Lawrence babbles, ‘Da-da-da-da’ so we ring my mother and hold out the phone, whereupon he stops. He can nearly sit up, but just when you think he’s stable, does a terrifying whiplash movement with his upper torso which sends his head flailing forward. If we put him within two miles of the coffee table, he will knock himself out, and quite possibly lose an eye. We make one concession to safety, and stash the coffee table away. We briefly consider getting cupboard clips, but the people we know who have them can never get their cupboards open easily, and anyhow, even when he does become mobile, he doesn’t pull all the plates onto the floor. Instead, he opens them and peers in rather politely, as if seeing round the house, then closes them again.
A friend with a daughter the same age invites us to one of those groups I hate, called Tick-Tock or Humpty- Dumpty. As I am still hoping to turn into the sort of person who likes – or can at least tolerate – sitting on a cold church-hall floor chanting, ‘Hickory-dickory-dock,’ we go along. Lawrence isn’t interested. He only wants to crawl across the middle of the neat baby circle and snatch the others’ maracas.
I always believed that women couldn’t be creepy, but that was before encountering people who perform for the under-fives. This one clearly has favourites, who get to be the mice while she chases them with a cardboard cleaver. The effect is clearly meant to be jolly, but she comes over to me like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Then she goes round handing out shakers and bells and so on to each child. But she misses out Lawrence. And although he’s oblivious, I gasp as though I’ve been winded. She has passed over My Child! Right, that’s it! You people who dress up as mice and pretend to run up clocks have had your chance.
Number Two swims through its Nuchal Fold scan and blood test, and somersaults through the twenty-week scan. As before, we’ve decided not to know the gender, but go for the Mystery Parcel option.
‘Actually it’s our policy not to reveal the sex,’ explains the radiographer. ‘For one thing, even at twenty weeks you can get it wrong.’
‘And some people … certain – cultures – don’t want certain sexes. For example, girls.’
‘Er, well, yes.’
As spring turns to summer, I put on the same two bits of maternity wear as the year before, a black top and bright orange skirt, so if I go into labour while I’m out, I’ll be easy to find in a crowd. At the cinema one evening, we’re greeted by friends we haven’t seen for a year.
‘Haven’t you had that baby yet? Surely it must be ready by now!’
But as Peter’s father used to say, Laughing leads to Crying.
My mother says solemnly one evening: ‘I’ve been observing Lawrence, and he doesn’t respond to music.’
‘What kind of music? Jazz? Classical? Deep House?’
‘I sang to him, and he didn’t respond. I think you should get his hearing tested. Properly.’
‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘He’s fine.’
She goes back home, and I dissolve into a puddle of worry.
‘She thinks he’s deaf! What are we going to do?!’ ‘I’m sure he isn’t.’
‘He just doesn’t respond to her.’
‘Well nor do you,’ says Peter. ‘Maybe it runs in the family. Still, isn’t he supposed to have his ears tested about now anyway?’
Lawrence is the right age, eight months, yet the invitation from the health visitor hasn’t come. To appease my mother, and because I secretly fear she might be right – a truly horrendous possibility – I ring the Audiology Department of the local NHS Trust.
A week later we are seen. After a two-hour wait, during which Lawrence gets more and more bored and restless, and I get more and more tense and anxious, we go in. The doctor is some kind of senior paediatrician, with a nurse. She tells me to sit Lawrence on my lap, and says: ‘He’s not sitting up very well, is he?’
‘He’s – well, he’s – I don’t know,’ I say weakly. I have a feeling this is not going to go well.
I am right. The nurse waves a couple of building blocks at him, while the doctor goes behind us and claps her hands. Lawrence decides he’s more interested in the blocks. Even after several goes, he shows no inclination to turn round.
‘You do realize,’ says the doctor, ‘that this child is Developmentally Delayed.’ And she writes it down. So that’s why he didn’t turn round, I realize now; he knew she was a Horrid Lady.
At that moment, however, I can’t tell you what happens because the blood drains out of my head and I start to cry. Even as I carry him to the car – my bright, bouncing, alert little boy – I know she is wrong. I’m almost more angry with myself than with her, for not telling her where to shove her pencil. And her fucking building blocks. From the moment we arrived she had a bitter, resentful look on her face. Did I resemble the woman who’d stolen her husband? The mother who’d never cuddled her? Did she just not like my face? I don’t like it myself that much, but still: a person has rights. Last week, a bit of work came in, and I rang up to try and get an alternative time. That’s it! I’m being punished for Putting My Career First. I’ve been branded. As far as she’s concerned, Lawrence is Deaf and Stupid, and I am Evil.
As soon as I get back I ring Peter, who struggles to follow my account.
‘Sh-sh-she s-s-s-said h-h-he (sob, splutter, sob).’
‘I can’t – what? You poor thing! Calm down. Of course he’s not deaf. Of course he’s not. I’ll see you tonight. Everything’ll be fine, I promise.’
How? Our child has been tested and failed. It’s on his record. So what if this woman would have sacked the staff of Colditz for being too soft. She has the final say. And worst of all, I initiated it! If I hadn’t listened to my mother, if I’d just gone to Carol the Health Visitor, who is nice, it wouldn’t have happened. I pour my heart out to Maureen, the neighbours, the plumber, the man in the Turkish supermarket and every other person I meet.
Maureen dismisses the whole thing with a gentle shake of her head. Not prone to displays of outrage, she gives me to understand that such notes are not worth the official paper they’re stamped upon. Nonetheless I spend the next week in a state of volatile gloom. How can I have another baby when things are going as badly as this?
I tell my neighbour, Mira, who’s as far away from anyone’s idea of a Bad Mother as it is possible to get. Well, I never hear her shouting.
‘Oh, mine failed that thing too,’ she says airily. ‘Lots of them do.’
‘Really?!’ I have to stop myself from crumpling at the knees and wiping my eyes on her skirt.
‘Of course! It’s totally unscientific.’
I start to feel better. Then I bump into Kath, whose son Roman is exactly Lawrence’s age.
‘It’s total bollocks,’ she says firmly.
‘Why do they do it then?’
‘Oh, it’s something to tick off in that stupid red book. Sweep it from your mind. Oh, and while you’re at it, throw out all your books.’
‘My books???!’
‘Your baby books. They’re just full of things to make you worry. A friend told me to get rid of mine, and I’ve never looked back.’
I return home with renewed purpose. Lawrence isn’t alone! Others ‘fail’ too! Intelligent ones! Ones with Better Parents than us. Ones who get into Good Schools. Ones who – hang on: if The System is relying on something so patently unscientific, as Mira puts it, how can its credibility remain unchallenged? How can we believe in It? Is it possible that we could – should – put more faith in ourselves? The thrilling – and terrifying – prospect presents itself: we might know something. We might even, at times, know more than It.
I call Betsy, the one who was able to go to the loo because we gave her a mobile to hang from her baby’s cot. He’s seven now.
‘How’re you going, Bets?’
‘Fine. I’m pregnant.’
‘Wow! So that’s – three!’
‘Four.’
‘By the way … Did yours pass their Distraction Test?’
‘Their what? I dunno. I can’t remember.’
‘What?! Really?’ God, she’s cool.
‘Oh, I’m terrible. I never fill out that stupid red book. And you know what? When the health visitor comes—’
‘What?’
‘I hide.’
‘You what?’
‘Sure! I hide behind the curtains, and the kids tell me when she’s gone.’
I put Lawrence in the playpen with his Aston Martin and get down the baby books. Into a box I put What to Expect When You’re Expecting, with its bumper load of things to worry about in each trimester, What to Expect The First Year, with its generous helping of things to fail at in each month of development, the two big, floppy breastfeeding books by Sheila Kitzinger, and the pristine Baby and Toddler Meal Planner by Annabel Karmel, a present from my mother, who fed us out of jars.
I keep only one, the Book of Child Care by Dr Hugh Jolly, as it says: ‘The “experts” should not be regarded as infallible; It is up to you to be selective about other people’s advice … Make decisions based on your own instincts.’ Keep it? I’ll bloody frame it.
9 Unfaithful to Lawrence
As I get bigger, it’s becoming much harder to pick Lawrence up, and of course there is the decision we made to live in a house composed almost entirely of stairs.
‘I’m sure by the time the second one’s born, he’ll be able to walk,’ I say to anyone who visits. Strangely, they all look sceptical. In fact, he does start – but recreationally, like people who take their car out on Sundays for a spin. He hasn’t actually got it in mind to go anywhere. And somehow I have got being able to walk confused with wanting to. I try to get him to increase his distances, to practise as much as possible before the big day, but time is not on our side. He still likes to be picked up as much as usual, and of course, to be carried up to bed. At least being eight months gone gets me out of this. Peter agrees to help me even further by not going away for work – or out at all – for the next five years.
Peter and I decide to start Lawrence on full days at Maureen’s a bit before that, so he doesn’t feel displaced by the new one. Again, I go on to Peter about how guilty I feel. And again, I am incredibly grateful for the help. In fact, without Maureen in the frame we wouldn’t have considered having the other one so soon.
On 4 November, our agreed date – to avoid Bonfire Night – Peter and I arrive at the hospital.
‘We’re really sorry,’ says a nurse. ‘Only there’s a woman in theatre, and she’s haemorrhaging, so … could you come back tomorrow? We’re awfully sorry.’
‘You mean someone’s bleeding to death in my slot? Cheek!’ We reassure her that we do not mind, and go for coffee.
‘What shall we do?’
‘We’ve got an extra day!’
‘Ooh, like free time on the meter.’
We go and see The Truman Show, which seems appropriate, as Truman is a kind of permanent baby who has never left the womb. When he does try to escape, he finds his whole world is a set.
‘It’s a great idea,’ I say. ‘If the children show signs of trying to be independent too early, we could—’
‘What, paint a sign saying “Squat” on the garden shed?’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Look, let’s just get this one born, shall we?’
We return the next day, 5 November. Baby 2 is born to the same opera duet, in the same sociable atmosphere. In an exact replay, Peter moves down to where the action is and gasps, ‘It’s a girl!’
She is called Lydia. There are no breathing problems, and she comes upstairs with me, where a friendly midwife offers me my own room.
‘You back again already?’
‘I like the view.’
‘Put your stuff in there. You get your own loo.’
‘Great! Aren’t you supposed to pay or something?’
‘They’re for twins and multiples, but we haven’t got any. You get a spare bed as well.’
‘Can I have friends to stay?’
‘Yeah, if you keep fairly quiet.’
I’ve got my own sink, as well as the loo, and a spare bed for the beer and takeaways which Peter will bring later. I unload my nappies, chocolate and magazines. From the window, I can see some of the lives I didn’t lead. Across the road is RADA, where my best friend Tilly and I went to giggle at Anton Lesser when he was a student and we were silly fourteen-year-olds. She became an actor, I didn’t. Just behind us is UCL, where my sister went to university; I didn’t. Right at the end is the building where my father lived; on his sixtieth birthday he urged us to have children. But he died two years later, and never knew that we’d listened. Now here I am: a mother of two, with a life that wasn’t on the list.
Lydia is asleep in the plastic wheely cot beside me. I listen to the distant fireworks for a while, then fall asleep. Tomorrow, Peter is bringing Lawrence.
But I’m dreading seeing him. I feel as though by having another baby, I’ve been unfaithful. I’m convinced I’ve betrayed him. Why did no one warn me about this? I lie in my nicely appointed room, gazing over the rooftops, feeling a total shit.
The next day, Peter brings him. I’m expecting a huge bollocking: ‘How could you?!’ Then I remember he can’t speak.
‘Here’s your new baby sister,’ says Peter.
He does his fourteen-month-old drunk-style toddle, holding onto the seats of chairs, over to the bed, and peers at her, an unfamiliar expression on his face. Then he puts his head very gently on her tummy.
That’s the sibling rivalry issue solved, then.
Peter would make a good mule. His look of clean-cut, unimpeachable integrity belies the fact that his Boots carrier contains two chicken jalfrezis and a large Budvar. We sit on the beds, have supper and talk.
The day we bring Lydia home, Karen the midwife comes with us to ‘help her settle in’, i.e. mitigate the shock of being a Family of Four.
‘Whatever happens,’ I say to Peter, ‘we are not getting a people mover.’ He agrees, but transport is an Issue.
At first, I wheel Lawrence in the buggy, to Maureen’s, the shops and so on, with Lydia in the sling. We have a new buggy to replace the pram – well not exactly new; Peter found it in the street. But it’s a Chicco, a good brand, and with the mould scrubbed off, looks fine. But Lydia, who’s having no trouble feeding, gets bigger. And heavier.
‘I should be pleased, I know, because the feeding’s so much easier than last time. But …’ I unwrap her and flop into a chair.
‘There’s nothing for it,’ says Peter. ‘We have to—’
‘Don’t say it!’
‘Yes! We have to get a Double Buggy.’
The double buggy, as I know from my prenatal on-street observation, is the foot-powered equivalent of the Humvee. It takes up whole pavements, forcing pedestrians to leap into the traffic. It brings out the belligerence in people. It should have its own licence.
I go round to Mira’s for a test drive. She has the forward-and-back model, designed for combined upright-toddler-and-baby-sleepage. It’s much narrower, but the baby goes behind, putting the much bigger weight at the front. Trying to get it up a kerb is like pushing a small van.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ She’s right. You need the upper-arm strength of a docker. And even then you’re still in the road, struggling, while lorries skid round you.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Well, let me know if you solve it.’
‘I probably will – by the time they’re old enough to drive.’
We revert to our habitual mode when facing a dilemma: inertia. A couple of weeks later, another neighbour appears at the door.
‘Would you like this? Only Mira said you might want one.’
‘A double McLaren! How incredibly generous! Are you sure?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I’ve gone on for as long as I can stand it.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘Cruise control?’
‘It’s actually slightly narrower than standard. So you can get into more places.’
‘Like to buy food?’
‘Providing your children aren’t too—’
‘Chubby.’
‘Well, yes. Or you have to jam them in and it’s hard to get them out. And each side does lie right back. So you can use it before six months, and one of them—’
‘Or both …’
‘Or both – can go to sleep.’
I ring Peter to share the exciting news. Luckily, I have no idea how heavy two children can be, even on wheels. Sleeping, their weight seems to double. Maybe that’s why they call it a Double Buggy.
Now my life revolves entirely around which places I can get the DB into. I can no longer go into the community garden and watch people planting their mini allotments. The only stall at the market I can reach is the one at the end, which sells batteries. The bank is up a flight of steps and has no cash machine. Helen, my friend with three, has actually had to leave her bank and join a flatter one. Months of turning up with passports and moving sixteen direct debits, all because she didn’t leave a proper gap between kids. I stand on the pavement and gaze resentfully into the Turkish supermarket which has hitherto catered to all my needs. As they only ever open one of their double doors, I am now banned. I can, however, still get into the homosexual shop that sells candlesticks, vases and throws.
‘Hi,’ says Peter. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘A set of espresso cups.’
‘…’
‘They’re really nice, though. Look at the shape.’ The next morning he gets up at seven and goes to Sainsbury’s, which is why I married him.
10 The Swingometer
Lawrence has got a word: badu. He uses it for a variety of occasions, a bit like the French use alors. We take him to Hampstead Heath to practise his walking, in a purple padded suit. From a distance he looks like an animated bilberry.
‘God, you can tell he’s a bloke.’
‘Why?’
Confessions of a Bad Mother Page 9