Sorting Out Billy

by Jo Brand

  They got a bus fairly quickly and huddled together for emotional warmth as a series of disturbed people did their party pieces for their fellow travellers. This happened often enough for Martha to have christened it London Transport Psycho Cabaret. Always fascinating and a surefire touring success, she reckoned, but quite scary to watch as occasionally the acts picked on members of the audience, as the middle-aged drunk with a selection of last week’s dinners down his suit did now.

  ‘Here, you fucking old slag,’ he directed at Pat who, emboldened by being sandwiched between Flower and Martha, replied, ‘Yes, what can I do for you, you miserable, pissed old wanker smelling of sick?’

  Martha began to laugh and Flower did too.

  ‘Fuck you!’ shouted the drunk, shocked by the lack of terror he had engendered in this sixty-year-old woman.

  ‘It’s highly unlikely that you are going to fuck me,’ said Pat, ‘so why don’t you just fuck off?’

  Everyone on the bus began to laugh, and the drunk, betrayed by his public and heckled down by a member of the audience, shambled off at the next stop.

  ‘Mum, that was brilliant,’ said Martha.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ said Pat.

  ‘The Reverend Brian, according to what you told Junior this morning,’ said Martha. Luckily Pat didn’t understand this and continued to bask in the glory of the open spot comedy guest who has stormed the show against the odds. However, this made Flower sit up and take notice and wonder whether Martha had let something slip that she could perhaps work on.

  They reached Liverpool Street station without any further mishaps and saw Pat onto the train. Her newfound confidence had made her sort of crisp round the edges and Martha knew that her father was in for a roasting when Pat got home. She smiled to herself as the square of window containing Pat’s face shifted out of view up the platform.

  ‘Where shall we go for a drink then?’ she asked Flower. ‘Let’s head up to the Barbican, shall we?’ said Flower, who secretly loved all the street performers and winced as Martha said, ‘No stopping for those wanky jugglers though.’

  They found a wine bar with huge glass windows that looked out onto passing shoppers.

  ‘Two orange juices,’ said Flower to a barman who could have been dead a week, he moved so little and looked so pale.

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said Martha. ‘Get me a Bloody Mary.’

  ‘Do you think you ought to?’ said Flower. ‘Flippin’ heck, when did you turn into Grandma pissing Mussolini?’ said Martha. ‘If you’re not careful, I’ll ask him to make it a double and put a sweet sherry in it.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of foetal alcohol syndrome?’ said Flower.

  ‘Look,’ said Martha, ‘you have to be glugging meths from conception for that to happen, and apart from last night I’ve barely touched alcohol during this pregnancy.’

  ‘Last night?’ said Flower. ‘I thought you were in Casualty.’

  ‘I was,’ said Martha, rather pathetically.

  Flower felt confident at this point that Martha would topple.

  She did. Out it all came, squirting everywhere with no punctuation, emphasis, or emotion, but a lot of capital letters because Martha couldn’t decide whether to weep, celebrate or beg for more. Martha didn’t spare Flower any details.

  She, Sarah and Flower had never been coy about filling each other in. She only felt sorry that this session could not be shared with Sarah too.

  ‘Oh Martha, I can’t believe it. What happens when Sarah finds out?’

  ‘She won’t,’ said Martha.

  ‘Yes she will,’ said Flower. ‘You told me almost immediately. You’ll crack within days.’

  Martha knew she was right.

  ‘And Billy’s a violent man,’ said Flower accusingly.

  ‘Not with me he wasn’t,’ said Martha.

  Flower realised she had been reduced to an ‘Oh Martha,’ machine as each new comment of Martha’s brought out another sigh of despair.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Martha, ‘I might kill him. I nearly did before I slept with him, you know’

  ‘Oh Martha,’ Flower said automatically, then added, ‘That is bullshit.’

  ‘Honestly, Flower, it’s not,’ said Martha. ‘These hormones flooding round your system make you want to do so many weird things. If I hadn’t been so desperate for a fuck I’d never have jumped Billy.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Junior have done,’ asked Flower, adding, ‘if you were desperate?’

  ‘What — and be had up before the beak for underage sex?’ said Martha. ‘No, ta.’ Then she stopped talking for a while and just stared.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Flower.

  Martha wasn’t. She felt warm all round her thigh area and realised that her waters were breaking. It seemed, for a second, like a big warm sea swirling round her and she stood up helplessly as she tried to work out how much of what felt like a tributary had flowed down the main gangway of the wine bar.

  There was quite a lot.

  Flower saw it and thought Martha had wet herself, and much to her shame was logging it away in the area of her brain that memorised things her friends did which could be worked into a comedy routine.

  The half-dead barman, bearing something enormous on a plate that Martha had ordered, stepped unsuspectingly onto the skidpan created by her amniotic fluids and slid almost gracefully towards the bar before he fell, bruising his coccyx very badly in the process.

  ‘Quick, call an ambulance!’ shouted Flower and the sleepy bar sprang into life.

  Within minutes an ambulance sped up and two paramedics scooped up the beleaguered barman, leaving Flower and Martha to run along behind protesting that they needed an ambulance too.

  The staff at the local Accident and Emergency weren’t particularly impressed by Martha and seemed far more keen to move the half-dead barman into a cubicle for treatment. To Martha it was the most momentous time of her life, whereas to the A and E staff, another cursory welcome into the world of a squealing mass of redness was about as dull as it got.

  ‘But my water has burst,’ shouted Martha at the disappearing arse of a very officious, obviously sexually frustrated and childless staff nurse.

  She turned and said, ‘Its waters have broken actually, and I suggest you just go home and wait for the contractions.’

  Martha, who had based her knowledge of pregnancy and birth on Hollywood films and adverts rather than actual textbooks, which she kept meaning to get round to reading, but just hadn’t, turned dejectedly to Flower and suggested they went home.

  Flower nodded and got her special emergency tenner out from her mobile phone case to pay for a cab as she felt the situation demanded it. Her phone had been turned off in the hospital and when she turned it back on, it rang immediately telling her she had six new messages, all from Charlie, of course, the next more urgent and louder than the one before and seeming to convey that some injury had occurred during the demo and that he was off to get some treatment.

  So while the cab driver gave Martha a rundown on the births of his six children, Flower called Charlie.

  ‘Shit,’ he said in reply to her enquiry about how he was, followed by his description of the trajectory of the policeman’s boot.

  ‘So just how far up your arse did it go?’ enquired Flower, oblivious to the fact that the cab driver, a confirmed homophobic, was getting completely the wrong idea.

  Martha gave her a look after which point she became barely audible at the other end of the phone and Charlie assumed she was in a bad reception area and hung up.

  Contractions started even before the cab had reached its destination and Martha wondered whether they should turn right round again and head for the hospital but Flower vaguely remembered that you should wait for a few hours, until as she put it rather unscientifically. ‘They’re really fucking killing you,’ before you ventured off to hospital.

  ‘Should you go and minister to poor Charlie?’ said Martha, silently praying, an odd thing for
the wayward daughter of a vicar to do, that Flower would stay with her.

  Flower was so used by now to Charlie’s encounters with the constabulary and his resulting injuries that she promised she would stay for the day and keep an eye and then accompany Martha into hospital.

  So what do you do on a day when your Lump is about to become a real baby?

  Martha felt she should do something dramatic and memorable. Flower suggested in that case she might want to have a stab at cleaning her bedroom, and strangely enough, as is often noted with the late stage of pregnancy, a nesting instinct overtook Martha and she swooped into her bedroom and began a major clear-up of evidence from her liaison the night before, coupled with the removal of grime of months. After several hours and increasing pain, she had created quite a nice little haven for her and Lump to exist in for the first few weeks of Lump’s life.

  By early evening the frequency of contractions had increased enough for Martha to ring the hospital, having glanced at her book of what to do if you’re having a baby, and tell them she thought labour was imminent.

  The hospital agreed and Martha asked when the ambulance would arrive. There was a hollow laugh on the end of the phone echoed by Martha when she realised she would have to get there under her own steam. A scrabble of immense proportions round the flat produced only one pound seventy pence and of course Flower had spent her emergency tenner on the cab home from the previous encounter at A and E.

  Martha was bereft and in pain. ‘Oh fuck, what are we going to do, Flower?’ she said.

  ‘We could get a cab one pound and seventy pence worth of the way and then hitch,’ said Flower, knowing as soon as the words had come out of her mouth how stupid they sounded.

  Martha chose to completely ignore her statement. ‘Who do we know with a car?’ she said.

  ‘Billy?’ ventured Flower.

  ‘Oh I can’t,’ said Martha. ‘If Sarah turns up, I won’t be able to keep quiet.’

  This sentence was interrupted by a loud screaming response to the pain shooting through her pelvic region, leading to Junior on the other side of the wall speculating that Pat was at it again.

  ‘Well, what about Ted?’ suggested Flower.

  ‘Oh, you are coming up with a lot of good suggestions,’ said Martha, through clenched teeth. ‘Let’s get my dad along and really have a good time or maybe anyone else I’ve fucked that I totally regret who has a car and might be able to take us to the hospital in that sort of hideous tortured silence only the memory of a mistaken sexual encounter can produce.’

  ‘Well, there was that one that gave you warts,’ said Flower.

  ‘Ah yes, Henry,’ said Martha. ‘Yes, he’s got a very nice motor — go on, call him.’

  Flower looked aghast and should have been because Martha had reached the stage where the whole experience had resulted in her truly losing her marbles and she would have been prepared to do anything.

  . ‘I don’t know Henry’s number,’ said Flower lamely, at which point Martha began to sob.

  ‘I am not going on the fucking bus,’ she said with a snot accompaniment.

  Junior, hearing the commotion, appeared round the balcony. ‘What’s occurring?’ he said.

  ‘The fucking baby’s fucking coming and I fucking haven’t got any fucking money for a fucking cab or I fucking can’t think of a fucking way to fucking get there and I’ve flicking had enough and I don’t want to give fucking birth in this fucking rathole,’ said Martha succinctly.

  ‘Man,’ said Junior, ‘I didn’t think you were supposed to swear that much until the thing was actually, like, coming out.’ Then an image of that very thing happening made him feel so queasy he had to sit down.

  ‘Just do something, Junior!’ screamed Flower, getting carried away with the momentum of it all and putting too much pressure on an emotionally under-developed fourteen year old.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute.’

  Then Junior went out and nicked a BMW, something he was very accomplished at, and drove it back to the flats, beeping incessantly until Flower looked over the balcony to see him gesticulating wildly twelve floors below and signalling to them to come down.

  ‘Where’s your bag?’ said Flower.

  ‘There,’ said Martha, pointing at her very grubby handbag.

  ‘No, silly,’ said Flower. ‘Your bag that you have packed ready for the hospital with all the stuff for the baby and your nightie and that.’

  ‘Oh, give us a fucking break,’ said Martha. ‘Who do you think I am? Bleedin’ Mrs Beeton? Of course I haven’t got a bag packed. There’s more interesting things to do in life you know than sit in my room deciding which nightie’s going to look most attractive with placenta splatted all over it.’

  ‘Jesus, Martha,’ said Flower and ran madly around like a recently decapitated chicken throwing a selection of totally inappropriate things into a supermarket carrier bag.

  Junior beeped very loudly. He could see a police car patrolling through the estate and thought it was not a good idea to get arrested now.

  ‘Right, let’s move,’ said Flower.

  Martha lay on the floor and wailed, ‘I don’t want Lump to come out! What the hell am I going to do? I’ve got no money, no permanent job, oh my God I can’t cope.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ said Flower in the manner of a brusque psychiatric nurse, because she found herself ever so slightly irritable now and was surprised that, as a hippy social worker, she couldn’t disguise it properly.

  Martha sensed the change in her tone and decided to get a grip. She stood, grabbed the carrier bag, found her keys and ushered Flower out of the flat.

  Into her mobile phone, Flower was saying, ‘Yes, actually having it — well, not literally, Charlie, there’s nothing poking out yet, but we’ve got to get to the hospital. In Junior’s car. No, Charlie, I categorically do not fancy Junior, never have, never will. I’ll call you later when I have some news.’

  Junior virtually catapulted Martha headfirst into the back of the car and Flower had to run alongside and jump in, he took off so quickly.

  There was no sign of the police now but the traffic was terrible and their progress slow. Junior was caught between being a fourteen-year-old black kid who had just stolen a BMW and the risks that engendered if they were spotted, and wanting to get Martha to the hospital as quickly as possible because she was making such an awful noise and he knew he would throw up if he saw blood or vomit. Besides, he couldn’t hear the radio.

  ‘How are you going to pay the congestion charge?’ enquired Flower.

  ‘What?’ screeched Junior, who was now unfettered by caution and doing fifty-five down a bus lane.

  ‘Well, I think we’ve entered the area,’ said Flower.

  ‘I’ll enter your fucking area,’ said Martha, clutching the Lump. ‘Bloody congestion charge when I’m about to split open.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Flower. ‘Only trying to help.’

  Junior’s mobile phone rang. It was his mum who was the only individual who prevented him being able to see himself as a local gangster. Flower could hear him being given a hard time.

  ‘Mum, I gotta go,’ he protested. ‘I’m on business.’

  ‘Don’t you hang up on—’

  He did.

  Their arrival at the hospital was a chaotic affair, Junior having driven the wrong way into the Casualty Department and blocked an ambulance containing a seriously ill man. Had Junior not decided to get into a verbal abuse session with the two ambulance men about the moral rightness of his case, they would all have got inside a lot quicker.

  Eventually though, Martha gratefully felt herself being slung into a wheelchair and closed her eyes as she was wheeled down a series of corridors. A whiff of cigarette smoke struck her nose and she realised she was dying for a fag. She opened her eyes to see the big pasty face of Mr Cancer only a few inches away from hers.

  ‘Give us a puff,’ she said and grabbed his cigarette, adding, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ to Junior who race
d her off down the corridor with Martha puffing like a fat train until they reached the labour ward.

  Junior was left like a dumped bridegroom at the door of the labour ward as Flower explained that he was not the father, while a stern midwife thought to herself that she didn’t believe a word of it and women of Martha’s age would have sex with absolutely anyone to get a baby. Alternatively, she might be a lesbian who had resorted to a turkey baster with her girlfriend — the vulture in a dress, she thought to herself.

  The next twelve hours were a total surprise to Martha, consisting as they did of many things that were entirely unexpected. There was pain, sure enough, and she was well aware that might be the case. However, solutions to the pain were not as satisfactory as she had been led to believe by her sister and some friends. Having attempted gas and air and finding it about as effective as a paracetamol for a mastectomy, she moved on to pethidine (rubbish) and an epidural which worked brilliantly on one side and not on the other.

  Flower turned into a blurry face that occasionally loomed up in front of her looking concerned and she followed instructions as if she was sleepwalking. She breathed when told to breathe, panted when told to pant and pushed when told to push and at 3.30 in the morning a great big bugger of a baby boy covered in blood and goo exited from her vagina and began to scream the place down. Stern midwife’s features softened, Flower cried and Martha let out a noise which was a mixture of extreme joy, hunger, sadness, exhaustion and amusement and then she slept.

  Some hours later a noise woke her and she looked up to see a line of people including Flower and Charlie, the Rev Brian and Pat, Sarah plus black eye and Billy, and Greasy Ted, the bugger’s dad.

  Martha wasn’t sure who to start on first. They made her think of skittles in a bowling alley waiting for her to knock them down, in which case, inevitably. she started with her father.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Well, I was in London for a conf—’ he began, when Pat cut him off and said, ‘Come on, Martha, did you really think we wouldn’t come to celebrate the birth of our daughter’s first child?’