by Fiona Neill
‘This is better than Mission Impossible, Mum,’ says Sam, sliding through the narrow gap at the bottom of the window down on to the grass. They stand in the front garden, all holding hands, because they sense this is one of those rare occasions when a family really needs to pull together, and watch me struggle to slide through to the other side. I have pulled my shirt and T-shirt up around my ribs in order to reduce the area around my middle. I wriggle through in slow bursts, stopping periodically to suck in my stomach.
‘We should have rubbed butter round your tummy, Mummy,’ says Sam, pulling my arms. ‘I’ve seen them do that on Blue Peter.’
‘To get mummies through windows?’ asks Joe.
‘No, to help beached seals off the coast of Scotland,’ Sam says thoughtfully, as I scramble through into the flower bed.
Feeling elated at my cool head in a crisis, I agree to play Best of Bond Theme Tunes very loudly in the car on the short journey to school. We will hardly even be late. At around fifty metres from the playground, my luck runs out and the car grinds to a halt in the middle of ‘The Man with the Golden Gun.’ We are stranded. The petrol gauge is on empty. Traffic starts to back up from the front and behind. I have one of those out-of-body experiences, where I feel as though I am an observer watching someone else’s life.
‘Mum, you can’t pretend this isn’t happening,’ says Sam, sensing what is going on. So I phone Tom on my mobile and coolly explain the situation to him.
‘What do you expect me to do about it? I’m on my way to Milan,’ he yells down the line.
‘What would you do in this situation?’ I plead.
‘I wouldn’t be in it,’ he says.
Impatient drivers, including Yummy Mummy No. 1 two cars back, start hooting rhythmically. I get out of the car, pointedly open the Peugeot’s bonnet and start poking around the engine. ‘Must be a flat battery,’ I shout to no one in particular. ‘Anyone got any jump-leads?’
I would be good in a war zone. I would be great doing front-line medical interventions. I would be brilliant at dealing with natural disasters. I’m just not good at the small stuff, I think to myself, as I take a few plugs off the engine and clean them with a duster. Unfortunately, it is these small details that now define my life. I search in my pockets for something that might qualify as a sharp object, because at this particular juncture, piercing the engine is an option I am considering. Anything to avoid admitting that I have run out of petrol.
Sexy Domesticated Dad appears, strolling down the road, away from school. His arm is out of plaster. ‘Got a problem?’ he says, coming over to peer into the engine, walking like a cowboy in that way that urban men do when they sense a rare chance to show off manly qualities. He is even wearing a plaid shirt. This is north-west London, not Brokeback Mountain, I want to say. Words like gasket, spark-plug and carburettor trip off his tongue. But his hands remain firmly in the pockets of his jeans, which are so loose that I can spot a hint of grey underpant spewing out the top. We both peer under the bonnet.
Yummy Mummy No. 1 joins us the other side, leaning over the engine to reveal perfect cleavage, firm but not pneumatic.
‘That’s unnatural,’ I say unthinkingly.
‘What is?’ says Sexy Domesticated Dad.
‘Lucy, I will say just three words,’ Yummy Mummy No. 1 replies, staring straight at me over the engine. ‘Rigby and Peller.’
‘Is that a law firm?’ says Sexy Domesticated Dad, looking puzzled. He seems unmoved by the view. Then he starts to get down and dirty, pulling rubber caps off bits of the engine. I’m still unconvinced that he knows what he is doing. But at least he is offering good cover. He passes something oily to Yummy Mummy No. 1. Her perfectly manicured hands are smeared with grease.
‘It’s a bit like one of those Micheline Arcier paraffin-wax oil treatments,’ she says, looking down at them dubiously.
Alpha Mum approaches. She is trying to twist her features into an expression of faux sympathy, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth slightly open, but she can’t smother her underlying smugness. ‘Oh, poor you,’ she says, looking up and down the road at all the traffic. ‘Of course, you live so close that you could easily walk.’
‘But then you can’t wear high heels,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1, clicking the heels of a pair of Christian Louboutin boots together in irritation.
‘How do you drive in those?’ asks Alpha Mum.
‘I don’t. I wear a pair of cashmere slippers and put the boots on when I get here,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1.
The headmistress appears to investigate the noise and general chaos, and begins to order cars to reverse back down the road in both directions. ‘Hello, Mrs Sweeney,’ she says. ‘I recognise your car from the other day.’
‘What are you doing, Mum?’ yells Sam, winding down the window. I have forgotten that the children are in the car.
‘I’ve found the keys to the house hidden down the back of the seat. That’s good, isn’t it?’ yells Joe from the other window.
‘Wonderful, darling,’ I shout.
The road is filled with the sound of ‘Nobody Does it Better’. ‘Say, “Baby you’re the best”,’ Joe shouts back.
‘What helpful children,’ says Alpha Mum dryly. I can tell she is making a mental inventory of these incidents.
‘Turn the music down, we can’t hear ourselves think,’ I shout in forced jolly fashion.
‘But you don’t need to think, you just need to go and get a can of petrol from the garage,’ insists Sam, who is nothing if not rational.
They all stop in their tracks. ‘You mean you’ve run out of petrol?’ says Sexy Domesticated Dad, holding his head in his oily hands.
‘This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about,’ says Alpha Mum, her voice laced with sarcasm. ‘It would be disastrous to have her as class rep. Unsafe.’
‘Look, I’ll take the children into school,’ says Sexy Domesticated Dad.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble as Sam and Joe cheerfully climb out of the car.
‘And I’ll take you to the garage,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1.
‘And I’ll organise people to push the car into a space on the side of the road,’ says the headmistress.
‘And I will go and plan my victory speech for tonight,’ says Alpha Mum, walking away, nose in the air, leaving the rest of us standing in the street.
‘Well, you still get my vote,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1, as I bundle Fred into a car seat in the back of her vehicle. ‘School life would certainly be a lot less boring with you in charge.’ It’s one of those double-edged compliments, but I am too busy absorbing the full range of activities in the back of the car to mind. First of all, there are the television screens on the backs of the seats and a range of DVDs, each stored in the correct case, in a small compartment at the back of the handbrake. Also on the back of each seat is a transparent storage unit with pockets in various shapes and sizes. One contains pens. Another paper. Then there are age-appropriate books. It is all straight lines and symmetry. Very pleasing to the eye. ‘It’s more Piet Mondrian than Tracey Emin, I think,’ she says, smiling at me as I climb into the front beside her. ‘Actually, it’s all my nanny’s work.’
I shut the door and there is silence. It is like entering another universe, even the air smells different. I breathe in deeply and shut my eyes. It’s not even nine o’clock.
‘It’s a mixture of rosemary and lavender,’ she says. ‘I get them made up specially to suit my different moods. This one is called “Cup of aromatic tea on the road to Marrakesh”.’ I snort with laughter, but she isn’t joking.
She then hands me a Bach Rescue Remedy from the glove compartment. If she produced a pot plant or plate of sugared jellies from that Aladdin’s cave I wouldn’t blanch.
‘Although I don’t think there is any known antidote to that woman,’ she says.
Then we drive to the garage, I buy a can of petrol and she drops me off back by the car. It is quite simple really. If only I had someone to organise me, it
could all be so different.
Later that day, I repair to the bathroom to prepare myself for the evening ahead. I consider how this morning’s disaster might impact upon events. On the one hand, it has given ammunition to Alpha Mum’s whispering campaign, not that there was any need for more anecdotal evidence of my perceived incompetence. On the other, it makes me human, a quality that is distinctly lacking in her.
When Tom is away, it is my turn to wallow in the bath. I have spent so long soaking in the lavender oil that Yummy Mummy No. 1 kindly handed to me this morning saying, ‘Your need is greater than mine,’ I feel as though it has impregnated my skin and that if I were to sweat, it would be sweet instead of salty. Downstairs my mother-in-law Petra is tending to the children.
Tom has arrived in Milan. He sounded bright and cheerful on the phone when we spoke as I was running the bath. He had made a site visit and contractors had finally begun digging the foundations for his library. He told me that he was reading a short story by an Argentinian writer that one of his colleagues had given to him. ‘It’s very exciting because it’s about the idea of a library being a universe made of interlocking hexagons and that is how I have conceived the building.’
I made an effort to follow that analysis, partly because I hadn’t heard Tom so enthusiastic about a project for ages, but mostly because it might prove useful in conversation with Sexy Domesticated Dad.
‘Has it been made into a film?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No,’ said Tom, clearly surprised by my sudden attentiveness. ‘It’s a short story and the main character is a library. Anyway, good luck with it all tonight, Lucy, if you are sure that’s what you want,’ he says.
I am momentarily unnerved, thinking that he is referring to the drink with Sexy Domesticated Dad, and I don’t know what to say.
‘Look, I’m sure that whatever happens, it will be memorable,’ he says. ‘Must go now, we’re going to raid the mini-bar before dinner.’
Whenever I start to worry about what lies ahead I put on the hot tap with my foot until it becomes so unbearable that any worries dissipate. My skin is shrivelled and the stretch marks on my stomach become so red that I take on the mottled quality of a melted Stilton. I disowned my stomach long ago, confining it to a twilight existence, for ever banished from the public eye. I now understand why old ladies used to enshroud themselves in complicated undergarments with zips and ties to imprison unruly elements.
My breasts bob underwater with pleasing elasticity. I regard them as reliable old friends, trustworthy allies who can be called upon on special occasions to engender confidence and feelings of youthfulness but are perhaps a little unwilling to accept any loss of status over the years. The rest of my body is in a state of rebellion, always threatening to break away from me. It would take years to suppress those revolutionary elements, to rein them in and bring them under my control. A more likely scenario is a slow erosion of my authority. Occasionally, I struggle to regain the upper hand and lose a few pounds, but to stamp out the soft edges would require a degree of self-control that I simply don’t have.
When I emerge from the bath and glance at Tom’s electric clock, I realise there is less than half an hour to get ready and get to school. The electric clock looks lonely and abandoned sitting on the bedside table on its own, rejected in favour of the battered metal clock with a rabbit’s face and frayed ears that Tom took with him. There is a shiny oval space amid a sea of dust where it usually stands, and I imagine it incongruously installed in a minimalist hotel room in Milan. Tom will never think to hide it in the wardrobe when his colleagues come to his room. They will most likely conclude it is sweet for a middle-aged man to be travelling with an alarm clock belonging to his eight-year old son. Especially those young single women he mentioned the other night.
It is one of life’s great puzzles that the equation of men plus children invariably amounts to something greater than the sum of its parts, enhancing the qualities of both parties, whereas the juxtaposition of women plus children generally leaves you in arrears. It is mostly aging, unsexy and messy.
It might sound ingenuous but I have never worried that Tom might be tempted to stray during such a trip. To ponder on such eventualities seems a hopeless indulgence, when there are so many more immediate worries to focus on. Besides, he is generally so absorbed by the project in hand that anything extraneous is viewed as an unwanted distraction. The devil is in the detail, he always says. Plans need to be fine-tuned, taking into account the opinions of structural engineers and clients, whose desires are all too often diametrically opposed. He is never more impassioned than when he is involved in a big municipal project like this. A few years ago double-storey glass extensions and loft conversions afforded similar satisfaction, but for an architect like Tom, size definitely matters and now nothing less than a whole house really holds his attention.
I wish the daily rhythm of my own life afforded me similar satisfaction. Perhaps a little responsibility will engender a renewed sense of purpose.
Three minutes have elapsed and I need to reach a conclusion about what to wear. The floor is covered in clothes and the black long-sleeved V-neck top that was first to be tried and is now my favoured option has gone missing. I crawl around the floor wearing a black bra and knickers until I find the elusive top under the bed, pull on the jeans that I was wearing earlier, and decide to put on make-up on the way to school.
Petra calls up, ‘Lucy, you’re going to be late.’ I come down the stairs two at a time and she stands reproachfully at the bottom with the three boys. She disapproves of her daughter-in-law going out at night without her husband, even if it is for a school meeting. I’m glad I didn’t put on any make-up.
‘Would you like me to try and marshal that laundry?’ she asks. ‘I’m going to iron a few of those shirts too. What does Tom do if there isn’t a shirt ready for him in the morning?’
‘Well, he either does it himself, or if time has really run out, he has been known to buy a new one on the way to work,’ I say unthinkingly. ‘And actually it would be great if you could tame the laundry pile. I can’t remember the last time I saw the bottom of the basket.’
‘Lucy, I think you might find that if you elect a day for washing and a day for ironing, all your problems would be resolved,’ she says. An interesting theory, but not one likely to be put into immediate practice, I think to myself.
‘She’s got a point, Mum,’ says Sam, trying to be helpful.
‘I’ll stay tomorrow morning, if you like, and help you sort it out,’ she says, opening the front door and pushing me out into the cold night air. ‘Good luck. I think it’s laudable that you’re going to take on new responsibilities, although I’m a little concerned that you are overextending yourself.’
I decide to drive, partly to prevent me drinking when I go out with Sexy Domesticated Dad, but also because the car has a mirror that I can use to put on a quick sweep of mascara and lipstick when the traffic lights are red.
I walk through the heavy front door of the school behind other parents from our year and stop in the hall to look at some self-portraits by the children in Joe’s class and find the one that he has done. I am struck by the fact that, unlike the other children, who have painted heads that are disproportionally large to the small stick bodies with flaying limbs underneath, Joe’s self-portrait is tiny, probably half the size of the others. The detail is astonishing, however: there are freckles, teeth, and nostrils, hundreds of curly, pencil-drawn hairs on his head, red lips and even a small mole that he has on his chin. But the head is tiny. What could this mean, I wonder? It must be related to his fears about shrinking. He isn’t significantly smaller than the children in his class. I must speak to his teacher and maybe call Mark and ask him what he thinks. Children aren’t his speciality – he hasn’t any of his own yet – but he never resents a meander around the subconscious of his nephews.
My phone beeps and I open up a text message from Emma, requesting an urgent conversation about a new imbrogl
io in her over-complicated love life. She has obviously forgotten the significance of the evening for me, which is a little galling, since she was present when Cathy added a whole new stressful layer to an already difficult moment.
‘You know I am poised to become a pillar of the community,’ I whisper into my phone, warning that a long chat is out of the question in my new-found role as respectable mother of three.
‘I’m really sorry, Lucy, I don’t know how to handle this one,’ she whispers back. I imagine her standing in the corner of her office with her back to her desk. Although she has her own glass bubble, the door is always open, and she is convinced that journalists who are naturally adept at reading papers upside down on people’s desks are also imbued with an innate ability to lip-read.
I retreat to the children’s cloakroom through a door with a low brass handle at the far end of the entrance hall, ready for crisis talks. It is freezing. The windows are half-open, but it is not enough to overcome the potent smell of bleach and urine. The urine has the edge, I decide. I go into a cubicle with half-height walls to offer my best advice and sit on the edge of a tiny loo, using my foot to keep the door shut. Outside I can hear the other parents file into the classroom for the vote.
‘Lucy, do you remember me telling you that Guy has these fantasies about having sex with two women?’ Emma whispers.
‘Is that the name of your banker?’ I ask. She has never referred to him by name before. Another sign that their relationship is moving into a new phase. She ignores the question.
‘He stopped talking about it for a while and moved on to sex in public places, but he’s suddenly become obsessed again,’ she says.
‘It is every male fantasy to have sex with two women,’ I bend over further to whisper into my phone, ‘especially for a married father of four, but it doesn’t mean that he actually will go through with it. You should never have agreed to do it, even in the heat of the moment.’