Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  The second one is in a cavernous church hall, and is Montessori. I have a reflexive aversion to the M-word, having done time at a weird Montessori primary school. But I overcome it and take Lawrence to see the Head, who sits down with him and gets out some of the superb wooden learning aids, such as beautifully turned cylinders with lids in ascending size. She gently encourages him to line them up in order, and he clearly enjoys himself. We go away happy, and I am in the process of weighing up the long walk, versus the wonderful Head versus the slightly gloomy church building, when it burns down.

  That leaves Treetops, also in a church but a cheerier one, and only a short buggy-push away. The staff are seemingly more qualified in playing in the Wendy house than actual teaching skills. But Lawrence is two, not twelve, and I want him just to get out of the house for a few hours and have a nice time, not start his GCSEs.

  On the day he’s supposed to start there, he refuses to leave without his toy supermarket trolley. We line up to cross the road, and as I bend down to do up Lydia’s shoe I realize he isn’t holding my hand. When I look up again he is in the middle of the road with his trolley, and there is a car in front of him. It seems to have stopped, but the scene looks like a freeze-frame. When I dash out – will it rev up again and run him down? – I grab him, and the wretched trolley, but feel so sick we have to turn back. I ring Treetops and ask if he can start the next day instead, but don’t think I can ever take them out of the house again.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Peter. ‘Still, these things happen.’

  ‘No, I can’t do this. We’ll just have to move to New Zealand.’

  The next day, Lydia takes her first step.

  ‘You clever girl!’ says Peter.

  ‘Bit of a waste, as I’m never letting them out again.’

  I do take Lawrence to Treetops, hang around for the first couple of days, and drift off home for another day of jamming cars in the toy garage and watching Fireman Sam.

  Very quickly, the route to nursery becomes boring. As my interest in cars has increased under Peter’s influence, I start teaching Lawrence how to recognize them by their badges. It alleviates the monotony of passing the same takeaway, newsagent and dry cleaner’s, and will be a useful grounding should he follow the Calman tradition and go into design.

  ‘What’s the blue oval?’

  ‘Ford.’ And so on. Lions quickly become ‘Peugeots’. And within weeks he is identifying a Metro, which has no distinguishing features, and – spooky, this – a Vauxhall with no badge. But as usual, we have succumbed to Short Termism.

  ‘Lawrence, look up at the lovely pink sky!’

  ‘Vauxhall!’

  Still, to look on the bright side, Lydia is now pushing the double buggy. The time when we can rid ourselves of the beastly vehicle is in sight. As Shea, my old nanny, always says: One door closes: another door opens. You just have to make sure a child isn’t standing on the other side.

  Although Treetops doesn’t mind nappies, Katarina is encouraging us to give them up.

  ‘But nappies are so convenient, so easy!’

  ‘Yes, but he needs to learn to use the toilet.’

  I tell her about the perverse couplings with Champagne doll and the Playmobil pilot.

  ‘I’m no good at this. Honestly.’

  ‘I’ll help you, don’t worry.’

  In the end she pretty much does the whole thing. I am not shirking; I’m learning to delegate. Anyhow, the job needs someone with a combination of attributes that I don’t possess, i.e. patience and persistence. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice says: You’re going to become dependent on her. But I shove it away. After all, I’m dependent on Peter. You can’t spend your whole life avoiding anyone useful in case they leave. I mean, John Lewis used to do this wonderful mascara for £1.95, then suddenly they stopped. I pleaded with the cosmetics buyer, but eventually I got on with my life. One does. Anyhow, I’ve got more important things on my mind. Are we going to keep Lawrence at Treetops until primary school, or take the advice of someone we don’t know very well – admittedly an expert in these matters, well OK, a teacher – who’s begging us to see the local prep school? We weigh up the pros and cons.

  ‘OK: pro.’

  ‘Small classes. Plenty of sport.’

  ‘Expensive. And plenty of sport.’

  ‘Rich peer group. Might take him on good holidays.’

  ‘Rich peer group. All his friends will have their own villas in Mustique.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to be silly.’

  ‘Excuse me! Your friend John’s girls go to a school where fourteen year olds have their own cars and drivers.’

  ‘That’s a total one-off.’

  ‘No it isn’t: the chauffeurs all drive them to their second houses in Rock. You just don’t like state schools because the one you went to was full of skinheads.’

  ‘And you don’t like private schools because the one you went to was run by a nutter.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Copycat.’

  ‘Nyer!’

  Out of curiosity we phone anyway. The Head is charming.

  ‘And how old is Lawrence?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘We normally hear from people a little earlier than this’ (i.e. before conception).

  ‘Ah, well, you see, we’ve just moved. From Islington,’ I add, going for the sympathy vote.

  Mrs Adams said we should call.’

  ‘Mrs Adams! Oh, I know her work well!’

  We barely know Mrs Adams. We know her son, sort of. But she teaches the older boys, and her name clearly opens doors.

  ‘Bring him along next week.’

  The nursery department is in a rather style-free prefab, but with slides and other outdoor kit, a big grass field to play in, and flower beds. A dinner lady brings us some coffee and we look at the children’s work on the walls.

  ‘So what d’you think?’

  ‘Mmm. Good biscuits.’

  Lawrence is clutching the favourite toy he’s been asked to bring, a crane he and Peter have made out of Duplo. This is where having a child who won’t shut up comes into its own. He chats to any adult who stands still long enough, or who can’t get away. One day I leave him outside Oddbins – he stops there automatically now – and find him delivering some kind of talk to a woman in a wheelchair. I don’t know whether she’s charmed, or has just lost the will to push herself away. Anyhow, it’s just the sort of thing to get him through the selection process. The only problem is getting him to stop. The Head takes him away to talk about his crane, and when they return, he’s still babbling behind her.

  ‘He’s had a lovely time.’

  ‘Oh, good. Er, is that it?’

  ‘We’ll write to you by the end of next week.’

  ‘So what d’you think?’

  ‘The teachers are very nicely dressed,’ says Peter.

  ‘Oh, well that settles it.’

  Meanwhile we carry on at Treetops. Then I come in one day to get Lawrence, with Lydia as usual, and a small boy approaches.

  ‘Baby!’ he says. ‘Baby!’

  ‘That’s right …’ I say. He grabs her leg and starts to pull.

  ‘Baby!’

  I’m crouching with her on my lap. He pulls harder and she starts to slide off. I growl at him: ‘Get off ! ‘ He doesn’t. We tussle until I wobble backwards and we all end up on the floor.

  ‘Don’t do that, Jason,’ says one of the girls.

  Whenever I come in after this I hold Lydia up, like a rifle in a swamp. But Jason isn’t the only problem. There is also Maurice, as strong as Jason, but even more unpredictable, a sort of Charles Bronson character in shorts. He scares me.

  When I ask Lawrence: ‘How was nursery today?’ he says: ‘I don’t like Maurice.’

  ‘Did you play in the kitchen corner? Did you build a—’

  ‘I don’t like Maurice, Mummy.’

  I like
Treetops because the staff are laid-back, and you can pick your own hours. Plus they serve fruit at break-time and it’s only £20 a day. On the other hand, if your child’s too scared to go, it’s not such a bargain. Luckily, we can avoid a decision by awaiting the letter from the prep school. When it arrives with a yes, we are all relieved. We have made the right choice. Probably. We think. Definitely. Probably.

  14 Sex with Thomas the Tank Engine (& Friends)

  Sitting on the downstairs loo in our new house, I browse the pinboard. Amongst the curry menus, next to an ad from someone called Krysta offering ‘cleaning and irony’, a newspaper cutting catches my eye. It’s a cartoon I once cut out of the New Yorker, showing a sensible-looking couple sitting in armchairs.

  ‘Now the kids have grown and gone,’ says the man, ‘I thought it might be a good time for us to have sex.’

  And I realize it’s not as funny as it was before.

  I treasure the memory of sex, but it feels like too much effort – like hearing there’s free money being given away in Oxford Street, but it’s rush hour and you have to get on the tube. Anyhow, what I really fantasize about is sleep. Toddlers need at least ten hours, say the books, and I need eight. Sex? This tired, I wouldn’t cross the room for George Clooney. After several days on less than four hours a night, I change personality. It starts with wanting to kill people over parking spaces, and attacking Peter over his nose hair. Then within a fortnight I’m signing up for cults with smiley people at stations and saying we should make a move to Devon and create a sustainable community built entirely from peat. Why is sleep deprivation used by despots around the world as a torture? Because it is one. So why the fuck should we worry about sex? It’s just one more thing TO DO, one more thing on the Giant List of Life:

  Meet non-useless, non-psychopathic man.

  Have children.

  Try to restart career.

  Go to a film/play/gallery/somewhere that’s open after 6 p.m.

  Read a book that doesn’t have the words ‘Little’, ‘Hugs’ or ‘Bear’ in the title.

  Have an uninterrupted conversation.

  You see? I didn’t even intend to leave it out. And – be honest – did you notice? The trouble is, it’s so – expendable. I like it, but it’s amazing how easy it is to do without it. Wine I can’t live without. Or meat. But sex … I’ve never heard anyone on Desert Island Discs ask Sue Lawley for a vibrator.

  My mother’s generation were of the view that if anything went wrong in a marriage, it would invariably be because He wasn’t happy in bed. Which was always Her Fault. And we know the medical profession still think that way because of the speed with which they send round the thin young nurses with the contraception leaflets. Think: what do women most want after they’ve given birth? If you answered ‘Penetrative Sex’ you are either (a) a doctor, or (b) a (very stupid) man.

  This idea, that men go to pieces if they have to do without it for two minutes is bollocks. We go without chocolate – sometimes for days. And even if it isn’t bollocks, no new mother has it as her top priority. All you want is sleep. And once a man is as deprived of it as you are, he won’t remember what sex is either. He’ll either want to rest, or die.

  Nearly two years after having Lydia, we are at the epicentre of toddler-induced exhaustion. The books acknowledge that babies make you tired, but babies can be put in slings and walked about, or driven around, or knocked out with nipples. A two and a three year old just crush you with an energy that makes nuclear power look feeble. Steven Spielberg’s first film, Duel, has a man being pursued by a seemingly driverless lorry. Wherever he tries to go, it follows him, bearing down on him in a terrifying way. It’s clearly a metaphor for life with the under-fives, and in the path of it, who thinks about sex?

  The writers of books on the subject generally recommend you talk about it. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to do that. (Well, not to their man anyway.) The experts think we should all be ‘open’ about it. They love the word ‘open’, which is probably why no woman I’ve ever met takes their advice. Another word they love is ‘initiate’.

  ‘I’d like to initiate sex,’ says Peter, if he wants to creep me out. He did try to inject it with a bit more allure, once: tried the Warren Beatty tactic. At about 8.30 he rang me up and said, ‘I’m ten minutes away. Take off your pants.’ But his train got stuck outside London Bridge, so I put on my thick socks and ate a whole trifle for four.

  I’ve got a book from the eighties that advises you not to criticize while on the job – i.e. don’t say: ‘You are total crap’ while they’re actually Doing It – but wait until you’re dressed and then say: ‘I’d like to make some time to talk about sex.’ This puts me in mind of applying at some kind of desk.

  As for magazine articles, like ‘Put the spice back into your sex life’, they make me want to refuse to do it ever again. What do you mean? Pepper? And they’re very keen on lacy underwear. Well, when Ann Summers starts a section called ‘Post-Partum Party’ they’ll know there’s a demand for it.

  Still, I do miss it. Not as much as an amazing orange-flavoured bread and butter pudding I had in 1992 in Bristol, which I still think about. But quite a bit. And I’m just slightly concerned that Peter has started to refer to it with the same nostalgic fondness he used to reserve for flying boats and the Age of Steam. He hasn’t actually complained, but I think he’s relegated it to our Former Life, along with reading a whole section of the Sunday newspapers and talking without interruptions on the phone. I make a decision. I’m going to Consider His Needs. I won’t change my pants, as it were, but I will initiate. I picture him at work. I’ve always found offices quite sexy. I had sex with a guy on his desk once. Apart from a sore back because of the stapler, it was quite good. Mind you, these days the arousal threshold is lower. When your life is dominated by two year olds, just being near a man in a suit is quite thrilling. And the phrase ‘Let’s do lunch’ is practically foreplay. Right! I’m focused now. I’ll ring up and get him in the mood. Pip-pip-pip-pip (that’s me dialling).

  ‘Hi … I just thought you should know, that – I’d really like to fuck you sometime.’

  ‘Actually, can I call you back? I’m in a meeting.’

  And by the time he does get home all we want to do is eat, drink and go to sleep. That leaves early morning – the only part of the day where energy and quiet are available at the same time, except that at the moment the kids wake nearly every day at five. A few days later, however, we get our chance. It’s 6.30 and they’re still asleep.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Yeah, go on.’

  ‘What if they wake up?’

  ‘They’re very quiet.’

  ‘D’you think something’s wrong?’

  ‘We should check on them.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’ll wake them up. It did last time.’

  ‘OK, go on.’

  ‘I think I heard something.’

  ‘No, no. Hurry up, they’re fine.’

  Sex! Quick, quick, boy! An ecstasy of fumbling. I pull off the non-lacy pants and hurl them across the room. But it’s harder to throw off the guilt. I remember when my friend Claudia unplugged the baby monitor to put in a cappuccino machine. As we drank we made up headlines: ‘Tragic Tots Died So Parents Could Have Frothy Coffee.’ Some bit of me is absolutely convinced that if I let them go out of my head, even for a minute, something bad will happen. Still, I’ve got the pants off now. Fifteen minutes in, when we’ve forgotten that we even have any children:

  ‘Da-a-a-a-d-e-e-eee!!!’

  We stop dead, look guiltily at the door.

  ‘Maybe they’ll go back to sleep.’

  ‘D-A-A-A-DDE-E-E-E-EEEEE!!!’

  ‘Coming!’ Ha, bloody, ha.

  We go into their room. Lawrence is halfway over the bars of his cot with an expression of pained self-righteousness, like Jack Klugman in Twelve Angry Men. Lydia is rattling hers and shouting incoherent abuse, like the alcoholic prostitute in the
flats near where I used to live. Peter has a brainwave.

  ‘Hey, what about a video?’

  ‘Thanks, but if I can’t have sex myself, the last thing I want to see is someone else having it.’

  ‘Not you: them.’

  ‘Yes, please!!’ says Lawrence.

  ‘Minamin!’ This is Lydia’s name for Thomas the Tank Engine. I don’t know why.

  ‘Right! Where is it?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘Come on everyone! Quick!’

  A straggly procession makes its way downstairs, taking ages because Lawrence has to stop for a wee, which he’s just learned how to do, and Lydia gets halfway then has to go back for her favourite purple scarf.

  ‘Sit down, everyone. Not there!’

  Lawrence has sat on my non-removable-covered little armchair, the only one in the house I mind about, and since starting toilet training, his favourite. Peter holds up Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends, which is only fifteen minutes: not long enough. Well, not for me anyway.

  ‘Get Rescues on the Railways. That’s the longest.’

  It’s thirty-four minutes – long enough even for me. But we can’t find it. We search frantically, chucking tapes all over the place.

  ‘Don’t throw things,’ says Lawrence. ‘You’re very naughty.’

  We have three episodes of Homicide, two copies of Saving Private Ryan – why do people keep giving us that? – a selection of documentaries about penguins and other marine life and one about women’s rights in Afghanistan – a very short one, ha-ha. Rescues on the Railways remains elusive.

  ‘Hey, look: The Big Sleep!’

  ‘Great. I thought it’d gone forever.’

  ‘You said I never packed it when we moved. I did. See? And you didn’t believe me, you said—’

  ‘Wait, what’s this?’ It’s Spooks and Surprises – late period Thomas with ghost trains, crashes and explosions, with beautiful special effects. And it’s a whopping fifty-three minutes long.

  ‘I love this!’ shouts Lawrence.

  ‘Minamin!’ cries Lydia. ‘Oh, look – it’s the one with the boulder!’