would already be there.’ He grins, very pleased with this logic.

  ‘Yes, but then I’d only have four inches of mattress to sleep on, with a tiny bit of duvet. You should start off in your bed and you’ll probably have lovely dreams.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll have horrible dreams and it will be all your fault. Actually I’m starving, Mummy. Can I have a satsuma in bed?’

  ‘No, because last time you sat on it and made a terrible mess.’

  I’m shoving him along the corridor now and succeed in getting him into bed, where he instantly transforms into an angelic vision in pyjamas and does his special pleading look, but I manage to stand firm and he eventually agrees to stay in bed if a) I stroke his back for five minutes in circles, not lines because they itch; b) he can have his little light on; c) he can have a satsuma for breakfast, with all the peel taken off and all the white bits; d) if I see a werewolf on the stairs I will smack it sharply on the head.

  I check on him again after twenty minutes and he’s fast asleep, doing that thing that only small children do where they look like they fell asleep unexpectedly, in the middle of doing something else. His arms and legs are stretched out and he’s clutching bits of Lego in one hand and a small dagger in the other. I realise, not for the first time, that however much you love them you always love them that little bit more when they’re asleep.

  I wake up early the next morning, because Charlie has crept into my bed at some point during the night so I’m freezing cold with a small bottom pressed into my neck. He has taken up the entire duvet, my head is bent into a weird shape, and I’m marooned on the furthest edge of the mattress. It’s extraordinary how one small boy can take up so much room, and he could do it even when he was a tiny baby. I know it’s useless to try to get back to sleep, so I get up, make some tea, and refill the bird feeder which hangs outside the kitchen window. Then I spend ten minutes watching the birds get hysterical in a bid to eat as much food as possible and still be able to fly. A bit like children’s parties, really, but with no jelly.

  Breakfast goes very well, the satsuma is a big success, and we set off for school thankfully minus the milkman slowing down progress. Everything is fine until we spot a pheasant wandering in the woods at the side of the road. Pheasants are Charlie’s favourite, and we have to stop the car and chat to it or he will descend into a sobbing fit and cling on to the car door when we arrive at school. We’ve discovered that pheasants run like hell if you try to get near them, but if you stay in the car they obviously feel safe and will peck about quite near. Presumably it’s considered bad sport to actually shoot them whilst sitting in your car. I feel very foolish, but Charlie is thrilled, and I am so busy watching him I lose track of time.

  Finally the bloody thing moves off into the distance and Charlie agrees we can now drive on – a good job because we are now late. The headmistress, Mrs Taylor, is standing by the gates looking pointedly at her watch as we walk in. Charlie, as usual, makes the whole thing much worse by saying, ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Taylor, we’ve just seen a lovely pheasant so we stopped to have a chat,’ which makes her look at me like I’m a complete moron. Which she already suspected, because she still hasn’t got over Charlie insisting he will not go to Assembly any more because he is a Pagan. I don’t know where he got the idea of pagans from: he insists they did it on
Blue Peter, but somehow I can’t quite imagine this.

  I get home to discover the man who does the garden, Bill, has got his pruning shears out and is looking at the trees in the front garden with a smile on his face. This is very bad news. What he’s supposed to do is mow the lawns and generally dig things, and stop the weeds reclaiming the garden entirely, for an hour a week for a fiver. Brilliant. What he must not be allowed to do, as various villagers have impressed upon me with great force, is prune anything or the garden will end up like theirs: a curious mixture of traditional English cottage garden meets bonsai. I have to make tea, and generally divert his attention, and then ask him to tidy up the herb garden to avoid him reducing the apple tree to a stump.

  He potters off eventually and makes the herb garden look pristine, so we’re all happy. The garden is not really that big and I could just about cope with doing it myself. But mowing the grass takes hours in the summer, even though both the lawns are tiny, and last time I tried it I managed to mow over one flip-flop and half the paddling pool so it seems safer to leave it to Bill. I feed the rabbits, and wonder if I should ring the vet and ask if it’s OK for them to spend so much time humping each other. Let them out in their run, and the bastard things begin digging a burrow in the middle of the lawn. Bill is outraged by this and has them back in their hutch in thirty seconds flat. It usually takes me at least half an hour to catch them, and I think they rather enjoy diving about and watching me fall into flowerbeds. But they are furious at Bill’s more assertive technique, and begin a mammoth sulk in their hutch. I’m longing for Charlie to get bored with them so I can put them in a cab and send them to Rolf Harris or the producers of Pet Rescue. It’s all their fault anyway, because the endless barrage of pet programmes meant Charlie was desperate to adopt everything from a donkey with three legs to a foul-looking lizard.