by Joanna Coles
‘Digestives,’ she moans, propped up magisterially upon our California King Sized Serta Perfect Sleeper, ‘I must have digestive biscuits.’
I am soon cruising the muggy lengths of Seventh Avenue in pursuit of the elusive biscuit. It takes me some time to realize that in the United States digestives are called graham crackers.
‘Look,’ says Joanna when I return triumphantly bearing her biscuits – she has apparently lost all interest in my bounty – ‘look at the picture, isn’t it sweet?’
She holds out the sonogram photo of our child. I look at it for some time. It is completely indecipherable to me. I can’t make out what species it is. I can’t even make out which is top or bottom.
‘Look, there are its eyes, there’s its nose, its little ribs just like a tiny toastrack.’
I feel as though I’m looking at one of those pointilliste games and if I stare long enough the shape of a baby will suddenly become apparent to me too. At least I should be able to clock the toastrack. But there is still nothing.
‘Aahh,’ says Joanna, going all soppy. ‘I think it’s smiling for the camera.’
I look and look some more and slowly a vague form does emerge. It appears to be a malevolent hamster. Then its shape changes. It is now a thin-faced, beaky bird. Whatever it is, it is definitely scowling.
Saturday, 25 July
Joanna
My friends with babies have all eagerly warned me about the pain of delivery, recommending epidurals at the first contraction. I’m sure I’ll follow the path of least resistance, but I am currently obsessed by the tale of a New Jersey schoolgirl, who is awaiting trial for murder. She delivered her own baby in a college bathroom in total silence before returning to the dance floor.
According to reports, Melissa Drexler, a quiet, hardworking student hoping to study design at university, arrived at her school prom at 7.30 p.m. At 7.45 p.m., after complaining to her boyfriend of ‘women’s problems’ she disappeared into the loo, only to emerge half-an-hour later with fresh make-up, her delivery over.
She then danced for two hours until a cleaner, dispatched to clear up blood in a toilet cubicle, found the baby’s body, which Drexler had strangled before dropping in the trash can. Finally, a teacher deduced what had happened and confronted her.
I am staggered by this story. How could Drexler have given birth so quickly and in silence and still had energy left to go dancing? I suppose her seventeen-year-old body was in better shape to attempt this feat than mine. Though I am fit, I am still thirty-six and in medical terms am now referred to as a ‘geriatric prima gravida’. However much I prepare myself and however short my labour, I can guarantee it will not be in silence.
Sunday, 26 July
Peter
We retreat to the Hamptons on Long Island to wait for the test results. Like Paris in August, New York feels deserted in the summer; many of its residents retreat from the oppressive heat by migrating to the mountains or the seaside. I tend to think of New York as a temperate northern city, when in fact it is on the same latitude as Lisbon.
We have rented a summer place in East Hampton. There is one fact about East Hampton that tells you most of what you need to know. It has no launderette. This is the place to come for a lingering death by a thousand social comparisons. This is where celebs come to breed. It’s the summer home to Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Lauren Bacall and Steven Spielberg. This is a place where ordinary millionaires feel poor and envious.
What on earth are we doing here?
We live in a rather grand shingled house on the Circle, close to the centre of East Hampton, the most moneyed and the most expensive of the series of manicured villages and towns that collectively make up the Hamptons. How can we afford such a desirable house? We can’t. Some time ago the owner divided it into four apartments, two on the ground floor and two upstairs. And we share one of the small two-bedroom ‘garden apartments’ with another couple, Dani and Michael, friends from Manhattan. The idea is that we rotate weekly with them during the summer, but often we all pile down together and squeeze into the flat.
Although we like being at the seaside, we are embarrassed by our modest digs. They are smaller than most servants’ quarters in these parts. In fact we go to great lengths to conceal our minute dwelling from visiting friends. We endeavour to arrange to meet them at restaurants or at the beach. We never invite them back or entertain at home. But despite our attempts at domestic quarantine, one couple in particular, smelling a social rat, has inveigled our address and ambushes us. Through the window of our little kitchen I spot Henry and Amy, an intense Wall Street couple, who are summering here. I sound the social alarm and we rush out to head them off at the door.
‘Wow, that’s quite a place you guys have got there,’ Amy remarks admiringly over dinner later. ‘Traditional shingle like that, so central, big garden, all-year rental. That must set you back a bit?’
I shrug noncommittally, realizing that she is under the impression that we rent the entire house but doing nothing to disabuse her of her upward appraisal of our financial standing.
‘Your last book must have sold well,’ she continues, with a probing laugh.
‘Not bad. Not bad at all,’ I say equivocally.
That night as we lie cramped in our tiny double bed, I am overcome by cabin fever.
‘Why didn’t you tell them that we just rent the flat?’ Joanna asks. ‘Then we wouldn’t have to keep up this ludicrous charade.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say miserably. ‘I knew she’d say something condescending.’
Why did I do it? Probably because she’d already sneered at our hire car, an ugly Japanese compact with a prematurely crimped tail, like buttocks defensively clenched after an unwanted pinch. It is painted in the gruesome shade of avocado green inexplicably popular in 1970s bathroom suites.
‘We journalists and writers are the court jesters to those with real money,’ I complain. ‘We dance around on the social periphery, performing for their entertainment, until they tire of our company and rusticate us.’ And I remind her of a story told by our friend John, a columnist for the New York Times. He was at dinner at the house of a wealthy banker friend, plying them with anecdotes and witticisms, when the hostess turned to him and patted him on the arm. ‘That’s why we like you, John,’ she tinkled. ‘You’re one of our interesting friends.’
As opposed to one of their peers, on the same economic level.
Joanna is snoring lightly.
Wednesday, 29 July
Joanna
We are lounging listlessly on our wooden-slatted Adirondack chairs on the porch in East Hampton waiting for the phone to ring. At the hospital last Monday Elena told us it would take six to eight days to get the results of the amniocentesis and it is now exactly a week later. I have been trying to factor in the effect of a weekend on the tests. Do weekends count, or are the six to eight days only working days?
‘If the news is good,’ Elena told us during the workshop, ‘then we just leave a message saying congratulations! If the news is bad we leave a message asking you to call us.’
I wonder if I should phone to check if the results are in yet, but she did say 4.30 p.m. and I should probably keep the line free. The last time I can remember feeling like this was waiting for A-level results.
I can’t imagine how we will react if, instead of announcing in a jubilant tone that everything is fine, they ask us to go in and discuss the results. How exactly will they word it? I suppose they must be trained to give bad news. I will, of course, insist on knowing what the results are over the phone, but what will we do if it does have Down’s? We have already decided that we would insist on a second opinion, though they told us they always grow two sets of cultures, just to be certain.
Thursday, 30 July
Peter
‘Which is it: Sean “Puffy” Combs or Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs?’
‘I dunno. And it’s pronounced “Coombes”, anyway,’ replies Joanna, deep in her copy
of Hamptons, the glossy freebie that runs nothing but group pictures of society revellers.
‘God, look at us!’ I bluster, startling Joanna out of her magazine. ‘Discussing the name of a rapper with all the exacting pedantry of a Debrett’s sub-editor ensuring the precise honorific of an hereditary peer.’
‘Well, at least Puff Daddy worked to get where he is,’ says Joanna.
It’s a fair point. Puff Daddy Combs, a black rap artist who now has his own successful record label, has exploded onto the Hamptons’ social scene this season with all the finesse of a cluster bomb. He has purchased a grand manor and taken up residence there with a large retinue of flunkies, quickly becoming a fixture at major Hamptons’ events, to the consternation of the Old Money set, a set that has been on the decline for some time here, vanquished by Wall Street Masters of the Universe, and Hollywood Show-people on furlough.
‘Look, he’s on the List,’ says Joanna, once again nose in glossy.
The List is an apparently arbitrary catalogue of names of people-on-the-Hampton’s-scene, selected at the whim of Jason Binn, publisher of Hamptons. Our fellow summer tenement dweller, Ron, who lives upstairs with his psychotherapist wife Betsy in what is probably the only apartment in East Hampton smaller than ours, has recently unsettled Joanna with the news that he has been featured on the List no fewer than three times.
I suspect that Joanna secretly covets a place on the List, if only to call people’s attention to the fact by affecting embarrassment at having appeared on it at all.
Friday, 31 July
Joanna
Everything feels on hold.
‘We could tell the Schiffrins I’m pregnant, they should be back from Europe by now,’ I say to Peter, as we toy unenthusiastically with eight-dollar ham and salsa sandwiches from Barefoot Contessa – possibly the most expensive deli in the world.
‘Why don’t we wait until tomorrow?’ Peter replies calmly. ‘Just in case…’
At 4.30 p.m. precisely the phone rings. It is a researcher from the Leeza Gibbons talk show. I am strangely fascinated by the glamorous figure of Leeza Gibbons. The spelling of her name, for one thing, the ostentatiously phonetic ‘Leeza’. And the fact that she was once married to Brian, the famously wooden son of Ivy Tilsley from Coronation Street. Like most of Britain, I’d been amazed when Brian, aka Christopher Quentin, announced that he was getting engaged to Leeza, and giving up this prime part to follow her to the USA, there to pursue his own acting ambitions. Sadly, both the marriage and his career quickly foundered.
The researcher wonders if they could fly me to Los Angeles to talk about Princess Diana’s legacy. I tell her curtly that I’ll call her back.
Peter has emerged from his desk and is sitting silently on the sofa. We agree to wait until 5 p.m. and if we’ve heard nothing by then we’ll go for a walk along the beach. If it’s good news we agree to go to the local toy shop and buy a first toy.
At 5.10 p.m. there is still no news. We go to the beach.
AUGUST
The foetus now has a definite chin, a large forehead, and a button nose. His eyelids have begun to develop across his fully formed eyes, and he is beginning to respond to external stimuli – if his mother’s abdomen is poked, he will try to wriggle away.
Dr Miriam Stoppard, Conception, Pregnancy and Birth
Saturday, 1 August
Peter
We have developed a routine of working in the morning and cycling to the beach in the late afternoon on our Hampton Cruisers, old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg bikes with wicker baskets, back-pedal brakes and no gears. Until we purchased these bikes we had been under the impression that the Hamptons were flat. We now know better.
After trying several beaches we favour Two Mile Hollow, a particularly beautiful beach, which curves in a shallow blond crescent in each direction. The light here is magical, soft and refracted, and it’s easy to see why the Hamptons were first colonized as a summer resort by New York’s painters.
Joanna claims that the adverts for the unisex perfume, Eternity, by Calvin Klein (who lives opposite Georgica beach nearby in a stunning traditional grey shingled house with its own windmill) were shot on this beach, but I’m not sure she can stand this up.
Two Mile Hollow beach is finely calibrated into very particular comfort zones. Gays to the far left, lesbians straight ahead, straights to the right, straights with kids to the far right. By and large these zones are self-enforced, though it is permissible to stroll along the water line through alien zones as long as you do not appear too shocked at anything you may witness there. Most of the potentially shocking stuff takes place to the far left in the male gay zone, but high up in the dunes, well out of casual view. In fact there is little public nudity. What exposure there is, seems to be age determined. The older you are the more likely you are to strip off.
Though the beach regulations state that dogs may only be on the beach before nine and after five, Two Mile Hollow is a popular dog hang-out all day, and the various sexual sub-tribes appear to have quite divergent tastes in canine companionship. The gays favour miniature breeds; Jack Russells, Maltese poodles and fox terriers. Lesbians tend to like bigger dogs, German shepherds, Dobermans and mastiffs. And the straights go for Labradors, the cardigans of the canine world.
Saturday, 1 August
Joanna
The President has taken time off from Monica problems to visit East Hampton for a frenzy of fund-raisers, organized by the local celebs. All week Secret Service helicopters have been hovering over Georgica Pond scoping out the approaches to Steven Spielberg’s post-modern barn, where Bill and Hillary are staying. The Spielbergs have even erected a temporary indoor riding arena to provide entertainment in case it rains, though the weather promises to be excellent.
I have spent all week trying to procure an invitation to a Clinton bash, any Clinton bash. The most realistic chance I have is for Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin’s event, which is brutally tiered by ticket price. Those who have forked out $5,000 each get to shake hands with Bill and Hillary and sup in the Baldwins’ dining room on seared tuna, serenaded by Hootie and the Blowfish.
A thousand bucks gets you into a marquee on the lawn, and a buffet salad, made with ‘local Hamptons potatoes’; and for $250 you can stand in the outer reaches of the garden nibbling a ‘locally baked doughnut’ and slurping a paper cup of ‘locally produced cold corn chowder’. If you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the President as he arrives and hear the distant strains of Hootie and his Blowfish.
It is the first time a standing President has visited the Hamptons in living memory, and the locals are demonstrating an exaggerated ennui by moaning abut the traffic congestion it is causing. Chief Inspector Stone of the East Hampton Town Police had contributed significantly to local alarm by issuing an apocalyptic warning that this weekend the three-hour journey from New York will take twelve hours – in the event the roads are so deserted that the journey time is cut to an hour and a half.
My contact on the Democratic Party committee, a local worthy on the board of the East Hampton Ladies’ Village Improvement Society, ultimately fails to come up with the Baldwin tickets. They are in such demand, she apologizes, that she couldn’t even secure one for her own daughter, who has come up from Florida specially. I have no joy playing my foreign press card. No one cares what the British media think.
I toy with the idea of gatecrashing another event, Jonathan Sheffer’s afternoon cocktails, not least because I am curious to observe his garden. Mr Sheffer is the conductor of the New York chamber orchestra, Eos, and is so excited to be hosting a presidential party, with his partner Christopher, that he has had his entire lawn sprayed green. It was green before, but he wanted it greener.
The real power party was held last night at the $9 million Cranberry Dune, belonging to financier Bruce Wasserstein, who had his ‘16th century Scottish barn’ transplanted from Europe, stone by stone.
Kelly has badgered the supposedly secret menu out of the caterer: a start
er of smoked salmon in cucumber cup with caviar mousseline, duck prosciutto and white peach chutney on a corn crêpe, followed by lobster and squid salad with Louisiana shrimp, served with avocado, hearts of palm and roasted tuna wrapped in bacon with roasted asparagus.
For this, diners paid a cool $25,000 a throw, slightly outside the Guardian’s budget.
Sunday, 2 August
Peter
It is the last day of the President’s visit to East Hampton and since Joanna has failed to inveigle her way into any of his functions I am trying to be dismissive of his presence, pretending that we are above the hullabaloo. It is my way of being supportive. We stroll into town to pick up provisions from Barefoot Contessa, only to find that Newtown Lane has been cordoned off by the EHTP so that the President can do a walkabout and gladhand the local shopkeepers. I harumpf about it, as though I am a long-time resident.
As we are returning home, waiting to cross Main Street, the presidential cavalcade drives by. Security vehicles pass first and then the convoy slows to a halt just as the President’s limo draws opposite us. We are the only pedestrians there and the President leans forward to peer at us. Up close, his grey-flecked head is enormous, as though already carved into Mount Rushmore. His features are marooned in the large puce terrain of his face. He waves tentatively, and Joanna and I look at each other, astonished, and burst out laughing. The President also seems to find some amusement in our sudden traffic-enforced intimacy and he laughs too. For an elastic moment we are suspended in this impromptu one-on-one waving session and then he is borne away by a tide of yowling sirens and strobing lights.
Sunday, 2 August
Joanna
I am beginning to develop a soft spot for Sean Puffy Combs. The ultra-conservative East Hampton Star has run a piece blustering with outrage about a recent raucous party he hosted at his mansion. It is reported that guests were served platters of steaming hot marijuana brownies. Apparently the EHTP are on the case. Luckily the President was not on Sean Puffy’s guest list, or he’d have to swear that though he might have chewed, he didn’t swallow.