Sorting Out Billy

by Jo Brand

  Having left behind the grimy, slightly urine-tinged smell of the bus, they sniffed the air optimistically and headed off down the country lane which led to a little glade in some woods by a stream which no one else seemed to have discovered. Charlie had grabbed something he called ‘a picnic’ from the kitchen but it turned out to be a tub of cous-cous past its sell-by date, two spongy apples and some chocolate biscuits. So they had biscuits and cider lying on a blanket, side by side, alternately reading and looking at the sky and inevitably the combination of these things led Charlie to want sex.

  He took Flower by surprise, as he landed on top of her with very little warning and began to remove articles of clothing in a completely random way until Flower was left with one sock and shoe on and a grubby vesty thing which she used for security when she was a teenager and hadn’t quite been able to part with.

  Charlie, who was easily bitten in rural settings and got cold if he so much as removed one of his seven layers of angora, only stuck outside his clothes the absolute minimum necessary to complete the sexual act — and the fact that Flower laughed uncontrollably when she saw it coming towards her only increased his desire.

  Flower lay back and allowed Charlie to do his thing and as she gazed up at the sky became aware of some movement just out of her line of vision and quite a lot of giggling.

  ‘Charlie,’ she whispered furiously.

  ‘Oohaah,’ was all Charlie could manage.

  ‘Charlie!’ hissed Flower. ‘Someone’s looking!’

  Charlie quite liked this idea and the pumping got harder. Then two faces appeared from behind two trees to reveal a couple of, spotty teenage boys filled with fascination and concentration and obviously giving each other the boldness not available to them as individuals.

  ‘Stick it to her, mate,’ said one of the boys, whose nocturnal consumption of pornography on the internet had convinced him that this was an appropriate comment to make to a couple in their thirties found fucking in the woods.

  Charlie had reached his climax and was now on the downward spiral of self-loathing that characterised many of his sexual encounters with Flower and with other women in the past, something he had not thought to explore in any way but just accepted. However, here was someone to rail against and even better, teenage boys, a breed he hated and so did Flower.

  Charlie rose to his feet, zipping himself up and managed to afford Flower some decency by kicking their rug towards her. Flower decided to put the blanket over her head like a prisoner facing the paparazzi and come out when Charlie had sorted it.

  Charlie reached the pair who, rather than legging it, as is the wont of most teenage boys, decided to stand firm because this hippy bloke looked a little bit easy to knock down. Teenage boys they were, but through some miracle of feeding they were the size of men but the threat they posed failed to strike Charlie as anything less than minimal.

  ‘Clear off,’ tried Charlie, holding in reserve worse language, should it turn nasty.

  ‘Go fuck yourself, hippy man,’ said one of the boys and suddenly the sky seemed to darken as Charlie realised he had misjudged things and might get a kicking yet again. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble,’ he said. ‘Just leave us alone, will you.’

  ‘I think you need to be punished,’ said the other boy, ‘for shagging such an old dog in the woods.’ Both of them bent over double at the hilarity of this remark and Charlie, a veteran of many aggressive encounters with the police, who after all weren’t so different from these teenage boys, seized his chance and punched a fist in the general direction of the nearest boy’s chin.

  It connected and with a scream of pain, he staggered backwards.

  ‘Do you want some too?’ said Charlie to the other one, who was a massive coward and only buoyed on these occasions by his mate.

  He began to cry.

  ‘Now fuck off the pair of you,’ he said, hoping they couldn’t spot the fact that he was trembling.

  The two ran off. Charlie turned to Flower. ‘What about that then?’ he beamed, full of self-congratulation.

  Flower was crying.

  ‘Babe, what’s the matter?’ said Charlie. ‘We stuffed the fuckers.’

  Flower had, however, been imagining what could have happened and in her mind had visualised some terrible scene of torture and death, her and Charlie at the mercy of the two boys.

  All the way home on the bus Flower kept putting her hand in her handbag and feeling the gun. Little did Charlie know, but she had been so close to getting it out. She had wondered if she could have got away with just waving it, or whether they would have thought it was a replica gun and forced her to use it. In which case, had she shot one she would definitely have had to shoot the other, and that would have left her with only one bullet — and she wanted more than one.

  Jesus is three days old today, thought Martha. I wonder why my dad hasn’t been in touch?

  Ted stood at the open door for a long time watching Martha with his baby. She didn’t notice him. She was so taken up with trying to get the breastfeeding thing right; she felt she must master it, if only to piss off stern midwife who was convinced she couldn’t do it. Ted felt so fond of Martha for a few seconds that had she not done this awful thing to him of failing to reveal his paternity, he felt it could be all right between them.

  Suddenly Martha became aware of Ted’s presence and before she remembered the atmosphere that had prevailed last time they saw each other, was pleased to see him and felt an enormous amount of warmth towards him.

  Ted’s facial expression turned thunderous and set the agenda, for the next few minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ted,’ said Martha. ‘I know I’ve done the wrong thing and hurt you, but I was worried if I told you, you’d try and make me do something I didn’t want to do.’

  ‘And so that has allowed you to keep this whole affair to yourself. I don’t suppose you’d ever have told me, unless I caught you on the day he was born,’ said Ted. ‘Well, I’ve seen a lawyer and I’m going to try and get custody.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Martha cheerily but her heart swooped down to her boots.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Ted.

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘On the grounds that you’re likely to be a rotten mother,’ said Ted. ‘I have seen your flat, you know, and many people would say that it’s not fit for human habitation.’

  ‘You bastard! You don’t know anything about my mothering skills, do you?’

  ‘I know enough,’ said Ted, ‘and I know that it’s always the women who win in these cases but I’m going to do all I can to fight you. In fact, I may contact your father — I’m sure he’d help me.’

  ‘No way,’ said Martha. ‘I refuse to give you permission to see him.’

  ‘What do you think this is, some Victorian novel or something?’ said Ted. ‘Do you really think you can stop me seeing your dad? Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. In fact,’ he continued, ‘once I dig up some stuff about you at work, I can’t fail to win. You could have a drug problem.’

  ‘I don’t do drugs,’ said Martha.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Ted. ‘I can make it seem like you do — and I can tell them you used to steal from me.’

  ‘They’ll just send me and the baby to prison and then I will definitely not see you,’ said Martha.

  ‘I don’t know how you could do this to me,’ said Ted. ‘I thought we got on.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha miserably. ‘Anyway, where are you going to live with the baby if you get custody — in that smelly bedsit above the club?’

  ‘Oh no, I’ve got big plans,’ said Ted.

  ‘The baby can’t come and live with you. He’ll cry all the time.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ted.

  ‘Because of your ugly face,’ said Martha.

  It was a gamble, but Martha had always been able to make Ted laugh and she prayed for the second time that month that it would work.
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  Ted could hardly believe that in the middle of such an emotional debate, Martha had dared to do a Ted Is Ugly joke. He stared expressionlessly at her for a few seconds and then his great cavernous pitted face began to show signs of creasing and within less than a second he had thrown his head back and begun to laugh as if he would never stop.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha, ‘I really am,’ and she began to cry, and just for good measure, Jesus joined in.

  One of the nurses who was doing the medicines wheeled her trolley into the room to find all of its occupants heaving out huge great sobs as if their respective worlds had ended.

  From that moment onwards, it seemed to Martha that the whole situation became more bearable once Ted had been included in the family. She had asked to stay in hospital for a couple of days because she couldn’t face going back to the flat yet, knowing that she had alienated most of the people she loved. However, once she and Ted had managed their reconciliation, she asked the medical staff to let her go. There was no reason to keep her there as Jesus was perfectly healthy and Martha was as healthy as she ever would be, which was not very.

  Martha and Ted tried to have a discussion about the future but found they were not very good at it, and so they agreed that Ted would go back to the flat with Martha, stay for a couple of days, and then they would come to some sort of a decision.

  Ted had made no reference to the fact that his son was called Jesus and Martha didn’t allude to it for fear of pissing him off. Between them they packed Martha’s stuff and Ted went off home to get a few belongings and dutifully arrived back to pick Martha up. As they sailed through the portals of the hospital, Martha pointed out Mr Cancer to Ted, in order to introduce him into the world of strange people whose lives collided with hers from time to time.

  Junior, who had been waiting for the call to nick another car for the journey home, was surprised to hear the hustle and bustle going on in the flat next door and the cry of the baby. He stuck his head round the balcony, to be greeted by Ted’s big face inches from his. It quite frightened him.

  ‘Who might you be then, mate?’ said Ted in the style of an East End villain, which he was quite good at.

  ‘I’m Junior,’ managed Junior. ‘See you later, man,’ and scuttled back to his side, pondering the arrival of this big ugly bloke, and what it could mean.

  Martha wasn’t coping terribly well with Jesus. The breastfeeding still wasn’t properly established and so the baby seemed pissed off and hungry all the time. Martha was knackered and frustrated and just wanted to sit in front of the telly and stare blankly at it and then go to bed. But on day three of Jesus’s life she realised it would be a very long time before that sort of freedom was available to her.

  ‘Look,’ said Ted, ‘I can tell you’re knackered — why don’t I take The Big J with me down the bookies in his pram and you have a bit of a kip and take it easy.’

  Martha felt herself screech, ‘Because a three-day-old baby should not be going in the fucking bookies,’ and wondered why she had suddenly acquired the voice of a seventy-year-old witch.

  ‘All right then,’ said Ted, ‘I’ll just stroll round the park for an hour.’

  Ted was not acquainted with the vicissitudes of life round Martha’s way, as a stroll in the park usually meant at the least being pelted with dog shit by the seven year olds or being stabbed by the thirteen year olds.

  Martha explained this to him, in her high-pitched witchy voice and they came to the compromise that Ted would put Jesus in the baby seat in his car, drive somewhere nice, get him out and take him for a walk then put him back in and be home within three hours — the amount of time Martha had decided could elapse between one feed and another without him starving to death.

  Ted also noticed that the number of baby things accrued by Martha was minimal: a crappy frayed Moses basket that Flower used to keep her CDs in, a few little sleepsuits from Junior’s mum and some blankets. He wondered what Martha had been doing with herself for all that time before the birth and felt like he was starting to get to know her a bit better and was somewhat perturbed by every little extra bit he was finding out.

  Martha didn’t want Ted to go out with Jesus, but she was so exhausted, she found it hard to put up any real resistance. She was beginning to realise just how fooled she’d been by all the pictures of motherhood painted in the media. As she looked at herself in the mirror, noting the rings under her eyes, nipples she could light the gas with and the raging tempest that used to be her vagina which now felt like a racecourse for horses with pointy hooves, she almost fell asleep on her feet.

  Jesus and Ted meanwhile were having a wail of a time on the Embankment. Ted had decided to give Jesus his first real thrill and take him on that big revolving wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames. In their pod on the London Eye were a few mothers with their school-age children; the mums all looked at Ted in a horrified way when they saw what a very young baby he had with him. Could he be a paedophile who had stolen it from somewhere? they wondered. Perhaps he was an extra in some play in the West End and the baby was a prop. As far as ‘they could tell, the baby was quite attractive so Ted couldn’t possibly be a blood relative.

  Oblivious to all this speculation, poor Ted nodded at everyone in a good-natured fashion, making the women clutch protectively at their children, who found this very irritating since they had far more idea of what a paedophile was than their mothers did and could tell that Ted was a good bloke and no threat to them.

  Back at home, Martha furiously burrowed her head under the pillow, willing herself to go to sleep in the few precious hours she had been given. Jesus was up all night squawking and complaining and therefore, as the book said — Martha had finally taken a look at it — it was important to get some sleep while you could. What Martha didn’t realise was that this was the dreaded third day — only vaguely alluded to in the books for fear of its huge impact, and underplayed by,, everyone except the new mother experiencing it, or the partner or friend on the receiving end.

  Martha finally gave up on sleep and did something her father had always told her not to do — she turned the telly on in the middle of the day. There was an item about children’s clothes and within seconds Martha had collapsed into a raging torrent of weeping and sadness which she found impossible to comprehend as this just wasn’t her. She switched to another channel, which was showing a documentary about a couple getting married, and this only made her worse. This is absolutely bloody ridiculous, she thought, sobbing her heart out. Finally she changed to another channel on which a very dull-looking bloke was explaining something about trigonometry, but there was a pathos in his movements and the way he was dressed that lifted Martha’s distress to ever greater heights. She lay on the chair, snot flying everywhere, each fiery vein in her eyes red and bulbous, and her chest heaving out great racking sobs of despair, completely perplexed as to why this was happening.

  Had Ted any idea that this was going on, he would sensibly have run as fast as he could in the other direction until the fourth day dawned. But poor old Ted had only glanced at a new mothers’ magazine article in the newsagents and this didn’t really give a complete picture. So he returned like an innocent smiling child into the hall of the Mountain King, unaware that a savaging of monstrous proportions was about to hit him.

  No sooner had he got the pram into the hall containing a peacefully sleeping Jesus than Martha screeched at the top of her voice whilst aiming the nearest thing to hand at him — a heavy shoe. The content of her outburst went as follows:

  ‘Ted, you fucking arsehole, you’re not fit to be a father you piece of slime, get out, go and hang yourself, you hulking great piece of shit, I hate you I hate you I hate you!’

  Ted, who had left Martha on the lowest level of screeching, was speechless that after three hours’ relaxing time she had managed to crank herself up to this height. Something in the back of his head told him to keep calm and that this wouldn’t last, whereas another little voice kept prodding hi
m, saying, ‘She’s like this all the time, mate. You don’t really know her.’ He sank into a chair.

  Bad move. Martha launched herself at him like a nuclear-powered sack of potatoes.

  ‘How dare you! How dare you!’ she screamed as if sitting down could be equated with torturing an animal and eating its vital organs.

  ‘What have I done?’ asked poor helpless Ted.

  This was the cue for Martha to launch into another tirade about Ted’s resemblance to an axe murderer, and in the end he was forced to join Martha’s screeching society to get his point across.

  ‘What the fuck have I done?’ he shouted in a voice that could be heard several flats below.

  Martha could only keep tapping her watch furiously with her finger but with such force Ted feared she might break it. ‘Ten minutes!’ she screamed. ‘Ten minutes! I thought you’d been murdered and the baby had been kidnapped!’

  It dawned on Ted that this was all about him being late and he wondered what Martha would do if he really did something wrong. He decided to try and play the conciliator.

  ‘Look, sweetheart,’ he said, and Martha just collapsed into tears on the chair again.

  ‘No one’s ever called me that,’ she wailed. ‘Do you mean it?’

  Ted knew if he said, ‘No,’ he would be killed and he kind of did mean it anyway. Amazingly, Jesus slept through this verbal hurricane, leading Martha to believe that he must be in a coma.

  ‘Fucking hell, Ted, let’s take him down the hospital,’ she said.

  Thankfully at that moment, the community midwife knocked on the door.

  The community midwife was called Tangerine and should have been related to Flower, so similar were their backgrounds. Born in the sixties to a couple who had conceived her at the Isle of Wight festival, they had chosen ‘Tangerine’ because it was their favourite fruit, colour and half a band name at the time. ‘Tan’, as she called herself, just had to put up with it; in fact, she’d developed a bit of a comedy routine because people always asked her what Tan was short for, and she delivered it with the weariness of the long-serving circuit comic who has never made it on to telly. Tangerine, as the psychology books would predict, given her background, had a conservative approach to childcare and a horror of babies being thrown into rucksack-type affairs and carried off round the world when they were obviously desperate for a routine. She did her round amongst the council flats of South London, moving from one single mother to another, to families of children with several different fathers and on to homes where drugs, alcohol and violence were high on the list of domestic pastimes, with the pained expression of a constipated Madonna, as though all these people were doing it deliberately to get at her personally.