William's Progress

by Matt Rudd

  ‘But it’s our first one.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. But I was thinking, you know, we haven’t been away since the Caribbean.’

  ‘That was five weeks ago.’

  ‘And, well, I might, you know, pop the question.’

  And rather than being a best mate and saying, ‘Wow, that’s amazing, you two really deserve each other,’ or some other nonsense, I said, ‘Isn’t this all a bit fast?’ as if I were his dad.

  And then I got home all ready to break the bad news to Isabel (about Andy, not the £8,000 debt that she only knows about one sixth of) and found Jacob teetering on the very top step of the staircase.

  ‘Jacob!’ I shouted. And he looked around in shock, and in so doing, lost his balance and fell. I was too far away to do anything except scream. Isabel appeared through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs and caught him on the second bounce.

  For a good two seconds, there was silence.

  This was when I thought, ‘His neck has snapped. His skull has fractured. He is paralysed. He will never play rugby, not even for an average club side.’

  Then he started screaming. He was alive. He was fine. He had a bruise and a bump, but he was fine. He wouldn’t be screaming if he wasn’t going to be all right. That’s what the doctors always say, isn’t it?

  ‘What on earth was he doing at the top of the stairs?’ I shouted above the screaming. This, of course, was not the time to be allocating blame, but I was too shocked not to be angry.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that!’ said Isabel.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You made him fall.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was there. I was watching him from the doorway. He was climbing the stairs perfectly well all by himself. And then you came in and shouted at him.’

  ‘He was about to fall.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. He’s been up those stairs plenty of times. He’s selfaware. He’s learning the risks. And then you just bellow at him, and he falls.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. He shouldn’t be crawling up stairs. We need a stair guard.’

  ‘We are not having a stair guard.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘We. Are. Not. Now leave us alone.’

  I’ll tell her about Andy and Saskia and the debt another time.

  Saturday 14 September

  We have agreed to disagree about stairs. I have explained that dads spend every minute imagining the millions of ways in which our children can kill themselves with anything from a staircase to an egg whisk. She has explained that if we don’t expose Jacob to risk, he can never learn to look after himself. She starts talking about children in jungles again and I set off on my solo triathlon-training programme.

  I am a machine. Nothing can stop me. Not even the knowledge that my wife is still content to experiment with her Mowgli theory of parenting while I am away.

  SOME OF THE THINGS THAT COULD KILL JACOB AND HOW

  Staircases. Falling down them, obviously. But also falling up them.

  Egg whisks. Fingers get stuck in the whisk end. Jacob panics. Waves hands about. Gouges eye with non-whisk end. Infection spreads. Death.

  Forks. As above, but without stuck fingers or panic.

  Baby swings. Daddy pushes too hard. Neck snaps.

  Bugaboos. Brake not working properly. Looking away for a second. Slight hill. Across road safely but quickly. Continues down pavement, through gate, tips into shallow pond. Can’t undo the buckles quickly enough. Drowns.

  Umbrellas. Obvious.

  Dishwasher doors. Obvious.

  Baths. Death traps.

  Bouncer. We’re not getting one. Teresa has one and it’s a human catapult. The torque is too high. If anything were to snap, baby would be fired at high velocity into the door frame. Death.

  Sunday 15 September

  Neck has gone.

  Must have slept funny.

  ‘Maybe you were training too hard. Or worrying too much. Have some arnica and wear this neck brace. It will help.’

  Jacob has a bruise on his temple, the poor sausage. His perfect body. Damaged. Neither Isabel nor I mention it.

  Monday 16 September

  Ninja self-control has taken a hit, thanks to the neck giving way. On the way to the station, Brenda smirks at the neck brace. I smirk at her ginger hair. I am not one hundred per cent sure she knows it was the red hair I was smirking at.

  At work, I write something sarcastic about people who buy cat magazines in an article about, well, cats. Then forget to delete it. Janice asks if I have a problem with cats. I say I was only joking. I love cats.

  Then Andy phones and declares an emergency pub meeting. He says he has news. I have declared the last six emergencies in a row, so this is something of a novelty. Nevertheless, I say I can’t until tomorrow night, which is mean.

  No one at work wants to buy any aloe vera, despite its many and varied health-giving properties. Sceptics.

  Then Isabel phones to say that Alex is upset. Geoff has gone off to Morocco to design Sting’s yoga tent without him after they had a fight about whether Danish white and ochre can be used on the same fireplace. He’s going to stay with us for a few days. Is that okay?

  There are a million reasons why that is not okay, not least because, on Wednesday, we’re moving back to the house that Alex was primarily responsible for destroying. We don’t need Alex hanging around while that’s going on. Patiently, I explain this to Isabel and she says we aren’t moving on Wednesday after all. We’re moving at the weekend because we’ll have more time then and she hates the smell of paint. And Alex is staying. And I have to be more charitable.

  I say fine, but I’m afraid I have to go out with Andy tonight. He wants to talk. She says fine, so I phone Andy and say I can make the pub after all. And I’m sorry for being mean.

  Andy has got engaged to Saskia. It was perfect. They were having dinner on some terrace on the Left Bank. There were candles. There was a bowl of moules frites à deux. They fed each other. They kissed with their aloe-soft lips. A jazz band struck up across the cobbled street, and Andy got down on one knee and proposed. Saskia burst into tears and accepted gladly. They looked up at the night sky, and he swears – he absolutely swears – that a shooting star shot across it. Then they got the bill and went back to their tiny, seedy hotel room and made passionate love all night. He spanked her. She spanked him. He tied her up. She tied him up. It was amazing.

  ‘I’m going to be sick in my mouth, Andy,’ I said supportively. ‘But I’m delighted for you. Marriage is a wonderful thing. Don’t listen to anything Johnson will tell you. And don’t mess up like me, either. Ignore both of our approaches to the marital challenge, and you will be fine. Congratulations.’

  ‘So will you be my best man?’

  Oh God.

  Best man at Saskia’s wedding. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  ‘Of course I will. Now come here and give me a hug. And mind my sore neck.’

  Tuesday 17 September

  Over breakfast, Isabel seemed to receive the news of Andy’s engagement to the Destroyer of Relationships quite well. But Alex, who was sitting in my seat eating my cereal out of my bowl, started sobbing. ‘Everyone else always finds true love. I never will. I’ll die sad and alone.’

  ‘Tush, tush,’ said Isabel, as if she was a folkloric Russian grandmother and Alex was a child who’d just had a nightmare about a wolf. ‘You love Geoff and he loves you. You’re perfect for each other. You’re just having a little tiff.’

  ‘I try to do everything he wants and it’s never good enough. He’s such a perfectionist.’

  I may, at that point, have snorted but I think it was masked by the coffee machine. All the same, Isabel gave me the Mummy Power look before declaring that she was late for a coffee morning.

  ‘Bit early for you lot, isn’t it?’ I said, concerned that I might be left in the house with a snivelling Alex.

  ‘Well, Annabel and Teresa keep arguing about parenting methods. I thought the
y were going to kill each other in Bluewater the other week. Something to do with bibs. So I thought we’d meet earlier this week. They have higher blood sugar early in the morning. Do you want to come, Alex?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he moped. ‘I’ll stay here, if it’s all right with you, William?’ And he looked at me weepily, so I had to say, ‘Fine.’ And the minute Isabel and Jacob pranced off to their social engagement, Alex turned to me and said, ‘How can I make him love me?’

  ‘I’m really not the right person to ask.’

  ‘I mean, I do everything I can to show how much I love him, but it doesn’t work. The harder I try, the worse it gets.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re trying too hard. It’s obvious. Blokes hate that.’

  ‘Well, what should I do, then? He has to know how I feel.’

  Half an hour later, I left for work. In the space of those thirty minutes, I had become Alex’s chief relationship adviser, his counsellor, his Zen Master of Love. He hugged me in gratitude. I hugged him back. And he wandered off into the garden repeating his new mantra: ‘I shall be mean. I shall keep him keen. I will win his heart through ruthless aloofness.’

  Wednesday 18 September

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Well, thanks. He seems much happier today.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘He said you’d really put things into perspective.’

  ‘Right.’

  And she gave me a kiss. A naughty kiss. A we-might-have-sex-when-you-get-home-from-work kiss. After days and weeks of tetchi-ness caused by my idiocy, one chat with Alex and she’s being properly nice and doing proper naughty kissing. Except that Jacob was watching, so I cut it off early and ruined it. But you can’t kiss naughtily in front of your children, can you? You’d traumatise them for life.

  ‘Does this mean he won’t be staying tonight?’

  ‘He’s staying until tomorrow, okay?’

  Sex is not possible.

  Thursday 19 September

  Ninja self-control is back. I am a triathloning, counselling, decisive and hard-working father of one crawling, sitting baby. Without even having to set foot in a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, I have thus concluded that there is no system and that the way to pay off my £8,000 debt is not via the magic of a change of luck in online gambling. Consequently, I have closed my online poker account. Not only that, the cleaner at work bought a tub of aloe. Things are on the up. Except that I get home and Alex is still there…

  ‘Why’s he still here?’ I shout-whisper to Isabel in the kitchen after dinner.

  ‘Because he had another row with Geoff,’ scream-hisses Isabel back.

  ‘I thought everything was all right again?’

  ‘Well, it obviously isn’t, is it? What did you tell him?’

  ‘I already told you. Nothing much. I just said that sometimes being an obsessive lovesick puppy isn’t necessarily the way to a woman’s or, in his case, man’s heart.’

  ‘Oh great, the William Walker approach to relationships.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘Hi, Will,’ mopes Alex by way of interruption.

  ‘Hi, Alex. Sorry you had another row.’

  ‘You two boys have a chat while I get Jacob to sleep,’ says Isabel and scarpers with Jacob. And so it happens again. I have to listen to Alex moan on about his terrible relationship and how he loves Geoff but he’s not sure Geoff loves him back. That he tried being less clingy on the phone today, but Geoff was still distant with him. When I point out that this might just be because Geoff’s in Morocco – which is distant – he brightens up. Then he asks me what to do. I point out that I am by no means an expert and then urge him in as diplomatic a way as possible to stop being a psycho.

  ‘So I shouldn’t call him?’

  ‘Not every day.’

  ‘And I shouldn’t tell him I love him?’

  ‘No. Not every time you talk to him. Treat ’em mean to keep ’em keen.’

  ‘But I’m so miserable. I think I might die if I don’t see him again soon.’

  Jesus. ‘Shall we watch some television? It might take your mind off things.’

  ‘Okay, Will, thanks for the chat. You’re so good at this stuff. I can see why Isabel stuck with you,’ says Alex, sort of complimentarily, as we traipse through to the living room.

  ‘Chicago or Road Wars?’ I ask, charitably.

  ‘Chicago.’

  Annoying.

  Isabel comes down. She hates Chicago, too. We sit there, three being a crowd. Then she says she’s tired. And I say I’m tired. And Alex says he’ll probably stay up a bit longer. So Isabel and I go upstairs together and, out of the blue, Isabel kisses me naughtily. And I kiss her. We’re in the bathroom. We start undressing, but there’s no lock on the door.

  ‘Sssshhh, let’s go into the bedroom,’ says Isabel, even more naughtily.

  ‘No, we’ll wake Jacob,’ I reply, unused to the naughtiness.

  ‘No, we won’t. He’s out for the count.’ She really is intent on being naughty.

  It was three, maybe four seconds after we had finished being naughty that Isabel gasped.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ were her exact words. My mind raced. Had I done something wrong? Was she having some sort of post-traumatic sex panic? Had she realised she hadn’t wanted it? Had her neck gone? Or worse, had she suddenly realised Jacob had been wide-eyed throughout? Was he now traumatised for ever? What? What?

  ‘What?’

  ‘The baby monitor!’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ I said, jumping out of bed. ‘The baby monitor.’

  And there it was, on the bedside table, its little green light flashing away.

  ‘Turn it off,’ mimed Isabel. I turned it off and we listened. Five seconds later, we heard the beeping, the terrible beeping from the monitor’s speaker. The monitor’s speaker in the living room. Yes, it had happened. The audio track of our naughtiness had been played through a loudspeaker. And Alex had heard the whole thing.

  Friday 20 September

  Breakfast was embarrassing. Apparently, the reason he hadn’t turned his bit of the monitor off was because he didn’t know how. On-off buttons are so tricky. His solution to the problem had been to turn up Chicago. Hmmm. I decided I needed to get to work early.

  ‘Can I just say, guys, that I am glad you two are my friends,’ said Alex as I made for the door. ‘And I’m glad you are still very much in love.’

  No, you can’t. You can’t just say that.

  In my haste to escape from the house, I nearly knocked over Brenda as she came tearing round the corner with the replacement whippet. Irritating that she was on my side of the green.

  ‘I hear you’re leaving tomorrow?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Certainly am.’

  ‘Well, safe journey.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And sorry about the chicken.’

  ‘Right, thanks.’ Maybe she was being nice at last.

  ‘Mind you, you have to admire Smudgie, don’t you?’

  ‘Who’s Smudgie?’

  ‘Our cat. It took Bob ages to train her to attack birds. Most cats don’t have it in them. But she came through in the end, though, didn’t she? You should do something on her in your little magazine.’

  And off she jogged before I could react.

  This is, indeed, my last day in the village. The village run by the midget bitch and the whippet killer. And it is only on my way to work that I remember I have the perfect leaving present for them. In the cupboard mostly full of my unsold aloe-vera products is a large bag of Lion Poo, sent in to the magazine by an enthusiastic marketing person who clearly hadn’t understood that a magazine called Cat World might be pro-cat.

  I take it home.

  I bide my time as we say farewell to Annabel and Teresa.

  I wait for darkness to fall.

  I wait for the pub to shut.

  I wait another hour.

  And then another, just to be sure.

  And then, dre
ssed head to toe in black, I sneak across the green. Crouching by the fence, I open the bag and start flinging whole hand-fuls of the pellets into the pub garden. When I get back to the house, Isabel is changing Jacob in the bathroom, half asleep.

  ‘What on earth are you doing still awake?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ I reply.

  Nothing, except at last exacting my revenge on Smudgie for the death of Louise.

  Saturday 21 September

  We’re back at our house. Almost six months since the flood, and we’re back. And everything is as it should be. Jacob is so delighted to be home that he immediately crawls up the stairs while neither of us is watching. But he doesn’t fall.

  He just sits at the top and says ‘Dadda’ proudly. This is definitely closer than ‘Aaaaaaddddaaaaaaaaa’, which, until now, I have been convincing myself is ‘Daddy’.

  It takes all day to unpack our junk. I get my old drawer back. Jacob gets his old nine drawers back, even though one of his babygros is one-eighth the size of one of my babygros.

  By 6 p.m., we are all exhausted. Jacob tucks into his courgette-and-pasta bake, gumming the bits of courgette in the absence of teeth. I tuck into a G & T, gumming the lemon in the absence of courgette.

  ‘I thought you were training,’ says Isabel, as she walks into our newly restored living room. Oh God, I know I’ve been in the doghouse, but can’t I have one G & T without being made to feel guilty?

  ‘Yes, I am training,’ I reply testily. ‘But we’ve got our house back. I thought I might celebrate a little bit.’

  ‘Me, too,’ says Isabel, her angry-at-husband face breaking into a be-nice-to-husband smile as she taadaas a bottle of champagne and two glasses out from behind her back.