The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy

by Fiona Neill

  ‘Great. He’s with his dad for the night,’ she says.

  The springs are weakest here and I sink into a dip, securely wedged between two of my closest friends, feeling something akin to contentment. Then a friend of Cathy’s from work appears. As she sits down I marvel at a world of such spontaneity where people are unaccountable to anyone apart from themselves, free from complicated arrangements involving third parties and lists of phone numbers and instructions what to do if the children wake up.

  Suddenly I am no longer a lonely married person on day release from the suburbs, but part of an attractive group of nominally single thirty-something women having a very good time, thank you very much. I imagine people looking at us and wondering how we fit together. Except that at a place like this, other people are too involved in the small print of their own lives for ours to warrant much attention.

  There was a time in our twenties, although it seems fantastical now, when we lived parallel existences, carving out fairly successful careers and rather less consequential relationships. Then I met Tom at a party held by Emma, because he was one of the architects involved in designing the new offices for her company, and Cathy met the man we now refer to as Hopeless Husband on an ad shoot. We both got married and Emma nearly did several times.

  After Ben was born, Cathy went back to work three days a week as a copywriter.

  For a good few years we traipsed around the same toddler groups together on her days off. We shared weak cups of tea out of polystyrene cups. We had half-conversations with our husbands on mobile phones, as we wheeled pushchairs through playgrounds we had never noticed before, despite their proclivity for primary colours. We lovingly checked sandpits for old syringes, as other mothers warned us to do.

  While the tedium of my own conversations with Tom often left me numb, revolving as they did around subjects domestic, such as how to release Action Man from the U-bend in the toilet, Cathy’s got ever louder and more acrimonious.

  Her husband veered between trying to establish himself as a furniture designer and working on building projects, neither of which generated much income. So she had to go back to work full time and shortly afterwards became a company director, making him feel ever more inadequate. Of course, it was more complicated than that, because it always is. Her husband found a therapist who told him his wife was holding him back and so he decided to dispense with wife and child and move back in with his parents. Now Cathy lives a dual existence, as responsible mother of a five-year-old and wild party animal – depending on when her ex-husband has their son at the weekend – with a full-time nanny organising the bits in between.

  Downing a third glass of champagne, and now more than perfectly happy with the quality of my own happiness, I start to review private clubs to which I belong.

  ‘Of course there’s no waiting list, and if you want to drink you have to go into the loo with a hip flask, but in order of descending importance there is 1) Little Dippers swimming club, 2) Munchkin music group and 3) Fire Engine playgroup.’

  ‘That one sounds good,’ says Cathy. ‘I could do with a bit of rough.’

  Then Emma shrieks. ‘Something tried to ladder my tights.’ The four of us bend down to look under the table.

  ‘Forget the local wildlife,’ says Cathy. ‘It’s Lucy’s hairy legs.’

  Everyone demands to examine them, by running their hands up and down my calves in amazement. ‘God, Lucy, you could cause serious carpet burn with those,’ she says. I try to explain that having three children demands a minimalist beauty routine. Having a three-minute shower counts as major pre-party preparations with anything from deodorant to a quick pluck of the moustache as bonuses tacked on to the end. Leg waxing has become a biannual luxury, after late-night attempts at home waxing ended in disaster involving hairy bed sheets. Incredulous looks all round.

  ‘But what do you do all day?’ asks Emma. ‘Isn’t it all yoga and Cath Kidston floral prints? And what about home baking?’

  So I relay key developments of the day from the domestic rearguard. ‘I got up at six-thirty, made two packed lunches, listened to Joe read, rushed to school to drop the eldest two, arranged a date for Sam’s best friend to come for tea, looked in lost property for Joe’s jumper, and then raced to nursery with Fred,’ I tell them, leaning forward for dramatic effect. ‘And this was all before nine o’clock.’

  ‘No,’ they say in awe.

  ‘Do you really want more?’ I ask. They nod.

  ‘I went to the shops, raced home to unload everything, lowered the clothes mountain by about a foot, dealt with the discovery that Fred has been using the bin in our bathroom to pee in for two weeks, and then ran to his nursery to get him. Fred had a friend to play so I phoned my mother while they were upstairs. Then I discovered they had taken out all of Sam’s clothes from his chest of drawers, so I had to tidy up the mess. By then it was time to go back to school to pick up Sam and Joe. Then there was homework, tea, bathtime, and stories. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I played “I’m Jens Lehmann” for half an hour after tea.’ More puzzled looks. ‘He’s the Arsenal goalie. He’s almost a member of the family.’

  ‘But it can’t be like that,’ says Emma. ‘You are living our idyll. Don’t spoil it for us.’

  Actually, this was a good day, and I quite enjoy role-play as Jens Lehmann, but I don’t tell them that. There were no injuries. No illness. No breakages. Nothing to derail the status quo. I don’t mention the things that I do routinely, the endless cycle of cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing, partly because it has become second sense but mostly because even I can’t quite believe that the contours of my existence have become defined by this domestic treadmill.

  Besides, I am almost certain that Emma is too busy enjoying her own life to covet mine. She has a flat in Notting Hill and visibly winces on our infrequent visits with the children, when they leave tiny fingerprints all over the stainless-steel worktops and run their tractors up and down the pristine oak floor.

  The conversation quickly turns to more straightforward subjects including analysis of a new boyfriend. ‘Tell me if this even approximates normality,’ asks Cathy’s friend, the lassitude in her voice belying what is coming next. ‘He’ll only have sex with me if there’s a pillow covering my face, or I’m lying on my front. And he doesn’t want any physical contact afterwards.’

  ‘You mean he’s into asphyxiation?’ says Emma.

  ‘Could it be a cushion, or does it have to be a pillow?’ I ask, adding quickly, ‘He might have an interiors fetish.’

  ‘Do you mean it would be all right if he was depriving her of oxygen with that gorgeous Lucinda Chambers cushion from the Rug Company?’ asks Cathy.

  ‘I don’t know the one you mean, but there’s something less sinister about a cushion perhaps,’ I say. ‘There are more colours for a start.’

  ‘Look, he’s probably just gay,’ says Emma.

  ‘Just gay,’ says Cathy’s friend, her voice slightly trembling. ‘But that’s even worse because then there’s no hope. I can be a lot of things but never a man.’

  Emma confirms that she is still road-testing hotels in Bloomsbury with a married father of four with whom she has been having an affair for the past eight months. They met during a dinner organised by a financial PR company to promote relations between bankers and journalists. ‘He says that he has had a sexual epiphany since he met me,’ she says gleefully. ‘For the first time in fifteen years he is capable of having sex more than once in a night.’

  ‘I bet Tom could do that, if he was sleeping with you,’ I say. ‘It’s not really about you, it’s about the novelty of having sex with someone who isn’t his wife and there’s nothing very profound about that.’

  ‘I think I am making it easier for him to stay married,’ she says, as though she is working in a soup kitchen on Christmas Day.

  Cathy reveals that she has had unprotected sex with someone she met at a party and then starts pondering even more exotic sexual practices.

 
‘Oh my God,’ I say, a little taken aback by her unusual lack of caution.

  ‘You should save that for treats,’ says Emma.

  I have little to add to the conversation since I don’t think I have even had sex since we last met up. But sometimes, just sometimes, particularly at moments like these, that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing.

  ‘I think I fancy one of the dads at school,’ I say on a whim. Even as I speak, I wonder whether I have accidentally picked up the script of someone else’s life, someone sitting at the table next door perhaps, because this is not what I intended to say. However, I do expect it to be treated with reciprocal equanimity by my friends.

  Instead there is a stunned silence.

  ‘Lucy, that is absolutely awful,’ says Emma. ‘It’s shocking. Indecent.’

  ‘Ignore me, I’m just attention-seeking,’ I joke. They look at me with serious expressions. I start backtracking immediately.

  ‘Nothing’s happened. In fact, I’ve never been alone with him. Haven’t even reached the sexual fantasy stage. Don’t have time for that.’ I laugh with forced cheer, waiting for someone to join in with me. ‘Actually, I have barely even spoken to him.’ More looks of dismay. This is so hypocritical. Friends are worse than parents in expecting you to conform to designated roles.

  ‘Look, it’s not all Peter and Jane up in north-west London,’ I say. ‘I am allowed to daydream.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’ asks Cathy disapprovingly.

  ‘Know what? There’s nothing to know. He does the school run,’ I say, hoping that will explain everything.

  ‘I think we should come and check him out,’ says Cathy. ‘A whole new pulling zone.’

  3

  ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is only a step’

  WHEN I GET home, I don’t go straight to bed. Instead I wander round the house, wrapping the darkness and silence around me like friends. The light is on in Sam and Joe’s bedroom and I go in, relieved to find all the children asleep. I can tell by the train track on the floor with its labyrinthine network of bridges, switchbacks and tunnels that only Tom could have created, that bedtime was a protracted affair. Putting the children to bed alone is always a sobering experience for Tom, calling into question his belief that there is a magic formula for conjuring order from the essential chaos of domestic life.

  Fred is asleep in the middle of the track, on his front, bottom in the air, his nose almost touching a level crossing. Sam and Joe have kicked off their covers and I tenderly tuck them in again, then roam around the room, picking through the paraphernalia of childhood. Scraps of material so precious they cannot sleep without them, which I have to wash in secret because they love the smell so much. A muddle of bears, books and trains. I carefully tuck these beloved treasures under their duvets and promise never to do anything that will disturb their untroubled sleep, although there will be no reciprocity in that arrangement. Over the past eight years an undisturbed night has become a thing of note, a talking point, like sighting a badger in London.

  I gently lift Fred up and he makes reassuring noises, snorting and grunting into my chest like a small burrowing creature. I remove a cricket ball from Sam’s hand and take Fred back to his own room.

  Back downstairs in the kitchen I turn on the light, make myself a cup of tea and sit down at the table. I look up to find myself staring straight at a painting given to us by my mother-in-law Petra. It is a portrait in oil by an artist whose family moved to Morocco just after the end of the Second World War. Tom says that his mother was briefly engaged to the artist, he is unsure for how long, but refused to move abroad with him. This explanation seems to satisfy him. I have often tried to press Petra for more details, using the painting as an excuse, but she never engages. It is unfinished, and the green background is painted so thinly in parts that you can see the grain of the canvas. Petra says she doesn’t know who sat for the picture, although to me it seems obvious that it is her. ‘If you don’t take it, Lucy, I will give it away,’ she said when she handed it over during a visit. It was then that I asked her whether she was in love with the man who painted it. After all, she got engaged to my husband’s father only a few months later, which I would describe as a classic rebound relationship. ‘If you imagine hard enough, you can love anyone, Lucy,’ she replied, looking at me intently.

  I go up the stairs barefoot, zigzagging from one side of a step up to another in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre to dodge loose floorboards that might give my presence away. In the bedroom, I avoid switching on the light and put out a hand, knowing that I will find the corner of the chest of drawers four paces into the room on the right-hand side. I carefully open the wardrobe door and hide the cigarettes I bought earlier in a pair of leather boots.

  I whisper soothing words to Tom when he mutters, ‘You’re back already,’ although it will soon be getting light outside. I listen to the radiators gurgling disapproval and forgive them their inability to heat the house properly.

  Then I edge into the bed using a technique of slow imperceptible movements, remaining absolutely still when I sense any reaction across the other side so that I don’t wake Tom. When I am close enough I put an arm across his chest, and lie there on my front, feeling his warmth, allowing sleep to come to me just at the moment that I want it most. Only a true insomniac or a mother with years of sleep deprivation under her belt knows the pleasure of that.

  There is no logical reason why a combination of lack of sleep and too much alcohol should add up to anything more than a day of mood swings and a tendency towards weepiness. Yet, somehow, it doesn’t happen that way. The following morning, I attend an assembly in the overheated gym to celebrate the new school year. Skittery Joe is always alarmed if he doesn’t spot my face in the crowd, so I forsake my own breakfast in order to get to school on time, to grab a good seat near the edge.

  ‘Somewhere mid-field on the wing, you mean,’ Joe says, looking up at me hopefully as we walk through the school gates. I know what is coming next.

  ‘Can we play Jens Lehmann when I come home?’ I try to explain to him that a school afternoon consists of cooking tea, clearing tea, making sure homework gets done, bath time, stories and bedtime and that it is a miracle that all this can be condensed into four hours already. Then relent when I see his little face start to scrunch up.

  ‘Shall we do cricket instead?’ I gently suggest. ‘I can be Shane Warne and you can be Freddie Flintoff. Just for ten minutes.’ He jumps in the air excitedly. It’s so easy to please a five-year-old.

  As Fred and I walk into the playground with my pushchair loaded up like a packhorse, I pause, as I always do, waiting for silent applause for once again having made it before the nine o’clock watershed. I see the busy headmistress greeting parents on the steps. ‘Congratulations, Mrs Sweeney,’ I imagine her saying. ‘Well done, not just for making it here this morning on only four hours sleep and a hangover, but also for bringing two fully fed boys in the correct uniform, and your toddler, still eating toast but nevertheless dressed and partially fed, two nut-free packed lunches, and one pair of named gym shoes. You and all those other mothers and some of those dads – although I know it’s the mothers that remember everything really – are true heroes.’ Although no one cheers I feel a strong sense of elation.

  Feeling the worse for wear, I long for early-morning anonymity but soon find myself flanked in the gym on one side by Yummy Mummy No. 1 and then unexpectedly on the other by Sexy Domesticated Dad. I try to work out whether there are other chairs that he could have sat in and note there are plenty of spaces elsewhere. My heart starts to race and I feel myself blushing for the first time in years. I think I am suffering from a combination of premature menopause and delayed adolescence.

  I try to focus on the gym equipment. Ropes, vaults, horses, wall bars. Not much has evolved. Schools have escaped interior makeovers. There is no shabby chic, no minimalist aesthetic. And the fetid smell of stale socks and sweat is so familiar that, when I close my eyes and forget the sm
all child sitting on my knee, I am back at school myself. When you take your children into school, you too regress. So Alpha Mum seated behind us, former head girl and hockey captain, predictably sits on parent committees and looks on disapprovingly. The bullied have a nervous restlessness that only diminishes when they leave the school gates and their shoulders finally relax. And those of us who were busy appreciating boys, like, I suspect, Yummy Mummy No. 1, well, here we are still busy appreciating boys.

  Then I remember Simon Miller. My first boyfriend. When Simon Miller asked if he could walk me home after an A-level English class in October 1982, we strode in silence, our feet in time, to a shed beside the gym that I had never noticed before. There was not a girl in my class who would have turned him down and yet he apparently never had a girlfriend. Even back then, we recognised that Simon Miller was the real thing.

  Until we shut the door behind us, we barely touched. I don’t think we even talked much. The only thing he said to me was, ‘I want you to be my girlfriend, but I don’t want anyone to know because then my friends will want to know exactly what it is like having sex with you and it will be more exciting to keep it secret.’

  I nodded in assent and he put out his hand and stroked the side of my face, and I felt a shiver run up my body and struggled not to cough in the whirlpool of Aramis aftershave.

  The clumsy tangles on the cold plastic gym mats, which occurred weekly throughout that term, were the usual mix of half-clothed adolescent lust and endeavour. The possibility of discovery, the need for subterfuge at all times and the revelation of mutual attraction were a heady and irresistible combination. To my surprise, neither of us had had sex before. The equality of this situation made us generous, and Simon Miller must have gone on to give a lot of women pleasure, because even aged sixteen he had an innate understanding and love of oral sex that few subsequent boyfriends ever got close to. It was only when I left school and discovered that at least three of my girlfriends had been engaged in similar clandestine relationships with him, that the sophistication of his modus operandi was uncovered. But he had set a standard and that is of lifetime importance.