I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  “Come on, Kate,” says Richard. “We’re getting soaked here. Surely you know how to put that cover on.”

  I surely don’t know. How would I know? Only contact with wretched thing was handing over Visa card in John Lewis thirteen months ago and, when the assistant tried to demonstrate the rain cover, snapping at her, “I’ll just take it, thanks.” (Can hardly call Paula in Morocco and ask how to use own child’s equipment.)

  Ben is howling now. Drops of rain join the tributary of snot running over his lips to form a cataract of misery. Have you noticed how all baby equipment comes with the promise of “easi-assembly”? This is industry shorthand for: only those with NASA training need attempt.

  “For Chrissake, Kate,” hisses Richard, who will put up with anything except embarrassment in public.

  “I’m trying. I’m trying. Emily, don’t go near the cars. Emily, come here this minute!”

  A coach has pulled up alongside us and disgorged a tour party of seventysomethings: Ladies of the Valleys with freshly baked perms and short padded coats that give their trunks the appearance of boilers lagged to save on fuel. As one, they dive into their handbags and produce those slithery packets that open out into instant see-through sou’westers. There they stand, twittering companionably and observing my struggle.

  “Aw, poor dab,” says one, gesturing towards my bawling son. “Getting wet iz ’ee? Nevah mind. Mammy’ll ’ave yew right in a minute.”

  My fingers are blunt with cold. Can barely hold the bloody clip, let alone open it. Under the wrong piece of plastic, an enraged Ben is as puce as packaged beetroot. I turn to the ladies. “New pram,” I say loudly. And they all nod and smile, eager to be drawn into womanly complicity against the hopeless man-made machine.

  “They make stuff so stiff, now, don’t they?” says one woman in check trews, taking the rain cover from me, nimbly flipping it over the buggy and fastening it with practiced clicks. “My daughter’s juss the same as yew,” she says, briefly laying a hand on my shoulder. “Doctor up Bridgend way now, she is. Two little boys. Hard work, mind. Yew don’t get no holidays, do yew?”

  I shake my head and try to smile but my lips are rigid with cold. The woman’s hands are raw and bony, the tendons like red ropes. A mother’s hands—one who did the washing-up three times a day, peeled the veg and stirred the terry nappies in their scummy cauldron. Hands like that will die out in another generation, along with waist pinnies and the Sunday roast.

  Bowed double against the rain, Richard pushes the buggy along the little road to the cathedral. Emily is so drenched she has made the transformation from child to water sprite. “Mummy?”

  “What is it, Emily?”

  “Baby Jesus has got a lot of houses, hasn’t he? Is this where he comes on his holidays?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. Ask Daddy.”

  Cathedrals are built to inspire awe. Sacred fortresses, they always look as though they have been lowered from heaven onto a hill. St. Davids is different. It sits on the edge of a small Welsh town—a city in name only—hiding its virtues in a valley so perfectly designed it feels like an engraving. Cattle graze almost up to its walls.

  I love this place. The ancient chill that fills your lungs when you push open the door—the trapped breath of saints, I always think. I must have been seven or eight the first time I came here, candy floss from Tenby on my lips. Licking them now I can still taste its cobwebby sweetness. I have seen grander cathedrals since, of course: Notre Dame, Seville, St. Paul’s. But the greatness of this church lies in its smallness, barely bigger than a barn really. You wouldn’t be surprised to find an ox and an ass by the font.

  St. Davids is one of the few places that bids me be still. And here in the nave I realize that, these days, stillness is an unaccustomed, even an uncomfortable sensation. The cathedral is timeless, and my life...my life is nothing but time. Rich has taken Emily and Ben to explore the gift shop. Left alone, I find my mouth forming words no one can hear: Help me.

  Asking a God I’m not sure I believe in to get me out of a mess I don’t understand? Oh, very good, Kate, very good.

  On the far wall, there is a slate tablet commemorating a local grandee. In memory of Somebody Thomas and of his relict Angharad. Relict. Same as relic? Will have to ask Rich, he’s good at Latin. Had a proper education, not the comprehensive shambles I had to put up with.

  Outside, a vertiginous gingerbread staircase links the cathedral to the tiny city on the hill. I haul the buggy backwards up the steps, feeling each bump in my lower vertebrae. Rich carries a squally Emily on his shoulders. She and Ben badly need their tea. Guilty bad mother. I always forget children are like cars; without regular injections of fuel they judder and stop.

  We walk down a street full of cafés and peer through the windows, inspecting each one for child-friendliness. Is there room for the buggy? Are there older people in there who would rather not share their toasted crumpets with a dribbly Ben? Britain is still no country for young children. Venture too far from Pizza Express and you find the same resentful sighs I remember from when Julie and I were kids.

  We settle on a chintzy establishment full of other holiday parents, as spooked and unrested as us, and make for the farthest corner. Draped over the backs of chairs, our wet coats steam like cows. I read out the menu and Emily announces loudly that she doesn’t want anything that’s on offer. She wants pasta.

  “We can do ’oops from a tin, like,” offers the kindly waitress.

  “I don’t want hoops,” wails Emily. “I want pasta.”

  Metropolitan brat. All my fault for giving her everything so young. I didn’t taste my first pasta till I was nineteen years old. Rome. Spaghetti alla vongole—clammy in both senses, a shaming ordeal of alien shells and unmanageable strands.

  Sometimes I worry that I’ve traveled this far, done this well in life, only for my kids to grow up as jaded and spoiled as the people I was patronized by at college.

  As Rich cuts up the children’s Welsh rarebit, there is a little twiddly beep from my mobile. It’s a text message from Guy.

  TurkE crisis.

  Rod & R C-C away.

  Devaluation?

  Turk shares collapsing.

  Wot do?

  Oh, hell. Jump up, barge past other families, trip over labrador, run into street. Try mobile, but this time it’s making another kind of beep telling me the battery is low. Can’t get a signal. Of course I can’t get a signal, am in Wales. Run back into the café.

  “Have you got a phone I can use?”

  “’Scuse me?” The waitress looks blank.

  “A pay phone?”

  “Oh, yes, but it’s not working like.”

  “A fax?”

  “Facts?”

  “A facsimile machine. I need to send an urgent message.”

  “Oh. They might ’ave one over the paper shop.”

  Newsagent has no fax; he thinks chemist has fax. Chemist does have fax. Fax needs paper. Back to paper shop. About to close. Bang on door. Beg. Have to buy brick of five hundred sheets, of which I need precisely one. Back to chemist. I scrawl a note to Guy using the prescription pen which is tethered to the counter:

  Guy, MUST weigh up risk of Turkish trade failing and being charged interest rates of 2000 percent—could cost us shedload of money—versus loss in value of shares if currency devalues.

  1. How much have we got in Turkey?

  2. What’s market doing—knock-on effect other regions?

  Answers on my desk tomorrow 8:30 a.m. Coming Back Right Now, Kate

  9:50 P.M. There are huge jams in both directions on the M4. The headlights form a three-mile diamond necklace. From the driving seat, Rich shoots me inquiring, sidelong glances. I am grateful for the dark; it means I don’t have to pick up his distress signals until I feel ready.

  Finally he says, “I still think it’s a bit odd, Kate, you sending yourself those flowers on Valentine’s Day. Why did you do it?”

  “As a morale boost. I wanted people
in the office to feel I was the kind of person who got flowers on Valentine’s Day. And I wasn’t sure you’d remember. Pathetic, really.”

  Easy to lie when you try. Easier than saying that the flowers came from client with whom I have recently dined, client who has since occupied much of my conscious mind as well as rudely gate-crashing my dreams. Time to change the subject.

  “Rich, what’s a relict? I saw it on a tomb in the cathedral today: AND HIS RELICT ANGHARAD.”

  “Widow. It means literally what is left behind.”

  “So the wife was the remains of the husband?”

  “Exactly, Kate.” He laughs. “Of course, in our marriage, I’d be what was left of you.”

  It’s said with enough love to sting. Do I really make him feel that way? That small? Over the miles to come, I embroider any number of plans, strategies to make things better between us. Put things right. But three hours later, as we pass Reading, I start to feel the gravitational pull of London, and the resolve to change my life burns up on re-entry.

  REASONS TO GIVE UP WORK AND GO AND LIVE IN COUNTRY

  1. Better quality of life.

  2. Can buy mansion with en-suite minstrels’ gallery for cost of Hackney heap.

  3. Chance to be real mother who has time to love husband, learn secret of children’s hearts and discover how bloody buggy rain cover works.

  REASONS NOT TO GIVE UP WORK AND GO AND LIVE IN COUNTRY

  1. Would go mad.

  2. See above.

  3. See above.

  PART THREE

  15

  The Pigeons

  WHERE IS A BIRD OF PREY when you need one? Since early this morning, two pigeons have been sitting on the ledge outside my office window: on their first date, apparently. For an hour or so, the male seemed to be bowing to the female, making polite little waiterly dips in front of her. Well, I assume that’s the male, because the other one is the color of dishwater and lowers her head in a coy Princess Di way, while he has this magnificent ruff of feathers round his neck, emerald and purple with a petroleum sheen.

  It wasn’t so bad when the male was whispering sweet nothings, but now he’s strutting about with his tail spread out in a fan, hissing and whistling to attract the female’s attention. The noise is unbelievable. Like having the entire percussion section of the LSO inside my ear. I give several sharp raps on the window to scare the birds away, but the courting couple only have eyes for each other.

  I call over to Guy and tell him to get the Corporation on the phone right away and ask for some guidance on pigeons.

  Guy puts on his Jeeves face. “Do you want me to arrange to have them shot, Kate?”

  “No, Guy, they’ve got a hawk to take them out. Can you ask them when he’s making his next visit?”

  It’s a little-known fact that the City of London employs a falconer who brings his sparrowhawk along every month to control the pigeon population. Last time he was here, Candy and I were on our way to lunch and my unshockable American friend was astonished to see a large countryman with a single leather gauntlet launching a feathered missile into the air above our heads.

  “If you’ve ever wondered why the City has such clean pavements compared to the rest of London, there’s your answer,” I said.

  “Oh, I get it.” Candy grinned. “That way they keep all the shit on the inside.”

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Debra Richardson

  How ARE YOU? Me so stressed after 3 days of half term wanted to check into the Priory. Do they do a work-withdrawal program for sad junkies like us? We went to a “child-friendly” hotel in Somerset. Felix got us banned after fusing electrics in the breakfast room. Plugged his Thunderbirds fork into the communal toaster and the whole place went dark. Ruby says she hates me.

  Are we just causing our children short-term damage, do you think, or will there be major lawsuits later on?

  Lunch on wednesday, right? Yrs in D-nial xxx

  * * *

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Jack Abelhammer

  Subject: Japanese Banking Crisis

  It is with some concern that your client notes the continuing upheaval in the Far Eastern sector. I understand Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank has plans to cut back several smaller branches.

  Can I get some direction on this, ma’am? xxxxx

  * * *

  To: Jack Abelhammer

  From: Kate Reddy

  Subject: Japanese Banking Crisis

  Don’t you have a business empire to run, sir? Jokes about the plight of our oriental friends are in v. poor taste, although I did hear shares in Kamikaze Bank have nose-dived and 500 back-office staff at Karate Bank got the chop.

  Katharine xx

  * * *

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Jack Abelhammer

  Hey, I missed you. I’ve grown accustomed to your pace. How was the vacation? Hot and relaxing, I hope.

  Saw this great movie the other night about a guy who lost his memory, so he has to write all the stuff he needs to remember on his body. I thought of you—you said you always had so much stuff to remember, right?

  Jack xx

  * * *

  To: Jack Abelhammer

  From: Kate Reddy

  Not hot and not relaxing exactly. Still cold here—passed a guy on the ice rink outside the office this morning; he was doing these cool loops and swivels, as though he was writing his name on the ice. Or even someone else’s—how romantic is that?

  Correct about the movie, though. Most of my body is covered in detailed notes already, but I have a spot left for you behind my left knee.

  * * *

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Jack Abelhammer

  I skate a little—do you? We could try a few moves on thin ice one day.

  As for the left knee, be right there. Just feathering my quill.

  * * *

  10:23 A.M. Now the damned pigeon has started clapping his wings together. Like he’s giving himself this big round of applause for being such a great lover. The female, meanwhile, is doing the birdy equivalent of lying on her back and waving her legs in the air. Completely intolerable. I manage to open the window and try to shoo them away. But love, it turns out, is deaf as well as blind.

  So much to do am surprised that my head is not lolling to one side with the weight of activity in there. In two days, I will be attending a final in the US for a three-hundred-million-dollar ethical pension fund which I will be presenting with a twentysomething graduate trainee who has all the qualifications for the job—not white, not male—except being able to do the job. Between us, Momo Gumeratne and I will signal EMF’s passionate commitment to diversity, a commitment whose finest hour till now has been the inclusion of tacos on the cafeteria menu. Also, I have still not secured the services of an entertainer for Emily’s birthday party. Also, I must pick up clothes for the final from the cleaners. Also—there was definitely another also.

  Damn. That’s all I need. A memo on my desk from Robin Cooper-Clark says there’s an internal investigation into some stock EMF sold that we didn’t actually have. I push the memo across the desk to Momo and tell her to go and put it on Chris Bunce’s desk. “But make sure he doesn’t see you, OK?”

  The leaf-shaped eyes curl up at the corners as she scans the paper. “We sold stock we didn’t have and now there’s a claim against us and Robin wants to know who is responsible?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, we find out whose fault it is?”

  “No, Momo. The aim is to keep passing the buck until you wear the others down. Are you familiar with the game Musical Chairs? Yes? Well, this is Musical Memos. The last person left holding the paper is in deep shit. So, if you could just deliver that to Bunce’s desk. Now?”

  I am beginning to recognize the expression on my new assistant’s face—a sort of tremulous frown where high principle struggles with a fervent desire to please. “Sorry, Kate, but how do we know Chris Bunce is to
blame?”

  I swivel my chair away from her to stop me losing my cool. Outside on the ledge, the pigeon family tableau is framed by a crane like a giant set square. How to account for a man who in conversation unconsciously grabs at his crotch, as if to check his manhood is still there, or rubs it in excitement when he thinks he’s about to get the better of someone? Particularly me.

  “Look, Bunce is a seat-of-the-pants artist who never does any of his admin and leaves it to conscientious girlies like you and me to do all the boring stuff that satisfies the authorities. If IMRO knew what Bunce got up to they’d be in here with a team of Alsatians. But Bunce is very good at getting away with it because he himself plays a mean game of Musical Memos. Am I making myself clear yet?”

  “Sorry,” Momo says, as another person would say OK, and walks across the office, holding the memo out in front of her like a sapper with an unexploded mine.

  “Are you going to be able to train her up?”

  Candy is standing by my desk wearing a skirt so short it’s practically a text message. I didn’t even hear her come over.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to introduce Momo to the idea that not everyone is a nice person.”

  “Omigod. We’re not talking about a functional childhood, are we?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Candy shakes her head in wonder and pity. “Poor kid. She’ll never get anywhere.”

  11:25 A.M. Determined to get my new personal organizer up and running. The Pocket Memory will revolutionize my life! The Pocket Memory will banish stress! The Pocket Memory will make my time work harder for me!

  After ten minutes reading the Starter Pack leaflet, I discover that the Pocket Memory is not compatible with my computer. I call the help line. The school dropout at the other end delivers his prepared script with all the facility of a man translating from the Urdu.