Comfort and Joy

by India Knight

  ‘Oh, but can we wash these children first,’ asks Flo. ‘Would you mind? We need to hose them all down and then come down and have pudding. Otherwise it’s going to get too late – for mine, at any rate.’

  ‘Did you forget to feed them, Flo? I thought they had tea at half past five.’

  ‘They do normally, but look at them – they’re so stuffed they can barely walk, the pair of puddings. They’ve been helping themselves to leftover canapés all afternoon. They’re not really children, they’re mini-pigs.’

  ‘I love mini-things,’ says Evie. ‘I like everything mini. I wish I was mini and lived in a mini-house and ate mini-food at a mini-table.’

  ‘How small?’ says Flo. ‘You’d have to get the size exactly right, otherwise it might be creepy. Like, Borrowers-mini?’

  ‘Thumb-sized,’ says Evie immediately. ‘I’ve given it a lot of thought. Hand-sized would be odd and toe-sized would be dangerous.’

  ‘I agree,’ says Flo.

  ‘Right,’ I say, trying to round up the children. ‘Who wants a bath?’

  ‘Ach, they don’t need a bath,’ says Pat from her armchair. ‘They’re on their holidays.’

  We have this debate every time Pat comes to stay with us, which is usually outside term time. If Pat had her way, no child would be washed from July to September. This, she says – being humiliatingly filthy and stinking to high heaven, basically – would constitute the most tremendous treat for them.

  ‘The thing is, Pat, kids like baths these days. Baths are fun. Hot water, splashing, bubbles, toys – what’s not to like?’

  But she’s unpersuadable. In Pat’s world, baths equal sitting in two inches of tepid water and being scrubbed with a Brillo pad, and all holidaying children should neither bathe nor wash their teeth. When I questioned the wisdom of the latter approach a couple of years ago – the idea of not brushing your teeth is completely disgusting to me – Pat said to just ‘freshen their mouths with something nice and clean, like a wee kiddies’ fruit yogurt’, which is akin to sprinkling their gums with sugar and which is indeed what she does when she babysits. Pat feels sorry for Maisy’s daily bathing ordeal, to say nothing of the four minutes of tooth-brushing she must endure at the hands of her mother.

  ‘Is it Child Soup?’ Maisy asks. ‘Please can it be Child Soup? With the twins in it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘We’ll make Child Soup. Giving each one of you a separate bath’s going to take too long.’

  Flo and I start to wrangle the children, who squeal with excitement and run, or in the twins’ cases waddle (going ‘Soooooup! Sooooooup!’), up the stairs.

  ‘Would you look at that,’ says Pat. ‘You’re that funny, in London. Kiddies in baths!’

  ‘Do you want me to do it?’ says Sam. ‘Or at least give you a hand?’

  ‘Oh you angel,’ Flo says before I’ve had a chance to reply. ‘Would you? Then I could actually spend some time with my poor ole husband, Edward the Neglected.’

  ‘Shall I help too?’ asks Tamsin. ‘Though I don’t know that Cassie wants to be a part of Child Soup. What do you think, Cass?’

  ‘I’m too grown-up for it,’ says Cassie matter-of-factly, ‘but I’d still like to.’

  ‘Yaaay,’ Maisy yells dementedly. For her, a bath with Cassie would be equivalent to Madonna perching companionably on the lav, chatting away while I shampooed my hair.

  ‘Do you want me to come up?’ says Tamsin.

  ‘No, it’s okay, Mum,’ says Cassie. ‘I know Sam and Clara. He is not a bad man.’

  ‘No, of course I’m not,’ Sam says, looking surprised.

  ‘I know,’ says Cassie, who is a solemn, big-eyed child. ‘That’s what I said. There’s no stranger danger with you, because I know you.’

  ‘Though of course, statistically, a child is more likely to be assaulted by someone she does know,’ says Evie.

  ‘Evie!’

  ‘Sorry, Sam. I’m not at all suggesting that you’re a child-botherer. You know, like an awful peed. God, the things that come out of my mouth. No self-editing, you see. Sorry. Up you go, Cassie. Sam is a good man. He will not harm you.’

  ‘You’re making it worse,’ I say. ‘Stop talking.’

  ‘My body is private,’ says Cassie. ‘It’s my body and it’s private. No one can touch it without my permission.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says Sam.

  ‘School,’ mouths Tamsin with a helpless shrug.

  ‘My body isn’t private,’ says Maisy sadly. ‘Everybody is always touching me.’ I am really, really glad that we know everyone in the room.

  ‘Darling, of course it is,’ I say. ‘Everyone’s body is private.’

  ‘But my brothers squidge me and tickle me and put me upside down all the time and say, “Who’s the boss of you, who’s the boss of you?” And you bite my bottom.’

  ‘They are no respecters of privacy,’ says Evie. ‘Your mummy was the same with me and Auntie Flo.’

  Delighted by the idea that I may have held her aunties by the ankles, Maisy takes my hand and we make our way to the bathroom. Cassie solemnly puts her hand in Sam’s, giving him a long, wary look as she does so. The twins are halfway up the stairs.

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable, Clara,’ Sam whispers as we get the twins out of their nappies and the little girls dance around, shedding their clothes. ‘Cassie’s looking at me strangely.’

  ‘You are a good man,’ I say, grabbing the bottom wipes out of the twins’ changing bag. ‘You will not harm her.’

  ‘Don’t, it’s creepy,’ Sam says. ‘Oh God, Grace has done a poo.’

  ‘You can deal with a poo, can’t you? Or do you want to swap?’

  ‘Here,’ says Sam. ‘Swap.’

  ‘But you did Maisy’s poos. Well, some of them.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s my daughter.’

  ‘So, what – you think I mind other people’s poos less than you?’

  ‘No – well, yes. It’s your niece’s poo, for a start.’

  ‘Your niece by marriage, too.’

  ‘I know. But … I just don’t really like the poo. And you’re a woman.’

  ‘That’s a despicably sexist thing to say. Women are not genetically predisposed to like poo more than men. Honestly, Sam.’

  But he’s just standing there, staring at the poo and looking repulsed.

  ‘Hold Ava then,’ I say, wishing the now-naked toddler would pee on his arm.

  It’s funny, isn’t it, about poo. I can’t claim I ever loved any of my children’s poos, but you just get on with it, partly because it’s family poo and partly because there’s no choice. Poo belonging to others, though: not so keen. For a moment I feel like leaning over the banisters and shouting down to Flo that there’s a poo that’s come from a bottom I didn’t give birth to, and could she come and deal with it. Instead I get on with it myself and remember the other really unattractive thing about toddler poos, or indeed baby poos: the horrid shock of realizing that they’re sometimes adult-sized.

  ‘I’m naked now,’ says Cassie.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I say.

  ‘Sam! Clara!’ she shouts, causing both to turn and look at her.

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘This,’ says Cassie, pointing at her vagina with both index fingers, ‘is the most private area of all.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Sam. ‘I’m going to have to leave you to it.’

  ‘And this,’ she continues relentlessly, turning round, ‘is very, very private too. The bottom.’

  ‘So, the fronty,’ says Maisy, looking interested. ‘The fronty and the bottom, Daddy. THE PRIVATE AREAS.’

  ‘Yep,’ says Sam, averting his eyes. ‘I know, Maise. No need to shout.’

  I have an inappropriate but overwhelming urge to howl with laughter.

  ‘The thing is, Cassie,’ I say instead, ‘that everyone has a fronty and a back bottom. They’re private, but not that interesting. Is the thing. So …’

  ‘That’s not true,’ says Maisy
. ‘Daddy doesn’t have a fronty. And neither does Charlie. And neither does Jack.’

  ‘Sam has a peeeenis,’ says Cassie, who hasn’t smiled once since we came upstairs and is giving Sam her stare again. I have to admit, it’s quite disconcerting.

  ‘Sam has a penis,’ says Grace the toddler.

  ‘Is a penis a willy?’ asks Maisy.

  ‘Yes,’ says Cassie. ‘But it’s silly to say fronty and willy. It’s what babies do.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Maisy, crestfallen.

  ‘The proper names are penis and vagina,’ says Cassie.

  ‘Bagina,’ says Ava, who has a slight cold, or has maybe just misheard.

  ‘Moving on,’ I say briskly. ‘It’s bathtime. Child Soup. In you get.’

  ‘I think I should maybe go downstairs,’ says Sam, ‘and get Tam to come up.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I hiss, like matron at school. ‘This is ridiculous. Cassie can’t help it – she’s just repeating something she’s been taught. And since as far as I’m aware you have no sinister designs on her person …’

  ‘Clara!’

  ‘Well, really. It’s completely absurd. I didn’t know anything about people having sinister designs on children until I was about eighteen. It was bad enough finding out at that age – gave me nightmares. Imagine what it’s like knowing that kind of stuff when you’re still in Year 1. I knew not to get into cars with strangers and it served me perfectly well. I never needed anyone to tell me that my vagina was very private when I was still practically a baby. I didn’t even know what a vagina was.’ I point downwards with my two fingers, like Cassie did. ‘It’s a question of context, I suppose. But since our context in this house is only dysfunctional in the emotional sense, I think we’re probably okay.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s something you should joke about,’ says Sam. ‘Seriously, Clara. Stop doing that with your fingers.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think little children should be terrified of adults raping them. I don’t think it should be the norm. I think it’s fucked up. Most people are nice – that’s what we should teach them. Anyway. Moving on.’

  The girls are in the bath at this point, the twins wedged in between Cassie and Maisy, who are at either end. I throw in a load of fish-shaped bath toys. I sit a few feet away, on the loo seat, and Sam leans against the entrance to the bathroom.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Nice Christmas Day.’

  ‘Thank you for your charming speech.’

  ‘Don’t be sarky, Clara.’

  ‘No, I mean it. It was nice.’

  ‘Hard to know what to say. I mean, given the situation.’

  ‘There is no situation, Sam. You were here and then you left me and here we are. It’s not a situation. It’s just normal life.’

  ‘I guess,’ he says.

  ‘By the way,’ I say. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask all day. Do you find me physically repulsive?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You flinched when I kissed you. It hurt my feelings.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Yes, you did. You went all stiff, and I don’t mean in your pants.’

  ‘You need to adjust your vocabulary, Clara. You can’t say that kind of stuff to me any more.’

  ‘Why not? Do you think it’s a come-on? Because ding-dong, you’re wrong. It’s just how I talk. As you know. Anyway, you’re not answering my question.’

  The girls are shrieking with laughter in the bath. They have decorated the twins’ sweet little round heads with bubbles. Ava is laughing so hard that she has got hiccups.

  ‘Come on, Sam. It’s simple enough.’

  ‘No, of course not. Of course I don’t find you physically repulsive.’

  ‘Oh good,’ I say, meaning it.

  ‘I don’t find you anything,’ Sam says. ‘Not repulsive – nice dress, by the way – and not … attractive either. I think of you as the mother of my child. Which is what you are.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Well, yes. Unless you wore padding for nine months and stole her from a pram.’

  ‘You don’t see me in any other way at all?’

  ‘No. What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I just think it’s so weird. I was thinking about it this morning. You know – we live together all that time, and we sleep together, and then overnight I’m “the mother of your child” and nothing else. Like your eyes have fallen out of your head and rolled away down a drain hole, or something.’

  ‘It’s what people do to hold on to their sanity, Clara.’

  ‘Hm. I’m not sure. I think it’s what men do because they only know two types of women: the ones they’d like to shag and the others, who become invisible.’

  ‘Right. You’ve got your feminist dungarees on. Always a look I liked.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Hm. Shall we wash these children, then? I think you’d better do it. Fuck knows how Jake deals with all this.’

  ‘I don’t think Jake has much to do with childcare. Do you remember, when he and Tam first got together he dressed Cassie one day and Tam said he put her in a vest, pants and a cardigan?’

  ‘And then took her to tea at Fortnum’s for bonding. Yeah, I remember.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll last?’

  This used to be one of our favourite games. Sam invented it. At first I thought it was rather a mean, negative game, but after a while I joined in enthusiastically. He was obsessed with the game: the happier the couple we spent time with, the more likely he was to ask, ‘Do you think they’ll last?’ Oddly for someone who is basically good-natured, he was pessimistic about most people’s chances, usually because of the female half of the couple. I wonder if anybody played it about us.

  ‘Tam and Jake?’ he now says. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because they need each other desperately. They’re both horrified by the idea of being alone. Remember Tam’s love life before?’

  ‘Yeah. Not great.’

  ‘And Jake goes on about being a stud, but he’s old. He’s scared of being by himself. Like I say, they need each other. And they love each other too, I think. Proper love.’

  He’s said a perfectly simple thing, but I can’t stop thinking about it as I scrub the four children. For some weird reason, this has never really occurred to me before, but it’s when you stop needing each other that it all goes wrong. It’s when one or both of you become surplus to requirement. It must go some way to explaining why so many couples split up once one of them ‘makes it’. Everybody starts off needing each other, and then they get used to each other, and then gradually they need each other less, and then one or both of them thinks, ‘I’d have more fun on my own, or with somebody else.’ Or maybe someone thinks, ‘I don’t need them, why do they still need me? It’s creepy, clinging to me like that.’ And the relationship crawls away to die, along with the need.

  It’s at this point that my phone – a new one I got given this morning by my sisters; it only finished charging half an hour ago – beeps in my dress pocket. I’m in the middle of extracting the twins from the bathtub and wrapping them in towels to take them through to my bedroom. I can feel the phone vibrate against my thigh as it beeps. ‘Please let it be him,’ I say to myself in my head. ‘Please.’ I put fresh nappies, vests and pyjamas on the toddlers – which takes a while because they’re so wriggly – and hand them to Sam to take back downstairs to their parents. Then I go back into the bathroom, which is by now quite swamp-like, and dry Maisy and Cassie before sending them upstairs to Maisy’s bedroom to find a couple of nighties. I take out the bath plug, gather up all the plastic fish, wait for the water to drain away, and rinse out the tub. I pick up the load of wet towels and put them back on the rail near the radiator. All the time I am thinking, ‘Please let it be him.’ The phone beeps again, to remind me that I haven’t read my text. I get a mop from the cupboard on the landing and quickly swish it over the worst of the puddles. I turn off the bathroom light and go back into my bedroom, to sit
on my bed.

  ‘The girls said you were bathing the children,’ the text says. It’s from Julian, my former stepfather. ‘So doing this the modern way to wish you all a very happy Christmas. Love to all, J x.’

  He could have called back later. He could have left a voicemail. He could have rung earlier, to be honest, if he wanted to talk to me.

  It’s when you stop needing each other that it all goes wrong.

  We turn the lights out for the Christmas pudding. Everyone is gathered around the kitchen tables. I’ve asked Sam to light the pudding, because that’s what we’ve always done. He comes through holding it aloft, burning on a white plate, to awed gasps from the smaller children. The blue flames flicker in the darkness, lighting up the faces of my babies, my friends, my family. Here we all are. Will we all be here next year, and will it be the same? Will we all still be together? I say a quick prayer in my head – ‘to health, to love, thank you God, amen’ – and blow out the flame.

  PART THREE

  5

  24 December 2011, 5.57 a.m.

  Terrible, terrible mistake. Fatal error. Monstrously bad call. We’re at the airport. The airport. On Christmas Eve. Whose brain-bleedingly moronic idea was this, then? Oh, that’s right. Mine. My idea. It came from me, who loathes flying and whose only motto in life is ‘We spend Christmas at home.’ Cherry on the cake: it’s just coming up for 6 a.m. We got up before 3 a.m. You can imagine the levels of good humour. Jack and Charlie are slumped over a trolley, their faces grey, moaning about wanting breakfast and having a half-hearted argument about thin versus fat chips. Maisy is in my arms, which is breaking my back. Her legs are dangling down by my knees: we must look absurd. She’s far too big (and long) to be carried, but she was so overexcited about our trip that what with falling asleep late and getting up inhumanly early, she’s only had a couple of hours’ sleep. She’s got the mood to match. I don’t know where her father is – he’s supposed to be meeting us here, in the hideous, unforgiving neon lighting by Counter B6 (like a vitamin), but there’s no sign of him. I push our two trolleys forward and somehow manage to bang myself on the shins. What I would really like to do at this stage is lie down on the floor and have a snooze, and maybe a little cry.