The Baby Group

by Rowan Coleman

  Robert did not move. He did not even appear to breathe for several frightening moments and then he said, ‘I never wanted all this. All I wanted when we got married was you and me, but you kept banging on about how much a big family meant to you, about your dream house and your dream life. Sometimes I wonder if that is all you ever wanted me for, to dish out the sperm and the cash.’

  ‘Robert . . .’

  ‘Because,’ Robert went on, ‘if we didn’t have the kids and this house and a mortgage the size of the national debt then . . .’

  ‘Then what?’ Meg asked compulsively.

  ‘Then perhaps I’d have wife I wanted to come home to,’ Robert said, his voice hard and angry. For a few seconds longer Meg watched him, waiting for him to turn back to her, to take her in his arms and tell her he was just tired and he’d had a bad day at work and that he was really sorry, he hadn’t meant anything he had said. Instead, more than a minute passed before he sat up and roughly pulled his dressing gown on around him.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, getting out of bed. He turned the bedroom light off as he closed the door behind him.

  That was what Robert had said to her last night, or rather earlier this morning. So yes, she felt that she and James’s teddy had quite a lot in common right now.

  The doorbell went and Gripper halted her assault on Teddy to bowl up the hallway and hurl herself at the front door, barking enthusiastically at the shadow on the other side of the stained glass. Meg realised that, with much the same excitement as the dog, James would soon be out of bed and downstairs to see who had arrived. At last she got off the chair, her backside numb and her back painfully stiff as she bent to sweep the remnants of Teddy off the tiles and shove them in the bin on her way to answer the door. For one mad, wonderful moment she thought it might be Robert full of remorse and ready to apologise, but then Robert had a key so why would he ring? For a split second she thought about flowers. He might have sent her flowers. But he hadn’t been out long enough to organise a bouquet.

  She must have slept at some point during the night because she had woken late to hear the front door slam and to find her four-year-old, Hazel, leaning over her dressed in her uniform and school coat.

  ‘Daddy’s taking us to school!’ Hazel had exclaimed, so happy that she got a ten minute car ride with her father that Meg almost wanted to cry.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ she had said. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘Waiting in the car. Alex is with him. But I wanted to say bye,’ Hazel had said. She was a forthright little girl, she said what she felt and she usually did what she wanted.

  ‘Bye then, sweetie,’ Meg had said, kissing her daughter. ‘See you at home time.’

  No, it wouldn’t be flowers. If Robert could wash and dress the children and give them breakfast, a job he never usually had time for, rather than have to risk another conversation with her, then it definitely wouldn’t be flowers.

  Sure enough, James was already at the door banging his palms against it as Gripper used the little boy’s shoulders to prop herself up onto her back feet. Above the noise Meg could hear Iris’s irritated wail begin to rise and thicken, proclaiming that she was hungry and wet and generally fed up.

  Sweeping boy and dog aside, Meg opened the door.

  ‘You’re not dressed!’ Frances said, looking at her wristwatch. ‘We’re going to be really late.’

  ‘Late?’ Meg asked her. Frances tutted and bustled past her with little Henry bundled in a thickly padded snowsuit that made his arms and legs stick out at doll-like angles.

  ‘James is still in his pyjamas, and is that Iris crying?’ Frances shoved Gripper out of the way with a firm sweep of her leg. Meg followed her dumbly up the stairs and into the nursery.

  ‘Late for what?’ she managed to ask Frances as she picked up Iris and took her to the change table.

  ‘Steve’s!’ Frances exclaimed irritably. ‘It’s that baby aerobics thing and we’re supposed to be going to Steve’s place first – remember? I said that meeting more than once a week would be too much but you were all for it. And now look. We’re supposed to be there in ten minutes.’ Frances looked around the nursery as if formulating a plan of attack.

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to leave this mess for now. I’ll dress James while you see to Iris and then have a quick wash. If we motor we should only be about ten minutes late, which is just about acceptable even if you do only live over the road.’

  Meg let the tidal force of Frances’s voice wash over her and recede before she spoke.

  ‘I’m not going today,’ she said eventually.

  Frances stopped folding Babygros.

  ‘Not going?’ she asked. ‘But you have too!’

  ‘I’m coming down with something. I’m really tired. You go, send my apologies, OK?’ Meg sat down in the rocking chair and began to feed Iris, noticing how uncomfortable Frances was, being in the same room with her and her naked breast.

  ‘I can’t go if you don’t go,’ Frances said, sitting down abruptly and shifting the starfish-shaped Henry onto her knee.

  ‘Why not?’ Meg asked her. ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. They don’t like me.’

  Meg sank her head into her shoulders. The last thing she needed was to have to support Frances through another of her occasional bouts of paranoia.

  ‘Of course they like you.’ Meg forced her voice to sound friendly.

  ‘They like you,’ Frances said flatly. ‘They won’t like me going on my own without you.’

  ‘Well, don’t go then!’ Meg said edgily.

  ‘Are you saying I’m right?’ Frances asked her, her tone particularly high and thin. ‘Are you saying they don’t like me?’

  ‘You said it, not me,’ Meg replied. ‘I don’t think it at all. But in any case I’m not going today.’

  ‘There’s no need to shout at me,’ Frances said, even though Megan was sure she had not shouted.

  ‘I’m just so tired and . . .’ Meg had wanted to say sad, but she stopped herself. Frances would want to know why she was sad and she couldn’t tell Robert’s sister the truth. She’d have to make something up on the spot, and whatever it was it wouldn’t be a good enough to convince Frances that sadness was justified.

  Frances was not the kind of person to give sympathy for any minor ills or worries. You needed to have had a leg drop off on the same day your house burnt down for Frances to think you had anything to moan about. A few weeks ago Meg had dared to express sadness about breaking an old and treasured vase that had belonged to her grandmother.

  ‘Well, at least you haven’t been killed in a tsunami,’ Frances had admonished her. And she was right of course, in the scheme of things an old vase with purely sentimental value was nothing at all. But even so Meg felt she should be allowed to feel a little bit sorry for herself now and again – especially now.

  ‘OK, we won’t go,’ Frances said, setting Henry on the floor and beginning to unzip him. ‘I’ll stay and here and help you get this place straight.

  ‘No!’ Meg said with much more force than she intended.

  Frances froze and looked up at Meg.

  ‘No?’ she asked, perplexed.

  ‘Just go to the group, go to Baby Aerobics and have a good time, please,’ Meg said, knowing she sounded quite rude and feeling both appalled at and proud of herself at the same time.

  ‘Fine,’ Frances said, zipping Henry smartly up again. ‘Fine, I will go. I know when I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Frances . . .’ Meg called out without much enthusiasm as Frances flounced out of the nursery and stalked down the stairs.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t feel well . . .’ Meg tried again, but the front door had slammed shut even before she reached the end of the sentence.

  ‘Mummy?’ James’s tear-stained face appeared in the doorway. His lip trembling, he approached her, holding out something very small that glinted amber in the light. It was one of Teddy’s eyes.

  ‘Tedd
y’s gone!’ he wailed, tipping backwards and hitting the carpet with a painful thud. ‘Gripper’s killed Teddy!’

  Meg looked at her little boy lying on the floor, rigid with grief and bawling his eyes out. And she had to resist – with every ounce of her strength – the urge to lie down next to him and do the very same thing.

  Chapter Nine

  Natalie had expected Steve and Jill’s place to look more or less exactly like Meg’s, a huge sprawling Victorian mansion, only probably tidier and decorated in more of a contemporary style. She was almost right, except that it was one of three apartments that the house had been converted to in the nineties.

  Whereas Meg’s house was all quirky little rooms, pantries and parlours, Steve’s place was open-plan, polished wood flooring and flat white walls. The main living space included a stainless steel state of the art kitchen at one end and Steve’s draftsman’s table at the other.

  ‘Livework space,’ Steve said, melding the two words into one as he showed Natalie in. ‘That’s what it’s all about these days. Multi-purpose living.’

  ‘Multi-purpose living!’ Natalie replied. ‘I’m impressed. It’s hard enough to find any purpose to living at all when you’ve only had three hours’ sleep and your jeans don’t fit you any more.’

  Natalie winked at Jess, who was sitting quite gingerly on the edge of a long orange sofa with such a low back and arms that to lean on it would be to take your life into your own hands.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said to Jess. ‘You look great, not a bulge or a spare tyre to be seen. I want to be you.’ Both Jess and Natalie were surprised by how sincere she had sounded, Jess because she was convinced that she must be the least attractive adult here and Natalie because she had never wanted to be anyone but herself before in her entire existence. Even when her life was at its most difficult and unsatisfactory in her twenties, she had always rather liked being herself.

  ‘You don’t want to be me,’ Jess exclaimed with a laugh. ‘I’m a total neurotic. I had us all up in the night because I thought Jacob was wheezing. I made Lee take us to casualty! Two hours, we were waiting for. In the end the doctors said he was snoring.’ She held up her thumb and forefinger. ‘I felt about this big.’

  Jess cringed as she thought back on the events of the previous night, which since daylight had arrived seemed like one of the tangled and backwards stress dreams that she was frequently prone to these days. Except it had really happened.

  She had woken with a start and for a while she couldn’t understand why. Jacob hadn’t been crying and for once she didn’t need to visit the bathroom. And then she heard this noise, a long, thin, rattling whistle that was coming from Jacob’s cot. There was a beat of silence and then the sound came again.

  ‘Lee!’ Jess prodded her boyfriend sharply in his ribs with her elbow.

  ‘What!’ he moaned. ‘’Syour turn.’

  ‘Lee!’ Jess elbowed him again. ‘Wake up.’

  Reluctantly Lee sat up, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  ‘Listen,’ Jess said intently. She was wide awake now and every muscle in her body was braced for disaster.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Lee said groggily. ‘He sounds like a dolphin.’

  ‘He’s wheezing,’ Jess said anxiously, feeling her own chest tighten reflexively. ‘Do you remember I told you I had asthma as a kid, it was pretty bad. I had to go to hospital once.’ She gripped Lee’s forearm. ‘I think he’s having an asthma attack.’

  ‘He’s snoring,’ Lee said, flopping back down onto the bed.

  ‘He’s wheezing,’ Jess said. ‘I’m sure of it. Do you know how long a baby can go before getting brain damage if it’s not getting enough oxygen?’

  Lee sat up again, sighing heavily as he kissed goodbye to any slim chance he had of sleep that night.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked Jess resignedly.

  ‘We have to take him to A & E.’ Jess was already out of bed with the light switched on as she pulled her jeans up over her pyjama bottoms and reached for a jumper to cover her top half. Blinking in the sudden glare, Lee followed suit, and roused by the shock of electric light Jacob began to cry.

  The rest of the night was a blur of street lights and hospital smells and bad instant coffee. Jess had cried when the triage nurse had told her she would have to wait, because she was certain that her baby couldn’t wait that long to be seen. With every passing second she imagined something worse that might have caused the noise. It hadn’t helped when Lee innocently pointed out that now Jacob was awake he had stopped snoring and perhaps they could all go home?

  ‘I expect you of all people to care about what happens to our son,’ Jess admonished him tearfully.

  ‘I do care,’ Lee told her. ‘I was trying to comfort you. I mean look at him. He looks OK.’

  It was true, Jacob was now alert and sitting in his dad’s lap. He was looking around him at the busy waiting room, his eyes bright with curiosity at all the strange sights and sounds.

  ‘I don’t want you to comfort me,’ Jess told him crossly. ‘I want you to worry too.’

  And then as they had waited, the sleeping drunk who had been sitting opposite them had let out a long loud rattling snore and Jacob had laughed. It was his first genuine laugh and his little shoulders shook as a real chuckle gurgled up from his tummy.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Lee exclaimed with delight. ‘He laughed! Our little kid laughed, do it again Jakey, go on, son!’

  And sure enough as the inebriated man snored again Jacob laughed.

  ‘He can’t be that ill, can he?’ Lee said as he grinned at Jess. ‘Not if he’s laughing?’ And Jess had been unable to be worried for those few moments as she watched Jacob’s face light up with laughter. She got the feeling that as long as he was smiling everything would be all right.

  It was then that they had finally been called in to see the paediatrician. They were out again in less than fifteen minutes.

  ‘Well, it’s impossible to know for sure if he had a wheezy chest before, but I’d say probably not because it is clear now,’ the doctor said after listening to Jacob for a few minutes. ‘He hasn’t got a cold or a fever, his oxygen levels are good. I don’t think he’s had an asthma attack. Sounds like he might have been snoring.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Lee said triumphantly, belatedly realising that probably wasn’t the best response when it came to staying in Jess’s good books.

  ‘Did you have the central heating on?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Jess said anxiously. ‘But only a bit – I’m worried about it getting too hot or . . . too cold.’ She trailed off, suddenly aware of how foolish she must seem. A typical overanxious, first-time mother, wasting everybody’s time.

  ‘Central heating causes a lot of bunged-up noses,’ the doctor told her with a weary smile. ‘Which in turn causes snoring. You do have a family history of asthma so you should keep an eye on him, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about this time.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ Jess said meekly.

  ‘Ah well, better to be safe than sorry,’ the doctor replied, glancing sympathetically at Lee. ‘And try not to worry so much.’

  ‘The thing is, how are we supposed to know?’ Natalie asked Jess after she had recounted her tale. ‘How do we know what it sounds like when a baby snores? We don’t. We have no precedent. I would have done the same thing.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have,’ Jess said.

  ‘Well, no I wouldn’t,’ Natalie admitted. ‘But only because you are a proper mum who even thinks to worry about things like that. It never crosses my mind that anything is ever going to be wrong with Freddie. I sort of think he’s indestructible.’

  ‘It’s official then,’ Jess said with a weak smile. ‘I wish I were you.’

  ‘I’ve got us snacks,’ Steve said, gesturing at a table of what looked like seeds and possibly pulses. ‘I know you like cake, Natalie, but Jill’s got us on a special diet. It’ll change in about two we
eks. We’ll only be eating carbs again, or bananas. Or oily fish. She’s a big fan of diets, is Jill.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell her that you don’t want to go on the diet with her?’ Natalie suggested.

  ‘Well, I could,’ Steve said with an affectionate smile. ‘But she’s a barrister. Very hard to argue with.’

  When Frances arrived with Henry, Natalie was disappointed to see she did not have Meg, James and Iris in tow.

  ‘Where’s Meg?’ Natalie asked Frances before greeting her, which a second after she had opened her mouth she realised was probably something of a faux pas, particularly where prickly Frances was concerned.

  ‘Ill, apparently,’ Frances said as if Meg was being terribly rude by being unwell.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Natalie glanced at Jess. ‘I might go and see her later, do you want to . . .’

  ‘She doesn’t want visitors,’ Frances said, her voice taut with incredulity. ‘She told me to leave!’

  ‘Did she?’ Natalie was surprised. Telling someone to leave didn’t sound like Meg at all. The woman was patience personified and she was always putting everyone before herself. ‘She must be really ill then.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Frances said, seeming to brighten up a little.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Natalie reassured her. ‘I mean, you’re probably her closest friend. If she spoke like that to you she must be feeling awful.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Frances said, her edges seeming to soften as she considered Natalie’s comment. ‘Poor Meg. She did look awful actually . . .’

  ‘Green tea anyone?’ Steve said, producing a Japanese tea set steaming with the aromatic brew.

  Natalie wrinkled up her nose. ‘Now, Steve,’ she said. ‘I think we all know a baby group wouldn’t be a baby group without one of these.’ She plonked the now ubiquitous Jamaican ginger cake on his perspex coffee table. ‘And have you got any coffee? I don’t mind instant.’