by Fiona Gibson
From the moment we met, I liked Chase. On my first day at Promise, I’d slipped quietly to my desk to hide behind a PC. My colleagues gossiped about celebrities I’d never heard of and snazzy restaurants I hadn’t eaten in. I felt too new, like shoes that hack holes in your ankles. Chase appeared at my desk, a hot air balloon of a man. “Let’s have a chat in my office,” he said, guiding me into his glass-partitioned cubicle. “Do you mind if I smoke? Trying to give up. I’ve been using this”—he waggled a white plastic fag substitute—“but you feel such a twerp. Might as well suck a biro.”
The glass office quickly filled with creamy clouds. “You’re doing an interview,” he’d announced. “Pigeon woman of Bethnal Green. Loony. Feeds the birds, situation out of control. Neighbors, police, court orders. But she won’t stop. Makes birdcakes from cornflakes stuck together with—I don’t know. Some kind of grease. Now toddle along and don’t forget to switch your tape recorder on.”
Now I tail Chase to his office, feeling as much of a misfit as on that first day. The buggy clanks like unwieldy farm equipment. Will he light up a fag, even though I have Ben with me? What is it Beth says about passive smoking? Might as well offer your baby a cigarette. Cut out the middleman. Chase’s words fling off in various directions: “I’d like you to take on the—I need you to come in and sort out the—” I hurry behind him, bashing the chair of an unfamiliar woman. Her nostrils flare at me.
“Bring the pram thing in,” says Chase, barging into his office. His ashtray is shaped like a miniature Australia. Two butts rest in it, one eking smoke. With difficulty, I ease the buggy into the space beside floor-to-ceiling shelves bearing box files of rival magazines. The opposite wall displays the latest Promise covers. Each depicts a model showing her teeth (Chase’s rules: big smile, bright lips, plain primary-colored top, though occasionally he’ll allow pink), almost obscured by jangling coverlines and at least seventeen exclamation marks. To boost sales, some covers bear a taped-on free gift, like a sachet of hot chocolate or packet of pansy seeds. Just looking at them triggers a headache.
“I assume you want to come back,” he says. “You can’t dawdle about forever.”
“Well, Jonathan keeps things going, money wise. I’m not in a hurry to start work.” In fact, Jonathan and I never discuss my career options. The cashpoint always spouts the required number of tenners. I have nothing of my own, of course; less than nothing, having bought that ridiculous dress and sandals.
“You’ll like what we’re doing,” continues Chase. “The whole triumph over tragedy thing’s finished. Overkill. Every damn magazine chasing the same bloody woman who stashed her husband in a lock-up garage in Bradford. These people want paying, can you believe it? Not a sweetener, a few quid here and there. I’m talking hundreds.”
I’d forgotten how quickly he talked, how fast things were outside babyworld: staff darting from screen to screen, phones bleating for attention like hungry babies, and a willowy girl with stress on her forehead hammering a keyboard (my keyboard).
“The other weeklies,” Chase rattles on, “they’re so desperate they’re making up stories. One woman who was supposed to have been married to a bigamist—picture of her at the front door with a suitcase—well, everyone knows it’s their editorial assistant. The whole thing’s set up, complete fiction. I interviewed her for a job once.”
“So what’s the new stuff you’re doing?” I ask.
“Come and see for yourself.”
I lift Ben from the buggy and check that he’s in a photogenic condition. In just six months, Promise’s entire personnel appears to have changed. No one rushes forward, demanding to hold Ben. I feel like a work experience girl about to be shown how to operate a telephone. One lapel of my jacket is streaked by some kind of oily splash. I press a hand over it as if monitoring my heartbeat.
“We want warmth, a sense of caring,” says Chase, indicating a double page spread on a screen. Two women are hugging in a nervous way. We Binned Our Cheating Love Rat reads the headline, And Now We’re Best Mates.
“And we’re bringing in a new regular page,” Chase continues. “It’s called My Secret, just a working title. An ordinary woman revealing something unexpected about her past.”
“Sounds great,” I enthuse in an abnormal voice.
“Could you take it on? One day a week. You can work here, you’ll be glad to get out of the house. Or from home if you want—I’ll get you a laptop.”
“I have a PC.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t have any child care,” I mumble.
“You could bash this out in your sleep.”
I want to say, “What sleep?” but hear my strained voice agreeing that I could fix something up, and leave the office promising to deliver the first My Secret in two weeks’ time. Of course, I’ll never find anyone. I’ve forgotten how to interview. I wonder what Chase will do with the blank page intended for my feature. What happened to star writer Nina? Can’t find her computer’s on button. Is this what childbirth does to the brain?
“I misjudged her,” Chase will sigh. “Thought she could come up with the goods.” And he’ll ask Jess, my replacement, to slam in a giant crossword to fill the empty page.
With an hour to go before Jonathan is due home, I pore over the phone directory’s Day Nursery section. Scamps, Tykes, Little Rascals. All imply that children are lovable, ruffly creatures rather than utter pains in the rear like Phoebe’s kid with his mini black taxi and fascination with gas. I call Scamps to be informed that the waiting list stretches to almost a year, and that I should have put Ben’s name down—accompanied by a sizable registration fee—when he was the size of an orange. At Tykes a panting girl wheezes, “Could you call back later? I’m manning the whole place myself.”
I’m about to try Little Rascals when the phone rings. “Well done,” says Lovely. “They want Ben.”
“Who wants him?”
“Little Squirts, the bath products ad. Next Thursday.”
“But he cried,” I protest. “He was terrible.”
“Maybe that’s what they want. It’s natural isn’t it? Babies cry. They’re not robots. Anyway, here are your details.” She bangs out an address which I write on my hand and adds, “It’s a classy job, Nina. Won’t his daddy be proud?”
12
Making Bathtime Fun
Jonathan has cut himself shaving. He’s applied a fragment of toilet paper to the nick which Ben tries to pick off during his goodbye kiss. “You’re all bloody,” I point out.
“I’m late,” he snaps. “The alarm didn’t go off. Did you tamper with it?”
“Of course I didn’t. Don’t blame me for your lateness.”
He pulls on his murky blue jacket and trousers. An office suit, designed never to be worn for fun. “It’s important, Nina, to be punctual,” he says. “Especially today. You’ll have to be up, rushing like I do, if you go back to work—when you go back to work.” He laces up glossy black shoes, erasing a chalky smear with a licked finger.
“What do you mean, when?”
“Those nursery numbers by the phone. You’re farming Ben out to strangers. We haven’t even discussed it.”
“I’m not farming him out. Chase wants me to do this little thing one day a week.”
“You’ve always said Ben needs you at home.”
Did I say that? I’m not sure I believe it. It’s more logical, when you think about it, for your child to move into a nursery with competent adults who know how to prevent choking by sweeping small mouths with a finger, and who can construct vehicles with rotating wheels from milk cartons—people who’ve made babies their job.
“Look at Beth,” Jonathan goes on. “She’s happy. Maud’s her priority. There’s no question of her being put into care.”
“Ben is my priority,” I protest. “And Beth has an au pair. Most of the time she has nothing to do.”
Jonathan checks his watch. He’s avoiding eye contact as if I’m a salesperson making him
late by forcing my dusters on him. “I don’t have time to discuss this,” he says.
“You started it.” I glimpse the scribbled address on my hand and hide it in the crook of my elbow.
“If you’re unhappy, it might be a good idea to talk about it.”
“I’m happy,” I shout, but he’s already clattered out of the front door in a flurry of serious suit with a black zipup bag containing casual clothes and his aloe vera skin conditioner. It’s only then that I remember he’s heading for Bath, to learn how to bond with his fellow men, and I won’t see him for three days. I want to run after him, say sorry and babble something about the Little Squirts ad. But he’s gone.
I’m not worried about Ben’s first, proper job. For all I care he can sit, Buddha-like, jabbing his belly button with a finger—because my child’s debut advertising shoot will also be his last. The minute he’s done his bit, sploshing in Little Squirts bubble bath (raspberry scented with skin-softening properties—as if babies are naturally lizardlike), I’ll be on the phone to Lovely, telling her I’m not happy about Ben modeling at all.
I’m not sure I even like the woman. Surely, baby model agents should find children interesting and want to hear about their developmental milestones. Yet when I told her about Ben’s new incisors stabbing right through our suede cushion cover, she said, “Really. So, if you have a pen ready, Nina, it’s Unit B, Henrietta Wharf, ten-thirty start. Don’t be late, or Marcus won’t want to use him again.”
It was that word: use. “Who’s Marcus?” I asked.
“The director. You met at the audition?” she said with exaggerated surprise, as if I should be au fait with every big shot in the advertising world. And she rang off abruptly, leaving my questions—what should I take? How do I behave in front of these important adults?—unanswered.
Life without Jonathan is formless. I stay up too late, pacing the flat in the black dress and dangerous sandals imagining myself out, after dark, as a single person. I pout at myself in the bathroom mirror; even try to chat myself up. A stark, bitter face stares back. No one calls to check how I’m faring as a lone mother. I consider joining a support group. Jonathan’s oldest friend Billy phones, but only to brag that he wound up at the end of the Northern Line and spent the night on a gravestone. “We’re getting married,” I tell him.
“Great! I’ll start planning my speech.”
I don’t tell him that Jonathan is considering asking Matthew to be his best man, even though they only met through the antenatal classes. Matthew doesn’t feel established enough to be a best anything. And Jonathan is concerned about inviting Billy at all.
The Little Squirts shoot looms constantly, clouding the space between my ears. I wake at odd times—at 5:56 a.m., worried that I’m a second late, my hand flapping for the alarm clock. It tumbles from the bedside table, knocking over Jonathan’s carafe of water with the glass stopper to prevent germs from sneaking in. When Jonathan finally calls he says I sound distant, and why am I holding the phone away from my mouth? I’m not. I speak like there’s a bubble in my throat. We ask each other questions like strangers (“How are you?” “Fine, how are you?”). He’s not enjoying the course. The team has been instructed to build a pond at a young people’s resource center. The idea is that they’ll dig together and bond as a team, only Jonathan’s been told not to bother with shovels and nip into Bath to buy cakes instead. “I’m not sure,” he says, “that I’m really a team player.”
Jonathan returns with a video of the pond work in progress. His colleagues grin at the camera, waving spades, and are splattered in mud. Jonathan stands a little away from them, looking clean. The night before the Little Squirts shoot, I’m aware of him guiding me back into bed. “You’re sleepwalking,” he says. “I found you at the wardrobe, rummaging through clothes, saying his blue fleecy jacket wouldn’t do.” I turn over my pillow and sink onto its cooler side. “Wouldn’t do for what?” he asks.
“I don’t know, just a dream.”
“Maybe you’ve got a bug. Have you been eating properly while I’ve been away? There’s hardly anything in the fridge. And your breathing doesn’t sound right.”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
He strokes my cheek. His finger feels like a spider. “Is it the wedding? It’s no big thing, Nina. Promise you’ll stop worrying.”
“Promise,” I say, hearing wind whistling through my nostrils.
Marcus’s face pokes out from a crumpled shirt flapping over jeans baggy enough to house the seven babies and children present. He appears to be wearing the clothes of a larger, more robustly proportioned species. Despite being the director, and presumably in charge of proceedings, he doesn’t talk to anyone. Certainly not the parents or children. I try to catch his eye, and give a little thank-you wave for casting Ben in the ad, but he stares crossly as if he’s spotted me tampering with his car.
From the outside, the place appeared to be one vast, windowless slab. It took me fifteen minutes, circling the building miserably, to find a way in. Inside, though, the set gleams with food-coloring brilliance. Daffodils spring from fake grass, wafted by a wind machine. Toddlers slump on a faded sofa like their spines have been removed. On a TV with the sound down, Pingu pat-pats across pretend ice.
Across the building, two unkempt males stamp on AstroTurf, flattening bumps. A circular inflatable pool is being filled by a bony-bottomed woman with a gilt chain belt slung about her hips. In the area set aside for models and their parents—all mothers except one stiff-looking dad, who is flipping huffily through the Daily Mirror—everyone lolls about casually as if their children appear in commercials every day of the week. It’s the done thing, I quickly figure out, to be utterly bored by such activities.
“We’re only here because we know Marcus,” boasts a golden-maned woman, windswept like she arrived by galloping horse. “He’s Oscar’s godfather. Oscar isn’t even with an agency. Tots and Pepperpots want to sign him up but I’m not getting into that competitive nonsense.”
“No, we don’t have the time,” says a West Indian woman, efficiently wiping her son’s rear on a padded mat and folding the soiled nappy in on itself to form a dainty parcel. “If he’s having fun, fine. But this friend of mine, her daughter did a picture for a magazine. Something about tantrums. The photographer kept them hanging about for hours in the rain, goading the little girl, even taking her favorite teddy away.”
“Like he was trying to drum up a tantrum?” frowns the golden-haired woman.
“Exactly, though he didn’t call it that. Said he needed a defining moment.”
Raven’s mother is the last to arrive. She’s sweating. Her hair is roughly bunched at the back of her head, like a shrub. “We’ll discuss it later,” she says, the child stumbling behind her, tugged along by a cuff. Lone father shuffles toward me to make sofa space for the latecomers. Raven’s mother is wearing another velvet concoction, this time in a shade of dried blood.
The dad’s toddler wants to sit with his face squashed against the telly and cries when he’s told not to. I chuck the man a sympathetic look, as is my tendency when faced with lone father and child. Mothers go to pieces over men in charge of their children. I’ve done it myself, gushing, “How on earth do you manage?” to a dad pushing his child on a swing. A man has only to change a nappy—remembering to bring Pampers and wipes!—for women to burst into spontaneous applause and pin a Champion Dad medal on his snot-smeared T-shirt. A mother, on the other hand, can endure a supermarket shop, her furious offspring snatching at tins and opening cereal boxes to nab free CD-ROMs, and no passerby remarks, “You’re doing a marvelous job.” If they notice her at all, they merely eye her gnarled ankles and remind themselves to double up on contraception (coil plus industrial-strength condoms).
The skinny-hipped woman turns off the hose and pours pink gloop into the pool. “Hi, mums—and dad,” she says, towering over us elegantly. “I’m Jackie. I’ll be looking after you today.” Lone father pays rapt attention to the strip of sunbe
d-fresh skin between her top and jeans. “Now, if you don’t mind waiting, we’re going to film with no children in the pool. The water’s warm, but we don’t want them in it for longer than they need to be.”
“Wanna paddle,” says Raven.
“There’ll be time for that,” Jackie says briskly. “Right, everyone happy?”
“Wanna go in the water,” Raven thunders. Jackie shows her teeth and stalks back to the pool. She pulls several life-size dolls from a zip-up bag. They will float on their backs, surely, or facedown (hardly the fun image Little Squirts are aiming for). But, magically, the dolls bob the right way up; empty-eyed like the toys in a horror film that come alive as midnight strikes, wobbling eerily downstairs.
“I want that doll,” says Raven.
“Look, darling, Pingu,” her mother sighs
“I want that doll with the big head.”
“It’ll be wet, darling. It’ll soak your pretty dress.” Raven’s lips curl in on themselves. Her mother rummages in a secret velvet pocket and pulls out a tube of Rolos. Raven rips apart the gold foil, sending Rolos bouncing to the concrete floor. For a moment I feel sorry for the woman in her bleak velvet with nothing to do but drag her child from audition to audition and stitch outfits from Butterick patterns. Then I realize I’m not really so different except that, three decades back, her stab at making a cross-stitched sampler was undoubtedly better than mine.
Jackie places six pairs of padded pants on the table. “If you could pop one of these on,” she says, “it’ll save any little doo-doos in the pool.”
“I don’t think it’ll fit me,” I retort.
She grimaces politely and turns to Raven’s mother. “We’ll have Raven in the pool last, on her own, in this darling pink swimsuit. Would you do that for me, Raven?” Raven hunches before Pingu, posting Rolos between her lips. She doesn’t appear to be chewing or swallowing. I wondered how many she’ll manage to stuff in before they start falling out.