The A&E staff put us all in a separate children’s room with big plastic toys and shiny cube seating units that you sit on and slide straight off again, as if drunk. They take an X-ray of Lawrence’s head and pronounce him fine.
‘We’re sorry to have wasted your time,’ says Peter, making me feel somehow as though it was my idea.
‘No, no: you did the right thing,’ says the nurse. They tell us to watch out for excessive drowsiness – in the baby – and we restart our journey to my mother’s. I spend most of the journey worrying that she’ll blame me.
8 Two’s a Crowd
I get a reminder about my smear test. The Margaret Pyke Centre is near the shops: I think, I’ll make a day of it!
I waltz in, pramless, slingless and as irritatingly carefree as a girl in a san-pro ad.
‘Just before I do it,’ says the nurse, ‘we always have to check that you’re not pregnant.’
‘Well!’ I say. ‘That would be a turn up! We’re planning to have another one quite soon, but …’
‘Shall we just do a test, to make sure?’
This time when I get the news, I’m alone. At least the nurse thinks it’s funny too, so that helps. I can’t wait to see the look on Peter’s face.
‘You’re not!’
‘I bloody am. From 0 to 60 in five weeks, same as last time.’
‘Cup of tea, or something stronger?’
‘I’ll tell you one thing, Mr Super Sperm. After this one, you’re sleeping in the shed.’
‘Hey, Lawrence, guess what?’
‘You’re going to have a little brother or sister!’
He doesn’t say anything. He is, after all, six months old.
Outside I bump into my neighbour, Mira, who’s just had her second.
‘Hey! Guess what! I’m going to have another one too!’ She turns sideways and edges through her gate.
‘Well, I’ve got just one piece of advice,’ she says. ‘Enjoy life with just one while you can. Two is not one-plus-another-one: it’s a crowd.’ She makes this point a trifle over-emphatically, I think. Mind you, she only gave birth a few days ago. She’s bound to be feeling a bit jaded.
‘Two’s a crowd, eh? Ha-ha! Well, OK!’
How right she is we can’t even begin to appreciate.
We tell our friend Alison. The sibling rivalry, in her boys’ case, is currently fuelled by pubescent surges of testosterone.
‘The boys fight over everything. When I drove them to my parents’ last week,’ she says, ‘they fought all the way. Connor said: “Niall’s looking out of my window!”’ She shakes her head.
Poor woman, I think, to have such petty, unreasonable kids. Then I remember what we were like.
My life was pretty wonderful for the first three years until my sister ruined it, by being born. One moment the lovable toddler with dark curls and a nice line in chat, I was suddenly last year’s model, in grey school pinafore and boyish, too-short fringe. My ‘present from the baby’, a hand-made bridal outfit, I ruined by refusing to pose for the camera without the little white bag I had chosen as an accessory: a loop-ended sanitary towel.
As everyone gathered to praise the blue-eyed wonder, cooing, ‘Isn’t your little sister beautiful?’ I felt utterly cheated. As soon as she could pinch finger and thumb together, I gave her a box of matches. Left alone with the scissors, I cut off her hair.
We fought over everything. Friends who came to play had to wait, baffled, while we held up their glasses of lemonade and scrutinized them for minuscule differences in the levels. Slices of cake were a forensic challenge, to be examined from every angle. Was that crumb sticking out a millimetre further than on the other piece? Space in the bath was measured using the tiles along the side: five tiles each, plus half the one in the middle. To avoid water fights – and potential drownings – the little chrome bridge that we kept the soap on was placed across as a divide. Mum would put it in position, then retreat, only to have to come back a minute later because one of us had nudged it, and the other was now shoving it back. The bedroom was like Belfast. Apple cores were lobbed over the bookcase that divided our territories. At night I flicked kirby grips over, then said in a scared voice: ‘What was that?’ Whereupon Claire, petrified, would whimper: ‘I don’t know!’ If all went well, she would start crying.
By the time I had my first boyfriend, the bookcase barricade had been changed for a long, fitted desk unit we were supposed to share. As he and I looked longingly at each other, desperate to snog, Claire – now eleven – sat under the desk, reading a comic. Polite requests for her to piss off and die merely provoked the response of someone able to commit atrocities in full view of a UN Peacekeeping Force.
‘It’s my room too.’
‘Well, it is her room too,’ said Mum. We were always demanding she be fair, and now she was.
So as you can see, my life was utterly blighted. Feeble attempts to grab attention, such as publishing this book, are all part of my forty-year struggle to get back to that Eden when paradise was just me and two adults.
‘Er, a bit late to go back now,’ says Peter. ‘I mean, unless you really don’t want to have it.’
‘No, I do. It’s just that—’
‘Hey, look on the bright side.’
‘You always say that.’
‘No, really. They’ll be able to play together. They’ll amuse each other and leave us in peace!’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Look at Sam and Joe (his nephews). They never argue.’
‘They never speak.’ (This is because they’re naturally quiet, not because they hate each other.)
‘Well, look at Jessica and me: we have a great relationship.’
‘Yes, but when you were born, she was seven. She’d already had her life.’
‘He won’t remember a time without her; they’ll be best friends.’
‘They’ll practically be twins.’
‘We’ll be able to re-use all this gear.’
‘They’ll be able to wear each other’s clothes.’
‘We’ll be out of the tunnel sooner.’
‘We’ll know stuff.’
For every theory there’s a counter-theory. Anyhow, whichever way we spin it, two facts remain: we wanted a second child, and we’re having one. Bloody soon.
It’s fun spreading the news. We love the way people gasp when we tell them. Like hovercrafts floating along on huge cushions of optimism, we’re heady at the prospect of adventure.
Realizing I won’t be able to carry the pair of them, I somehow believe I can will Lawrence to start walking before Number Two arrives. But thank God we are insanely optimistic, because without insane optimism you would never do anything at all. As Orson Welles said of making Citizen Kane at twenty-six: ‘You succeed because you don’t know all the things that can go wrong.’ And – when you’re older, when you do know – he was asked, what do you do then? ‘Continue in exactly the same way.’
I book my Nuchal Fold scan and we get onto the really important thing: with our last few months of – relative – freedom, what should we do?
Looking ahead to a time when we might be a little less – flexible – than we are now, how should we make the most of this precious time? We’ve had our holiday of a lifetime already – to Tobago. But wait! In my anoraky capacity for hoarding things, I’ve never spent the Air Miles.
‘What Air Miles?’
‘That came with the video!’
‘But that was ages ago.’
‘I know! Let’s see how far they stretch!’
We get out a map.
‘Dublin.’
‘Hmm. Bit cold.’
‘Vienna.’
‘Nah. Too – Austrian.’
‘Italy. No, wait, just the north.’
‘Milan? Can we get there?’
‘Yep. But what’s in Milan?’
‘Giuseppe and Ortensia!’
‘Right, that’s it.
’
They’re old, dear friends of his. We ring them and tell them our two pieces of good luck: another baby, and Air Miles.
‘With the baby?’ says Giuseppe dryly.
‘As good as.’
We pack our bags for a long weekend. They even have – despite not being parents yet themselves – a spare cot and pram. We put Lawrence in the sling, with our special back-up feeding kit of pre-measured formula that we mix into the bottle of water only when needed. If Lawrence sleeps for several hours, which he generally does in the sling, we won’t have bottles of milk going off. This is brilliant! We’re going abroad! With our baby! And not even that much luggage! We lock up and leave the spare keys with Dave, who is painting Lawrence’s room. He’s doing it in pink. I had a pink room as a child and Lawrence-plus-whoever will be bound to love it.
As we line up to go through to Departures, we can’t help feeling a little smug.
‘We’re going to It-a-ly!’
‘La, la-la, la, laa!’
At Passport Control we hold out our passports.
‘Thank you, Sir, Madam. And where’s the other one?’
‘Other one?’
‘For the baby.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Without a valid passport, the baby cannot travel.’
‘What? But he’s supposed to be on mine!’
‘But he isn’t, is he? We forgot.’
Our passports are whisked out of sight. Two men from Special Branch appear, and lead us away.
We are ushered into an office. Politely, but without undue friendliness, they ask us who the baby is.
‘He’s ours!’ we say innocently. ‘He’s Lawrence Calman-Grimsdale.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Er …’
British Airways Flight 271 to Milan boards, and takes off. They show us several sheets of paper, stapled together. ‘We’ve got the names of 3,000 babies here, who’ve been taken out of the country without permission.’
‘It’s usually one of the parents, isn’t it?’ I say knowledgeably.
‘Yes, generally a foreign national.’
‘I know, because my dad’s girlfriend did a TV drama about it.’
I forget that we’re in police custody, and think we’re at a party.
‘Did she, madam.’
‘Look,’ said Peter. ‘We are really, really sorry about this. You clearly have more important things to do.’
‘That’s no problem, sir. We’re not in any hurry.’
‘We are really, really sorry, we truly are,’ I add. I’ve been saving those Air Miles for six years. ‘The thing is,’ one of them said finally. ‘If the airline carries a passenger illegally, they can be fined £10,000.’
‘So, understandably,’ adds the other, ‘they like to be sure.’
We wait – for what, we don’t know. Lawrence continues to sleep peacefully in the sling. We have two premeasured pots of formula and two bottles of boiled water to mix them in. But it occurs to me that if he wakes up and can be breastfed, it might help our case. On the other hand, it seems mean to wake him up. And if I don’t have enough milk yet, which is likely, they’ll definitely think he isn’t my child. I debate this with myself while we continue apologizing. Why don’t they invite us to give up our plans for the weekend and piss off home? Maybe they’re bored with terrorists and drug smugglers, and welcome the change of routine.
‘Do you have the baby’s birth certificate?’ one of them asks casually.
‘Not here, sadly. It’s in the drawer at home. HANG ON!!’ I leap up, nearly bashing Lawrence’s head on the policeman’s chin.
‘Steady on, madam.’
‘Dave the painter’s there! Peter! He can fax it!! Would you accept a fax?!’
‘Would you accept a fax?’ repeats Peter, calmly.
‘We will enquire as to whether that would be acceptable, yes.’
‘I know where it is!’
‘Calm down,’ says Peter.
‘You’re always saying I don’t know where things are. I do!’
The second detective returns – we hadn’t noticed him slipping away – and says that if a fax were to be sent, it would be considered. It’s up to British Airways, really: it’s their £10,000. They point me towards a phone (we are pre-mobile) and I ring the house.
‘Dave! How’s it going?’
‘Not bad. I’ve done all the walls and I’m just starting on the paintwork. It’s quite a strong pink. It’s for a girl, is it?’
‘No. I don’t know. Look, Dave? We’re still at the airport.’
‘You’ve not gone to Italy, then?’
‘Not yet, no. Could you – Lawrence’s birth certificate is in the dresser drawer, in the kitchen. Could you – possibly – get it, and fax it to the number I’m going to give you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why?!’
‘I’ve never used a fax.’
‘It’s terribly simple, honestly. Can you get the certificate, and I’ll tell you what to do?’
‘Er – OK.’
He finds it.
‘You see?’ I tell Peter. ‘I do know where things are.’
We gather round the machine to watch the document emerge. Luckily, that patterned pink background they use hasn’t turned it all grey; it is legible. And right at the bottom, after the Name, Place of Birth and so on, is a line in much smaller type I have never noticed before: ‘WARNING: THIS CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF THE IDENTITY OF THE PERSON PRESENTING IT.’
We look at each other and say nothing. Perhaps they won’t read the small print.
They take the fax away, and after several agonizing minutes, return.
‘You are free to travel,’ says one. ‘The fact that he has both your names has worked in your favour,’ said the other.
‘Great! Thank you! Thank you!’
‘But our flight’s gone.’
‘That’s no problem, sir. We can put you on another flight.’
‘I’m afraid we’re on Air Miles,’ I blurt out guiltily.
‘We’re going to return you to the departure lounge. If you’d like to come to the British Airways desk, they’ll give you an overnight pack.’
‘Overnight pack?!’
‘Yes. You may not be able to collect your luggage in Milan until tomorrow. It has been removed from the plane, but we’re not absolutely sure when it will travel.’
‘Oh. OK. Thanks!’ We’re only going for three days. Still, at least we are going. And I now have an excuse to buy some Italian clothes.
At the British Airways desk, we’re given a plastic bag each, containing a toothbrush, paste, comb and plain white T-shirt.
‘Hey! A free T-shirt!’ I sit down to examine my gift.
‘Would you like one with a razor?’ asks the man. I feel my leg. ‘You shouldn’t be here that long.’
‘Here are your boarding cards. You’re on Flight 275, which leaves at 15.10. You’ll hear the announcement. We’ve rung Milan and told them to expect you.’
‘Goodbye. And thank you!’
‘That’s quite all right, sir.’
‘As for coming back, well …’
‘You’ll have to show the fax again and hope for the best.’
They melt away and, as if on cue, Lawrence stirs and wakes up.
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I think they realized we were incompetent, rather than criminal.’
‘Yes, very.’
It is the week before half-term, and the plane is about a third full. We have two stewardesses each, and another offers to walk Lawrence up and down the aisle while we have our drinks.
But at Linate we find ourselves in a small, crowded office, facing an official behind a desk. We present our fax.
‘In London—’ we begin.
He slaps the fax with the back of his hand, as if trying to stun a fish.
‘London!’ He implies it’s a preposterous place where people c
ross borders with flimsy sheets of paper: not a proper city like his. He’s having none of it.
‘Oh. Well, d’you think—’ 117
‘You sit. I phone London.’
We sit. The room is filled with officials, all smoking. I’ve forgotten how much smoke one cigarette can produce. Four or five going at once and the air is opaque. Lawrence stirs again in the sling. I’ve probably built up enough milk by now for a feed, and figure if I feed him myself, they’ll surely see he’s my child and let us go. On the other hand, we could all choke to death before I even get my tits out.
‘I need to feed the baby,’ I announce boldly.
‘You go in there.’ I am ushered into a tiny side office, mercifully free of smoke. Peter remains, smiling un-nervously to show he isn’t a child abductor.
After about an hour, the official finds the line to London engaged for the umpteenth time, and drops the phone back onto the desk.
‘It’s busy. You go.’
‘What? We can leave?’
‘Yes, yes. Go.’ We scuttle away before he changes his mind. I have no idea how, since we’re about five hours late, but Giuseppe is there to meet us.
Lawrence enjoys his trip, particularly the Sunday afternoon which he spends screaming. And something wonderful happens.
‘He’s slept through the night!’
Travel seems to agree with him. We stand over the cot and gaze at him, as if he will look different.
We return from our adventure to find his room duly painted, even if it is a somewhat more Barbie-ish pink than we remember from the colour chart. We’ll probably end up with another boy: fine. When they’re old enough to have a say about the colour, they can repaint it themselves.
At about three months, just as last time, I start falling asleep twice a day, and feeling sick. But I discover a brilliant cure: food! You know that traditionally morning sickness puts you off eating. You also know that things with ginger in often make it slightly better. But – selflessly using myself as guinea pig – I have found that tiny morsels of anything alleviate it to the point where normal life can resume. The only problem is, the effect wears off rather soon. I have to eat my own weight in biscuits every day.
Confessions of a Bad Mother Page 8