I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  I buy a cup of coffee from a passing trolley and open my briefcase to take out some work. On the top of the pile is Jill’s family memo. I shouldn’t read it, but I really want to read it. I want to hear my friend again, even if it’s only her words written down. Maybe if I just look at one page?

  When you supervise Alex’s bath, don’t forget to do in between his fingers, there’s usually a load of black fluff in there and the odd raisin! Must put Oilatum (turquoise bottle, white writing) in the water for his eczema. Please pretend it’s bubble bath, he hates being reminded about his skin.

  Alex will tell you he doesn’t like pasta. He does like pasta, so persist. Persist gently. Yes, he can have a Cheese Whirl—hideous, Day-Glo, no cheese—but only if he eats a real piece of cheese as well. No, he can’t live on sweet corn. Suggest family switch to Red Bush tea (cancer prevention, apparently).

  I promised Sam he could have contact lenses for his fifteenth birthday. Whenever you’re about to shout at him, count silently to ten and think testosterone. He won’t be revolting for long, I promise. Remember all the grief we had with Tim and how well he worked out? Timmy’s current girlfriend is Sharmila—lovely, v. bright, from Bradford. Her parents disapprove of slacker white boy—ours—so could you invite them to the house and do your charm thing? (Father, Deepak, is keen golfer: both parents vegetarian.) Tim will pretend to hate it when you ask him but be chuffed when it happens.

  BIRTHDAYS

  Your mother’s favorite perfume is Diorissima. Tapes are always a good bet. Anything by Bryn Terfel except Oklahoma, which we gave last year. Also Alan Bennett books and Turkish Delight. My mother likes anything by Margaret Forster or Antonia Fraser. You might like to give Mummy my rings, or maybe you should hold on to them as one of the boys might want for an engagement ring in due course?

  GODCHILDREN

  Your godchildren are Harry (Paxton), Lucy (Goodridge) and Alice (Benson). Their birthdays are marked on the calendar next to the fridge. In the present drawer—bottom of study filing cabinet—are gifts marked with their initials which should take you through to the Christmas after next. Simon and Clare’s marriage is a bit shaky, so you might take Harry out and let him know you’re there if he needs you. Don’t forget Lucy’s confirmation in September.

  ANY OTHER PROBLEMS

  1. How to work washing machine. In emergencies, you may need to know this. See Brown Book. NB: temperature for your wool socks.

  2. Bin bag sizes. Ditto.

  3. Cleaner—Mondays and Thursdays. Eight pounds an hour plus we help Jean out with bigger bills and holidays. Single mother. Daughter is Aileen. Wants to be a nurse.

  4. Baby-sitters—numbers in Green Book. Not Jodie who had sex with boyfriend in our bed while we were at Glyndebourne.

  5. Arnica for bruises (bathroom cabinet).

  6. Ignatia for grief (yellow bottle, my bedside table).

  7. Postman called Pat (really); paperboy is girl (Chloe). Dustmen come Tuesday morning, won’t take garden stuff. Xmas tips in Brown Book—be generous!

  8. After the funeral, the boys could see Maggie, counselor at the hospice. A bit alternative for your taste, but I think the boys would really like her and they may say things to her that they wouldn’t to you for fear of upsetting you, my darling. Kiss them for me and don’t stop just because they get taller than you, will you?

  It’s all there, for page after page: the minutiae of the children’s lives, the rhythm of their days. I wince when I think how badly qualified I would be to write such a memo for Richard. On the Birthdays page, there is a stain the size of a cup. Something oily with a scab of flour. Jill must have been baking as she wrote.

  Want to read on but prevented by blur of tears. Pick up the Telegraph instead and flick to the Obituaries page. Today there is an eminent biologist, a man who ran IBM in the sixties and a platinum showgirl, name of Dizzy, who “romanced” Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and the Aga Khan. No Cooper-Clark to be seen. Jill’s kind of life doesn’t get recorded for posterity. What was it Momo called it: “a waste”? How can all that love go to waste?

  2:57 P.M. In doll-size train loo, remove laddered tights and execute Houdini wriggle into new black pair. Back in the corridor, am surprised to attract a whistle of approval from the steward. Look down and see that black tights have Playboy rabbits picked out in diamante up back of legs. Swear I can hear Jill laughing.

  3:17 P.M. ST. BOTOLPH’S, GREENGATE. I arrive in time to hear the vicar invite the congregation to thank God for the life of Jillian Cordelia Cooper-Clark. I didn’t know she was a Cordelia—it suits her, principled and defined by love.

  I can see Robin and the boys in the front pew. Robin is so tall that he has to stoop when he bends to kiss his youngest son’s auburn head. Alex is trembling slightly in his new suit, his first suit. Jill told me they’d come up to London together to pick it out; she must have known when he’d wear it for the first time.

  We sing “Lord of All Hopefulness,” her favorite hymn. The tune has a Scottish melancholy to it I hadn’t noticed before. As it fades away, there is an outbreak of suppressed coughing and the vicar, a birdlike man with a crest of fair hair, asks the congregation to spend a few moments in silence remembering Jill.

  Close my eyes and rest my hands on the back of the pew in front, and instantly I’m back in a wood outside Northampton. August. Two months after Emily was born and James Entwhistle—he was my boss before Rod—had organized a shoot on some country estate for clients. He insisted that I attend, even though I can’t shoot and I was barely capable of remembering where Germany was, let alone schmoozing a bunch of Frankfurt bankers. Anyway, by lunchtime I felt as though I had burning rocks strapped to my chest. Breasts screaming to be emptied. There was only one loo, a portable thing hidden in the trees. I locked myself in the cubicle, undid my blouse and started to squirt milk into the toilet. Breast milk is different from cows’ milk—finer, less creamy, it has the bluish aristocratic pallor of porcelain; when mine hit the green chemical in the steel bowl it made an opaque soup.

  But at first the milk was reluctant to come. To keep it going I had to visualize Emily, her smell, her huge eyes, the touch of her skin. Hot and panicky, I became aware of coughing on the other side of the door. A queue was building up and I hadn’t even emptied the left side and the right still to do. Then I heard a woman’s voice speaking quite briskly, a voice which derived authority from its warmth. “Well, gentlemen, why don’t you all run along and avail yourselves of the bushes outside? That’s one of the natural advantages you enjoy over us ladies. I suspect that Miss Reddy’s need of the lavatory is greater than yours. Thank you so much.”

  When I got outside about ten minutes later, Jill Cooper-Clark was sitting on a log in the clearing. Seeing me, she waved and from a cooler produced a bag of ice which she held aloft in triumph. “I seem to remember this is the best thing for sore boobs.”

  I had noticed her before at corporate events—Henley Regatta, some rain-soaked beano at the Cheltenham Gold Cup—but I had taken her for just another golfing wife: the sort who buttonhole you about tennis court maintenance or how hard it is to get a little man round to deal with the swimming pool.

  Jill asked about my baby—the only person connected with work to have done so—and then confessed that Alex, who had just celebrated his fourth birthday, had been her present to herself. Everyone said it was crazy to go back for a third when you were finally clear of all the nappies and broken nights, but she felt she’d missed out on Tim and Sam’s babyhoods by working. “I don’t know, I felt that time had been stolen from me and I wanted it back.”

  Because we were in confessional mood, I told her I was afraid of letting myself feel too much. I didn’t know how I could go back to the job without hardening my heart.

  “The thing is, Kate,” Jill said, “they treat us as though they’re doing us a great favor by letting us work after we’ve had a child. And the price we pay for that favor is not making a fuss, not letting on how life can never be the same for us ag
ain. But always remember it’s us who are doing them the favor. We’re perpetuating the human race, and there’s nothing more important than that. Where are they going to get their bloody clients from if we stop breeding?”

  There was a sound of gunshots and Jill laughed. She had this wonderful liberating laugh; it seemed to blow away all the stupidity and mean-mindedness of the world. And you know something else? She was the only person who never said, I don’t know how you do it. She knew how you did it, and she knew what it cost.

  “Dearly beloved, let us say together the words which Jesus taught us: Our Father, who art in Heaven.”

  Jill’s grave is at the bottom of a hill that falls away sharply from the back of the church. At the top are the towering Victorian headstones—plinths and tombs and catafalques heavy with attendant angels—but the farther you crunch down the gravel path and the nearer to the present you get, the smaller and more modest the memorials become. Our forefathers knew they had a reserved seat, even a box, for the afterlife; we put in a tentative request for any returns.

  Jill’s spot looks out across a valley. The hills opposite have mascara smudges of fir trees along their ridges, and in the green bowl beneath hangs a dense silver vapor. As the vicar intones the liturgy and Robin steps forward to drop a handful of earth on his wife’s coffin, I look away quickly and with washed eyes focus on the headstones all around us. DEVOTED SON. FATHER AND GRANDFATHER. PRECIOUS ONLY CHILD OF. BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. SISTER. WIFE. MOTHER. MOTHER. In death, we are not defined by what we did or who we were but by what we meant to others. How well we loved and were loved in return.

  MUST REMEMBER

  All things must pass, mankind is grass

  My mother saying my name

  Kissing a child’s cold cheeks

  Return phone calls

  27

  A Change of Heart

  Courtship takes place during the spring and summer, and in Europe breeding continues from April to late autumn. During courtship, the males coo loudly, display before the females, and indulge in display fights. Pigeons can live to 30 years of age. They are monogamous and tend to mate for life, a feature remarkable in birds so strongly gregarious.

  A pair of courting pigeons may be silent for hours on end, while one of the pair, usually the male but sometimes the female, gently runs its beak through the feathers of its mate.

  For about five or six months, before it is fully adult, the cooings of the male have a dull and melancholy sound, these having replaced the feeble and rather nasal calls of the adolescent. The cooings eventually take on a richer quality when the bird is mated.

  —From The Habits of the Pigeon

  It’s quiet out here on the ledge. You can hear the hoots and the snarls of the City below, but they are muffled by height, smothered in a duvet of air.

  I am very near the pigeon now. I can see her and she can see me. She is making a low chirruking sound and there is a fierce shuddering in her neck. Every instinct is telling her to fly away; every one except the one that tells her to stay with her chick. One of the eggs hatched while I was down in Sussex. It was hard to see the baby from inside the office, but this close I get a good view. You simply can’t believe that this little creature will ever be capable of flight. It doesn’t look like a bird, more like an anguished sketch towards a bird. Shriveled and bald, like all newborn things it seems ancient, a thousand years old.

  I did try to open the window and reach out to the nest, but there’s so much triple-glazing you can’t budge any of the panels: there was nothing for it, I would have to climb out. So now, on hands and knees, I edge my collection of big books along the ledge. The volumes have been carefully chosen for size and durability:

  The Square Meal: A Guide to the City’s Restaurants

  Brokers’ Predictions for 2000

  CFBC’s Global Directions for 1997, 1998, and 1999

  A Review of the Pharmaceutical Industry

  A Linguarama book for the Italian course I started and never finished

  The Warren Buffett Way

  The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management: Proven Strategies for Increased Productivity and Inner Peace

  The birds can definitely have that last one. Just in case these are not up to the task, I have included A Handbook of Financial Futures, a manual with all the depth and interest of a breeze block. The idea is to build a protective wall around the pigeon and her nest. On the way back from Jill’s funeral, I got a call from Guy. Good news, he said. A man from the Corporation had returned his call and told him the falconer would be along tomorrow. It was me who insisted that the hawk show up and now I very urgently want him to stay away.

  Down in the piazza, thirteen floors below, I’m attracting a bit of a crowd—the first commuters pointing up at the woman on the ledge. Probably wondering if I’m a casualty of the recession or of the heart. A broker threw himself under a train at Moorgate the other morning and he missed: fell into the pit under the rails instead and got pulled out by an emergency team. Everyone kept saying what a miracle it was, but I wondered what it would be like to feel so bad you try to end it all and then fail at that too. Would it feel like rebirth or a living death?

  Behind me, from inside the office, floats the voice of Candy, droll as ever but streaked with anxiety.

  “Kate, don’t do it, get back in here.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Honey, these things are often a cry for help. We all love you.”

  “I am not crying for help, I am trying to hide the pigeon.”

  “Kate?”

  “I’ve got to help her.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a hawk coming.”

  I actually hear Candy’s snort. “There’s always a fucking hawk coming. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation about some stupid bird. Get in here this minute, Kate Reddy, or I’m gonna call security.”

  Through the glass, a group of EMF colleagues are monitoring my progress, giving an ironic little cheer as another volume is shunted into position. As I pick up Warren Buffett, I catch sight of my hand, its wedding ring glinting, the ridge of eczema across the knuckle, and I think of what would happen to it if I fell—bones, skin, blood. No, don’t think about it, let’s just finish the fortification with The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management. Edging back along the ledge, I can see Candy leaning out of the window and Guy hovering behind her. My assistant’s face is touched not by fear but something that looks ominously like hope.

  To: Kate Reddy

  From: Debra Richardson

  Jim is away for second weekend in a row. Not sure if I’ll murder the kids before they murder me. Has left me to organize his fortieth birthday party—told me to invite “the usual suspects.” How come he can clear his head of everything to do with home when he has a big deal on and I can’t?

  As I think you will have gathered, am just a teensy bit fucking pissed off with him.

  Know any gorgeous single men . . . NO DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION.

  * * *

  To: Debra Richardson

  From: Kate Reddy

  Q: What should you do if you see your ex-husband rolling around on the ground in pain?

  A: Shoot him again just to make sure.

  You have got to take Tough Line with Jim—tell him your job is not a hobby, must do his share, etc. Mind you, Richard is very helpful, but I end up having to do everything again after he’s done it. . . . So maybe better to do it yourself in first place???

  Am worried about you. Am worried about Candy too. Did I tell you she’s pregnant? Won’t even talk about it. Pretends it’s not happening to her. Also worried about me. Been feeling pretty crazy since Jill’s funeral. Have just consolidated reputation as Office Madwoman by climbing out on window ledge to save baby pigeon.

  What is Meaning of Life? Please Advise Soonest

  * * *

  12:17 P.M. So Momo and I did it. Rod got the news late last night. We won the New Jersey final. Momo is
so excited that her feet leave the ground—like Emily, she literally jumps for joy.

  “You did it, Kate, you did it!”

  “No, we did it. We. You and me together.”

  Rod takes the whole team out to lunch to celebrate at a place in Leadenhall Market. It’s changed a lot since I was here before. Limestone was clearly last year’s material; now it’s all opaque glass forming faux Japanese bridges over streams full of gaping carp, who can’t decide whether they’re art or lunch.

  Rod hauls himself onto the stool next to me; Chris Bunce is opposite Momo. I don’t like the look he gives her—avid, sly, lip-moistening—but she seems to be enjoying herself flirting with him, trying out the power that her new confidence brings. I find myself mentioning the Salinger Foundation several times, just for the pleasure of saying Jack’s name aloud. I love hearing and seeing his name—on the side of vans, over the front of shops. Jack Nicholson, Jack in the Beanstalk, Jack of Hearts. Even the Foreign Secretary has become a more attractive man since he was called Jack.

  “Katie, what’s with the fucking pigeon?” demands Rod, as the lobster arrives. “You gonna race it or roast it?”

  “Oh, it’s a kind of affirmative action. Part of my new brief to be friendlier to the environment.”

  “Jeez,” my boss says, tearing a granary roll in half, “taking things a bit far, aren’t you?”

  By the way, Rod says he has some business he wants Momo and me to pitch for. Stone something. “One Stone with two birds, geddit?”