My Life On a Plate

by India Knight

  Sammy totters in. ‘Pee-pee,’ he says, pointing at his crotch. ‘Done pee-pee.’

  I struggle to squidge him out of his coat – his mother refuses to accept that she really should buy him clothes made for five-six-year-olds, so he is always sausaged into his outfits in a way that tugs slightly at the heartstrings.

  ‘Why,’ says Amber, ‘is this child in nappies if he’s aware of the act of peeing?’

  ‘I don’t know, Amber. Maybe his mum wanted to make it easier for you. Maybe he’s only just started being potty-trained.’

  ‘But she isn’t making it easier,’ Amber wails, ‘because now I’m going to have to change his nappy.’

  ‘Nappy,’ says Sammy, doing an oddly adult, wriggly little dance, as if the disco floor of a Saturday night held no surprises for him, thank you very much, babe, fancy a spin? ‘Sammy’s nappy’s full.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ whispers Amber. ‘See what I mean? Why couldn’t he just say, “I need the loo” before the event?’

  ‘Because he’s two,’ I say sternly, taking Sammy by the hand. ‘Stop being mean. Pass me the changing bag. I’ll do it. Come on, Sammy.’

  I take him up to the boys’ room and do the necessary. Is there anything more revolting than changing someone else’s child’s nappy, especially when it is, as Sammy accurately pointed out, indeed very ‘full’? Having done the business with the Pampers and the aloe vera wipes (using half the tub through fear of making contact with Sammy’s poo), I smile briskly at Sammy, who smiles back beatifically, says ‘Better’, points at his crotch again and takes my hand in his own squidgy one, quite touchingly, to go downstairs.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask. ‘You could have an early lunch.’

  ‘Want tea,’ he says, in his sonorous basso profundo. Honestly, the child would be the pride of any Welsh choir. ‘Want my tea.’

  Had he not done this before, I would simply assume Northern parentage and provide him with a bowl of pasta. These days, I know better: Sammy wants a cuppa. I don’t know why infantile tea – and coffee – drinking should repulse me so much, but it does. Sammy’s PG Tips seem lacking in innocence, somehow. What kind of woman gives her two-year-old mugs of tea?

  I try what I always try: ‘Ribena, Sammy? Apple juice, milk, water, Vimto?’

  But Sammy replies what he’s always replied: ‘I want my tea.’

  Back in the kitchen Amber, who’s made herself a pot of coffee and dug a fruit cake out of the tin, practically throws herself at me. ‘You did it! You did it! Oh, Clara, you’re an angel! It must be easier for you, having kids of your own, of course. You must be used to it. I just can’t deal with all that poo. Will you do it again if he does it again?’

  ‘Can’t we at least take turns? Because it’s in no way easier, Amber, actually,’ I reply. ‘Poo, let us not forget, is poo. You can just about get to grips with your own flesh and blood’s, but believe me, anyone else’s grosses me out as much as it does you.’

  ‘Want my tea,’ says Sammy, who is sitting on the floor and has started taking off his shoes.

  ‘Coming up,’ I sigh, flicking the kettle on again. I wander into the playroom – well, the boxroom that has toys in it – and come back with some wooden bricks, a nodding dog on a string and a pile of picture books. ‘Here, er, darling,’ I say, depositing them on the floor by Sammy, who is now struggling with his socks. ‘You have a play while I talk to Auntie Amber. Would you like a biscuit?’

  ‘Where’s my TEA?’ shouts Sammy, momentarily distracted from the business of tending to his extremities. ‘Want my TEA.’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ I mutter, abandoning the ‘I am a kind lady’ tone I’d adopted earlier. ‘Give me a chance.’

  ‘Ooh, I’m parched,’ says Sammy, who is normally looked after by an elderly childminder and whose vocabulary can, therefore, err on the Mavis Riley side. ‘Ooh.’

  ‘Coming up,’ I repeat, retreating back to the table and to Amber, who is looking at Sammy and shaking her head. ‘I’m never, ever having one,’ she says. ‘Imagine if it came out all Samoid! And it was yours! And you had to love it! I’d have a breakdown.’

  ‘You wouldn’t notice, if it was yours,’ I say.

  ‘Course you would. Motherhood doesn’t make you blind, for God’s sake.’

  Amber and I always have this argument. She claims that she would never be able to love a plain child as much as she would a photogenic one. I claim that she would, though actually I claim this for argument’s sake, since I am not convinced. Certainly, when the boys were born, I scrutinized them very closely indeed. And I decided they were lovely – the bee’s knees, the ant’s pants of glorious babyhood. But then, I am their mother.

  ‘Clara,’ says Amber, tucking into her fourth slice of cake, ‘you know perfectly well you would be distraught if you had a plain child.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t know,’ I say. ‘Unless you told me. Would you tell me, Amber?’

  Amber munches thoughtfully. ‘We always said we would, remember, before you had Charlie? But then you loved him so much… And, thank God, he was lovely.’

  ‘He still is.’

  ‘Yes, of course he is. No, I wouldn’t tell you, but I’d confirm it if you told me.’

  I get up and make Sammy’s tea, pouring the brew into a child’s Peter Rabbit, two-handed mug to make myself feel better about feeding a baby caffeine and tannin.

  ‘Two sugars,’ says Sammy.

  ‘Sugar rots your teeth,’ I say briskly. ‘I am not giving you two sugars, Sammy.’

  ‘Milk and two sugars, please,’ says Sammy uncompromisingly and looking at me squarely, slightly like a dog that’s about to bite.

  ‘God’s sake,’ I mutter. ‘It was only one last time. What do I do, Amber? Do you give him two?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Amber. ‘Otherwise he has amazing tantrums.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Sammy, as I put the mug on a low table beside him. ‘Tea.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I say, noting that he may look like a pig/dog, but at least he has nice manners.

  ‘Cara,’ says Sammy, as if he were a suave, hand-kissing Italian, or – less charmingly – I were a type of easy-roast potato. ‘Cara?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve got cheesy feet,’ Sammy says, in his open-mouthed, faintly breathy way.

  I reel back, nauseated. ‘I’m sure you haven’t, Sammy,’ I mumble.

  ‘I have,’ he says stolidly and matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve got really cheesy feet, Mummy said.’

  ‘Amber!’ I say furiously. ‘Can’t you have a word with his mum? It’s a completely inappropriate thing to say to a little child. I mean, I kiss my children’s feet.’

  ‘She was just stating a fact, I think, Clara.’

  ‘Nonsense. Two-year-olds don’t have stinky feet.’

  ‘Don’t come over all Dr Spock with me,’ says Amber. ‘I don’t know about two-year-olds’ feet and I don’t wish to know.’

  ‘Penelope Leach, actually,’ I say. ‘Do keep up.’ I am suddenly filled with compassion for big, ugly, foot-odoriferous Sammy, whom I pick up. His big, slightly bovine, brown eyes stare up at me. I hoick him on to my hip and bring him to the table. ‘Shall I read you a story?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Sammy. ‘Lovely tea, that. Nice cuppa tea, that,’ which banter he feels compelled to qualify with a loud, exhaled ‘aah’ in the manner of a freshly sated builder who has drunk his tea, smoked his fag and burped a loud, rich burp.

  Three minutes into some dreary saga about train engines, I am forced to concede that Sammy’s mummy has a point after all.

  ‘It’s putting you in a bad mood, isn’t it, having us here,’ states Amber, with some accuracy.

  ‘It’s just it makes me feel so guilty, Am, not having charitable or Christian thoughts towards him. It makes me feel like the most horrible, monstrous human being.’

  ‘Sammy farted,’ says Sammy, from my lap.

  ‘And now he’s farted on my thigh,’ I hiss, putting Sammy down. ‘And m
y thoughts are getting worse and worse.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d like a nap,’ says Amber hopefully. ‘He has one, late morning.’

  ‘Doesn’t look remotely sleepy to me,’ I say. ‘Not when there are more feet to examine, and more wind to expel.’

  ‘I’ll take him to the park, then,’ says Amber, looking disconsolate. ‘We haven’t even had a proper chance to chat and I haven’t seen you for weeks. Come with us to the park, why don’t you?’

  ‘Mm – you know how much I love nature. But okay, just to catch up.’

  ‘Sammy did a pee-pee,’ says Sammy, holding his crotch.

  16

  While the other mothers at the park are devoted to their charges, smiling contentedly and making unabashedly competitive, elaborate sandcastles with turrets and moats, we head straight for the bench in the corner for a smoke and a gossip. Amber has taken the precaution of wedging Sammy into a toddler’s swing that he can’t clamber out of by himself and we watch him swoop happily into the sun-flecked air as we chat, emitting loud, deep ‘Waah’s of excitement (Sammy, I mean, not us).

  The reason Amber hasn’t been around, or at least not around at the same time as me, is that she has met a man. Not just any old man, she explains, but The Man; The True Love; The One. She met him at a dinner party, which just goes to show that those hellish evenings devised by married people for their own cruel amusement – ‘Which retarded ugly-bug shall we sit next to your desperate single friend with the plummeting self-esteem, darling, this time? The dwarf with halitosis, or the letchy fat one with dandruff? Decisions, decisions…’ – do sometimes yield results.

  She’s quite hard-boiled, Amber, and she doesn’t fall easily. I glance over at her and I must say that she looks in love. She has that kind of radiant glow more often associated with pregnant women. ‘He’s just fantastic,’ she says. ‘He’s just amazing. It’s like we’re the same person, cut into two – look, I’m even saying naff things, that’s how in love I am, yuck, but also yippee – except he’s much sexier than me. Oh, God, Clara, he is just so sexy. He’s incredibly good in bed – the sex, the sex, my God…’ She drifts off and stares into the distance, smiling a faintly irritating smile, so that I have to pinch her.

  ‘Ow, Clara, what did you do that for? Anyway – I can’t believe it, can you? He’s handsome – he’s incredibly handsome, actually. Almost abnormally. He’s freakishly handsome. He’s funny. He’s good in bed. He’s cleverer than me, which I always like. He even has money!’

  I do see how this would appeal, since Amber has spent large chunks of her life supporting impecunious, hopeless types, all of whom claimed to be ‘artistes’. (‘Yeah, piss artistes,’ Tamsin once said succinctly.) ‘And I’m moving in with him at the weekend.’

  ‘What, already? How long have you known him?’

  ‘Two weeks. But he was away for five of those days. Actually, it’s two weeks, six hours, eleven minutes’ – she squints at her watch – ‘and…’

  ‘Yes, okay, I get the picture,’ I say, laughing. ‘You don’t think you’re jumping the gun at all?’

  ‘I know I’m not,’ says Amber, grabbing my arm quite hard. ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I can’t wait for you to meet him.’

  ‘I still think…’

  ‘I get out of bed naked!’ says Amber triumphantly, raising her voice.

  ‘What, no draping yourself in king-size duvet so you have a train? No blanket? No sheet? No lying there getting cystitis from dying to pee but not wanting him to see your thighs?’ I am, it must be said, quite impressed.

  ‘Nope. Naked.’

  ‘Naked as a worm? No cheating? Actually showing the thighs? Exposing the buttocks?’

  ‘Naked as a naked thing. Completely starkers. And not even retreating so the buttocks are concealed. Actually turning around, Clara. Now will you believe me?’

  ‘It does put a new light on things,’ I admit.

  Amber has, shall we say, poor body image; her years of bulimia have seen to that. Unfortunately for her, she is a classic English pear shape, so no matter how much she diets, or how sick she makes herself, she still looks like she’s wearing jodhpurs even when you can see her ribs. I’m only being matter-of-fact here, you understand, rather than mean; it’s simply the truth. Amber is lovely-looking, but she has the world’s biggest arse – an arse so vast that she is forced to sway from side to side as she walks.

  I would never get out of bed naked now, I think to myself, if I were ever in a situation that called for it, which of course I wouldn’t be. I am full of admiration for Amber, tinged with, perhaps, a tiny flicker of jealousy. What’s she doing getting out of bed naked, when my arse is smaller and I still couldn’t? Thank God for marriage and cosy pyjamas, I think to myself with a shudder. Still, there’s no denying this is good news for Amber.

  ‘God, Amber, that’s so brilliant. Congratulations!’ I give her a hug. ‘Have you told your counsellor?’

  ‘About Mark? Not yet.’

  ‘Because it’s the most amazing leap forward, the naked out of bed thing. I’m really pleased for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles – and she really is looking dementedly happy. ‘I’m pleased too. The amazing thing is, he actually seems to like my bottom. Oh, GOD,’ she shouts, smacking herself on the forehead, ‘oh, GOD, I forgot to tell you the other news.’

  ‘What other news? You’re not pregnant?’

  ‘No… but guess who is?’

  One of the other mothers is walking towards us, looking worried. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, gesturing towards the swings, ‘but is that your child?’

  ‘NO!’ we both shout in unison.

  ‘I mean, sort of,’ says Amber.

  The penny drops and my stomach lurches. ‘We forgot about Sammy!’ I scream, horrified.

  ‘It’s just he’s been swinging for about fifteen minutes,’ says the mother. ‘All by himself.’ She is not beaming with approbation exactly. She is looking at us much as, earlier, I looked at Sammy’s nappy.

  ‘Oh, God, oh, fuck, oh, godding fuck,’ says Amber, which doesn’t do much to improve the mother’s facial expression. ‘Fucking buttfucks up the BUTT,’ she adds, for emphasis, stubbing out her cigarette and running towards the swings.

  I race after her. A group of small children has gathered around Sammy the Incredible Swinging Toddler – ‘He Just Swings On and On’ – who, mercifully, seems to be enjoying their attention, although he does look a little dazed.

  ‘Sammy! Oh, Sammy! Oh, poor thing,’ says Amber, swooping him out of the swing and kissing the top of his Babar hat. ‘Oh, darling Sammy, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Sammy swing,’ booms factual Sammy.

  ‘God,’ says Amber, ‘poor little boy.’ She looks up and notices the other mothers, and can’t help adding, ‘He’s not mine, you know. I’m just minding him. See?’ She squishes her face next to his. ‘We don’t look at all alike. Because he’s not mine.’

  ‘Funny way of minding a child,’ sniffs a woman in dungarees. (We have come to Stoke Newington, after all, where people eat nut loaf and millet as if the past three decades simply had not happened, a state of denial that extends to the sartorial. Want to buy a tie-dyed T-shirt and matching Jesus sandals? Fancy a lentil bake? You know where to come.)

  ‘The poor little thing,’ says another. ‘We thought he’d been abandoned.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t,’ says Amber. ‘I just got caught up chatting to my friend. Come on, Sammy, let’s go and play.’

  ‘Whee,’ says Sammy, sounding unconvinced. ‘Sammy go whee! Swing.’

  We slink out of the playground enclosure, swift with guilt. Amber straps Sammy into his buggy. He’s asleep within minutes, exhausted from his surfeit of involuntary exercise.

  ‘I think you’d better not visit anyone when you’re with him,’ I say to Amber. ‘Just concentrate on him. It’s as much my fault as it is yours, though – God, how awful.’

  ‘Well, he’s fine now,’ says Amber. ‘He remains un-snatched. Tha
t’s the main thing.’

  ‘I was just so enthralled by what you were saying,’ I say, suddenly remembering. ‘So, who’s pregnant?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Amber. ‘You’re not going to believe this one.’

  ‘Amber, come on. Tell me.’

  ‘Guess,’ says Amber.

  ‘No, I don’t want to. Come on.’

  ‘Tamsin.’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Yup! She found out a couple of days ago.’

  ‘But whose is it?’

  ‘Ah,’ says Amber. ‘Ah, yes. The paternity question.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me she doesn’t know,’ I say, aghast. ‘She’s a fully grown woman. Fully grown women know who they’re pregnant by. Jesus. It drives me mad, that. It’s like when women in their thirties tell men they want to hold on to, “I think I’m pregnant.” I mean, talk about fuckwits. You pee on a stick and you find out. You don’t dither about like Mavis bloody Riley.’

  ‘Tamsin did pee on a stick. And she does know who she’s pregnant by,’ says Amber.

  ‘Well? Well?’

  ‘The one-night stand.’

  Oh no. Oh no. I grab Amber’s arm. ‘Please tell me you’re joking, Amber. The weeny peeny? The man who had a dump in her loo? No. No. Please, Amber, are you joking?’

  ‘I swear I’m not.’

  ‘Fuck. What’s she going to do?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. She’s in a bit of a state. I mean, you know as well as me that she’s been madly broody for years now… But, you know – even in that kind of situation, would one want a weenster as a dad?’

  I leave Amber in the minicab office – why is it that none of my friends can drive? – and walk home via the nice bakery that does hot bread. Back in the house, I drag a battered old quilt down from my bed, make a pint mug of tea, hunker down with a hunk of said loaf and dial Tamsin.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Hi, Clara. I was a bit freaked out. Also, I kept getting your answering machine.’

  ‘How far gone are you?’

  ‘Only six weeks.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Have you told him?’