Mummyfesto, The

by Green, Linda

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘You should try, Mummy. You always tell us that we’ll never know if we can do something unless we try.’

  ‘You know, Zach, you talk a lot more sense than most of the grownups I know,’ I kissed him again on the forehead. ‘Now, you get some sleep. It’s very late.’

  ‘Love you, Mummy.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  I closed the door quietly and crept back down the stairs. Rob had a cup of tea waiting for me on the kitchen table.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ I said. He looked up at me from his copy of NME, his head propped up on his hands, an expression of bemusement on his face.

  ‘You were being serious, weren’t you?’ he asked. ‘About standing in the general election.’

  I nodded. ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I always knew that.’

  I smiled. ‘I don’t quite know exactly how or what yet. All I know is that I can no longer just sit here and do nothing.’

  ‘How far do you want to go, exactly? On the scale to world domination, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t want to dominate anything. I just want to try to make things better. To shout about all the things that are wrong and get them put right.’

  Rob nodded slowly, ran his fingers through his mousey hair.

  ‘And how are you going to find time for this? We hardly see each other as it is. You put in far more hours than you’re paid for at the hospice and what with the governors’ meetings at school, not to mention looking after Oscar. Jeez, there’s going to be nothing left of you.’

  I looked down at the quarry tiles, which were cracked and needed replacing. Not that we could afford it, of course. I wasn’t used to Rob doing serious. I knew this was an enormous ask. He was right, we didn’t spend enough time together as it was. And it had taken its toll on us over the past few years. It was probably only the fact that we’d been so bloody strong in the first place which had kept us going. And now here I was wanting to throw a huge bloody grenade into our already stressed lives and expecting Rob to be OK about it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know this is going to be really tough on you and I don’t want Oscar or Zach to suffer in any way because of what I’m doing. But nor do I want them to grow up in a country where they’re the soft targets. Where the government says, “Oh yeah, we’ll cut services for kids because they can’t complain or vote us out.” I want to do something that will make this country a better place for them to grow up in. Them and every other child who lives here. And if I don’t do it I’m not sure anyone else will.’

  Rob stared at me as my eyes misted over. I thought I saw him swallow. He shook his head.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘It still does my head in sometimes. How bloody brilliant you are.’

  I grinned and threw my arms around him. ‘You mean you don’t mind if I give it a go?’

  ‘No,’ he said, kissing my shoulder. ‘Just so long as I don’t end up as Denis Thatcher.’

  ‘That will never happen,’ I said with a smile. ‘You hate golf for a start. And I don’t possess a handbag for you to carry.’

  5

  JACKIE

  ‘Is Grandma going to talk to me today?’ asked Alice.

  We were on our way to see Mum. I hadn’t taken Alice with me since Mum had come out of hospital. Mainly because she’d been so upset after she’d visited her there. But then yesterday Alice had asked why she never saw her any more. And the guilt had got me from the other direction.

  ‘She was only quiet when she was in hospital, love. It was because of that medicine they gave to her to calm her down.’

  The ‘medicine’ in question was actually an antipsychotic drug. I’d gone ballistic when I’d found out. There was no medical reason to put her on it. She was agitated because she was losing her mind and had been taken to a strange place. It was an entirely natural response. What she needed was love and familiarity and security. Not a bloody chemical cosh.

  ‘So is she cross and bothered again?’ asked Alice. ‘You said they gave her the medicine because she was cross and bothered.’

  I sighed. How did you even begin to explain this to a six-year-old?

  ‘She was cross and bothered in hospital because she wasn’t at home. She was confused. And when people are confused they can get a bit angry.’

  ‘So isn’t she confused now?’

  I turned off the main road through Boothtown and began making my way left, right and left again through the narrow roads of terraces which I knew so well. I pulled up as near to number 52 as I could park and turned to reply to Alice.

  ‘She is still confused, love. But not as badly as when she was in hospital. Just her normal confused because of the disease we talked about.’

  Alice nodded. She didn’t seem at all sure. I got out and went round to open her door.

  ‘Tell you what, love,’ I said as I helped her out. ‘If you want to go at any time you just tap me on the knee and I’ll know, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Alice.

  I knocked twice and then let myself in with the key.

  ‘It’s only me, Mum,’ I called out. Alice was holding on to my left hand very tightly. We slipped our shoes off on the mat and went through to the front room. Mum was sitting in her armchair. The first thing I noticed was that she had two skirts on; a beige pleated one poking out from under a mauve floral one. She had teamed them with a yellow, short-sleeved blouse. You could quite clearly see the goosebumps on her arms.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ I said, bending to give her a kiss. ‘I’ve brought Alice to see you.’

  I waited, willing her to say something positive. Or at the very least not to ask who Alice was.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ she said, smiling in Alice’s direction. I ushered Alice forward. She planted a kiss softly on Mum’s cheek before retreating back to the sofa.

  ‘Your arms feel cold, Mum,’ I said. ‘Where’s your cardi?’

  ‘It’s dirty,’ she said. ‘It’s in the wash. They’re all in the wash.’

  ‘Let me go and find you something to put on,’ I said. ‘Alice, why don’t you tell Grandma what you did in swimming this morning?’ Alice looked at me hesitantly, but started speaking when I nodded at her.

  I went upstairs and into Mum’s bedroom. Clothes were strewn all over the floor, it looked more like a fifteen-year-old’s room than a seventy-two-year-old’s. I opened the top drawer in the chest where she kept her cardigans and jumpers. It was empty. I hurried downstairs. I could hear Alice still trying to explain what a swimming noodle was as I passed the open door on my way to the kitchen. I checked the washing machine. Nothing in there. Or the laundry basket. I began opening cupboard doors, looking in the bin, anywhere I could think of. And then I came to the cooker. I could see the outline of something through the tinted glass in the door. I put the interior light on. Only I wasn’t checking to see if a cake had risen. What I was really illuminating was the inside of Mum’s head. It wasn’t just the one cardigan. It was all of them. Bundled in there ready to be washed. The only saving grace was that she hadn’t gone as far as turning it on. Because I suspected gas mark 4 might well have been translated as a 40-degree wash.

  I opened the oven door and began unloading the clothes into the laundry basket, aware that my hands were shaking. I picked a blue cardigan out from the middle of the pile that hadn’t touched the inside of the oven. I sniffed it. I could still smell the fabric conditioner from the last wash. I loaded the rest straight into the washing machine, added powder and put them on a quick cycle. I heard the water gush in, watched the clothes being tossed around the drum and the bubbles slowly creep up the glass. She was going under. I knew that. Not waving but drowning. She wouldn’t even think to wave. She wouldn’t recognise anyone to wave to. And it appeared I was the only lifeguard on the beach.

  I went back through to the front room. Alice, bless her, was still talking. Telling Mum the names of all her cuddly toys. Clearly she was going to become
skilled at an early age in the art of filling awkward silences.

  I took Mum’s left arm and eased it into the sleeve of the cardigan.

  ‘You can put this on for now,’ I said. ‘The rest of them are being washed at the moment. I’ll put them on the airer before I go.’

  She nodded. ‘I like this one,’ she said. ‘Bill always used to say it set me eyes off a treat.’

  I smiled at her as I buttoned the cardigan up. ‘I don’t want you to do any more washing,’ I said. ‘Just leave it in the laundry basket in the bedroom and I’ll do it for you when I come. Or ask Cath to do it. I take it she hasn’t been today?’

  ‘She’ll be coming any minute to give me my breakfast.’

  I looked at the clock. It was half past twelve.

  ‘You haven’t had anything to eat this morning?’

  ‘No. I’m waiting for Cath.’

  I nodded. ‘I tell you what. We’ll have something while we wait.’

  I went into the hall and phoned the out-of-hours number for social services. Cath was off ill. Someone else was supposed to have come. Only quite clearly they hadn’t.

  ‘I want to speak to the care manager,’ I said.

  ‘She doesn’t work weekends.’

  ‘No, I bet she doesn’t. Unfortunately my mother still eats at weekends. Or rather she should do.’

  ‘Is there a message I can give her?’

  ‘There is but you probably wouldn’t like to repeat it to her face, in which case I’ll save it until I speak to her tomorrow. She’s not going to like it, mind.’

  I put the phone down and strode back through to the kitchen. I started cooking scrambled egg on toast. I figured I may as well do enough for all of us. We were clearly going to be here some time. The sound of the egg sizzling must have covered up the noise of the kitchen door opening. The first indication I had that Alice was in the room was when I felt a gentle tapping on my knee.

  ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’ I said, taking the pan off the hob for a second when I saw her solemn face looking up at me.

  ‘I’m ready to go now,’ she said. ‘Grandma keeps calling me Deborah.’

  ‘How you feeling?’ asked Paul when we were lying in bed later.

  ‘Worried, despairing. Mad as hell.’

  ‘No, I meant about tomorrow.’

  The one good thing about spending the day fretting about my mother was that it had at least taken my mind off the impending hospital visit.

  ‘Oh, that. I just want to get it over with, to be honest. Just want to move things forward.’

  Paul nodded. Though I suspected he didn’t feel the same way.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  He hesitated. I heard him sigh deeply next to me. Watched his chest rise and fall before he spoke.

  ‘Worried, despairing. Mad as hell.’

  I propped myself up on my elbow and turned to look at him.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m worried they’re going to say it’s my fault then I’ll feel really bad for letting you down, I’m despairing of what we’ll do if they say we can’t have another baby because I know how much it means to you and I’m mad as hell that you’re having to go through all this when everyone else seems to be able to pop out another one without any problem. That’s why.’

  I shut my eyes and bit my lower lip. I had no idea he felt like this. I thought it was me who was wound up about it.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, squeezing his shoulder. ‘It won’t be anybody’s fault, whatever they say. And if it’s bad news, we’ll deal with it. I don’t know how, but we’ll do it. OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, stroking my arm. ‘You’re right. I know you are. We need to be strong. Both of us. I’ll stop being such a wuss.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you told me. Sometimes I get it into my head that it’s only me going through this. It’s actually good to know that you’re in as big a state as me about it.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Paul with a smile. ‘We’ll be crap together.’

  We sat in silence in the waiting room of the assisted conception unit. Paul held my hand and squeezed it intermittently. I felt a bit of a fraud, to be honest. Here I was attending the infertility clinic when I had a happy, healthy six-year-old. I wondered if the other women waiting could tell. If there was some tell-tale mumsy evidence which gave the game away. If they’d be talking about me to their partners afterwards. ‘I don’t know what she was doing there, she clearly already has one.’

  Maybe I was being greedy. One was enough for lots of people, why wasn’t it enough for me? I knew the answer to that, of course. And it was a perfectly valid one – at least to me. But it still left me feeling that my pain was not as great as other people’s. That this was a sham and I should go home to my child, give thanks for what I had and let someone else have a turn.

  Only child. The term still rankled with me. All the times I had been asked if I was one or people had simply presumed I was and I had suffered a fresh explosion of hurt inside. And already people were saying it about Alice. People assumed we’d made a lifestyle decision. That one was quite enough, thank you, and we didn’t want our lives disrupted by the inconvenience of another. People who should keep their fucking noses out of our business.

  A nurse came through to the waiting room. ‘Paul Crabtree,’ she called. Paul let go of my hand and stood up.

  ‘Have fun,’ I said. Paul managed a weak smile and followed the nurse out. He was embarrassed about it. He’d told me so last night. The fact was that while I was prodded and poked and subjected to all manner of indignities and discomfort, he’d get shown to a private room with a collection of ‘adult’ magazines and be told to amuse himself in a way which teenage boys up and down the land considered a pleasure not a chore. There were some things feminism simply couldn’t change. The complexities and difficulty of access of the female reproductive system was one of them.

  I picked up one of the celebrity magazines on the table. Personally, I could have quite happily got off on looking at the photos of George Clooney getting arrested outside the Sudanese embassy. He didn’t even have to take his clothes off. The handcuffs were enough for me.

  But sadly it was not to be.

  ‘Jackie Crabtree?’ The young woman who called out my name smiled when I got to my feet. ‘Have you come far?’ she asked.

  ‘Only Hebden Bridge.’

  She nodded. I wondered if she was specially trained to make small talk to put people at ease before inserting a camera up their private parts. Perhaps she would continue by enquiring whether I had any holiday plans while trying to get a good shot of my ovaries.

  I was told to undress, put on a delightful hospital gown and given a small paper towel as some kind of modesty blanket, which didn’t really make sense as the only person it would screen my bits from was me and oddly enough I’d seen them before.

  I leant back and opened my legs as requested and tried hard to cling on to the image of George Clooney in handcuffs. But it was difficult when the monitor next to me insisted on showing me pictures of what could have been some ropey seventies space movie but was actually the inside of my womb.

  I remembered going for the scan when I was pregnant with Alice. Seeing the hazy image on the screen and needing Paul to point out to me where all her limbs were so I could try to make sense of what I was looking at.

  And now here I was looking at what wasn’t there. The space. The ache. The emptiness inside. I’d actually been worried this morning. Wondered about cancelling the appointment. Just in case I was actually pregnant and whatever they were planning to do was going to wrench this new life from me. I’d even thought about how ironic that would be if it happened. I felt stupid now, of course. Like some grown adult with an imaginary friend. Telling people to watch their step, not bump into him, be careful when they swung around. There was nothing there. There hadn’t been for four years and to think there was now had clearly been fanciful at best, borderline insane a
t worst. The only positive thing I could think of was at least this time I wouldn’t be disappointed when my period came. What you already knew couldn’t hurt you.

  I listened to the older woman, who was monitoring the screen, giving directions to the younger one: left a bit, go back slightly, let’s go round again. It was akin to someone doing their cycling proficiency test inside me. I was trying to detect something in her voice – any note of concern, any hint that she found something untoward – but she was good at this, clearly an old pro at not giving anything away.

  I asked in the end. I had to.

  ‘Have you seen anything that gives you cause for concern?’

  ‘Well, obviously you’ll have to wait for your appointment with the consultant to get a full report, but I think it’s safe to say there’s no evidence of anything sinister.’

  I nodded and thanked her. I don’t know why. There’s something about people in hospital uniforms that makes me feel compelled to be grateful for even the tiniest morsel of information.

  ‘No evidence of anything sinister.’ What the hell did that mean? That there weren’t a gang of masked robbers lurking in my uterus. That she hadn’t found an al-Qaeda cell trying to infiltrate my Fallopian tubes.

  ‘OK, Mrs Crabtree,’ said the younger woman. ‘We’re all done here. If you’d like to get yourself dressed I’ll take you through for your blood tests.’

  I nodded. Imagining Paul sitting back in the waiting room. And actually being quite pleased that he did feel guilty.

  Paul was quiet on the way back to Hebden Bridge. He didn’t really say anything much until we pulled up near Sam’s road.

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s my fault,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if they didn’t find anything wrong with you it’s probably me, shooting blanks or summat.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘We don’t know it’s not me, yet. They probably wouldn’t have told me if it was. Anyway, we shouldn’t be talking about fault. It’s not intentional is it? On either part.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ Paul’s shoulders straightened a little. ‘I just want you to know I appreciate what you’re putting yourself through.’