Why Mummy Drinks

by Gill Sims

  Unable to face the mess in the house (eight fucking children!) I had decided to try to weed the front border to make the house look less like it was an abandoned junkyard, what with Louisa’s camper van (named, we are not allowed to forget, ‘Gunnar’) parked on the road outside, gently listing to starboard as the tyres deflated, a pool of oil underneath growing larger each day.

  Repeated suggestions to Louisa that she needs to do something with her battered heap, like sell it for scrap, or at least take it to a garage and get an estimate for how much it would cost to make it roadworthy, are met with either another storm of grief that we want to ‘kill’ her beloved Gunnar, who ‘saved’ her from Bardo/Kevin and Sgathaich/Carol (who she has now declared clearly must be an evil witch who enchanted Bardo and would have enslaved Louisa’s poor innocent children, had brave Gunnar not carried them to freedom. I think Louisa has been watching too many old Disney films) or a shuddering sigh of horror that she is being asked to contemplate anything so sordid as financial considerations when she is so clearly in the grip of higher emotions.

  In the meantime, it can’t be long before one of the neighbours makes a complaint to the council about the rust bucket ruining the street by lowering the tone of the neighbourhood and, more importantly, house prices.

  As I jabbed away at the parched earth with my trowel, trying to decide whether the wilting specimen in front of me was a weed or something that was meant to be there, there was a nervous cough behind me. There stood dullsville Katie from across the road, who lives in what I must stop thinking of as the Jenkins’ house, as now it belongs to Katie and her husband, Thingy. (I have really tried to remember his name, but it keeps slipping my mind.)

  ‘Ummm, Ellen, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but errr, is that your sister-in-law’s?’

  I sighed. ‘Yes. I’m very sorry about it, and yes, I know parking is an issue in the street, and no, I don’t know how long she is staying or what she is planning on doing with it.’ (This was not the first time I had had this conversation with a neighbour since Louisa arrived.)

  ‘Oh no!’ said Katie, going a pretty shade of pink (she is boring as sin, but she does blush prettily in a mousy sort of way. I go a fetching puce). ‘I just meant, I wondered if Louisa was in? Since her van is here?’

  Has Katie not noticed this bastarding heap of junk hasn’t moved in almost a month, since Louisa arrived?

  ‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘She’s gone to the shops.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Katie sadly. ‘That’s a shame, I was going to ask her over for a cup of tea. I’ve bought the special, organic, herbal tea she likes.’

  Katie was going to ask Louisa over for a cup of tea? Louisa? In all the months they’ve been here, Katie and Thingy have not so much as asked us over for a glass of water, despite (or perhaps because of) our extremely generous hospitality on Easter Sunday. And now, not only does Louisa get asked over for tea, she gets special tea bags bought for the occasion!

  This was not right. This was rude. This is not how people in this street conduct themselves. We are respectable people, following a strict code of conduct about invitations to Christmas parties and barbecues and admittedly somewhat dangerous firework parties and even cups of tea!

  You cannot accept someone’s invitation and, firstly, fail to return it, then think you can just bypass them and invite their unwashed flake of a sister-in-law round for a cup of tea made with special tea bags. THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS!

  This may have shown somewhat on my face as I narrowed my eyes and scowled at Katie, because she then nervously added, ‘And you, of course! Would you like a cup of tea?’

  No, Katie, I wouldn’t. It was too little, too late, Katie, because clearly to know about the special tea bags you have been merrily teaing away with bloody Louisa while I have been WORKING to put food on the table for the eight children currently living in my house, but Katie was not getting away with it that easily, and also I wanted to see what her and Thingy had done with the house since they moved in, so I put down my trowel and said, ‘That would be lovely!’

  Katie’s house is very … cataloguey. It looks exactly like someone has ripped a series of illustrations out of the catalogue for a mid-range high street furniture shop and made it come to life. It was quite extraordinarily soulless, which made me glad, as I would have been most galled to discover bland, boring, TRAITOROUS little Katie was actually hiding a talent for exquisite interior design.

  Katie, it turned out, is harbouring quite the girl crush on Louisa. I found this baffling at first. Katie is so clean! She looks like she scrubs herself down with Dettol and a wire brush every morning. Louisa looks like she needs to be scrubbed down with Dettol and a wire brush. And then possibly fumigated. And just to be on the safe side, steam-cleaned for luck.

  Katie, though, thinks Louisa is marvellous. A ‘true free spirit’ was how she described her. It seems Louisa has seen fit to confide in Katie that her current life plan is to travel around Europe with her children in Gunnar, educating them in life. After Europe, who knows? She might drive across Africa with them, or she might go to Asia. Apparently, it all depends on karma and serendipity and where the winds of fate blow her.

  Louisa seems to have failed to realise that even phase one of her grand plan, just getting herself to Folkestone, will require a working vehicle and money for diesel and ferry fares, none of which she currently possesses, before we even touch upon such tedious realities such as how she plans to feed herself and six children as she bums around the world ‘educating them in life’. (Also, I think Coventina might raise strenuous objections; she is a sensible child with a remarkable work ethic, who informed me the other day that when she grows up, she is only going to shop in John Lewis. For a child of Louisa’s, there is no greater rebellion.)

  Katie, though, was starry-eyed as she waxed lyrical about Louisa’s bravery and strength in undertaking such an endeavour. I wondered whether to disillusion her about the practicalities which mean that Louisa will be doing no such thing, at least until she gets Bardo to start paying her some maintenance for the tribe. But Katie was in full flow about the wonders of Louisa and there was no stopping her.

  ‘It must just be so amazing, to be so free from a humdrum life!’ sighed Katie.

  I had had enough. I didn’t know what bollocks Louisa had been prattling to her but I was sick of hearing of the wonders of St Louisa of the Great Unwashed.

  ‘It must be amazing, Katie, yes,’ I snapped. ‘We’d all bloody love not to have to think about filling the dishwasher and going to the supermarket and seeing if there is enough bastarding milk in the fridge for breakfast and getting the car MOTed and cleaning the gutters and scrubbing the bath and all the other really fucking boring bullshit that keeps life ticking over, but the unfortunate fact is, Katie, someone has to do those things.’

  Katie looked like I’d just slapped her. Her lip actually trembled as she quavered, ‘But that’s not true. Louisa doesn’t have to worry about anything like that. She is just free, to go where she wants and do what she likes!’

  I felt a bit bad about Katie’s brimming eyes, which had been glowing with zeal until I pissed on her chips, but I was on a roll.

  ‘Louisa doesn’t have to do any of those things because Louisa is an irresponsible child-woman who has decided to abdicate all accountability for her own life to other people while she witters a load of New Age bollocks about being true to ourselves and letting The Universe provide what you need. Louisa has got away with this for as long as she has because her bloody father and Simon have been bailing her out and bankrolling her for years, but the fact remains that she is a thirty-eight-year-old mother of six children and it is about time she put on her big girl pants and started taking responsibility for herself and for them. She will not be going off travelling round Europe with her children, or Asia, or Africa, because that rusting tin can of a camper van no longer goes and she doesn’t have any money to buy another one or indeed to even feed her children because she is a feckless waste
of space, and tomorrow she can stop wafting about being all airy fairy and refusing to confront reality and start looking for a job and somewhere to live because Simon and I are not financing another one of Louisa’s hare-brained schemes! Why should she get to follow her dreams at our expense? WHY, KATIE? WHY?’

  I realised that I had got a bit carried away and had been banging my fist on Katie’s lightly distressed kitchen table so hard that one of her wooden letters spelling E-A-T had fallen off the wall. Katie was also openly sobbing. Shit. They already thought we were crazy and now I had confirmed it by taking a massive hissy fit in Katie’s colour-co-ordinated kitchen.

  ‘Oh God, Katie, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to get so carried away. It’s just it can be incredibly frustrating, living with Louisa, and trying to get her to stop being such a –’ I was about to say ‘complete and utter fanny’, but I had already shocked Katie enough with my potty mouth. Katie looks the sort of person who not only says ‘Oh sugar’ but actually thinks it, too, so instead I carried on ‘– an ostrich and burying her head to ignore anything that doesn’t fit in with her life. I shouldn’t have shouted, I’m sorry. Katie, please stop crying!’

  Katie sobbed harder and mumbled something incoherent.

  ‘Sorry, Katie, I couldn’t quite make that out. Do you want me to just go?’

  Katie shook her head violently and howled, ‘Such a lovely DREAM! Louisa’s ideas, just packing up and going where the fancy took you, something new and different every day. Leaving all THIS behind.’ She gestured violently at her immaculate kitchen.

  ‘It’s always the SAME, Ellen,’ she wailed. ‘EVERY FUCKING DAY!’ Blimey, she does swear. ‘I get up. I feed the girls, we go to some wanky baby class where every other mother there is smiling and shiny and perfect and they all love their lives and everyone tells me how lucky I am, and I am, I know I am, I do love the girls, and Tim’ (TIM! Of course – that is Thingy’s name.) ‘But it’s so repetitive and tedious and I used to be someone, Ellen! I used to be head of marketing for a really big company, and people respected my opinions and listened to what I had to say at dinner parties and I KNOW I’m so incredibly lucky to be able to stay at home with the girls, but I am so sick of being known as Ruby and Lily’s Mummy, instead of as a person in my own right, and then Tim comes home and tells me how tired he is, from being Busy and Important, while implying I’ve basically been playing with dollies all day and I scream at him that at least he gets to go for a fucking piss in peace, which is more than I do, and I’m so LONELY, Ellen, and I feel so awful for feeling like this, because all the other mummies are so much better at all this, and I’m just a shit person and it was such a lovely idea of Louisa’s, just to leave everything behind. To go off and have an adventure. I want an aaaaaddddveeennnntuuuuuuuure!’

  I was stunned. I felt bad for judging Katie’s house for being bland and soulless when clearly she is just having a bit of a bad time, adjusting to being a stay-at-home mummy. Charlie was right, I am shallow. There was further evidence of my shallowness, because although I did feel for Katie, there was part of me that was thinking, ‘Why is my life filled with crying women all the time?’ Maybe this is how Simon feels every month.

  I patted Katie gingerly on the shoulder (again, I appear to be turning into Simon, but I was wearing a new t-shirt and I didn’t want to get her mascara all over it, and also, those personal space issues).

  ‘Katie,’ I said. ‘It’s okay. Pretty much everyone feels like that.’

  ‘NOOOOO!’ bellowed Katie, who having decided to unburden was really going for it. ‘It’s only me, I know it is. Everyone else is so perfect and I try to be, I really do, and it’s no goooooood! I just feel like everything I do is wrong.’ Then she subsided into gulping and sniffing dolefully.

  ‘Seriously,’ I said, feeling like the wise, elder stateswoman of the tribe, though Katie must be about the same age as me. ‘We all feel the same. We all sat in those classes and shook our maracas and drank the dreadful coffee at Mother and Toddlers and looked at everyone else and wondered how they all had their shit together and why we were so inadequate. It’s just nobody talks about it. It’s not until later that you are having a glass of wine with someone one night and they suddenly admit that they seriously thought about repeatedly smashing their head on the floor of the church hall if they had to sing “Wind The Bobbin Up” one more time, and then you realise you’re not alone, and we were all struggling and it would probably have been so much better for all of us if we had just admitted it. I bet if you go to Mummy and Me Music tomorrow and announce you are finding it really difficult and you feel a bit lost, 99 per cent of the other mums there will say “ME TOO!”’

  ‘Won’t they judge me?’ whimpered Katie.

  ‘They will probably think you are a fucking heroine for having the nerve to stand up and admit it!’ I cried. ‘I felt like I was the worst toddler mum, because I didn’t make homemade salt dough Christmas decorations with them. I felt like I was the worst school mum for working, I felt like all the stay-at-home mums were judging me, and then I made that stupid app, more as therapy for me than anything else, and thousands of people have bought it and it turns out that all the school mummies felt the same as me and we just need to talk about it, instead of pretending we are all fine and everything is perfect and we are coping splendidly without a care in the world. Running away like Louisa isn’t the answer, we need to TALK TO EACH OTHER!’

  I was banging on the table again. Another letter fell off the wall.

  ‘I never knew,’ said Katie. ‘I would never have thought you felt like that. You and Simon look like you have such a perfect life, you are so glamorous and exciting. I was terrified of you after that Easter party, because I thought you were so clever and cool. Even your sideboard is cool!’

  ‘Ah ha ha ha!’ I cackled. ‘The sideboard has been a bone of contention since I painted it. And we are not perfect or glamorous or exciting. The dog was sick in my shoes last night, and I frequently want to stab Simon for being a patronising twat, and NOBODY’S life is as perfect as it might look. NOBODY’S!’

  The last letter fell off the wall.

  ‘I hate those fucking letters,’ shouted Katie. ‘Let’s BURN THEM! And open some wine. FUCK, YEAH!’

  Thursday, 21 July

  Drama abounds. The big guns have arrived in the form of Michael and Sylvia. After the day with Katie I obviously revealed Louisa’s travelling plans to Simon. Simon did his nut and pointed out all the many flaws in Louisa’s plan, and Louisa screamed a lot that he wasn’t her father and he couldn’t tell her what to do (nor would she ever rule The Universe with him).

  Louisa also took an almighty strop with Katie and me for ‘betraying’ her by telling Simon what she was up to. Apparently, we not only betrayed her, we also betrayed the Sisterhood and the Goddess. She has told me this several times. For someone who announces at least three times a day that she isn’t talking to me, she talks to me an awful lot. I rather wish she would make good on her promise to never utter another word to me.

  Another contradiction Louisa seems to have no issue with is her declaration that she can hardly bear to be in the same room as me, yet she is perfectly happy to live under my roof, at my expense. Simon, meanwhile, although not her father, as she often points out, is apparently bringing the full weight of the patriarchy down on poor beleaguered Louisa, for no other reason than to oppress her. For fun, probably.

  Eventually, in despair, as Louisa refused to listen to any reason and kept insisting that she would be going travelling and that Gunnar was perfectly roadworthy (although for one so keen to travel, she showed no signs of actually getting in that bloody camper van and leaving, assuming it would even start) and therefore she would not be looking for a job, or a home, and with the summer holidays rapidly approaching and the house feeling more cramped and claustrophobic by the day, Simon rang his parents and asked them to intervene with their wayward daughter.

  Michael and Sylvia arrived today, and while I
must admit I had had some reservations about how much use they would actually be in making Louisa see sense, when it came down to it they were rather marvellous.

  Louisa, predictably, threw a massive tantrum as soon as they arrived and started shouting at Simon about running to Mummy and Daddy to tell on her, and Michael, who I had always assumed was a splendidly jolly but somewhat buffoonish character, who took nothing very seriously except his golf scores, bellowed at her in a terrifying voice.

  ‘LOUISA CATHERINE RUSSELL, SIT DOWN AND BEHAVE YOURSELF! Ellen and your brother have been more than hospitable, putting you and your children up for over a month. Not many people would do that. Apologise to them this minute.’

  ‘I’ll apologise to Simon, but I’m not speaking to Ellen,’ muttered Louisa sullenly.

  ‘YOU WILL APOLOGISE TO THEM BOTH. NOW!’ boomed Michael. ‘AND THANK THEM FOR EVERYTHING THEY HAVE DONE FOR YOU!’

  ‘Sorry, Simon, sorry, Ellen. Thank you both, you’ve been very kind,’ mumbled Louisa, to my astonishment.

  ‘Right. Are you aware, young lady, that Ellen and Simon’s attempts to thwart your plans are not, as you have been shrieking, to ruin your life, but rather to keep you out of prison? If you attempt to turn up at a border crossing and a policeman gets one sniff of that deathtrap rustbucket –’

  ‘– Gunnar!’ protested Louisa. ‘His name is Gunnar!’

  ‘What? Who is Gunnar? I thought that pillock you married was called Twatto or something? Oh dear God, tell me you haven’t taken up with some other hippy fool already. You’re not pregnant again, are you? Simon, why didn’t you tell me about this Gunnar?’