by Fiona Gibson
I grip Ben to my chest, not caring that splodges of partially digested peach puree are sopping straight through my T-shirt. “We’ve got to go,” I cry.
“Yes, of course,” says Jonathan. He springs out of his chair, upending the black pepper dish and slapping several ten-pound notes on the table, even though we’ve had only four olives each.
Ben’s simmering cheek meets my face. I feel the back of his neck like proper mothers do. He arches backward, not wanting to be held and not wanting to be put down. As we gather up his possessions and turn to hurry along the riverfront, I hear Beth telling Matthew, “It’s all that solid food they’re stuffing into him.”
Ben times his next vomit for when he’s being carried into the flat, and splatters the floor with soupy fluid.
“How hot is he?” asks Jonathan.
“Bloody hot.”
“No, I mean how hot? With a thermometer.”
Even if we possess such an item, I wouldn’t know where to locate it.
“Bathroom cabinet,” growls Jonathan. “Little white thing in a see-through packet.”
“I can’t bear to do this,” I babble, when I return with it. Ben gulps timidly into Jonathan’s neck.
“Can’t bear to do what?”
“Put it up his bottom.”
“God, Nina, he’s not a farmyard animal. You stick it on his forehead.”
Ben huddles into Jonathan’s chest. The cries rev up again, peaking to a nerve-shattering screech that refuses to subside, even when Jonathan paces the living room and points out two dogs embarking on a lewd act on the pavement.
“Get the Calpol,” he shouts.
“Have we…?”
“Right-hand kitchen cupboard, above the spices, next to coffee filters.”
I spring to the kitchen and notice with admiration that Jonathan has arranged first-aid items—plasters, Savlon, bandage—neatly in a Tupperware container marked “Medical Supplies.” I return with a wobbling spoonful and hold it before Ben, expecting him to gulp it greedily. He flings back his head, apparently disgusted. I lurch forward to try again. Ben thrashes wildly, causing the spoon to collide with his cheek and fire sticky pink liquid onto my wrist. “Hold him down,” I instruct, pouring another spoonful. Ben yowls like a cat, kicking the spoon.
“Let’s take him for a drive,” suggests Jonathan. “That’ll calm him down.”
“He’s going to hospital.”
“Why? It’s not—”
“He’s got an infection.” That was it: an infection caused by filth and bacteria. From inhaling fag smoke in Greg’s studio. Or being close to a rank canal where rats live with their stinking diseases. I spotted something bobbing in the water and assumed it was a partially deflated football. Perhaps it was a rodent, long dead and bloated.
Or what about the studio floor that the dog had scratched and licked and done its business on? I can virtually see germs, swarming around in Ben’s belly. What terrible things will they do to him? I’ve heard about conditions caused by dog mess: blindness. Madness. Beth is always scribbling petitions to ban dogs from pavements, parks and possibly even the planet, and no wonder.
Or maybe he swallowed something. One of Mum’s kirby grips. He plucked it from her hair and ate it. She wouldn’t have noticed.
Jonathan loads Ben into the car. “It’s okay,” he soothes. “Easy, now. Easy.”
“Would he scream like this,” I gabble, “if he’s eaten something bad?”
“He hasn’t eaten anything bad.”
“Maybe he’s too little for all that mushed-up food. His intestines can’t cope.”
I feel mean for trying this tactic, attempting to deflect suspicion that our son has ingested an eyeshadow applicator or lipstick lid, now embedded in his stomach wall. What was I thinking of, bringing a baby into contact with adults whose sole function is to decide whether a side parting is very now, or very not now?
“There’s something inside him,” I announce, crying now as the car lollops over speed bumps. “They’ll have to X-ray him. How will they get it out?”
“Get what out?” shouts Jonathan.
“Whatever it is. The sharp thing. Will it come out of his bottom or will they open up his stomach?”
The lights turn red. “There’s nothing inside him, Nina. Nothing that shouldn’t be inside him.”
I picture Ben’s innards: miniature stomach, spleen and intestines quivering with the effort of expelling something hard and shiny. “I’ll go through his nappies,” I rant. “I’ll pick through them and see if it’s there, like they do with owls’ dung to find the little skulls of animals they’ve eaten.”
“Nina,” says Jonathan. “Please stop. It’s probably a virus.” Perhaps he’s right. More than four weeks have passed since the shoot. Yet that makes it potentially fatal: the object, festering slowly, already smothered in barnacles. Ben growls like an electrical appliance on the brink of going horribly wrong. When that happens you try to ignore the rumbling sounds and behave normally but you know it’s a sign that all is not well; that you’re heading for inexplicable jolts and shakes, culminating in a mini-explosion and terrible stench of burning. Then you’re calling in experts who exhale heavily and rummage in filthy canvas tool bags, saying there’s a small chance of recovery—a grain of rice-size chance—but it would have been more hopeful if only you’d called an hour earlier.
I smear tears onto my T-shirt with the back of my hand. My nose is streaming. How can Jonathan remain so grown-up and capable throughout all this? It’s only when sunlight glints on his sweaty upper lip—and we’re nudging fifty in a thirty-miles-an-hour zone—that I remember he is just an ordinary man.
7
Running a Fever
A young man with a bleeding cheek is involved in an angry exchange with the hot drinks vending machine. “Call it a cappuccino?” he shouts, clutching a brown plastic beaker which quivers dangerously.
I perch on a molded orange seat. Jonathan clutches Ben, who’s awash with snot and tears but mercifully silent.
“I said cappuccino,” says the man, slamming a flattened hand against the machine. Toffee-colored liquid slops onto his coat sleeve, which looks like it’s been run over by a tractor. “Cappuccino,” he bellows into the air before him, “allegedly involving the passing of steam through milk to create a bubbling action and make proper froth instead of this piss which is not cappuccino.” He boots the machine.
“Careful,” warns Jonathan, “you might scald yourself.”
The man stumbles round to face him. “Who are you?” he growls.
Jonathan glances at his watch.
“I said, who are you?” the man demands.
“Jonathan,” says Jonathan, fixing his gaze on a pro-breast-feeding poster. Lunchtime and not a breast in sight. A woman with a swingy bob is laughing with colleagues in a café. Her baby is tucked neatly into her top. No vast, veiny breast, no bitter nipple.
“Nice baby,” says Cappuccino Man. “Nice woman. Are you married? Have you made her decent?”
“Will we be long?” Jonathan asks the receptionist.
She is busy with a middle-aged man in a football top who’s shouting about his hamstring.
Cappuccino Man whirls coffee under my nostrils. “Have some,” he offers.
“No, thanks.”
“Not good enough for you, Miss lah-di-dah, with your boring bloody husband.”
Jonathan’s hand lands on mine. I study a poster depicting contraceptive methods: the Pill, IUD, cap, implants and injectables. Below it, a handwritten notice reads: Do Not Allow Children To Play With Vending Machine. Very Hot Liquid.
“Good job the baby looks like its mother,” grumbles Cappuccino Man, “because you know what your face is? It’s sick, mister, you in your crappy weekend clothes.”
Jonathan rubs the sleeve of his fawn-colored shirt.
“Excuse me,” I shout. “We have a young baby. This is an emergency.”
“Is it really?” says the receptionist, tapping primly on
a keyboard.
“Yes. I think he swallowed a kirby grip.”
“Did he?” says Jonathan. “Why didn’t you say that before?”
A young doctor appears, milk-faced and clearly no more than eleven years old. This child is to be trusted with the removal of an unidentified object from my son’s innards? He can’t have studied at medical school. Becoming a proper doctor takes five years at least. I wouldn’t trust him to stick on a plaster.
In the curtained cubicle Jonathan details Ben’s symptoms. Ben eyes the doctor fearfully, aware that his stomach’s about to be opened. “I’d say gastroenteritis,” says the doctor. “His temperature’s coming down now. Keep offering him cooled, boiled water.”
His voice has barely broken. He is probably a virgin. There comes a point when you start noticing that you’re in the company of a young person, which means you no longer are one. You use words like “cool” and try to befriend them by saying, “I love your…” and tail off into silence because you don’t know the name of that particular type of trouser.
“It’s the in thing,” says the doctor.
“What?” I bark.
“Gastroenteritis. We’ve had a wave of it.”
“Aren’t you going to X-ray him?” I snap.
“No need,” says the doctor. “But you were right to bring him in.”
“I want him X-rayed,” I protest.
“She’s just upset,” says Jonathan. “Let’s go.”
As we drive home I think: maybe it’s not so bad being ancient. You don’t have to hang out in damp-smelling basements, plucking at dusty snacks that too many strangers have dipped their fingers into on their way back from the urinals. This baby stuff, it’s what we’re designed for. It keeps us out of mischief. Forces us to grow up, to cook meals requiring ingredients.
Jonathan lowers Ben into the cot. It’s 8:20 p.m.
“I feel stupid,” I say.
“Don’t. You were scared. That’s natural.”
Jonathan heads for the kitchen and a vegetable mountain to be mushed with the addition of finely chopped herbs from his new windowbox. I hadn’t seen the point of filling a silvery trough with compost and scrawny plants. What was wrong with the dried stuff in jars? But within weeks leaves had bushed out and Jonathan appeared with a fistful of parsley, instructing me to sniff it.
I creep into the bedroom. Ben snores throatily. Cappuccino Man was wrong; he’s not like me. He’s not like either of us. Perhaps he really did drop out of an airplane.
Warbly voices come from the answerphone. Eliza, sounding like she’s smoked several packets of filterless cigarettes and slept with her head in a drain. “Where are you?” she rasps. “You never go out at night. Listen, there’s a pile of makeup at work that no one wants. The colors are a bit manky but I thought it might perk you up.”
Beth enquires: “Is everything okay? Shame about lunch today, but don’t worry, the manager was very good about it.”
The third message plays: “Hello, Nina? You don’t know me. I’m Lovely. Model agent. We’ve heard about your little boy from Greg Moore, the photographer. Sounds like he’d be perfect for us. Do call me.” She rattles off an assortment of numbers so I can reach her any time.
“Who’s Greg? Who’s Lovely?” Jonathan stands in the bedroom doorway, holding a bundle of leaves.
“Maybe someone to do with Eliza.”
“She wants Ben to be a model?”
I nudge his blanket into position and check his forehead: normal service restored. “No idea,” I murmur.
“You will tell her we’re not interested?”
“Of course.” My eyes grow accustomed to the dark. A cheek forms in the cot; a perfectly rounded, utterly photogenic cheek.
“It’s exploitation,” comes Jonathan’s voice. “Babies can’t agree to this kind of nonsense and give permission.”
“I know.”
“They can grow up disturbed and in therapy.”
“Yes.”
I watch Ben, overwhelmed by the beauty of him sleeping there. Unable to stop myself, I superimpose a logo above his head: Pampers, perhaps, or Cow & Gate.
“Maybe she called a wrong number,” he says.
“Yes, that’s probably it.”
I follow him into the living room where he’s staring at the phone as if expecting it to perform a somersault. “But she knew your name,” he says.
Sunday was just the start of it. Ben thrashes irritably, punctuating nights with vomit explosions and helpless crying. He kicks the bars like a bear kept in inhumane conditions and forced to perform for grown-ups. His cheeks radiate anger and hotness. The rear end assumes an equally unhappy hue. It seems a terrible design fault that babies are not born with the ability to explain, in reasonable terms, that they don’t hate you, they’re just feeling lousy.
I develop diagonal gray lines under my eyes. My pores gape like tea bag holes. Ben has taken to swiping my face with a fist as if the wretched illness is my fault. Each morning, when Jonathan heads for the office, I clamp my mouth shut so I can’t beg him to stay. One day, with Ben’s cries piercing my brain, I can think of no other way to appease his displeasure than summoning Jonathan home from work. “There’s a systems failure,” he says. “I can’t leave.”
I inform him that something similar is taking place in his own home. In less than an hour he appears with a paper bag containing more Calpol because the last lot got kicked over, plus his bleeper, which goes off several times to remind me that he should be at work, salvaging systems.
Next morning I pack the changing bag with supplies for a day in the park. The playground smells of wet metal. A dog wees against the seesaw. At least the irritable swans and bigger kids twisting the swings’ rusting chains will keep Ben occupied. But even the squeaking roundabout fails to enthrall Ben for long. His wailings attract swarms of unsolicited advice—teething powders, cold flannel on the forehead, keeping him wrapped up indoors and not out in the park, poor mite— that buzz around my ears as I hurry back to the flat, batting them off.
An elderly lady appears at my shoulder, her permed head jutting from a buttoned-up coat. “You’re the one who’s not breast-feeding,” she says.
I hurtle into the flat.
“He’s hot, that’s why he’s crying,” continues her faraway voice. “You don’t want him in woollens, not when he’s running a fever.”
I bare my teeth at her, willing her to go. She stands at the gate, glowering. “You’ll get your figure back if you breast-feed,” she adds, then continues her search for other new mothers to advise, gripping her handbag like a weapon.
I’ve stopped worrying about my body, even the apron stomach, as Beth calls it, correctable only with an operation called an apronectomy. It’s not so bad, the collapsed flap of belly. I can fold it in on itself and tuck it into my knickers. With Ben temporarily appeased after a bottle, the phone rings. I know it’s someone in an office because I can hear the happy background babble of adult voices. “Nina?” he says. “Chase here. Thought I’d check you were still in the land of the living.”
I jam the phone under my jaw. Ben starts bleating. His nappy has leaked orangy-brown onto his babygro. “How’s it going?” I ask, trying to radiate alertness.
“Great,” says Chase. “We’ve just had new figures. Just over six hundred thousand.” So he’s calling to brag about his booming circulation. The phone digs into my ear as I place Ben on the sofa and strip off the putrid nappy. “Noticed the new regular columns?” Chase asks. “Seen the last few issues?”
“Briefly,” I lie. I have encountered little in the way of reading matter since Ben’s birth. Magazines have become distant blurs of gaudy color spied briefly through the newsagent’s window. Beth lent me a novel with a pastel drawing of a beach hut on the cover. I had to reread the first chapter three times to remind myself who George was.
“I thought you’d like it,” Chase chunters on. “This new thing—My Operation—with the pictures?”
“Very brave,” I bl
uff.
“Everyone says that. I never imagined readers would get the pictures, let alone send them in—but they do. With all that going on—their bodies being delved into and God knows what—they’re making sure Auntie Myra’s there with the disposable camera.”
“Amazing,” I say, gripping Ben’s ankles with one hand while wiping vigorously with the other. His bottom glowers at me.
“The new girl, Jess, set it up,” Chase explains. “She’s in Features till you come back. Keen, but doesn’t squeeze the juice out of people like you do. When are you coming back?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “It depends on arrangements.”
“What kind of arrangements? Aren’t there nannies and nurseries for that sort of thing?”
“I haven’t looked into it yet.”
“I’ve heard,” he continues, “about these twenty-four-hour baby hotels where children go—just like they’re on holiday—and you never have to see them. Could I shove some freelance work your way?”
“Maybe,” I say, picking up Ben and supporting him on my hip. Immediately the right side of my cardigan is soaked with warm wee.
“Are you panting?” asks Chase. “You sound knackered.”
“Can I call you back?”
“Are you ill? What’s that terrible cat noise?”
“Just the baby.”
“Poor you,” he says. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back to work?”
Ben’s mood has failed to improve by the time Jonathan shows up with Constance. She perches on the sofa while he shimmies skate wings around in an outsize frying pan. His bleeper goes off twice during the short cooking time. Jonathan has been put in charge of developing a crucial computer system involving billing those who are foolish enough to subscribe to his company’s private healthcare scheme for a minimum fee of £7.95 a month (“which,” Jonathan told me, “won’t get you a splinter removed”). He has been given a generous pay rise and a team of five to manage. His boss says he needs to improve his management skills and is planning to send him, with a group of similarly lacking employees, on a training course in Bath.