by Fiona Neill
‘I know it’s hot, but you cannot walk to school wearing that. You look absurd. I’m going back to bed. I’ll get the boys up and bring them along later.’
In rebellious mood, I leave the house a couple of hours later, carrying my sponge discuses and chocolate dormice in a basket. I walk towards school feeling hot and itchy in Tom’s coat. Just outside the school gate, I spot Robert Bass locking up his bicycle, with a Cath Kidston cake tin under his arm. It is too late to avoid him.
‘Carrot cake. All organic,’ he smiles nonchalantly. ‘My speciality.’
I resolve to recall this sentence every time I think of him, because if ever there were six words designed to suppress desire, then these are them.
He is also wearing a long overcoat. I stare at his calves and notice that they are entwined in leather, in the manner of an ancient Roman.
‘What have you got on under there?’ I ask.
‘As instructed, I am wearing a short off-the-shoulder toga and leather belt,’ he smiles, gritting his teeth.
‘How short?’ I ask.
‘Well, put it this way, we could only find a child-sized sheet,’ he says, opening up the coat to show me the full, glorious effect. Robert Bass is wearing a mini-skirt to the school fete. I indulgently gaze at his legs, a little too hairy for my taste, but finely honed. In the spirit of shared humiliation, I show him my own fitted sheet with the hastily hacked hole in the middle. He visibly blanches.
‘It’s Casper the Ghost,’ he says, retreating towards the hedge to get a better view.
I am saved from further excoriation by the arrival of Isobel. She draws up beside us and her electric window winds down.
‘Comparing notes?’ she asks rhetorically. She disembarks, wearing a full-length cream number with perfectly ironed pleats and little spaghetti straps.
‘How on earth did you manage that?’ I say, genuinely impressed.
‘Issey Miyake,’ she replies.
‘I didn’t know you had a Japanese cleaner,’ says Robert Bass.
‘I got it especially,’ she informs me. It is then I realise that my priorities are wrong. Chocolate cakes are anonymous, but the dress code is highly visible.
Robert Bass and I walk in silence towards our cake stall.
‘About the party, Lucy,’ he says. ‘We need to talk.’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ I say, looking around in case someone is listening.
‘You can’t avoid me for ever,’ he says, standing behind the trestle table with his arms folded.
It is difficult to imagine a circumstance that could be more engaging than the conversation that Robert Bass is trying to engineer. But the playground falls silent as a very authentic-looking centurion guard, wearing a short white skirt, full body armour and helmet complete with visor and crest, walks towards us.
‘Hail Caesar,’ he shouts to us, waving his sword in the air. Celebrity Dad has arrived.
‘I’m here to defend your honour, Lucy,’ he whispers, as Robert Bass walks to the front of the stall and starts unpacking cakes. ‘Unless I pass out first. It’s all a bit tight. I think I have gained a little weight since I made that film. It must be the beer.’
‘Not the whisky?’ I ask.
‘Well, that too,’ he says.
‘Can everyone assume their positions,’ shouts Alpha Mum, clapping her hands.
As we stand behind the cake stall, the clouds break open and Robert Bass and I discover that, with the sun upon our backs, our sheets are rendered completely transparent.
‘Those don’t leave a lot to the imagination,’ says Celebrity Dad, looking us up and down from under his visor, his layers of skirt bobbing up and down pleasingly.
‘At least you’re wearing big pants,’ he says to Robert Bass, putting his arm around him and poking him in the stomach with his sword.
‘As long as we remain behind our stall, our dignity will be protected by the cakes. We’ll have to try and hang on to them as long as possible,’ says Robert Bass.
‘What are you all chatting about? There’s plenty to do,’ says Alpha Mum. She theatrically unfolds a tablecloth that she has personally embroidered with Roman numerals to match perfectly formed cupcakes iced with Latin inscriptions. My carefully crafted dormice suddenly look very agricultural.
‘Where are your Roman sandals, Lucy?’ she asks, staring at my wedges and handing me a plate of Roman coins. ‘Here’s the denarii, remember we want to make this as authentic as possible for the children.’
‘Well, I should have spent the night plucking songbirds and roasting dormice then,’ I say, pushing my chocolate cake to the forefront of the cake stall. She picks it up, staggers exaggeratedly and manoeuvres her cup cakes into the front line, tipping the front row over the edge of the table and on to the ground.
‘I think that’s an authentic pyrrhic victory,’ says Robert Bass, lifting my cake from danger and helping Alpha Mum to rescue her battered cupcakes.
‘Lucy, what have you got in here?’ he mutters. ‘It weighs more than me.’
Before I can reply, Alpha Mum announces that she has had a great idea and has decided to use my cake for a ‘Guess the weight of the chocolate discus’ competition.
‘But they didn’t do that in Roman times,’ I protest weakly, inwardly cursing Robert Bass.
‘Nor did they have tombolas or Bash the Dormice, but we have to make money somehow,’ she says tersely.
Robert Bass looks at me apologetically and shrugs. ‘Sorry, she’s a woman on a mission, Lucy.’
‘Perhaps Robert could run that competition instead?’ I suggest a little too eagerly.
Isobel glides across the playground, her pleats undulating gently behind her. She is carrying a spear.
‘Think Vestal Virgin,’ she says, looking Celebrity Dad straight in the eye.
‘But you’ve got four children,’ I say.
‘I think more Minerva,’ says Robert Bass. ‘Perhaps I can be your slave.’
‘Or me,’ says Celebrity Dad.
‘You need to get into the spirit of all this, Lucy,’ says Isobel forgivingly to me.
‘She has,’ says Robert Bass, pointing at my costume. ‘She’s dressed as Casper the Ghost.’ They all snort with laughter, and even I smile reluctantly. Robert Bass moves away to set up his competition and I feel calm again.
The sun comes out from behind a small cloud and I am again revealed in my full glory. Isobel stares at my groin and groans. ‘If you had used one hundred per cent Egyptian cotton sheets with a high thread count, you could have avoided all this,’ she waves her finger at me.
‘But it takes so much time to iron,’ I plead.
‘I wouldn’t know, not my department,’ she counters. ‘And, Lucy, polyester was inevitably going to make it clingy. Next time I would certainly wear a cotton sheet and possibly consider a Brazilian.’
As other parents arrive and the playground fills up, word spreads about the intimate nature of the experience on offer at the Roman cake stall. We find ourselves inundated with parents and children who start to outbid each other for chocolate discuses and dormice. An orderly queue has formed for the ‘Guess the weight of the chocolate discus’ competition.
The sun is so hot now that I am wrapped in a sweaty polyester sheath that clings unforgivingly to my body. The hastily hacked hole has frayed horribly and the neckline has moved from demure to plunging in the space of an hour. Every time I lean over to get change from the box marked ‘Denarii’ I have to hold the front of the sheet against my chest. Holding my stomach in is becoming increasingly exhausting. Handing over a cake involves two hands, and Celebrity Dad obligingly preserves my dignity by placing a hand somewhere just above my breasts.
During a lull in proceedings he looks me up and down, appraising my body with no hint of shame or apology. ‘More Venus than Minerva, I think,’ he says teasingly. ‘There’s nothing like a fulsome Roman woman to whet the appetite of a humble centurion.’
I spot Tom approaching with the three boys in tow.
‘I hear the Roman cake stall is the success story of the fete, Lucy,’ says Tom in disbelief. ‘I should have had more faith.’
He looks at Celebrity Dad.
‘That’s quite a costume,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you should try something different when we go to the Arsenal.’ The sun comes out again.
‘God, Lucy,’ says Tom. ‘You might as well be naked. Good job you’ve got a centurion guard to protect your honour.’
Then he laughs for probably a minute, head thrown back, right from the stomach.
‘I can see Mummy’s pants,’ announces Sam to anyone within earshot.
‘I’ll come back later,’ says Tom.
‘There’s nothing like children to bring you down to earth,’ says Celebrity Dad sorrowfully. ‘Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Uncertain people are dangerous people, Lucy. I’ve sacked my therapist, by the way. I’ve decided he was part of the problem.’
19
‘Fire is a good servant but a bad master’
LATER THAT SAME day, I sluggishly walk up the stairs of Emma’s private members’ club. It is one of those summer days in London, where the heat burns down from the sky and then back up from the pavement, so that you feel its full force somewhere at waist level. My clothes stick to me and part of me wishes that I had stayed at home, except we are here to celebrate Emma’s latest promotion. I climb flight after flight and it gets hotter and hotter, until finally I reach the top floor of the building. I lean against the wooden panels to catch my breath, hoping they might cool me down, but instead they are warm and sticky and leave brown marks on my white shirt.
I think longingly of Isobel’s tea dress and imagine the floaty billows of the skirt cooling me down. It occurs to me that I haven’t bought any new clothes for almost a year. It took Isobel’s housekeeper a day to separate her summer and winter clothes. My life has none of these seasonal boundaries. I am wearing the same pair of jeans I had on the last time I was here, ten months ago.
I feel so exhausted by my late-night and early-morning cake-making endeavours, that I have one of those moments I used to have when the children were babies, when, walking along the street, I would feel a sudden jolt as though someone was trying to wake me up. Was I awake or dreaming? There was no philosophical angle to this question; it was a purely physical sensation, the product of almost two years without a full night’s sleep. I consoled myself with the fact that no one has ever died from sleep deprivation, although undoubtedly it accounts for erratic behaviour. I say all this because it might explain some of what occurred later. From the outset, everything had a dreamlike quality. It’s not an excuse, just a partial explanation.
Tom offered to babysit because he felt guilty about forgetting to tell me that he was spending next week in Milan. But the offer was contingent on the children being in bed before I left the house so he could get some more work done before the trip. So between the fete and leaving home, I want to note that I accomplished the following: I simultaneously cooked spaghetti bolognese for tea and tended a knee injury that Fred sustained when Joe accidentally kicked him during a football game in the garden. Joe had persuaded Fred to be Jens Lehmann. But Fred stood in front of him stock-still when he took a shot at goal, and because Joe was wearing football boots there was blood. This was always the source of intense fascination, even for Sam, who at nine years old still hadn’t tired of the dramatic possibilities of a serious injury. ‘Is there blood?’ one of them always asked hopefully, and I could feel the frisson of excitement if the answer was affirmative, a mixture of fascination and awe. I think blood must be proof to children that they exist separately from their parents. A sign that one day the travails of life will have to be borne alone.
I then simultaneously put on a load of washing and tested Sam on his spellings; I called another mother to confirm Joe’s presence at a forthcoming birthday party and mended a shelf; and ironed the pair of damp jeans that I am now wearing, while answering Joe’s questions about sperm. His obsession over The Sound of Music has passed and he has moved onto David Attenborough wildlife programmes.
‘Mum, how big is a sperm?’ he asked.
‘Tiny,’ I said.
‘Even if you are a sperm whale?’ he asked.
‘Correct,’ I said, hoping that if I didn’t engage he would choose another moment to embark on this discussion. ‘No matter what size you are, the sperm are still tiny.’
‘Can I keep some as a pet?’ he asked.
‘They don’t really survive once they have left home,’ I told him, knowing that this fudge will sow the seeds of confusion later, but that time was simply not on my side. I was meant to meet Emma and Cathy in less than an hour.
‘Dad could give you some,’ said Sam, trying to be helpful. ‘He grows them.’
Joe looked at him suspiciously. Sam lives on the light side of life, but for Joe there will always be questions.
This would have been a good moment to embark on a rudimentary chat about the birds and the bees, but I just didn’t have time. I had an image of Joe aged sixteen, having sex with a girlfriend, getting her pregnant and then blaming me because I told him that sperm couldn’t survive in the outside world. I concluded that, on balance, there was plenty of opportunity for this discussion before then.
‘I think I’ll save up my pocket money and buy some instead,’ he said.
‘Maybe a goldfish would be better,’ I replied. ‘They have more personality. Why don’t you both have a game of Top Trumps?’
It was not what I call a babysitting-plus situation, which would have given me a night off bath time and stories, a process that takes around an hour and a half, even using short cuts. It was the kind of babysitting whereby you are exhausted by the time you leave the house. When I was reading to Joe, I felt my eyes grow heavy and it was half past eight when Tom woke me up.
‘I put Fred to bed,’ he said. ‘Hurry up, and you’ll still make it.’
I rushed out the door, mumbling thanks, but I was annoyed with him because I could count the number of times that he had babysat for me this year on one hand, while I had lost count of how many times I had put the children to bed on my own. No applause for that and yet I know that he will consider that he has accumulated points for babysitting tonight that I will never be awarded. What is it about even the most helpful men that compels them to quantify all their domestic efforts? Every minor contribution is meticulously logged, from bathing and getting breakfast, to unloading the dishwasher. They want and expect acknowledgement and plaudits. I know that I will go home to find the detritus from teatime still on the table and be expected to deal with Fred when he wakes up, as he does almost every other night.
So although the thought of an evening out with my girlfriends usually fills me with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for a teenage girl meeting a new boyfriend for the first time, tonight I wish for nothing more than an evening slumped in front of the television with a bottle of wine for company.
But when Emma and Cathy wave at me from the other side of the room, my spirits lift slightly. It has been almost two months since we last saw each other together and my last night out with Emma was memorable for all the wrong reasons. It certainly didn’t involve much small talk. I have been in a slump since I decided to abandon contact with Robert Bass. Eventually I will emerge with renewed energy, but for the moment there is a vacuum in my life.
‘Here’s to world domination,’ says Emma, handing me a glass of champagne as I sit down opposite her. ‘I’m now in charge of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.’
I gulp the champagne as though it is water and toast her success. Emma’s ability to always look outwards impresses and amazes me. She wins new territory like a colonial superpower, while I feel as though I am engaged in a constant struggle to control a tiny part of the terrain under my command. Even the laundry pile is in a constant state of rebellion.
‘I suppose it’s a bit like having three children,’ I say. ‘The eldest is relatively calm
but prone to arguments about money; the middle one always feels left out; and the toddler is stubborn and volatile.’
I sit back against the velvet sofa, pleased with my geographical relativism. ‘I do still read the newspaper, you know.’ Then the phone rings. I know, even without looking at the number, that it is Tom. If I was a region I would be Central Africa, I think to myself, out of control, heading towards civil war, and ruled by petty dictators.
‘Lucy, I can’t find any nappies,’ he says. ‘And Fred will piss everywhere if he doesn’t wear one at night.’
‘I think we might have run out. I’ll get some on the way home. You’ll have to wing it,’ I tell him, holding the phone from my ear.
‘Exactly what are you proposing?’ he asks suspiciously.
‘Well, you could use a tea towel and then put a big pair of pants on top. That will buy you a couple of hours at least,’ I say.
‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’ he says with exasperation. The phone goes dead.
‘I can’t ever imagine a situation where you fail to come up with an answer,’ says Emma, looking impressed. ‘You are so good at improvising. It’s a real skill.’
‘It goes with the territory,’ I say. ‘Three short straws and a husband on a short fuse release your inner firefighter.’
‘I can’t imagine that I will ever have three children to be able to compare notes,’ says Emma without any hint of wistfulness. ‘It’s ironic, but although I have had a steady boyfriend for the first time in years, I am further than ever from the baby question. Guy definitely wouldn’t have wanted any more.’ She pats the huge black handbag that she used to store tools during our nocturnal visit to Guy’s house in the way a pregnant woman pats her stomach. It looks full and I wonder what might be inside, considering its contents the last time we went out together.
‘Just as well, since he’s got a steady wife too,’ I say, noting her use of the pluperfect rather than the present when referring to Guy.
‘And I’ll never have any more, not if my current situation endures,’ says Cathy. ‘I think that on balance Pete would make a better father, but it wouldn’t be an auspicious start to family life.’