Why Mummy Drinks

by Gill Sims

  Jessica and Neil arrived about 12.30. ‘I thought we’d get here early and give you a hand, and of course Persephone and Gulliver were simply longing to see their cousins, weren’t you, darlings?’

  Persephone and Gulliver were hiding behind Jessica, looking appalled at the scenes of carnage strewn around my house. Frankly, I couldn’t blame them. Louisa and Bardo were shouting encouragement to Oilell, who was squatting on the patio, as I had put my foot down about the floor-shitting, while Nisien stood looking outraged at having his thunder stolen.

  Peter, Jane and Coventina, who had abandoned all pretence of being on her family’s side, were sprawled in front of the TV, playing something mindless on a games consul and screaming a lot while shoving the contents of selection boxes in their mouths.

  Cedric was marching up and down and singing ‘The Red Flag’, while occasionally launching an assault on the children in possession of the technology to try to take a controller for the people.

  Idelisa, the middle girl, who everyone seemed to pretty much ignore, lacking as she did her brothers’ psychopathic tendencies or Coventina’s spirit, was attempting to change Baby Boreas’ nappy. Boreas was objecting strenuously.

  ‘Gosh, what a busy little house you’ve got here, haven’t you?’ said Jessica.

  Neil mumbled something.

  Persephone and Gulliver tugged at Jessica’s hand and whispered in her ear.

  ‘Oh, that’s sweet! Persephone and Gulliver want to know when they can give everyone their presents. Persephone has been so busy with taking her Grade 8 piano and viola that she hasn’t had time to write her own composition this year, so she’s just going to play the first movement of the symphony she learnt for the school concert, and Gulliver has written a series of sonnets, in Latin – they are a sort of loose homage to Catullus. Isn’t that nice?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ I said weakly, while thinking didn’t Catullus write some fairly saucy poems?

  ‘And I just brought all the Christmas puddings so you can choose which one to use,’ (so if it’s rubbish it will all be my fault) ‘and you didn’t tell me where you had got the beetroot from, so I just picked up a jar in Fortnum’s while I was there. Now, what can I do to help?’

  Mainly out of malice, to see her wriggle out of it, I said, ‘Well, you could make a start on peeling those carrots, if you didn’t mind?’

  Jessica sighed.

  ‘Oh Ellen, would you mind if I didn’t? I had my nails done yesterday for a party we are going to tomorrow – the Cholmondeley-Featherstonhaugh’s, do you know them? – and I don’t want to wreck my manicure. Anything else, though, just say the word!’

  ‘Well, maybe you could keep everyone’s drinks topped up,’ I said, handing her a couple of bottles (the booze was disappearing at an alarming rate, between Simon and I self-medicating and Louisa and Bardo miraculously finding that their ethical, organic scruples didn’t extend to guzzling drink at someone else’s expense).

  ‘Perfect, of course! And fizz, what fun!’ said Jessica, squinting at the label and barking ‘Drinks!’ at Neil as he scuttled off.

  ‘Darling, I can’t help but notice that the fizz – what is it actually? Prosecco? Oh, CAVA, lovely! But it isn’t organic. I do hope you don’t mind but I only actually drink organic wine these days because otherwise the sulphides give me the most awful migraine,’ (obviously Jessica can’t just have a hangover like the rest of us) ‘so I’ve brought a few bottles of some lovely organic wine we get from this amazing little vineyard we stayed at in the South of France …’

  Ha ha ha, I thought. Good luck getting to drink much of that once Louisa and Bardo get wind that there is actual organic wine in the house!

  With her usual impeccable timing, Louisa appeared at that very minute and embraced Jessica at length. Jessica has even more issues with personal space and uninvited physical contact than I do so she twitched noticeably, and although I could see her mentally reaching for her hand sanitiser, good manners forced her to settle for discreetly wiping her hands on her skirt.

  ‘JESSICA!’ cried Louisa. ‘Long time no see! How are you? Did I hear you saying you had brought organic wine? That’s just amazing of you, you are so right about the sulphides. I keep telling Ellen, but she won’t listen – you know her, quantity over quality! That’s why she married my brother.’

  Louisa then indulged in some sort of hideous ‘nudge nudge wink wink’ routine before Neil reappeared with my bottles of Aldi Cava and, for the first time in days, Louisa put her hand over her glass at the sight of a bottle.

  ‘No, thank you. Neil, Jessica was just telling me about some amazing organic wine she says I have to try, so I’ll have some of that, please. Bardo! Bardo! Come and try Jessica’s organic wine.’

  ‘Oh thanks, man!’ said Bardo, putting down the possibly leaking baby and sloping over.

  Jessica and Neil both had fixed rictus grins as they realised that the bulk of their precious Châteauneuf du Unicorndust was probably going to be poured down Louisa and Bardo’s gullets before we had even sat down to eat.

  ‘Oh, you don’t mind, do you, Jessica?’ asked Louisa innocently.

  ‘No, no, of course not, help yourselves!’ Jessica ground out through gritted teeth.

  ‘Just say when …’ she added as Neil began to pour.

  ‘Ha ha ha, WHEN!’ Louisa shrieked as her glass threatened to brim over. ‘Ooooh, Neil, are you trying to get me drunk, you naughty boy? You better give Bardo the same, or he’ll think you fancy me!’

  The apoplectic bulging of Neil’s eyes – Neil, who is married to Jessica, the scrubbed and shining Ice Maiden – at the thought that he might be trying to get into Louisa’s doubtlessly crusty knickers, was the best thing I had seen all day.

  Sam and Hannah arrived about 2 p.m. Sam had got his way and had Sophie and Toby for Christmas, not so much due to Robin seeing the light and deciding to do the right thing, as Robin getting a last-minute offer to spend Christmas on a friend’s yacht in the Caribbean. Sam was chuntering a little about the latest ‘friend’, but mostly he was just delighted to have his children with him for Christmas. Hannah also had her two children, Emily and Lucas, who despite owing half their genes to Dastardly Dan are generally polite, pleasant and clean.

  Persephone had been crying for the last hour over wanting to perform her ‘present’, and Gulliver had been muttering increasingly menacing Latin phrases to himself that I wasn’t at all sure were his sonnets and not some foul curse upon us all (when I said this to Simon, he said Gulliver would be hard-pressed to come up with a curse fouler than Louisa’s oozing children), so once everyone had arrived, I suggested we did the rest of the presents.

  There was only one awkward moment when Cedric decided he was going to provide a percussion accompaniment to Persephone’s recital, which caused further tears and also a somewhat tactless (if true) wail from Persephone that ‘The DIIIIIRTY boy is spoiling it all, Mummy’, but other than that, it was a perfectly pleasant exchange of bland middle-class gifts purchased at the holy altar of St John of Lewis.

  Louisa continued to offer treatments as gifts, and Jessica choked on a Brazil nut and turned purple when Louisa announced that she would like to give Jessica a reflexology session there and then. Jessica pays a ‘marvellous little woman’ in Harley Street a sum roughly equivalent to my mortgage for weekly reflexology sessions and there was no way on God’s earth she was going to remove her Jimmy Choos and let Louisa’s grubby paws get anywhere near her.

  I finally got the dinner on the table about 4 p.m., after spending a good hour debriefing Sam and Hannah in the kitchen over a bottle of Jessica’s (admittedly delicious) wine that I had managed to liberate from Louisa’s grasp.

  The children were corralled in the kitchen around a medley of play tables drafted in to supplement my kitchen table and fed off plastic plates. I hurled food at them and then closed the door on the howls of how unfair it was, to leave them to go feral while the grown-ups ate in the dining room. Louisa waited until everyone was ass
embled around the table before remarking loudly, ‘I do think it is wonderful of you to let the children express their creativity by painting the furniture, Ellen, but what a shame you had to let them do it on darling Granny’s beautiful sideboard.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Louisa!’ snapped Jessica. ‘We don’t possess anything except our souls, remember; the sideboard is just an object!’

  I wasn’t sure if Jessica was actually defending me out of loyalty or whether she was just smarting over Louisa glugging all her special wine, but either way, I was grateful.

  By 8 p.m., everyone but Neil (who was driving) was hammered. Several of the children were also swaying in such a way as to suggest they had been taking liberal nips of something while they were shut in the kitchen. The Christmas Tea was upon the table, admittedly only about an hour after we had finished the Christmas Dinner, and Jessica and I insisted everyone conducted a blind tasting of our respective beetroots. Everyone looked a little frightened as Jessica and I sang the special ‘Song of the Hallowed Beetroot’ that we had made up twenty years before, and then snarled ‘Go on, which is better?’ The consensus was that both were ‘delicious’ before Jessica and I also embarked on the tasting and then cackled uncontrollably as we concluded both were disgusting because pickled beetroot is rank.

  By 10 p.m., Jessica and I were even bonding.

  ‘We’sh shishters,’ slurred Jessica. ‘N’I fucking luff you. Pershephone, pleashe jus’ fuck off an’ watch TV with the othersh, ‘kay? Mummy talkin’ to Auntie Ellen. I’s so glad you do Chrishtmash, Ellen, cos it like we a proper family. All the people …’ she gestured vaguely at the comatose forms of Louisa and Bardo on the floor (Simon and Louisa had provided the obligatory family Christmas row by having a shouting match about who was their parents’ favourite, because they had FaceTimed Simon’s iPad to wish us all a Merry Christmas and hadn’t rung Louisa separately. She stamped her feet and Simon told her he wished she had been given away for adoption and then they slammed some doors and generally behaved like petulant children), Sam, Hannah, Neil and Simon attempting to play Trivial Pursuit and various children skulking in corners, plugged into a variety of electronic devices. ‘It’sh lovely. S’what Chrishtmash’s about. Wish I was more like you. Wish I could jus’ not give a fuck like you do.’

  Why do people keep saying that to me? Does no one realise the amount of time I spend worrying and fretting about getting things right, or what people think about me? Or if everyone thinks I don’t give a fuck, maybe that suggests they spend even more time worrying about that stuff? Maybe everyone is anxious and thinking they are just muddling through while projecting a different image to the outside world. Maybe no one is as perfect as I think they are, not even Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy? Too much wine had been had to think about this. It’s Christmas. It’s magical (ish). More wine.

  Saturday, 26 December – Boxing Day

  Eurgh. Headache. Hangover. General inability to cope with reality while mourning the passing of the magic. The snow has turned to slush. The turkey is a sad heap of bones that should really be made into soup, but in the fridge are vats of pigs-in-blankets and stuffing and there are still five more Christmas puddings to eat that Jessica left behind. Today, everyone can fend for themselves. Today, I am going to loll in my pyjamas and eat mince pies and read the books that Hannah and Sam gave me for Christmas and stuff Turkish Delight in my mouth until I feel sick and remember I don’t actually like Turkish Delight, and generally not give any of the fucks that everyone seems to think I don’t give anyway. I will just tidy up a bit first, obviously, so I can loll properly. And put some clean pyjamas on – I am not an animal.

  Monday, 28 December

  I hate this yawning chasm of time between Christmas and New Year. After the hype and excitement and build-up to Christmas, it is all suddenly over in a flash of smoke, like the bang from a cracker, and all that remains is piles of tat, bad jokes and some tiny screwdrivers that will be very useful at some point in the future if only you could remember where you put them when the time comes.

  The Christmas Food – the Important Cheese, the snacks, sausage rolls and canapés and other morsels of deliciousness that had to be guarded so carefully against the marauding hordes intent on plundering my fridge before Christmas Day are now declared ‘boring’ and declined by all, as I desperately attempt to press the vol-au-vents and turkey sandwiches on anyone who pauses for long enough on their way around the house.

  Tonight we are having turkey and ham pie for dinner (well, Simon, the children and I are, obviously Louisa’s vagabond tribe cannot be expected to poison themselves with such muck and will be feasting on another Bardo Special – I have had to unclog the loo three times now and have informed Simon in no uncertain terms that next time, it is his turn). Simon sighed when I told him of tonight’s culinary delights and said, ‘Oh God, Ellen, I’m just a bit over all that rich food, I’d really like just a nice salad or something!’

  In truth, I would also like a salad, but THAT IS NOT HOW CHRISTMAS WORKS, and on a point of principle, we are not having anything else until all the Christmas food has been eaten. Simon claimed that there was no need for me to shout that at him while menacingly banging a knife against the worktop. Rude.

  Tuesday, 29 December

  The end finally arrived. Louisa and Bardo have departed, the rickety camper van crammed to the gunnels with children, backfiring black smoke as it lurched up the road. Truly I thought this day would never come. Louisa, obviously enjoying my hot water and central heating, offered to stay for a ‘few more days’, but Simon, who was growing increasingly twitchy about Bardo’s forays into his shed and garage (I found him last night looking anxiously at his special jars of screws, weighing them in his hand and wondering aloud if Bardo had been pilfering them. Quite probably, I would say) briskly intervened, barking, ‘That would be lovely, sis, but you’d better get back to the retreat, eh? The children must be missing their own beds, and after all there’s no place like home, is there? It’s been wonderful to see you, we must do it again soon. Not that soon. Safe home!’ and practically shoved her out the door.

  Bardo, however, made one last-ditch attempt to get his hands on the precious mitre saw, mumbling, ‘Oh Si, remember you said I could borrow the saw, man? I’ll just go get it …’

  Simon was having none of it and said firmly, ‘SO sorry, Bardo, old chap!’ (old chap? WTF? Has Simon turned into some sort of spiffing 1930s caricature in rebellion against Louisa’s hippy-dippy, New Age witterings?) ‘I’m awfully afraid the mitre saw’s broken. Yep, completely buggered, absolutely kaput! What a shame.’

  Bardo, credit where credit is due, was not so easily deflected and cheerfully offered to take it anyway, as he is ‘good with fixing things’ and apparently if it was beyond repair he could ‘just use it for parts’.

  The testosterone in the room was palpable, as Man faced down Man over the holy grail of Power Tools. Simon’s love for his power tools is not a force to be underestimated, though.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve taken it to the mender’s already,’ he said coldly. ‘A special mender’s, a long way away. I took it this morning, early. What. A. Shame. Goodbye, Bardo.’

  There was one final scene, when Peter and Jane hurled themselves upon Cedric, not as I initially thought in an eleventh-hour demonstration of cousinly love, but because he had secreted their iPods and various portable games consuls about his person and was attempting to make off with them.

  Louisa, seemingly more concerned by her offspring’s desire to fry his budding brain cells with ‘awful microwaves’ (not really sure iPods emit microwaves, but who are we to argue with Louisa’s cod science) rather than the fact that he is a thieving hooligan, announced that Simon was probably right, and it was time for them all to return to the ‘purity’ of life at the retreat. She didn’t actually denounce our house as a den of iniquity, but it was on the tip of her tongue.

  I have never felt such relief as when waving them off. I will quite miss Coventina, b
ut I fear she and Jane in combination would have turned into a pair of juvenile criminal overlords, selling black-market Haribo and X-rated, under-the-counter copies of The Beano while using poor Peter as their minion.

  And, oh, what bliss to have the house to ourselves again! I feel like I have done nothing but cook and clean for months.

  Wednesday, 30 December

  Ha ha ha, the tree is gone. Gone. GONE! I could bear it no more, the poor tree, borne into the house with such joy, such festive pomp and circumstance, but now reduced to a sad desiccated shrub instead of the glowing beacon of festive love that it once represented. I think I will be hoovering up pine needles until about March, but fuck it, the sitting room now looks so big – in fact, the whole house looks much bigger now all the cards and tat and holly and ivy are no longer decking the halls. Even though the house isn’t actually particularly clean, because I got bored with cleaning after spending an entire hour doing nothing but hoovering up pine needles and then another half hour unblocking the hoover which had clogged with all the bastarding pine needles, it looks much cleaner. Maybe Simon has a point with his endless whining for minimalism? Perhaps a stark white box wouldn’t be SO bad?

  The dog is also delighted that the tree has gone, because he was finally able to pee on it when it was lying outside the back door – something he has been longing to do since the day it arrived.

  Thursday, 31 December – New Year’s Eve

  Why, oh why, oh why (God, I loved Points of View before Anne Robinson got really scary) did I decide, in a haze of wine and unexpected bonhomie at TV Alicia’s party that it would be a good idea to have a party myself? And WHY did I decide to have it on New Year’s Eve, probably the worst night in the world EVER to have a party, with the hours leading up to midnight being filled with forced fun and hilarity, because it is New Year’s Eve and you have to have a wild and crazy time, IT IS THE LAW!