The Godmother

by Carrie Adams

  “I came back because of the boys. But I cannot stay any longer.” She picked up a suitcase that I had not noticed before and opened the door wider.

  “Where are you going?”

  Rose didn’t answer me.

  “Please don’t go, not now. Helen needs help.”

  “Yes, she does. But not from me.”

  “But she’s desperate,” I pleaded.

  “I know. I cannot help her while she continues in this way.”

  “It’s not her fault. It’s Neil!”

  “Tessa, make all the excuses in the world, but I will not stay here and watch Helen do this to herself.”

  I knew what she meant. I hated watching it too. I hated what Neil did to her, but this wasn’t going to help her. Rose saw the boys lying on their respective rugs through the open nursery door. I thought for a second that she started to lower her suitcase, but then she shook her head again and straightened up. When she looked back at me I thought I saw tears. I watched her descend the staircase and a few moments later heard the heavy front door close with a firm thud. I returned to the nursery, stripped the boys, peered into their nappies to check there was no poo, and, relieved, picked out new outfits that didn’t match. Tommy was in something with a train motif. Bobby got the bear suit. T for Train. T for Tommy. B for Bear. B for Bobby. At least I could call them by their names now.

  I had to get out of my ridiculous dress, so I crept into Helen’s room and found a tracksuit and trainers that looked like my size, but were, of course, too small. I didn’t dare go back in, so I squeezed into the pink velour and hoped that I didn’t bump into anyone I knew. You have to be very beautiful to wear pink velour well. I carried the boys back downstairs—no mean feat—to the basement, where I knew the pram was parked. I had made three more journeys to the nursery when I remembered I should take supplies. I fetched the frozen milk but forgot the bottles. Then I needed something warm for them to wear. Then Bobby was sick, so I had to carry him back up for a whole new outfit. Luckily, there was two of everything, so another bear suit was easy to find. At least I remembered the nappies on that trip. By the time I left the house I was exhausted and Tommy had been waiting in the pram for forty minutes. He was clearly pissed off. I couldn’t face another ascent, so I found something for him to amuse himself with. The jam-jar lid went straight in his mouth and he promptly fell asleep. One bonus to all of this was that Neil had vanished along with everyone else.

  I left a note for Helen, telling her to call me when she woke up and that I had the twins and everything was fine. Then I set off down the street with my charges to find some fuel for me. I glanced at my watch. Was ten-thirty too early for a stiff drink? Caffeine would have to suffice. Notting Hill Gate was full of lovely little cafés to sit in and idle away a morning, but there was no way I could get the pram through the doors, let alone navigate the tables. The pram may have been state-of-the-art, but it was still preposterously large and, frankly, a little too showy to gain much sympathy. I noted that as I stood outside one café emitting enticing warm, doughy smells, and wondered whether there was any chance of getting in, those on the other side of the glass glared at me with open hostility. With little sleep and terrible clothes, I looked perfect in my role of frazzled new mother.

  I walked away and headed for the one place I knew I could hang my hat and dump my load. I avoided Starbucks like the plague usually. There was nothing that made me feel the pinch of my ovaries more than a visit to Starbucks. You were usually confronted by a mammary gland, or several if a Lamaze class was “getting together,” before you reached the incomprehensible barista, and by the time it took the twenty minutes for your cup of warm milk to arrive, you’d heard several women discuss drying their nether regions with a hairdryer and could list nipple creams off by heart. But there were double doors, and women with babies to help hold them open. No one sneered at me. Instead, I got a look of pity from some and a knowing look from others that said “IVF was it, dear?” I ordered a triple-shot dry cappuccino and sat down on the scurf-covered brown velvet chair with relief. Someone had left a paper and for a few glorious moments I read it, drank coffee and thought, Hey, this isn’t so bad.

  Bobby woke up first and started crying. Fine, I thought. Milk. No problem. I got a large cup of hot water and plonked a bag of frozen milk in it. That was probably my first mistake. I should have got two. The milk seemed to take for ever to defrost, meanwhile Bobby got increasingly restless and soon got tired of crinkling brown sugar packets in his chubby little fingers. Personally, I thought the twins could probably do with skipping a meal or two, but clearly they didn’t. Tommy woke up and went straight from sucking the jam-jar lid to full scream. I returned to the counter and asked for more hot water. One sweet girl offered to heat the milk in the microwave for me. I could have kissed her.

  “I have twins,” she said, which surprised me, since she only looked about twelve. She took the bags and the bottles from me and a few minutes later, which felt like hours, she returned with an apologetic look on her face. I knew immediately something was wrong.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, above the increasing din of Tommy’s hunger. “It seems to have curdled. There wasn’t a date on the bag. How old is it?”

  I shrugged. “They’re not mine. I’m looking after them for a friend.”

  She looked concerned. I felt terrified.

  “What shall I do?”

  “Go to Boots and buy a carton of ready-prepared baby milk.”

  “But they only have breast milk.”

  “Or find their mother.”

  I swore silently under my breath.

  “You sure I can’t give them that?” I looked at the bottles for the first time. She was right, the milk had curdled.

  “It doesn’t smell right,” said the woman. “You go, I’ll watch the babies.”

  I could have kissed her again. There is such goodness in the world, I thought, my spirits rocketing back up from around my ankles as I ran out of Starbucks.

  There were several brands, for several stages. I didn’t have time to read the tiny writing and anyway, I didn’t know what the boys weighed, so I bought two of each, which set me back a bit. Then I ran back to Starbucks. The waitress was rocking the pram backwards and forwards and singing something in Spanish.

  “Thank you so much. This is probably the last thing you want to do; you probably come to work to get away from the kids.”

  She shook her head. “They are at home in Chile with my mother.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That must be hard.”

  “They are well fed,” she said smiling bravely. “So how old are these boys?”

  “Five months.”

  “Big boys. My colleague cleaned the bottles, you can start again now.”

  I wanted her to stay but a party of eight came in and she had to go back to work. I ripped open the carton with my teeth and noticed a woman looking at me disapprovingly. I smiled at her then poured the contents into the bottles, tightened the lids, and without remembering to warm them, offered them to the two hungry mouths. They started sucking furiously as soon as the plastic teats touched their lips, and despite some excessive dribbling, they seemed completely unfazed by this dramatic change in their young lives. As they stared up at me from inside their pram I thought about the slight girl behind the counter and her babies miles away and thought how very lucky we all were and how easy it was to forget. My confidence was soaring as the boys drained every last drop. I picked up Tommy to wind him and was rewarded with an enormous belch. I picked up Bobby and was coated in a thick slick of milky slime while he simultaneously filled his nappy. The rapturous noise was competing with the steam machine but still won. People turned to look. I smiled apologetically.

  “Gee, thanks, kiddo,” I said to Bobby, and placed him back in the pram alongside his brother so we could all pay a visit to the loo. There was no way the pram would get through the door, so I returned to my seat, lifted Bobby out again and asked the woman on the next-door table t
o keep an eye on Tommy. He was happily sucking the jam-jar lid again, so I didn’t think he’d be any trouble.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” I said, feeling pretty competent at this point, and picked up my bag of tricks. It was a disaster. As soon as I removed the odorous nappy, Bobby pooed again. Thick, squitty, sweet yellow poo. It was disgusting. I tried to wipe it up with loo paper but it ran down his legs and, more choicely than that, up his rather hairy back. The skid mark quickly soaked through two layers of clothes. I ferreted around in the bag, knowing full well that I hadn’t factored in a change of clothes. The recycled loo paper came apart in my hands and only managed to smear the excrement further afield. Was this putrid-smelling stuff normal? Maybe I had poisoned him with the baby milk?

  In the end, I used up a whole precious nappy wiping him up, hoping that Tommy had a firmer constitution than his brother. I finally got the last of the clean nappies under his bum, when from out of his willy shot a perfect arc of pee. Luckily, I had turned away at that moment so most of it went in my ear and trickled down my neck, rather than in my eye. By the time I had grabbed more loo paper, he and I were soaking. There was a knock on the door.

  “It’s occupied,” I shouted rudely.

  “Your child is screaming.”

  “Oh, sorry, can you…” No, she couldn’t. I didn’t know who this woman was. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago.”

  Fifteen minutes! Lying toad. I glanced at my watch. Shit. She was being generous. It was more like twenty. I unlocked the door and heard the bawling.

  “I’m so sorry. Had a bit of a nightmare.”

  The woman glanced over my pee-soaked shoulder. A pile of poo-covered paper and nappies were piled high around a wet, poo-stained baby who lay in a messy state of undress. He was smiling, though. Bless him.

  “I can see,” she said.

  “Would you mind just—”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go.”

  I was in a jam. I didn’t dare leave Bobby unattended on the changing-table, since I hadn’t bothered harnessing him in, but I couldn’t leave Tommy screaming the place down.

  “Look, I’ll push the pram over here.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said, filled with gratitude. “Really, thank you. Thank you.” Shut up you, mad woman. “Thank you,” I said again. In the space of one hour and forty-nine minutes, the twins had turned me into a gibbering wreck.

  An hour later I was back at Helen’s house. I’d been sitting outside her house for half of that time before she finally called, though naturally I didn’t tell her that. I think she was a little surprised to discover that Bobby was naked under his snowsuit, but she hid it well. I threw the damaged goods into the laundry room and closed the door on the sorry mess. Helen returned with a freshly dressed Bobby. I sat while Tommy happily played under another play-nest in the “family room.”

  “Was Tommy sick?” she asked.

  “No, but Bobby was.”

  “Bobby?” Helen looked down at the play-nest.

  Something was wrong. The baby lying on the play-nest had a train on his tummy.

  “Isn’t that Tommy?”

  “No. Hard as it is to believe, I do know the difference between them.”

  You might, I thought. But your husband doesn’t.

  “So sorry. How do you tell them apart?”

  “Tommy has darker eyes.”

  “What do you do when they are asleep?”

  “Hope no one has swapped them around.”

  I smiled, thinking Helen was joking.

  “Once they wake up again, I soon know. Tommy is sick all the time. Bobby isn’t. It’s weird.”

  “What if they both take turns in being sick, and you just think it’s always Tommy.”

  “Tessa, please don’t do my head in more than it is already.”

  As I said, I thought this conversation was quite jovial. Breaking the ice from the night before. Washing over it with humor. But then Helen burst into tears.

  I couldn’t calm her down. I couldn’t make the tears stop. I couldn’t. I didn’t know a human being could have so much liquid inside them. Babies are strange. The twins got agitated and distressed by the noise. I knew how they felt. It was horrible seeing someone you loved in that much pain, and not being able to stop it. I was frightened they would start crying too, so I extracted myself from her and took them to another part of the room. I found their baby bouncers and put them in front of Baby Bach. The hypnosis was instant. Eventually, I thrust a glass of brandy in Helen’s hand (and poured one for myself) and told her to drink it. She looked at me with such sorrow in her eyes that I couldn’t bear to hold her gaze. I knew it was far too early in the day, but sod the babies and their pure boob juice, I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Drink it,” I insisted. She obediently knocked it back in one. Then she stared at the glass so I took it away.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Helen, it’s one fucking drink.” I knelt at her feet and took her hands. “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t help you until you tell me. You are clearly depressed, that much I can see for myself. You need help.”

  “I’ve got tons of fucking help, all I have is help, help, help. I can’t cope. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “I don’t blame you. I had them for two hours and they reduced me to tears.”

  I wanted her to smile, but she didn’t. So I tried to think of a serious solution.

  “There must be a book, something to help you know what to do…”

  “Books. Books. There are millions of books all telling you different things; there are books about how many books there are, which promise to make it simple, but they don’t. They don’t. None of them can tell me why I feel like this!” She sighed heavily. “Trust me, I don’t need books.”

  OK, not books then.

  “Neil says I’m pathetic. Says it isn’t right, a woman of my age having a nanny, and he’s right.”

  “He is not! You’ve got to stop believing your husband.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t. Not any more.”

  Was the reason for these tears Neil, and not the babies, as I had thought? “I meant about when he puts you down.”

  “I know that’s what you meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “The world is full of trickery, Tessa. You know what I mean, everyone fucking knows what I mean. Even that nice man you met at the party knows what I mean, and I’ve never met him before. I don’t even care any more. He hurts me, but not because of that.”

  “What do you mean hurts you?”

  I saw the tears spill over again.

  “Helen?”

  “He’s done this, he’s made me into this. I wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for him.”

  “What does he do? Helen, what does he do? Does he hit you?”

  “He shagged someone in a corridor of the Soho House when the boys were six weeks old.” She shook her head. “I confronted him. You know what he said? He said, ‘What do you expect when I’m getting so little attention at home?’”

  It was not a pleasant feeling having your worst fears confirmed. Gossiping about scandal, and that scandal reducing your friend to pulp, were not the same thing.

  “You’ve got to leave.”

  “No. He is not running me out of my own home.”

  “Fuck the home, you’ll get another home—”

  “My mother, I could take it from my mother. It hurts more from Neil.”

  “Your mother?”

  “You see, she never said she loved me. Do you understand? Neil said he loved me and then turns me into this. I know where I stand with Marguerite. I didn’t see it coming from Neil.”

  “I want to get you out of here before he comes back. Who knows what sort of state he’ll be in.”

  “Rose will be back soon.”

 
; “No, Helen, she’s gone.”

  “She’ll come back. She’d never leave me. She just does it occasionally to show me who’s boss.”

  “What?”

  “But she always comes back.”

  “You need to see someone, Helen, a doctor, a psychiatrist, someone who can help you. I’m sure there is something he can prescribe to help you. Postnatal depression, it’s very common and that’s without your pig of a husband.”

  She laughed. “Pills. Pills don’t make it go away. I’ve got to save the twins. None of this is their fault. They didn’t ask to be born. I should have known. I should have known I’d be like her.” Suddenly she looked at me. “They’ll take them away from me.”

  “Now you’re being crazy.”

  “You should take them. You’re their guardian.”

  “Stop this, Helen.”

  “You don’t want them.”

  “No one is going to take your children away. You just need to sort yourself out.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let my mother get her hands on my boys.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Promise,” said Helen.

  “This is a stupid conversation.”

  “Promise me, Tessa.”

  I thought I was dealing with a woman on the verge of a breakdown. I would have promised her anything.

  “You’ve thought it yourself, though, haven’t you? Helen is doing a shit job of this, I could do better than that. Don’t lie to me and tell me you haven’t.” I felt shame creep up into my cheeks. In my most evil thoughts, while gripped by the terrible green-eyed monster, I had indeed had that thought.

  “That was before I knew how very hard it is. Honestly, Helen, I had no idea. I saw the perfect Pampers baby on telly and thought it was all smiles and bubble bath, and yes, I have to admit, I thought it looked pretty easy. I didn’t know babies could do this.” I looked at her.

  “It’s not their fault. It’s mine.”

  “You’ve got no support. I’ve been crap. Your mother hardly wins the ‘good granny’ award, and where the hell is Neil’s family? I’ve never seen them at any of your parties.”