We are supposed to move back in two weeks. Again. I really want to move back. I feel adrift. It has been nice to be in a village and I think it has helped me feel as if I belong, but I want to get on with my life. I want to have the space to stretch out and breathe. There is a pond in the garden of this rented house. We carefully covered it up. The boys equally carefully uncovered it. I want to open the door and let my sons out to play in the garden without worrying about whether they will drown. I want to fill my pantry with fancy tinned stuff that looks like art and glass jars of fruit we will never eat, not even at Christmas. I want to keep vanilla pods in sugar and have everything just so. For a day at least. That will be a very good day. One to remember. I want to go home.
Thursday, 28 June 2007
It’s my party
Terrible night. My six-year-old woke up at about 1.30 a.m., complaining of feeling sick and had to come into my bed. I think I managed about an hour of sleep after that. If we weren’t traipsing to the bathroom, he was asking for water, tapping on the wooden bedhead or moaning: ‘Mummy, I feel sick.’ ‘Me too,’ I muttered into the pillow. I can virtually guarantee that one or other of the children are sick whenever my husband is away – usually the four-year-old. It is as if he says to them: ‘Remember. Be good for Mummy and be sure to vomit lots while Daddy is away.’
I do not know whether it is sleep deprivation, but I cannot decide what to do tomorrow. Tomorrow being my birthday. In London, if I could get the day off work, I would often spend it alone shopping, seeing an exhibition or a movie and then out to dinner with my husband in the evening. I do not know where to go here. Can I replicate the birthday I would have had but in a different place, or is that a dangerous thing to do? Will I compare, contrast and find my northern life too different for my taste? Will I end up buying a saddle for no better reason than I fetched up in the saddle shop? Or do I do something entirely different? Go for a bone-drenching beach walk alone? (Happy Birthday, Billy No-Mates.) Take the four-year-old and the baby to a castle? (If I was counting, I would estimate I have visited two castles this week.) Perhaps I will buy a birthday cake and share it with the builders.
Friday, 29 June 2007
Prayers
My four-year-old came in with a tightly folded piece of paper. He said: ‘Happy Birthday, Mummy.’ Bleary, I pushed a pillow underneath my head. I said: ‘Darling, how lovely.’ I unfolded the A4 paper to admire the coloured pencil scribbling. I unfolded it some more to reveal the words: ‘To Granny and Grandad, love.’ I said: ‘This says it’s for Granny and Grandad.’ ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘but they can’t have it. It’s yours.’ I kissed him. When I came down to breakfast, my six-year-old had marked the occasion by peeling a satsuma and making plate faces with it for his brother and sister and chopping up an apple for me. He must have been awake for some time because the apple was brown with deep scars; it looked like it had been in a knife fight and lost, badly. Technically, he is not allowed to use knives when I am out of the room, but since there were no fingers among the slices, I pretended not to notice. The only injury of the morning was in fact mine when I was helping to dress him for school and an arm shot out of his sleeve and he socked me in the eye incredibly hard. I thought: ‘No one’s ever given me a black eye for my birthday before.’
Once the older boy was at school, my four-year-old and I went to the local ice-cream parlour, which has a long counter with stools that you draw up and occasionally fall off. This year, it finally recognized Britain’s membership of the European Union and introduced cappuccinos and lattes. Before the arrival of the big glittery coffee machine, I asked for a cappuccino and was told: ‘We don’t do cappuccinos, pet. We do coffee and hot milk.’ I love this café. It serves milkshakes in glasses whose sides bulge with pressed glass fruit. Next to the frothing trophy of pink, bubble-popping milk, an aluminium vat stands with more shake; ready, when you drain the glass, to fill your life again with thick and chilly sweetness. Here, bar flies, stuck fat and happy on their stools, eat bacon sandwiches and watch cold tourists buy colder ice-cream cornets at the window. Hands wrapped around your coffee, you think: ‘I live here. I know you do not have to stand at the window. You can come in and sit awhile.’ But you do not call out an invitation to the strangers.
My birthday was all the better for being spontaneous. I like the idea of spontaneity, I just find it difficult to work it into my schedule. But as soon as I decided to stay put, it was make do and mend and all the better for it. My four-year-old and I bought a blue marbled plastic bucket, a red spade and a fishing net, snatched up the baby and headed for the beach. I was a silent soul before I became a mother; silence was easy for me. I could hold my peace and never felt the need to chat and chatter. Then children come and you think: ‘I have to talk. I have to teach or my child will grow as silent and grave as his mother, which would never do.’ So you talk and do not stop. You say: ‘Look at that …’ Whatever it may be. You say: ‘Did you see …?’ and ‘That’s because …’ till any sensible child blocks up his ears with peas. Then, children leave. ‘Bye, Mum.’
There is silence in the kitchen and the car and everywhere. But there cannot be silence in her heart. I think, in her most secret places, a mother’s chatter plays out, regardless of the emptied nest. An old woman, shabby in a mac and slippered feet, holding a shopping carry-all; her hair, tousled; her mind, worse. The words escape again, she calls long-gone children to her side and loud-mumbles to them of birds and trees and passing marvels that she sees.
I have not yet become that ghost, but as I watched my son walk ahead of me, intent on the sea, resolute in his wellies, his net in one hand, his bucket dangling from an arm, the spade gripped in the other hand, I thought: ‘This is how the man will be: looking out to the horizon, armed and ready for his task, his mother hardly more than a memory. This is how I will be: trailing behind him, hoping he will stay safe, that he is happy, will turn round and remember me.’ He found his spot in a wash of water running across the beach while the baby girl and I squatted down, gathering seashells and pressing them into sandy walls of small castles. I got older. Despite that, it was a good day.
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Good cop, bad cop
It is a week till we move back into the cottage. It is difficult to believe it will be ready. I do not think I helped when I asked the builders to move the bath they had installed. They went off me a bit. I walked into the bathroom and the roll-top bath was pressed against the wall as if it had a crush on it. It looked terrible. Admittedly, the builders had asked me whether I wanted it to stand away from the wall or against it. I might have said: ‘Against it.’ I did not mean obscenely pressed against it, right against it, up against it. I did not mean for the bath to make a show of herself. I meant more of a casually, in the vicinity, if you happen to be passing then feel free to call in ‘against it’. It is, in fact, not just the bath which is up against it, but the builders too. I thought about not saying anything. I always think about not saying anything. Then I climbed into the bath and realized you could not rest your elbow on the side or put your hand on the bath to lever yourself up. I thought: ‘Every time I have a bath I am going to think: ‘This over-priced bath is far too close to that newly plastered wall in a bathroom I have just paid good money for and which I hoped would be perfect because it is costing enough to be perfect.’ I said: ‘Slight problem.’ The builder was incredibly calm about it, bearing in mind the plumbers had only just finished plumbing it all in. Sometimes I think my husband should have these conversations without me. The mixer tap arrived bent and the taps arrived without their ‘Hot’ and ‘Cold’ buttons. My husband said: ‘You ring them.’ Unlike the bath, the Aga was installed surprisingly far from the wall. My husband said: ‘You talk to them.’ I say: ‘Why do I always have to be the bad cop?’ He looks at me with puppy-dog eyes. ‘You know how I hate confrontation,’ he says, throwing down the nice-guy card and sweeping up the chips. I confront; the situation changes for the better. He hands me a bullet for th
e gun, hands me a bullet belt for better rat-a-tat. I fire, and between their ragged, bloody gasps the wounded think: ‘I don’t know how that nice bloke puts up with that stroppy baggage.’ My husband will kindly smile down upon their suffering faces, uncork his canteen of water to wet their dry and cracked lips, straighten up, beckon over his armoured wife, point, smile again and say: ‘This one’s not dead yet.’
Thursday, 5 July 2007
House about town
I am trying out a new café in the nearest market town. It has armchairs. This may sound like nothing very much, but believe me, an armchair to drink a decent cup of coffee in is right up there among my priorities, alongside ‘Bring up the children to be decent human beings’, ‘Stop my mother getting any frailer’, ‘Make friends’ and ‘Learn German’.
Perhaps I will not need the armchair. I have an idea. The newly refurbished kitchen – at least the half-refurbished kitchen – has a high window. I have decided to buy two bar stools and acquire one of those large china coffee mugs that want to be a Starbucks paper cup. When particularly desperate, I could ask the nice man who drives the big red bus for golfers and tourists to come round and park in front of the kitchen window. I could stare out, pretend I am back in the city. I have it all planned. I will do the school run in the morning, buy the newspapers and head for my little piece of London. I will turn on the Gaggia coffee maker, perhaps I will queue up by the sink for a while and leave some money in the children’s toy till. I think that would work. The other advantage to my sill café is you do not need friends in Starbucks. If you sit there on your own, you feel not odd, but urban and busy. ‘Too busy for friends right this minute. Too busy thinking of romance. Too busy planning my career. Too busy writing this screenplay. I only just have time for this latte and one more piece of caramel shortbread.’ Alternatively, if my lonely coffee stop palled, I could always say to another mother: ‘Come round for a coffee. I will meet you at my windowsill. Ten-ish.’
God knows, I need more coffee these days. I blame the osteopath for telling me to cut down on caffeine. If people stopped telling me what to do, I would not have the urge to go out and do the opposite. I also blame my caffeine cravings on the fact that we are due to move on Wednesday. We were due to move on Tuesday but pushed it back a day to buy our way back into the builders’ affections after making them shift the bath. I went up to the cottage this morning. In fact, I went up to the cottage three times within five hours. I suspect the builders have started hiding when they see me coming. The plumber moves more slowly than they do. Or perhaps he cannot fit. I said to him: ‘Thank you for moving the bath.’ He did not say anything in return; he just looked at me. He could have been thinking: ‘In this light, when she stands like that, she looks like Kate Moss,’ but I do not think so.
Monday, 9 July 2007
Indefinite futures
We were supposed to move house the day after tomorrow. Yesterday, it became blazingly apparent it was not going to happen. Today, the builder described it as ‘imperative’ we put the move back. Unfortunately, we cannot get hold of the removal man to tell him the move is off. Again. And would he mind moving us next week, or possibly the week after that, or maybe sometime never? I knew this would happen, as an old teacher of mine used to say. I have this vision of a large removal van turning up at the crack of dawn only for us to say: ‘Not today, thank you, Milky.’ Maybe if I stopped wanting it so much, it would all come together. As it is, every time I walk into the cottage, I look around and think: ‘This is not going to get finished in time.’ But you do not want to seem like a panicky, depressive girly. You do not want to stick a finger in your mouth, twirl a curl around another and giggle nervously as a sweating man tries to reach the finishing line. They do not like it.
I was right, though.
Builders step through their own personal landscape of debris and chaos. They say: ‘I am really looking forward to getting stuck in to that problem with the drains.’ They like banging their heads against brick walls. That way they get to knock them over. I am trying to keep it in ‘What’s another week between friends?’ perspective, but I am desperate to stop squatting in the rented house. Ever since the boys dyed the kitchen carpet pink, I have not been able to relax. The whole process of getting back home is just taking so much time: packing, or at least thinking about packing; endless fannying on about bits and bobs of furniture we have managed our entire lives without but which have become critically important to our happiness. Glamorous stuff like pan stackers and trivets. I mean, ‘trivets’. How have I managed all these years without a trivet? There was once a time when I did not even know what a trivet was. Ah. The innocence of youth.
Then there is the Aga. My husband’s idea – not so much a cooker as a cast-iron anchor roped to my ankle. Not so much an anchor as an advertisement to all and sundry ‘Look, we’re middle class and have come to live in the country.’ All sorts of rituals appear necessary when a new Aga is installed. Not least signing over a large amount of money. This afternoon, I spent several hours mopping down the sweat from the hulking brute. Normally, I would quite like that. But there was little return. I took up a slightly soapy cloth and washed it first. An hour later, the sweat was running from it. I tell you, these things are very demanding. I expected something that would clean itself and do its share of the ironing. What do I get? A traditional ‘Mop me down and worship my size’. It doesn’t even have any conversation. Still, it is on now and will keep the builders warm while they work through to the bitter end.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Alpha male
Tore down to the city to chose tiles with my husband. Tore back up again to get to a Christian supper at the local United Reform Church. The Oyster Farmer’s Wife completed something called an Alpha course, and the graduates celebrate with a supper to which they invite guests who might also want to do an Alpha course. She invited me. We were unusual among our London friends in that we went to mass. Being a ‘believer’ has no novelty value here at all. My ‘belief’ is a pretty ropy affair of feminist hesitation, personal doubts, general embarrassment and a cultural legacy from my mother, but other people’s certainty impresses me. I looked at my prayerful friend, thought: ‘I am about to move house again – look what happened last time. I need God on my side. Why not?’
As a Catholic, I do not have to talk about God. I hardly have to talk to God. The priests and my mother can do that for me. I have hardly been to mass since we moved up here. I hardly even pray to God these days. I figure he is busy, what with Iraq and all. But I tell a lie – I do. I regularly, head in hands, say: ‘God, give me strength.’ Or ‘Lord, give me patience’ or sometimes ‘Fucking Hell.’ Does that count, I wonder? Does he hear these Mother’s Prayers and answer them? I have not yet fallen to my knees and wept. Not recently anyhows. So perhaps he does give me pause and succour so that I do not explode in geyser ways, spouting anger and hot and bubbling mother blood.
We had supper in the church hall. Sausages and salad, pavlova and wine. I had brought the wine. I was not taking the chance of going through it entirely sober. The Oyster Farmer’s Wife is charming and very skilled socially. She does that thing with your name and an interesting fact to give you something to latch on to when you are introduced. I half expected her to say when she was introducing me: ‘This is Wifey. She’s probably going to Hell.’ The meal finished. We watched a DVD, a man preaching in a London church to the young and beautiful who would not be damned for all the world. They too had eaten their supper and drunk their wine and now listened with intent. Trainee doctors, lawyers and accountants. Shiny hair and painted lips. Serious expressions as they listened to the pastor’s tips for the top. They closed their eyes in prayer. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ the man said on behalf of the Lord. I am wondering as I look at the youthful screen beauties whether any of them have known the grief and loneliness which has you reach for faith in the hope of peace of mind. When the DVD was finished, the URC forty-something minister said: ‘Anyone w
ho is interested in the course can tell me as I stack the chairs away.’ And I said: ‘Did you notice how beautiful and young they were? Are we supposed to feel that way?’ I think: ‘If Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, I could save a fortune on cosmetics.’
Friday, 13 July 2007
Wedding blues
I know the feel of my mother’s wedding dress. Her first one, that is. As a girl child, I would slip it over my plaited head and feel the scratch of net at my throat, the rippled waves of lace; drop pearls and rainbowed sequins catching beneath my nails as I clawed, vain, at the too-tight zip. Bride for an hour, I would gather up the skirt in frothing handfuls, preen and whirl-twirl before the glass. Dressing in my mother’s past and my own future. I wonder, will my daughter do the same in my ivory and satin empire line? Will I let her play dress-up? Or will I say: ‘No, darling, Mummy wants to be buried in her dress. Won’t she look pretty in the box? She’ll finally get her money’s worth anyhow. Here’s a cowboy outfit. Wear that instead.’
I have seen black-and-white photos of that special day, my mother’s happiness with the groom who did not stick around. Who had to be replaced with something that smiled and was more durable. ‘You may kiss the bride and make her cry,’ the priest must have said to this groom who fathered a child and then cavalierly, cancerously, died. Job done. But I never knew until today that my mother’s bouquet was of golden yellow roses with a white ribbon bow. Now I know, I can smell the yellow from here.
Wife in the North Page 21