by Fiona Neill
‘My girls are so self-contained, they spend the whole day drawing,’ she says, watching the boys run wildly around the hall, followed by their mothers. On a bad day, she mutters about hyperactivity and pouring Ritalin into the national water supply. At the end of the hour each week, I swear her chest is as puffed up as a turkey’s.
‘Is that rough boy upsetting you?’ she asks her daughter, staring at Fred. I bristle and bite my tongue.
‘Do you know I didn’t want to have a third child, in case I gave birth to a boy?’ she continues.
‘That’s a shame, because it might have made you less of a bunny boiler,’ I say, shocked even as the words spill out of my mouth. She looks at me, astonished, and shifts along the floor, opening up as much space between us as is possible when you are sharing a small foam mat. The door of the church hall opens and a familiar tousle of hair, a little longer and stragglier than when I last saw it and decidedly unwashed, appears as Robert Bass walks in with his toddler. My spirits lift and I shake the tambourine with renewed vigour. He looks somewhat taken aback to find Fred and me, because this is an out-of-context encounter.
He is late, an infringement that would normally be met with at least a searing glare from the fierce woman who runs the children’s music group. But when he throws one of his winning smiles her way, I note that she blushes and urges him to come and join in, pointing decisively to a space beside her. How easily women of my age melt in the face of a little attention. We know that years of invisibility lie ahead.
Despite her best attempts, Robert Bass rejects the advances of the leader of the Munchkin Music Group and chooses to come and sit next to me and Fred, something I know I will pay for somewhere down the line. Her benevolence does not generally extend to mothers.
As I make space for him on my foam mat, I consider the fact that in the entire history of our flirtation, we have never been so physically close. Forget pubs and cafés, if you really want to get close to a man, toddler music groups are the place. Most of the right side of my body is touching him, even though the pleasure is diminished because I no longer have any feeling in my upper thigh. Thoughts of sitting cheek-by-jowl for the next hour cast endless choruses of ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ in a whole new light. Since this is his initiative and we are surrounded by other people, I decide that I can enjoy the moment with unadulterated pleasure, all the sweeter for the period of drought that preceded it.
Now all this is forgotten, and I am filled with born-again enthusiasm, waving the tambourine with Fred perched between my legs.
‘Stop, Mummy, stop,’ he says, pawing at my shirt with sticky hands.
‘Sshh, Fred,’ I tell him, energetically shaking the instrument to compensate for his lack of activity.
‘Mrs Sweeney, Mrs Sweeney,’ says the woman who runs the Munchkin Music Group. ‘There are no more green bottles hanging on the wall. You can stop now.’ I look round to find everyone staring at me, including Robert Bass, who eyes me warily.
‘You seem very enthusiastic, Lucy,’ he leans over to whisper in my ear.
‘I just sometimes get carried away,’ I whisper back, enjoying the sensation of his breath on my neck. I am so close I can smell him. I close my eyes and breathe a tangier than usual mixture of raw sweat, coffee and toothpaste. I wonder if he is doing the same and regret that I forgot to put on any deodorant. Still, this is how we will discover whether our genetic make-up is compatible.
‘And how does the sheep go?’ shouts the head of the Munchkin Music Group, breaking into my reverie.
‘Baaa,’ I hear myself shriek enthusiastically. There is a stony silence.
‘That one was for the children, Mrs Sweeney,’ she says coldly.
‘Where have you been?’ I whisper to Robert Bass.
‘My wife has taken a couple of months’ sabbatical while I finish my book,’ he whispers back. ‘I was going to call you, but I decided that it would be too, er, distracting.’
I am holding a carton of apple juice and am so surprised by this comment that I squeeze it a little too hard and a burst of liquid is propelled through the straw straight into his eye.
‘Direct hit,’ he says, wiping his eye and the green khaki jacket that matches them so well. Tom is right. This attention to detail is not unconscious. Whether it is for my particular benefit or for womankind in general is less certain. I notice that once again all eyes are upon us.
‘I always forget that mixture of pleasure and pain in your presence,’ he says. ‘The agony and the ecstasy.’ I feel myself getting hotter.
‘Can you please save your conversations for after the class,’ says the head of the Munchkin Music Group severely.
I open my handbag and blindly begin to search for wipes, but Fred is fed up with me and squirms between my legs. He is picking up crumbs of chocolate biscuit that have congealed on the floor of the church hall and putting them in his mouth. His face and hands are covered in a thin layer of chocolate. I hold his hands so that the trail cannot spread any further. Smug Mother of Girls looks on disapprovingly.
Robert Bass offers to help look, and in the spirit of this new familiarity, I let him rummage in my handbag while I hold my sticky toddler. I pull Fred tight to me, revelling in the soft fleshiness of his thighs and bottom, tickling him at the back of his neck, and he rewards me with sloppy chocolate-flavoured kisses. This is one pleasure that is never dulled by repetition.
Robert Bass pulls out, not necessarily in this order, one apple core, one pair of Bob the Builder pants (clean), a couple of lollipop sticks, and then the tour de force, a cheese sandwich wrapped in cling film, black and blue with mould.
‘Your bag is alive,’ he says. ‘I’m surprised it isn’t playing a tambourine.’
‘Try the side pocket,’ I urge him, shaking my maracas vigorously. He pulls out a condom and turns it around in his hand as though he has never seen one before. Oh, God. How did that make its way in there? Perhaps he thinks it is meant for him?
The music stops and the head of the Munchkin Music Group gives us a withering look. The room has fallen silent apart from braying children.
‘I keep one in case the children get bored on car trips,’ I hear myself say to the group of mothers and Robert Bass. ‘You can blow them up and they look just like balloons.’
‘Mrs Sweeney,’ says the head of the Munchkin Music Group, ‘that really is the limit. I am going to have to ask you and your man friend to leave the room.’
Robert Bass gathers up our toddlers and we retreat, shamefaced. We have been expelled from the toddler music group. Smug Mother of Girls is so inflated that I worry she might burst.
‘Well, that was short-lived,’ he says outside on the pavement. It has started to drizzle again. I decide to offer him a lift home in the car, trying to recall the exact status of the mess.
‘Would you like me to drop you home?’ I ask hesitantly, having been turned down the last time I asked.
‘That would be great,’ he says. ‘As long as we don’t stop at any petrol stations.’
We strap our children in the back and I notice that he holds his breath as he leans in to fasten the seat belt and then exhales when he is outside on the pavement again.
‘It’s not so bad in the front,’ I say.
‘I never know what I might find in here,’ he laughs nervously. ‘It’s always a little more adventurous than anticipated. So where are we going?’ he asks.
‘How about a walk on the Heath?’ I suggest in daring fashion. ‘Or should you be at work?’
‘I think I deserve a small break,’ he says.
He scrabbles around on the floor and asks me whether there is something to drink. I am negotiating a difficult turn across a busy road of traffic and unthinkingly tell him to look on the back seat. Before I can say ‘carburettor’ I see Robert Bass pick up a plastic bottle with yellow liquid inside and swallow thirstily.
He then makes a noise that is perfectly pitched between pain and disgust and spits out the drink all over me.
�
�What are you doing?’ I hear myself shriek. ‘I’m soaked.’
‘Oh, my God, what is that? It is so rank, it tastes like piss,’ he says, his eyes watering.
All the fingers of his right hand are in his mouth in a desperate effort to remove all traces of the mystery liquid.
I immediately realise that he has picked up what we refer to as the ‘pee bottle’. Early in the parenting experience, I discovered that we would never get anywhere on time if we stopped whenever one of the boys needed to pee. So all three children have been trained from an early age to use a plastic bottle.
He tentatively sniffs the liquid remaining in the bottle.
‘It is piss, isn’t it, Lucy?’ he yells.
‘Didn’t you think it was an odd colour?’ I retort.
‘I thought it was Lucozade or one of those electrolyte drinks,’ he says. ‘Do you think I should go to the doctor? Or A and E?’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Some people drink urine for medicinal purposes. Tito, Lady Di . . .’
‘But it’s fresh. There’s a pint of piss in this bottle. How long has it been in here, Lucy?’ he demands.
‘Look, you’re going to be fine,’ I say reassuringly, wondering if he is the kind of man who wants a woman to shower before he has sex.
‘Just take us home, please, I need to brush my teeth,’ he pleads.
On balance, I decide that this has been for the most part a positive encounter.
Tom arrives home late on Friday night. I am already in bed, so tired that I am unsure whether I am asleep or awake, when he stumbles into the room with his suitcase. He switches on the light and I close my eyes against the glare as he changes into another new pair of pyjamas. He is in buoyant mood. I know because he leaves all but the middle button undone.
The building work has begun on his library, he tells me excitedly. Huge concrete blocks, so big that trucks normally used by loggers have been commandeered to carry the load in a slow convoy through Milan, stopping the traffic for a day.
He has got a write-up in the local newspaper and pushes Corriere della Sera into my hand with the headline Il genio inglese. And a photo of him underneath, with his arm around an attractive brown-haired woman, who is looking away from the camera and up at him.
‘Who is that?’ I ask.
‘That’s Kate,’ he says. ‘She’s one of the junior architects working on the project.’
‘She’s very attractive,’ I say.
‘She’s one of Pete’s old flames,’ he says dismissively.
‘Does she go on all of your trips?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And before you ask me, the answer is no.’
Hatred for Italian bureaucracy, which meant the project had been delayed for almost two years, has been replaced by love of cheeses from the Lombardy region. He takes a large slice of Gorgonzola, a chunk of Grana Padano and a salami Milanese from his suitcase. He has even brought home a truffle wrapped up in kitchen roll, which he plans to shave on top of scrambled eggs every morning. He waves this around my nose and I make grateful noises of appreciation. He unwraps the cheeses, lines them up on the chest of drawers and shuts his eyes to sniff them with a look of ecstasy on his face.
‘They’ve been asleep,’ he says.
‘So have I,’ I say, trying not to sound grumpy.
‘They need to breathe,’ he says, pointing at the unwrapped cheese.
‘So do we,’ I say, reluctantly getting out of bed to take them downstairs.
It proves a fortuitous decision, because on the kitchen table I find a letter that arrived for me from Petra this morning. It is a short and formal note, properly punctuated, in her familiar neat handwriting. I glance over it again just to be sure that I haven’t misunderstood what she said.
Dear Lucy,
Please read this when Tom is not around and then destroy it because I know that otherwise you will leave it on the kitchen table. When I stayed with you in London just before I left for Morocco, I tidied your desk one morning and stumbled across a number of bills and notes from debt collectors indicating that you owe a substantial sum of money to various people. I hope you don’t think that I was being nosy. The money for the sale of my house has finally come through and I am enclosing a cheque, which will go some way in resolving this situation. I am settling into life in Marrakesh.
With love and affection, Petra
PS Read the book on Mrs Beeton. None of us are what we seem, but I would still recommend designating a specific day for laundry.
On the way upstairs, I stuff the letter and cheque for £10,000 in the top drawer of my desk, feeling an unusual lightness of being. This represents a reprieve. I have already started to make a list of who to pay off first, with the nice bailiff at the top.
Tom’s happiness is infectious, so when I return, I judge this to be a good moment to ask whether he would mind babysitting next week, so that I can go out to celebrate Emma’s latest promotion. I know that by the middle of the following week, some other catastrophe will have befallen his project, and his mood will dip.
‘That’s fine,’ he says. ‘Someone is coming round to interview me for a piece in the Architects’ Journal that night. Did I tell you that one of the Italian architects has invited us to go and stay in his house in Tuscany for two weeks?’
‘How fantastic,’ I say, with genuine enthusiasm. ‘No tents?’
‘No tents,’ he says. ‘A palazzo with a vineyard no less. Although I don’t think the camping provided a complete explanation for the fiasco in Norfolk.’
‘So what did then?’ I ask.
He doesn’t get a chance to respond because the phone on his bedside table starts to ring. We both eye it suspiciously, because phone calls late in the night are generally harbingers of bad news. I stretch over him to pick it up, but Tom puts his hand firmly on the receiver, waiting for it to ring exactly five times.
‘Hello,’ he says tentatively. ‘Oh, Emma, do you want to speak to Lucy? I’ll pass her over right away.’
‘She sounds a little odd,’ he whispers, his hand covering the wrong end of the handset. Tom’s benevolence towards my girlfriends does not extend to dealing with emotional crises.
‘Lucy, it’s me,’ says Emma. She isn’t crying, but her voice sounds breathless and panicky.
‘Is she ill?’ asks Tom, pulling at my arm. ‘Perhaps she is one of those high-powered women getting diseases that used to be more associated with men, like heart attack or stroke. I’ve read about it on the Internet.’
‘Where are you?’ I ask her, ignoring Tom, because even when he talks about other people’s maladies, he is still talking about himself.
‘I’m outside your house,’ she says. ‘Will you come down?’ I go over to the window, open the curtain and see her waving up at me from the driver’s seat of an old powder-blue Mercedes sports car that I haven’t seen before. This must have been a present from Guy.
I consider my last birthday present from Tom, an aromatherapy candle from a high-street store, which smelt of burnt sugar and cheap chemicals when I lit it. It represented a marginal improvement on the previous year, when he had given me a manicure set. On balance, I decide that if this is the price you pay for not having to share your husband, it is a price worth paying. Then I remember how much the quality of his recent presents has improved.
‘Can’t you come inside?’ I ask Emma.
‘No, I’ve done something awful and I have to deal with it now,’ she says, slowly and clearly to underline the seriousness of the situation. ‘Please say that you’ll help me.’
‘Whatever you’ve done, Em, it can’t be so bad,’ I say.
‘Where are you going?’ asks Tom.
‘There’s a crisis,’ I whisper to him.
‘Will you put on something dark?’ Emma says. ‘I can see that you are still wearing your pyjamas. I’ll explain everything when you come down. I’m so sorry.’
Emma is not prone to apologies. In fact, I think this is the first time t
hat she has ever said sorry to me. It is not that she doesn’t realise when she has messed up. She just never likes to admit she might be wrong about anything. She is a woman of conviction.
I open the front door into the night and, shivering with a mixture of cold and fatigue, climb into the passenger seat of her car, breathing in the warm smell of the old leather seats and admiring the wooden dashboard with its dials and walnut finish. I would really like one of these. For a moment I consider the cheque from Petra that is sitting in my drawer.
‘Are you having a Thelma and Louise moment?’ I ask her, as she starts driving down Fitzjohn’s Avenue and then heads due west towards Maida Vale, following instructions on the portable satellite navigation kit that sits on top of the dashboard.
‘We’re not going south of the river, are we?’ I ask, because I have heard of people being directed into rivers by their sat nav before.
‘No, Notting Hill,’ she says.
Emma always drives faster than me. She keeps her finger on the gear stick at all times and changes up and down to alter her speed rather than braking. In fact, since we met at Manchester in the late 1980s she has always done everything faster than the rest of the world. I can imagine her as a child, sighing with boredom when her four-year-old friends wanted to play with dolls, instead of experimenting with make-up. Then, growing frustrated as a teenager when her friends spent hours applying cheap Avon products, while she had already moved on to a more natural look that didn’t involve foundation in shades of American tan.
I have seen photos of her as a child and even back then she somehow looked more polished than the rest of us. A dedicated Londoner, she started university with all the apparent advantages that big-city life offers. While I bought from charity shops out of necessity, developing a look that could best be described as baggy, with its emphasis on ill-fitting knitted cardigans and oversize coats, she was already combining cheap period pieces with items from Miss Selfridge. She knew how to snort cocaine without sneezing and blowing away the fun for everyone else. She sang in a band. Even her parents’ divorce seemed exciting in all its plate-throwing recrimination. Emma made us all feel as though we had no experience of life. Back then, her wariness and cynicism made her seem cool rather than brittle. Aged nineteen, she was already weary of life. She was also the only person that I knew who was sure about what she wanted to do when she left university. In our last two years at Manchester she worked every weekend at a local newspaper. She knew where she was going, while the rest of us had barely opened up the map.