by Fiona Gibson
“Too small,” he says. “Ben can’t be in our room forever. We’ll need another bedroom. Two, when we have another baby.”
“We could use your study,” I say uneasily.
“For a while, maybe, when they’re little. But there’s no point in us being here. We never go out. We don’t want to. If we lived in the country we’d have everything: space, peace, bigger garden—acres to ourselves.”
I feel woozy, though that could be Constance’s gravy. It’s still there, pooling inside me. A man in paint-daubed overalls stumbles out the van. Registering his unpopularity, he spins around, jutting his neck into the passenger window of a custard yellow Beetle. As if planted by Jonathan to demonstrate the awfulness of city life, a reedy man in a fluttering suit springs out of the Beetle and slaps the face that’s raged at him.
“See?” says Jonathan. “This is no place to bring up our son.”
Finally, the traffic eases forward. Ben’s mouth wilts pathetically. Jonathan’s is clamped shut. Maybe he’s right: country life would be quieter, to the point of stillness. There’d be no road rage. We’d ease into middle age without noticing it. He’d wear cardigans with brown buttons and build a shed to hide in. I’d attend Women’s Institute meetings, go to church, even though I can’t remember any biblical stories apart from that one about the woman who turned into salt. I’d make marmalade. The kitchen would smell of oranges and sugar. Some people want that kind of life. Chase, my old boss, has a redbrick house in Surrey. Only he doesn’t live there. He just goes at weekends. He just plays there.
“Imagine,” says Jonathan, “having acres of land. Think what we could do with it.”
Acres? I think. What the hell do I want with acres?
14
Your Mobile Baby
Beth looks like she might vomit when I tell her about Operation Wilderness. “You can’t live in the country,” she says, ramming her buggy over cobbles, causing Maud’s plump cheeks to jiggle. “Trust me—I was trapped in a nasty little village until I was eighteen. Couldn’t wait to leave. Next-door neighbors never took the plastic wrapping off their sofa. That’s the kind of people you’re dealing with.”
We’re shunting the babies around a city farm. What’s the point of these places? They’re not real farms. You’re overshadowed by tower blocks and washing. Yes, there are animals, but those sheep know they’re only here to be manhandled by clumsy eight-year-olds. They don’t want to be poked or smacked. They’re so fed up with these leering faces, sucking on Chupa-Chup lollies, that they can’t even be bothered to have lambs. I have never seen a baby animal at a city farm. When we arrived, Beth spotted a smudgily-painted sign that read: Animal Nursery. Wash Hands Immediately After Stroking. She bounded into the slumped stone building, hoping to glimpse a baby bunny, but found only two hollow-cheeked girls, sharing a cigarette.
Fiona Gibson
The city farm was Beth’s idea. She felt guilty, she said, for doing so little with Maud since Rosie had come on the scene. If anything, Rosie is too efficient. Maud’s rear is wiped the instant an unsavory whiff is detected, leaving Beth waving a nappy helplessly. No wonder she has taken to filling her time with unnecessary tasks: making her own strawberry ice cream and fancy loaves with sundried tomatoes nestling inside. You can hardly move in her kitchen for gleaming white gadgets and a tangle of flexes.
The cobbled yard is populated by several ratty hens pecking nervously at discarded sweet wrappers. “We’re not moving,” I tell Beth. “It’s just a whim of Jonathan’s. Probably tied up with getting married. He’s agitated—keeps checking that I’ve booked everything. We’ve got the Fox doing the buffet. The registry office is sorted. Now he’s worried about how we’ll transport everyone from there to the Fox.”
Beth doesn’t respond. She often acts like this, hazing into a parallel universe, perhaps mulling over her next bread-making project. “Then there’s his suit,” I continue. “It came back from the tailor with one of the pockets sewn up.”
Beth points Maud’s buggy at a sheepdog curled up on the cobbles. The dog is licking a bleeding wound on its hind leg and rises unsteadily to its feet, causing Maud to squawk fearfully. “Don’t be fooled,” Beth warns. “The country looks great in the summer. Roses, clematis, honeysuckle, all growing round doors. You’re tricked into thinking—I could live here. You imagine yourself manning the tombola at fetes. It’s that tadpole thing, isn’t it?”
I blink at her.
“Tadpoles in jars. Children growing up with scuffed knees, climbing trees. But you’re trapped. Everyone’s mad in the country and you can’t get away from them. In our village, this crazy woman’s corgi died. She put it in the airing cupboard to bring it back to life.”
“Is it still there?” I ask, sensing a Promise story. Beth snorts and reties the knitted hat strings beneath Maud’s chin.
We pause at a field where a cow is batting away flies with its miserable head. “It’s just wedding nerves,” I tell the cow.
Beth leans on a splintery fence. “You okay,” she asks, “about getting married?”
The cow mooches away, displaying its moth-eaten backside. “I’m scared,” I say.
“That’s natural. But he’s right for you, isn’t he? Such a hands-on dad. You work so well together.” I want to tell her: we do, everyone’s clothed, no one goes hungry, we all have our shoes on the right feet. “You’re a team,” she says, giving me a wrong-feeling hug.
We have exhausted the farm’s possibilities. The babies flail miserably in their buggies even when shown a pond rich with frondy weeds and a solitary mallard duck. They would be happier at home, parked in front of the washing machine.
I want to leave now, to get away from this farmy stench, but Beth has brought a picnic. It’s too chilly to eat outdoors. I’d hoped to pick up chips on the way home. We find a segment of bare ground where grass might once have been and spread out Beth’s crocheted rug. “Isn’t Ben crawling yet?” asks Beth, opening pots containing couscous and a herb-laden potato salad.
“He’s not interested. I’ve tried holding a toy in front of him—that’s what Babycare says. But it feels stupid, like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. Anyway, Constance reckons Jonathan didn’t really crawl at all. He sat on the carpet till after his first birthday, then developed this bum-shuffling thing where he’d shunt along the floor, propelled by one hand.”
“Oh,” she frowns, offering Maud a slab of pita bread. “Let’s hope Ben doesn’t turn out like that.”
I must stop agreeing to these outings. Chase was right: I should get back to work. Hire a nanny. These women are trained for the job and therefore reasonably adept. The only training on offer for real mothers is witnessing photogenic children in movies who never regurgitate lunch or turn on gas rings. Even Felt Lady has a nanny now. She grew tired of taking her irritable child to the school where he’d growl his displeasure at the unfinished wall hanging. I’ll tell Jonathan I’ve run out of steam with this full-time mothering lark and go back to my old job on Promise. If Chase will have me. The first My Secret is due in three days. I have no one lined up to interview. I could interview myself: Little Ben’s dad thinks his son spends the week doing ordinary baby things—playing on the swings, visiting friends. Only Ben’s mum knows about their child’s other life. “It started as a bit of fun,” says Nina. “I knew Jonathan wouldn’t approve. Trouble is, we’re getting married in December. Maybe I’ll tell him on honeymoon, when we’re playing Kerplunk…”
“This time next week I’ll be off,” Beth announces, nibbling her pita bread.
I gawp at her. Aren’t she and Matthew getting along better now they have Rosie to shoulder the child-rearing burden? “Don’t look so shocked,” she giggles. “I’m going to Mum’s in Oxfordshire. She’s having this solid oak floor laid. Needs to pack everything away, every ornament, double-wrapped in tissue paper. She collects glass animals and makes settings for them. There’s the woodland scene and a miniature zoo. She makes hedges out of lichen.”
&nb
sp; Now I see why Beth wears a rabbit knapsack. “Won’t Maud go with you?” I ask.
Beth winces. “Can’t have her inhaling all that dust. Rosie will take care of things. It’s only for two or three days. And Matthew will be around in the evenings, of course. He’s allergic to my mother. Convinced she’s on a mission to put meat into him.” I picture an elderly lady presenting the skinny-framed Matthew with a steaming boar’s head. “It’s a game,” she continues. “Ways of putting meat into Matthew. Like her vegetable broth. He’s eating it happily until he gets to the bottom and there’s something gristly, like a knuckle. And Mum says, ‘Gosh. Can’t imagine how that got in there.’”
Ben removes a finger of pita from his mouth and places it delicately on the blanket. He parts his lips, allowing a dollop of cream-colored gloop to slip down his chin. In an attempt at recycling, he collects the mush in his fingers and happily reeats it.
Beth is clearly repulsed by my son’s picnic manners. The city farm cattle moo mournfully. Beth glances at Maud to check that she’s not picking up such dire habits. But Maud isn’t there. The knitted hat lies crumpled on the blanket with no baby face in it. Beth springs to her feet, skinny plaits bouncing. “Maud?” she cries desperately.
I jump up, covering as much ground as I can while keeping Ben within sight. As a noncrawler heading for bum-shuffling territory, it’s not as if he can go anywhere. At the peak of the developmental hierarchy, Maud could have tootled off to explore the labyrinth of walkways in the estate—or is heading for the tube to plummet head-first down the escalator. She might be on her way to Covent Garden for a shopping trip.
“The farmyard,” I shout, running back to scoop up Ben. I head for the cobbled square. Beth clatters after me, sturdy lace-ups smacking against the stones. “My daughter,” she cries, spilling into a sob. She flies into the baby animals building and emerges saying the smoking girls just stared blankly and didn’t seem to know what a baby was. She gawps at the wounded dog, as if it might know something. It yawns, showing black gums. A young woman with roughly chopped hair and a barbed wire tattoo circling her upper arm sweeps the yard, pretending to be deaf. “I’ve lost my child,” Beth shouts.
The woman leans on her brush. “What sort of age?” she says flatly.
“Seven months.”
“Oh, a baby. Can’t have gone far.”
“She’s a fast crawler,” pleads Beth. “You should see her. Amazing, really, considering her—”
“Did you leave her unattended?” enquires the woman.
“Of course not. We were having a picnic. She was right there beside me.”
“Have you thought of the pond?” says the woman.
“The pond? Oh, my…” Beth’s eyes flood instantly. And then I see it: the duck, swimming in lazy zigzags, and Maud sitting waist-high in stagnant water, examining a handful of weed which hangs in slimy strands between her fingers, like the cat’s cradle game. She looks up. Pond weed dangles from her mouth. “Silly girl!” cries Beth, teetering at the pond’s edge. “Your dress. That horrible weed’s in your hair. Get her out, Nina. You’re wearing old clothes. No—get my phone. It’s in my bag on the rug. Grab my phone and call home—tell Rosie to get down here with a fresh set of clothing and towels and some kind of strong disinfectant.”
“Shouldn’t we get her out of the pond? She’ll be freezing.”
But Maud seems to like it. She sniffs the weed in her hands and her tongue darts out to lick a deep green strand. The child looks past her mother, directly at me, and she laughs, her shoulders bobbing with the hilarity of it all. I can still hear her as I head for the rug, honking her fat little face off.
Within minutes of Rosie’s arrival, every inch of Maud has been deep-cleansed and speedily clothed. “What are these?” asks Beth.
“Dungarees,” says Rosie. “Matthew just brought them home. He says now she’s crawling, she needs more hard-wearing trousers.”
Beth frowns, looking sharply at Rosie. “He’s home already? It’s just gone three. Why isn’t he at work?”
Rosie shrugs. She examines Maud’s fingernails and delves into the bag she’s brought, extracting pink-handled nail scissors. “Bomb scare. They evacuated the building. He would have come over and helped, but thought he might get in the way.”
Beth stashes the picnic tubs in the bag and picks grass from her knees. “Bomb scare,” she says under her breath.
Rosie and I walk together, briskly pushing buggies. Beth dawdles behind, barking into her mobile: “Yep. She did. So…? Right. Really. Good. No. I’m fine.” When I look back, she grins at me, her mouth stretched into a wide sausage shape to prove how one hundred percent fine she really is.
Matthew is in the back garden, halfheartedly raking up leaves. He has a should-be-at-work look about him, doesn’t know where to put himself. Three women and two babies have burst in on him, wrecking his raking enterprise. “Wedding prep going okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I start, “though it’s becoming a bit of a—” He stalks into the house, tailed by Beth. Heads bob about in the kitchen, shouting. Rosie and I are left in charge of the children. She has them pushing toy trains along a track, shunting the vehicles intently. “You’re so good at this,” I tell her. “You always know what to do.”
“Maud’s pretty easy,” she says, “but she needs a little playmate. There aren’t many children I can invite round. Beth’s, you know—” she glances toward the kitchen when Beth is slapping about in the sink “—quite particular about people. Except you. Maybe you’d like to drop Ben round sometime. I could have him for an afternoon.”
This would be handy. The My Secret deadline is looming so close it’s breathing down my neck. “Would you?” I say. “I could do this freelance job. I’m running out of time and haven’t even found anyone to interview.”
She sits cross-legged, piecing train track together. “What kind of person are you looking for?”
“Someone with a secret. Who’s willing to share the juicy details and have their photo in Promise.”
“How exciting,” she says.
It’s not, I want to tell her; though I enjoyed Promise world once. Found it easy. I’d trawl the local papers for quirky stories and track down that woman who’d been forced to move because her neighbors had objected to the saucy mural she’d painted on her house. It was art, she said; an expression of sensuality. The neighbors called her a tart and whitewashed over it the minute her removal van had rumbled down the street.
“What sort of secret?” asks Rosie.
“Anything,” I say, desperately.
“Like being a lapdancer?”
From the kitchen window come snappy words and the banging of something; perhaps the breadmaker. I hope it’s not broken. Can’t have Maud eating bought bread.
“Would you really do it?” I say.
She nods. “I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done.”
I could kiss the lips right off that beautiful face.
As a mode of transport, the supermarket trolley wins Ben’s approval. He takes to being shunted along the aisles as if he frequently accompanies his mother to buy baking ingredients. He is pushed by Norrie, an ageless model of the Promise cover girl type, but without a hot chocolate sachet stuck to her face. She has bland fair hair and a crisp, white smile that suggests she has never drunk coffee or smoked a cigarette.
The ad is shot in a real supermarket, with extras meandering along the aisles. But it’s not real. There’s no toddler, flat on the floor, howling because he’s not allowed peelable cheese. The pretend checkout girl is unfeasibly cheerful. Marcus flashes pinched little teeth. It appears that I am the director’s new best friend. He brings me a coffee and kisses my son on the forehead. “Ben’s an absolute find,” he enthuses. “Very responsive. You rarely meet a baby who’s so relaxed in a shoot environment.”
“He’s not so bad,” I say, already blasé like those parents on the Little Squirts shoot.
Marcus breathes sour coffee at me and says, “You’re v
ery professional, Nina. I can’t thank you enough. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
We come home to an urgent message to call Lovely. As a professional, I ring her straight back. “I’m putting Ben forward for a springwater commercial,” she announces. “The idea is, a baby is cascaded with water like raindrops. He’ll have to audition to see how he copes with the water but it’s just a formality.”
“Why?” I ask stupidly.
“The director’s seen the Little Squirts ad. Ben’s just what he wants. We should have lunch, Nina. Perhaps your partner could join us. I’d like to plan Ben’s career, make sure he’s in it for the long term.”
“Let’s do that,” I say.
Rosie arrives next morning with Maud squawking excitedly from a front-loading carrier. “Sure you can manage both babies?” I ask.
“No problem.”
“Do bring him straight back if anything—”
“Get on with your work,” she says, laughing. I watch as they head for the park, then mooch around my PC, putting off the business of switching it on. Finally, I start to type:
Rosie Lyall looks like any other carefree twenty-year-old. When you see her at work, playing happily with the seven-month-old baby she looks after, you’d never guess that, until recently, she had a very different job indeed…
It doesn’t feel right, sleazing her up. “Play on the secret aspect,” Chase had urged. “The contrast between her respectable life with this poncy, middle-class family, and the dirty underworld of the lapdancing club…”
Rosie feels predatory eyes upon her lithe, young body. She is lost in a world of her own, feeling sexy and powerful…