by Sarah Moss
There was a Formal Hall three days later. Gowns will be worn. MA gowns (the doctoral gown is worn so rarely that it is usually hired) cost more than cashmere cardigans and since for babysitting reasons we never needed one at the same time we shared one that was short for Giles and long for me. As several elderly male professors of our acquaintance would attest, a gown covers a multitude of sins with regard to soup and, much less commonly, baby snot and sicked-up milk. Formal Hall begins at 7 p.m., sherry from 6.30 in the Senior Common Room. Moth, then seven months old, had supper at 6 p.m., bath at about 6.30, followed by a breastfeed which finished when he fell off the nipple so deeply asleep that the last gulp ran out of his open mouth. The ceaseless arithmetic of parenthood; I asked nursery not to let him nap so I could put him to bed early and leave Giles with a small warm bundle anaesthetized by milk, and hoped that by skipping dessert (which is not pudding, oh dear no, what do you think you’re living in, the post-imperial age?) and cycling really fast I could get home before his distress at the breast having unaccountably missed its 10 p.m. appointment annoyed the philosophy don next door.
Moth went to sleep in the pushchair on the way back from nursery at 4.30, a catastrophe. I lifted him out, sang songs about bouncy rabbits, tickled him, put him back, and he slept so deeply I kept touching his eyelids to make sure he wasn’t in a coma. We collected Raphael who, once convinced that he really was being encouraged to make a loud noise and wake the baby, produced more decibels than I had thought the human voice capable of generating. Moth’s eyelids flickered and he sank back into the stupor of an overstimulated seven-month-old who has found peace at last. Then I hoped he might sleep on into the evening so we could do the supper-bath-bed tarantella when I got back.
He woke at six, screaming as if he had just understood that we are all bound for death. Puréed avocado and baby-rice were ineffectual, but he scrabbled at my top as if I kept the elixir of eternal youth in there.
‘I can’t not feed him,’ I said, opening my shirt.
‘He’s going to want it again before you get back,’ warned Giles, who was trying to convince Raphael that an odd number of fish fingers on the plate is not a widely recognized harbinger of doom.
Moth grabbed a handful of the padding over my once visible ribcage and pulled my breast into his mouth. Silence, for a moment, filled the room, followed by gulping. Giles passed me a glass of water. It was 6:25.
‘OK,’ said Giles. ‘I’ll get the gown. You haven’t time to change.’
‘I need some make-up,’ I said. ‘Spotted bag in the bathroom cupboard. I’ll do it in the loo at college.’
‘Mummy,’ said Raphael. ‘Mummy, what happens if submarines run out of compressed air?’
‘Giles, can you put my phone in the sleeve of the gown? On silent?’
The only thing I was looking forward to was leaving the house without a bag.
Moth went on and on. At 6:40 I pushed my little finger into his mouth and pulled away. Milk spurted in jets. Moth rooted for a minute and then remembered mortality.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t leave him like this.’
‘Mummy, what if a submarine runs out of compressed air before it gets to the top?’
‘OK,’ said Giles. ‘Look, go now. At least show your face. If he doesn’t calm down in an hour I’ll bring him in a taxi, you can feed him somewhere and then I’ll take him away again. But you need to go now.’
I remembered the Principal’s pointing finger, his gaze on the rain outside. My Oxford career was probably already beyond redemption.
‘Anna, come on. You can’t lose your Fellowship over one breastfeed. He won’t starve in three hours.’
I poked my finger into his mouth again. Milk trickled. I pushed some kitchen paper into my bra, settled the gown over the whole sorry mess and ran for my bike. Moth’s screams curled round my legs to the end of the road.
The bath was cooling, becoming comfortable. I sat up, let some water out and added more hot. The house was silent, as if Giles had gone to bed. I lay down again and wriggled back until, by tilting my head, only my nose and mouth were above water.
I’d arrived at college with wild hair and my skirt soaked. The Fellows were filing in, meaning that I was too late to engage in the SCR dance where you try to make sure you finish the sherry in close proximity to someone whose company you can tolerate for the rest of the evening. It is not all right to swap places when the Principal rings the bell. I added myself to the procession and found myself next to the Bursar, who would have made an excellent prison warden or doctor’s receptionist. The Principal banged the table three times with the silver gavel, required the Almighty’s blessing in Latin, and the students sat down. As the noise level rose I remembered Moth’s open mouth and felt milk for him beginning to trickle into my bra.
‘Have we seen you since you took all that maternity leave?’ asked the Bursar.
‘Early evenings are difficult with small children. I’ve been back at work for eight weeks.’ Because maternity leave makes me want to chew my feet off. Because there were days when Raph was at school and Moth cried if I tried to put him down – so I could dial a phone number, for example, or butter a piece of toast – when I ended up walking up and down the road with him in my arms because I couldn’t actually go anywhere in case he needed feeding (which I did too badly to attempt in public) but I couldn’t stay in the house any longer because I didn’t trust myself not to hurt him.
‘Hmph,’ said the Bursar. ‘Of course in my day we had to choose. And if you chose to have children, you looked after them yourself. Better all round.’
A small white plate supporting an arrangement of fish and beetroot descended over my shoulder. You are not supposed to make eye contact with the butler. If you do, you will see in his eyes that he has decided which knife he would use and how long he would take over it. My phone banged against the table as I moved my arm.
‘It must have been hard,’ I said.
She forked beetroot. ‘Not in the slightest.’
There are four courses, not including dessert, which is a more or less optional extra. You converse with the person on your left until the plates are removed and then change sides, like one of those 1940s breastfeeding regimes. The senior Fellow should initiate the change. I was trying to drop casual remarks about recent progress with my research into conversation with the Fellow in Engineering when my phone began to whirr. I excused myself and ran for the corridor.
‘Anna, I’m sorry. He screamed until he was sick. We’re in a taxi.’
I could hear Raph singing ‘Old MacDonald’ and Moth moaning and hiccupping.
‘You mean he didn’t stop at all?’
‘We’re at the gates. I’ll come and find you.’
I heard the howls coming down the corridor. Hall has double doors lined with green baize. Oxbridge colleges are probably the last refuge of the green baize door, but I don’t know that they keep baby hysteria from the unsullied ears of the Fellows. Moth’s face was beetroot pink, his mouth cavernous with woe.
‘Oh Christ, quick. Give him to me. Raph, Daddy will take you to see something.’
‘But Mummy, what if a submarine runs out of compressed air?’
I ducked into the SCR, which was quiet and to hand, leaving Giles to address submarine contingency plans in the corridor, or perhaps to take Raph into Hall and make enquiries of the Fellow in Engineering. Moth’s howls rose. Death is certain and God is not in the world, suffering is inevitable and we had brought him into a vale of tears. I sat in the nearest seat, a low gold brocade which was probably meant by its eighteenth-century maker as a nursing chair, tucked the gown under my chin and latched him on. He pulled off again, screaming. I bared the other breast, leaving the first one waving in the wind, dribbling milk on to the brocade and the Persian rug below, and that was when the Principal came in.
Giles is right. I haven’t set foot in the place since, haven’t opened their letters. My salary keeps coming in, but if there is a mechanism for sacking
Oxford Fellows it is so arcane that even other Oxford Fellows can’t invoke it. My contract ends in a few weeks and my career is effectively over.
What Giles doesn’t know, what nobody knows except the doctor at the Family Planning Clinic and perhaps, now, Ian MacDonald, is that the following week I unplanned our family. The sickness and tiredness I’d put down to Moth’s sleeplessness and constant breastfeeding, which I held also responsible for my lack of periods. But when the vomiting started and the soreness spread across my breasts, it occurred to me to check. I abandoned research to cycle out to Bicester to buy a pregnancy test where there was no risk of encountering an old student or one of Giles’s colleagues. I dithered in the chemist’s, briefly convinced that some kits must be for women who want a baby and some for women sickened by the idea and that if I bought the right one it would give me the right result. Is Clear Blue the clear blue line of a (male?) baby or the clear blue skies of freedom? Is the worm promised by Early Bird a writhing infant or the security of a long, free day ahead? The sales assistant began to watch me and I picked up an unbranded box, hoping that economy and (Giles’s) anti-capitalist principles would buy me peace.
They didn’t. I peed on the stick in the ladies’ at the public library in Bicester and watched two lines appear as swiftly as skin blistering after a burn. I wrapped the test in the chemist’s bag, poked it into the bin, washed my hands and cycled back into town and straight to the clinic. Giles has always wanted a daughter. Given my history, it was not hard to persuade two doctors that my mental health would be jeopardized by a third child. I turned over quickly, slopping water on to the floor, and kept my face under until the plumbing went quiet and stars exploded under my eyelids.
Colsay House
18th November
Dear Aubrey,
I make bold to write again; although I have received nothing from you the postal service here is such that the absence of letters tells me nothing about my friends’ intentions – as you perhaps noted on your travels in the summer, there is no post road closer than Inversaigh. I have been making progress here, I believe; it is slow work but the best prizes are not easily won and I have reason to be more hopeful than when I last wrote.
The great news here is that Lord Dumfermline has decided to offer all the residents of Shepsay free passage to Canada at the same time as raising the rents of those left behind. Apparently the people have been for some years crowded on to subdivided crofts at the northern end of the island, where the land is poorer and the water not so good, and, after an outbreak of sickness, it has been decided that they must be better and happier where there is land for the asking, with fine trees and rivers and a climate which means that they will never have to borrow for meal again. Mrs Grice tells me there is great unhappiness at the announcement, but Mrs Barwick says most sensible folk are glad at the chance so it is hard to say who might be right, but in any case it seems to me that it would be a great thing for the people of Colsay to do likewise. Do you think it would be objectionable if I were to write to Miss Emily about this? I imagine it would be cheaper than building and maintaining a schoolhouse and paying a schoolmaster for the rest of the century, which after all the new Education Act will oblige Lord Hugo to do if the people remain, and I am very sure that it would be in every way better for them to build new houses in a new land than to drag on in the filth and smoke and dampness of their current abodes, however competent such a schoolmaster might be (which is, is it not, highly doubtful, considering the situation here and probable remuneration?).
I hope to be able to send you good news of Mrs Grice later this month, and am happy to say that I am in expectation of another patient in the Spring, although she is not a woman with whom I have been able to have any conversation so far! I do hope you will find a moment to write soon. I recall what was said under the tree in August and wonder how much was truly meant …
Fond regards,
May
COMMON KNOWLEDGE
It is common knowledge that only love for children will prevent their continual demands, the continual noise caused by them, and the continual damage done by them from being considered a nuisance.
Foster mothers, i.e., householders, are expected to suffer children whom they neither love nor over estimate.
– Anna Freud, Infants Without Families: Reports on the Hampstead Nurseries, 1939–1945, p. 175
Night Waking: 02:08
Someone is tapping softly on our bedroom door, someone who is already between us and the children. It comes again, low down, not the rapping of someone who needs to wake us but something signalling its presence.
‘Giles!’ I hiss. ‘Giles! Wake up.’
I shake his shoulder but there is no response. The knocking ceases and there are steps on the landing. Moth begins to whimper. I throw back the duvet, not waking Giles, and hurry. Whatever it is, it’s now in Moth’s room and he’s scared.
It’s Raphael.
‘Raph! What on earth are you doing? Shh, go out there.’
I push Raph back out to the landing and pat Moth’s back. ‘Hush, love. It’s all right. Shh, Mummy’s here.’
Moth wasn’t fully awake, and after a few minutes I can sidle out of the room.
Raph is sitting at the top of the stairs, hugging his knees. He’s not wearing a pyjama top and I can see each rib in his back. I go and sit next to him, and as I sit down I freeze. There is something moving in the attic.
‘Mummy,’ he whispers. ‘Mummy!’
I put my arm round him. His skin is cold to the touch. ‘Shh. I heard it.’
The tapper on the door? I don’t want to ask Raph in case it wasn’t him.
There is rustling and bumping above us. Moth sighs and turns in his cot, shaking the Cow Rattle, of which he is still fond.
‘That was Moth,’ I whisper.
The thing upstairs moves again, and there is indistinct speech. Not the cry of a baby. Raph shivers and burrows against my flannelette.
‘OK. Raph, look, I think there’s something there too, OK? I can hear it.’
He whimpers. I abandon my feminist principles. Spectre-hunting, like checking the tyre pressure and peeing standing up, requires a Y chromosome.
‘Come in my room and we’ll get Daddy to go look, all right?’
It is no moment for courtesy. I pull the duvet off and Raph tugs Giles’s feet.
‘Daddy! There’s something in the attic and me and Mummy are frightened.’
I’m listening for steps on the stairs, for it to come down and get Moth while we’re all in here.
‘Giles, for God’s sake wake up. I’m worried about Moth.’
‘What? What’s wrong with him?’
‘Daddy, please just go upstairs and – and – Daddy, I’m frightened!’
Raph, who does not cry, is crying. I can’t cope with Moth being on his own any more, and I go back, treading quietly across the landing, and work my hands under his back so I can scoop him up without changing his position. He settles against my neck, warm as new bread and damp and heavy. Back in our room, Giles is pulling on clothes, as if going out to rescue sailors from the rocks, and Raph is sniffing and shivering in the middle of the bed.
‘This is ridiculous,’ says Giles. ‘There better bloody had be something there. You do realize I have to get up in three hours for the puffins?’
‘Mummy heard it too,’ says Raph.
I sit down beside him, trying not to shift Moth’s weight about too much, but it is futile.
‘Hello, Raph. Morning now. Porridge!’ He is, none the less, uncertain about this gathering in the yellow light of my bedside lamp. The four-poster throws towering shadows up the wall.
‘All right,’ says Giles. ‘This better be good.’
We huddle together while he goes upstairs. I feel as if we are in Little House on the Prairie (which I have seen here somewhere and should find for Raph, as a counterpoint to the military hardware porn), waiting for Pa to come back having prevailed against a hungry bear in hand-to-hand combat
.
‘What if it gets Daddy?’ asks Raph. Then I get the house, I think, and enough life insurance for a damn good nanny.
‘Where Daddy gone?’
‘Daddy’s just gone upstairs. Raph, I’m sure there’s nothing there really. It’s probably just – just the wind or something.’
He is staring at the door, waiting for it to open. ‘You heard it, Mummy. Wind doesn’t walk about on the floor.’
He grabs my arm. There are steps coming down the stairs. ‘Mummy! It’s hurt Daddy and now it’s coming down! Mummy!’
He burrows under the duvet. Moth giggles. ‘Raph down a hole. Peepo!’
Giles flings the door open. Whatever is up there clearly has no intention of exposing itself to a sceptical gaze.
‘There’s nothing there. I told you. Absolutely bloody nothing. Go look. Now for God’s sake let me get some sleep.’ He strips his clothes off.
Raph emerges and we exchange glances. There was something. Probably.
‘Raph?’ I stroke his shoulder. ‘We’ll go up and look in the morning, OK? So you can see Daddy’s right.’
Raph looks away. Moth launches himself at Giles, who is showing signs of going back to sleep, and pokes his eyes.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Everyone back to bed now.’
Moth looks round, indignant as if I’d given him a new toy and then taken it away.
‘Porridge, Mummy!’
‘More sleeping first.’
‘Mummy?’ Raph is standing by the door as if there is a fast-flowing river on the landing. ‘Mummy, can I sleep in here? Just for tonight?’