by Matt Rudd
Jacob is definitely smiling now. When he’s not crying or sleeping, he’s smiling. And that’s for at least a whole minute a day.
REASONS TO BE UNHAPPY
The homeless predicament was largely of my making.
I have resettled us in a village inhabited by a midget who hates me.
Almost half a million people have watched the Captain Impractical YouTube video. I really don’t see what’s so funny. What has society come to when its main source of entertainment appears to be watching puerile internet video clips?
Isabel is having a good start to her month. Having accepted that I didn’t just punch a midget for no reason, she has had her coffee morning with Annabel who, it emerges, is also a hippy who sleeps next to her baby (and is married to a man who, like me, gets to sleep on the floor). Not only that, she uses a sling. And she has never at any point owned a bloody Bugaboo. Normally, these mothers are kept locked up in Brighton but, somehow, Annabel has escaped.
Thursday 2 May
Having completely failed to ascertain that Brenda the kick-boxing midget lurks in my new village before moving to it, I now see her everywhere. I had to miss a train this morning because she was waiting on the platform. This meant I was even later than usual, which elicited yet another ticking off from Anastasia.
The other child at the office, the one who has a whole column of her own simply because she understands how to use Twitter and IM and Facebook, can hardly contain her pleasure at the sight of me being publicly told off like this. It is humiliating. I shouldn’t even have to account for myself. I am a journalist. Journalists don’t have to keep office hours. They work all the hours, then none of the hours, then some of the hours. They chase stories, follow leads, meet sources in underground car parks in Washington, DC.
‘You work for Life & Times magazine,’ says Johnson in the midget-free pub we escape to for lunch. ‘Our last cover story was dinner with George Clooney, not Watergate II.’
‘That’s only because of Anastasia. We’re still proper journalists.’
‘No, we aren’t. Now calm down and get me another pint.’
Saturday 4 May
I really thought I was ready for this. Isabel’s friends had all insisted that she couldn’t turn thirty without some sort of girly night out (why not?) and that I could look after Jacob for an evening. That was three weeks ago. Now is the Night She Leaves Us. At least she is going early, and she is driving, and she has promised she will arrive at the restaurant, eat and come straight back. Two and a half hours, tops.
6.25 p.m.: Isabel leaves.
6.25 p.m. and twelve seconds: Jacob starts screaming. I change him. Still screaming. I do bouncing. Still screaming. I take him for a walk around the block. Still screaming. I sit him down and attempt to reason with him. ‘It’s okay, Mummy has just popped out to see her friends,’ I say as calmly as possible. ‘Daddy is here and we’re going to have a great evening and Mummy will be back before we know it.’ Stopped screaming but looking deeply traumatised. It’s not that he hasn’t been left with me before. It’s that he can sense that she’s not in the next room.
6.52 p.m.: It feels like she’s been gone for hours. It’s only been twenty-seven minutes. Not even half an hour yet. He’s not hungry. Isabel fed him to within an inch of his life before she left. But every time I put him down, he starts screaming again. He reminds me of the old portable television we had when we lived in London. The only way you could get reception was to stand on one leg, right arm outstretched, with one eye shut. Somehow, the TV knew if you were watching with both eyes and would immediately go grainy. Jacob is the same. If I rock him at precisely thirty-seven rocks per minute, he is happy. But only if we’re in an entirely unilluminated room with track four of the Gorillaz’ second album playing on loop with no more than two seconds of silence between each playing and only then if the rocking and the music are precisely off-beat and I am humming the lowest note I can with my cheek pressed against his, not too firmly, but not too unfirmly either.
7.21 p.m.: He has gone to sleep. So have my arms and my spine, but I no longer have to rock. All I have to do is put him down on the sofa and the evening is all—
7.22 p.m.: Awake. Getting ready to scream again. Back to dark room, Gorillaz, rocking, humming.
7.31 p.m.: Gone again. Am not going to attempt sofa. That was churlish. Will just prop myself against the fireplace and watch television from there. I can have dinner later, or tomorrow. Only an hour and a half to go.
8.12 p.m.: Think the music from The Bill must have upset him. Or maybe he’s hungry. He doesn’t seem interested in the bottle. ‘It’s the same stuff that comes out of Mummy’s booby, I promise,’ I tell him, but this just makes him angry.
8.15 p.m.: Proper screaming again now. Not even the bouncing is working. We’re both bored of that. Maybe I should try something different, but it’s very, very hard to think straight, what with all the screaming.
8.18 p.m.: I phone Isabel. ‘Hi, darling,’ I say, as calmly as possible. ‘Christ, is everything all right?’ she replies because my ‘Hi, darling’ wasn’t very calm at all and she can hear the screaming in the background. ‘Yes, fine, I just can’t stop him screaming.’
‘Have you tried the bottle?’
‘Not interested.’
‘What about getting him to sleep? Have you tried rocking him?’
‘Please stop asking stupid questions.’
‘Look, I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well, it’s not very helpful going out, is it?’
‘Thanks, darling. My first evening out in four months and you have to—’
‘Sorry, darling. I’m just stressed.’
‘It’s okay. You’re doing fine. Does he need changing?’
‘No, of course he…of course he does. Yup. Okay, fine. Sorry to disturb. Please don’t be too late. I love you. Bye.’
By the time Isabel gets back, Jacob and I are both asleep. Neither of us has eaten. Neither of us is in our correct bedtime clothes. The house is a mess, toys – which he doesn’t like, anyway – strewn everywhere. I must never, ever have an argument with Isabel about who works hardest again. Two hours with Jacob is like a month at the office.
She scoops us both up. Jacob smiles at her, as she says, ‘My boobs are bursting,’ and off they go to bed like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I have a whisky, then another, then some Marmite toast, then another whisky and wake up four hours later in the cold light of a television that long ago stopped transmitting anything worth watching.
Sunday 5 May
The woman who runs the village shop, the one that pretends we’re as remote as Svalbard even though we’re only an hour or so from London, refused to accept my £2 coin as payment for my newspaper on the grounds that it was forged. She said she hadn’t seen many £2 coins round here, but this one didn’t have any date marks on it. I pointed out that they were around the edge, but she was unwilling to budge. I told her it was illegal to refuse perfectly legal money and she told me to adopt a less confrontational tone or she would bar me, like the pub had done. ‘We don’t allow violent types round here,’ she said, haughtily. I was speechless and paperless all the way home.
Attempting to buy a car was no more successful, mainly because Isabel took a dislike to the salesman at the Skoda garage. I couldn’t blame her. You would assume that people turning up to buy a Skoda Estate were likely to be family types, would you not? That they might have a baby in tow? That maybe halfway round the test drive the baby might need a feed? That this might require pulling over in a lay-by for a mere ten minutes or so? Hardly a lot to ask. But oh no, Mr Skoda had to insist that the test drive continue. And so Jacob started screaming. And so Isabel lost the bumper taking a roundabout a little too roundly. And so Mr Skoda shouted at her.
‘We’ll be taking our business elsewhere,’ I said angrily.
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘We don’t like violent types around here.’
Before I could ask him what he had meant by that,
Isabel had taken me to one side and pointed out that we really needed a car, given that the old one smelled of fish. So I had adjusted my negotiating position.
‘No, actually, we’ll take it as long as you fix the bumper.’
‘No,’ he countered.
‘Okay, be reasonable.’ Sometimes you have to play nice with these sharks.
‘Why, will you punch me in the face if I’m not?’ That’s what he said. And even though the Skoda garage is twelve kilometres from our village, I realised in that second that Brenda’s reach was further than one might reasonably expect from a midget.
We bought the Skoda without the bumper. On the way home, Isabel told me not to let Brenda get to me. I should rise above it.
I promised that I would.
Stupid midget.
Monday 6 May
No kick boxing because (a) it is a bank holiday and (b) I was asked not to attend kick boxing any more, anyway. This is fine. I shall invest my energies in other departments. We’ve had sex just once in nearly five months and that encounter is now referred to as the Antiques Roadshow night. It’s not good enough. After a lovely afternoon stroll through the countryside, which might have ended with a pint in the pub if I hadn’t been banned, I make dinner while Isabel bathes Jacob.
I whisper a sweet nothing in Isabel’s ear. Something along the lines of, ‘Please can we have sex tonight?’ And she whispers back, ‘Fine, as long as you’ve stopped being weird about it.’ This makes all the reasons I’ve been weird about it come flooding back. As does the gurgling noise of Jacob’s bathwater vanishing down the plughole. Suddenly, I’m back in the operating theatre. It’s hot, airless, too brightly lit. We’re all dressed in blue and, from behind the matching blue curtain, all I can hear is a lot of sucking and slurping. Isabel’s body moves in time to the noises. Then, there’s one last slurp and the beautiful, piercing scream of our wonderful baby boy. Covered in blood.
‘William? William? Can you hear me, William?’
‘Sorry, darling. Lost my train of thought. What were you saying?’
‘I said I’ll get Jacob to sleep and meet you in the kitchen in ten minutes.’
‘What?’
‘Sex, William. Sex. If you want sex, you have to move it.’
I pull myself together and wait, naked, in the kitchen. Eventually, Isabel turns up and she is naked as well. She kisses me. It’s like old times, except it’s better because it’s such a rare thing to have time to ourselves. We kiss more and it’s still fine and actually incredibly exciting to be holding my naked wife again, and everything is going to be fine and then…
‘Did you hear something?’
‘No, it’s fine. Don’t worry.’
‘I definitely heard something.’
Jacob has woken up. ‘Wait here,’ says Isabel, vanishing up the stairs. I have little else to do but stand there in the kitchen, naked and alone. For a while, I contemplate making a cup of tea but abandon it as being too ridiculously English: naked tea-making while awaiting the distant possibility of sex. I’m not ready for that.
After what seems like twenty-five minutes – because it is – Isabel comes back down in a nightdress. We have taken a step backward in our nakedness.
I kiss her.
She kisses me.
Things progress.
The phone rings.
‘Leave it.’
‘But it’s late. Who could it be?’
‘Leave it.’
The phone stops ringing.
We kiss again.
I tear off Isabel’s nightdress skilfully (i.e. in a rampant enough way to suggest that we are still young, carefree and abandoned to passion but not in so rampant a way as to annoy Isabel by actually damaging an article of her clothing).
The phone rings again.
‘Answer it,’ I say, because all our family and friends know to call us after 8.30 p.m. only if someone has died or is dying or wants to die. I stand there, again naked, again alone, wondering why people insist on choosing these faux antique kitchen cupboards while Isabel chats to her mum.
Eventually, the conversation ends.
‘Was she dying?’
‘No. But they’re going on holiday. They wanted to say goodbye.’
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes.’
Mission unaccomplished.
Tuesday 7 May
Anastasia back from another long weekend (helping on an archaeological dig in north-east Colombia because, you know, one can’t drop one’s hobbies just because one has a demanding job) and has managed to find time to compile a new list of requirements (besides punctuality) for her team. She has now decided we must Twitter and blog and Facebook because we need to reach the next generation. We must work in close proximity with the internet department, because the internet is the future. Johnson reckons this is a way to weed out the old guard like us. I resent being called the ‘old guard’. I’m thirty-one. That is not old.
‘It is these days, mate.’
Wednesday 8 May
The girl who used to be a workie but is now the teacher’s pet is hosting a lunchtime seminar entitled ‘How to get a thousand followers on Twitter in one week’. I ask her how many real friends she has. She says she has hundreds. I ask her how many of them are real, real friends. She says hundreds. It’s what comes from being a club fixer from the age of fourteen, she explains dismissively. You get to know the difference between real friendship and fake networking friendship. I say, since when has having real friends been the be-all and end-all and attempt to swagger back to my desk, but really I’m annoyed with myself: what is the point in trying to wind up these children we insist on hiring to run the magazine? Why can’t I just be my own man?
Thursday 9 May
For the first time in my life, I remember that it’s a bank holiday week and that therefore the bin collection would be a day late. Ha! No one else in the village appears to be as organised…
The bin men come anyway. They’re obviously very well organised. Thanks, rest of village, for not telling me.
Friday 10 May
Today, I blogged. Next week, I may Twitter. How Anastasia thinks this will get more people to read our once-great magazine is beyond me.
Saturday 11 May
At a barbecue at Hippy Annabel’s house with the rest of her baby group. This, I start by thinking, is the parenting dream. Late spring sunshine. Large garden. Babies on picnic rugs. Beer. Conversation. But then Teresa, one of the mums, starts explaining how routine is the only way to teach a child how to behave, right from day one. And Isabel can’t bite her tongue long enough not to say, ‘Yes, these horrible little babies. We mustn’t let them get away with any of their nonsense, must we?’
From then on, the group divides into two: hardcore-routine mums on one side, hippies on the other. The dads are left in the no-man’s-land, not wanting to get involved but at the same time not wanting to get into trouble with their wives later because of not getting involved.
Then it starts raining. And the babies become cranky. And everyone makes their excuses and leaves.
Sunday 12 May
My parents come over for lunch. The plan was to get Jacob to sleep by driving him around monotonously before they arrived. That way we would give the impression of calm and control. Didn’t work. I was still driving around the village aimlessly half an hour after they rang the doorbell, Jacob babbling away happily in the back seat as if to say, ‘How nice of Daddy to drive me around the village like he’s a chauffeur and I’m Lord Mountbatten. I had better not go to sleep and miss any of the tour.’
When I gave up and brought him home, he proceeded to scream until we treated him like a television aerial, me on one leg (because he cried if I used two), holding him at an angle that he found soporific but I found excruciating. Lunch happened in stages, some people doing the rocking and some people singing the ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ in a French accent, because this is the latest thing we have become convinced sends Jacob to sleep.
‘Difficult little bugger, isn’t he?’ said Dad. ‘Is he sleeping through yet?’
‘They do things differently these days, darling,’ said Mum.
And I became more convinced than ever that Isabel was doing the right thing with our high-maintenance insomniac superchild.
Monday 13 May
There she is, on my train again. And in my carriage. Brenda. With her annoying hair in a tight bun, ready, I presume, for the kick-boxing class she got me thrown out of. It’s almost like she knows. She knows that it’s my train. She knows that I’ll have to miss it, catch the next one and get in trouble with my nine-year-old boss who now appears to judge people solely on the basis of their punctuality or lack thereof.
Kick-boxing class, my only local pub, my 07.56 to London. Where will I be unable to go next, thanks to Brenda?
Tuesday 14 May
The answer is the village shop. Brenda must be behind this. I went in to complain about some bin liners I had bought.
‘These bin liners…they tear when you try to open them.’
‘Oh, it’s you again.’
‘Three quid you charge for these, which is approximately three times the price they are in the supermarket.’
‘Well, we don’t have the same buying power as those—’
‘Look, I don’t want a sob story about supporting your local shop. All I’m saying is that I was supporting my local shop when—’