by Claire Allan
“Breathe, just breathe,” Aoife said, mopping my brow,
Dan paled beside me, and reached for my hand.
“It’s fine, Betsy, it will all be fine,” he said.
I looked at him, ready to shout and scream ‘What the fuck would you know?’ but then I thought of all the times he had told me it would be fine and he was right.
“You’re doing brilliantly,” Aoife said, a smile across her face. “This is just where it starts getting good for you, darling. It’s all ahead of you now.”
Good for me? I could almost feel my perineum tearing and this was the part where it was supposed to get good?
But then I looked at her again and saw her eyes were moist with tears.
Peggy was hovering between my legs.
“Okay, lovely. A nice big push for me, please?” she said.
And I knew, instinctively, as I sucked deep on the gas and air, that Aoife was right – even if, as she said, my poor fandango was fanning as we spoke.
Aoife
Lucas Jones was born on December 18, weighing in at a gorgeous 7lb and 5oz. I saw him come into the world and I saw my two best friends sob happy, ecstatic tears at his arrival.
And Peggy had smiled at me – a secret smile which seemed to say ‘You see, Aoife, I knew that first time I saw you that you would learn to love babies more than anything.’
Beth took to motherhood like a duck to water. Of course she had been shocked to find herself pregnant in the first place, but Dr Browne had explained that sometimes the very act of a dye test can make you extra fertile. It was ironic really.
Anna and I had hidden upstairs while Beth told Dan and hugged each other closely as we heard the whoops of delight from them. Dan had rushed right out and bought some cigars – which in fairness we still had because none of us smoked, but it was the gesture that mattered.
Maggie of course loved her little friend. She loved to pull herself up to standing by his crib and try to brain him with her pudgy baby hands.
Beth and I were as happy as we ever had been – and I didn’t for one second think it could have got better from there on.
As Christmas Day dawned I watched Maggie crawl to the tree and tear paper off her presents before crawling back to me for a hug. We had already phoned my mother to tunelessly sing “Away in a Manger” down the phone. (I was going to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, but realised just in time my mother would prefer something a little bit more religious.)
Anna was full of Christmas spirit when I phoned her at eight thirty. She was spending the day with John and his family and Maeve would also be joining them. “This is the best Christmas I’ve had in years,” she cooed.
And the day was yet to begin.
As I put the kettle on, I kept singing – now on a delightful chorus of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
“All this and she sings,” Tom said, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my neck. I melted into him.
“Happy Christmas, Aoife,” he said and sighed contentedly.
It had been wonderful to wake up next to him on Christmas morning.
Jake hadn’t been too impressed that his daughter was spending Christmas with another man, but then again, he hadn’t been falling over himself to spend any time with her himself. His feckwittedness continued to reach new levels, but Tom, he was different. Yes, things had worked out between us.
As Dan and Beth had cried their tears of joy in Anna’s living- room, crushing guilt had swept in on me. How could I have thought Tom was only after my child? How could I have been so bloody callous to him when all he had done was show me friendship? I thought back to how he had smiled at me (me, not Maggie) in Morelli’s. I thought back to how he had listened to me rant and rave about Jake – how he had cooked me dinner and walked me home. I thought of how we had laughed, felt at ease, of how he had moved to reassure me after Elena’s attempt at pimping me out. Most of all I thought of our flirting and of how my skin tingled when he kissed my cheek.
I had left the happy scene and phoned him from my bedroom.
Before he could say anything I launched into my apology. “I have no right to expect anything from you and I’m more sorry than words can say. I have no excuse to offer, Tom, but I’m sorry for being such a bitch. I was scared, you see, because yes I do have feelings and I so don’t want to get hurt. But I was still wrong, so wrong, and if you could forgive me I would really like that because I miss you and I want you in my life.”
When I stopped talking, there was silence and it was only when the silence was followed by a beep telling me my time was up that I realised I had been talking to his answerphone.
***
Shortly after I’d returned from Derry we had met in my garden. I had gone down to admire it. Then I heard movement behind me. Figuring it was either Matilda come to life in a mad modern-day version of the Chucky films or that we were about to burgled, I lifted a plant pot and turned to knock the head off my potential attacker.
“Hold fire!” he shouted and I dropped the pot in shock, narrowly missing my foot and making me jump the height of myself.
“Holy Mother of God, how on earth did you get in here?” I shouted, trying to cover my embarrassment.
“Beth gave me a key,” he said, “when I was working here so that I could show clients round.”
Suddenly I was very worried that we were not alone and my embarrassing plant-pot incident would have been seen by strangers as well as the more-tanned-than-usual-looking Tom Austin.
I looked behind him and was relieved to see that there were no traumatised customers with him – until of course I realised that we were on our own and that my heart was beating faster than normal and I didn’t know whether he had come to reciprocate my feelings or tell me to stay away forever.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard you were back and I just had to call around.”
I nodded.
“I missed you,” he said and I nodded again. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything from the outset but it’s not exactly a desirable quality in a man, is it? The lack of lead in a pencil? And besides we were just friends and that is all I ever intended us to be.”
“But things change,” I said, reaching my hand out to touch the smooth warm skin of his arm.
“Yes,” he said with a smile stepping closer, “things change.”
****
“We’d better get a move on,” I said, turning to kiss him. “I promised Beth we would be over early to help with dinner. If you ask me she is out of her head making Christmas dinner for us lot so soon after giving birth.”
“You know that Dan and I will be lumbered while you two sit cooing over Lucas and Maggie,” he said and I smiled.
“Well, you do tell me my cooking is rubbish.”
“More reason to practise then,” he said. “No wife of mine can be a shoddy cook.”
“Wife? I’m not your wife, Mr Austin.”
“No,” he said before dropping to one knee, “but who’s to say what the future holds?”
THE END
If you enjoyed Feels Like Maybe try
Rainy Days & Tuesdays also published by Poolbeg
Here’s a sneak preview of Chapter one
Rainy Days & Tuesdays
Chapter 1
I used to be glamorous once. Honestly I was. I went to the hairdresser’s every six weeks and had my roots done. I wore boot-cut jeans, suit jackets and fitted T-shirts which hugged my contours perfectly. I had a dressing-table overflowing with Clarins and L’Oréal and a selection of funky jewellery to jazz up any outfit. I was a babe – but somewhere between being a babe and having a baby I lost my mojo. Now I’m the ultimate slummy mummy.
This thought dances through my mind as I wake up – hair damp with sweat, skin greasy from last night’s takeaway. I toy with the idea of hiding under the duvet, ducking my responsibilities and going back to sleep, but then it dawns on me – I’m a grown-up. I can’t j
ust do that. It’s not like when I was at school and I could feign a cough or grab my stomach and perform my dying-swan routine for my unimpressed mammy who would eventually give in to my pitiful whinges and allow me a day under the blue blanket on the sofa. You can’t just refuse to go to work – not when there are bills to pay and stories to write.
You can’t go back to sleep when you can hear a wee voice from the nursery next door giving a rather amusing rendition of “Jingle Bells” (despite it being July), letting you know that your toddler is awake and will soon be demanding breakfast.
The dream I had been having was so nice too. It was sunny and bright and I felt gloriously relaxed. I was cycling to a local dress shop to pick a dress to wear to accompany dish-du-jour Dermot Murnaghan, TV News Presenter Extraordinaire, to the BAFTAS.
Himself is snoring beside me and I realise this is my reality. A stuffy, too bright room. A snoring husband, who bears not even a passing resemblance to the delectable Dermot, and a child who has started to reach fever pitch with his singing.
Oh yes, and there is work. I have to go to work. I pull myself out of bed and blearily reach for the cow-print slippers which are hiding on the floor. After pulling on my dressing-gown, I give a cursory glance at the mirror. T – minus sixty minutes (in NASA-speak) until I have to be dressed and out of the house. T – minus 60 minutes to make this face, this crumpled, wrinkly, bed-headed vision before me, respectable enough to face my public. It almost makes me laugh.
When I walk into the nursery I am greeted with a “Mammeeee!” Jack is grinning ear to ear from his cot. “My want breakfass!” he cheeps, and I smile again, realising that when my son looks at me he sees nothing but his very own mammy and he loves me.
He is not one bit bothered about my bed-head and the saggy pyjama bottoms I’m wearing. He thinks I am the bee’s knees, one yummy mummy, a foxy mamma. He reaches out his chubby arms and I reach in to lift him up, envelop him in my arms and feel his cuddly body against mine. Until, of course, he tries to bite me and the spell is somewhat broken.
This morning, like almost every other, I manage to get myself and Jack out the door in time. At least, I manage to get out the door ten minutes after I wanted to, which is a record for this year. Aidan is still snoring comfortably, having worked long into the night, and I have spent my precious sixty minutes trying to entertain my two-year-old, getting us dressed and getting into the car without totally losing my cool.
I choose to ignore the Weetabix stain I know is on my trousers. It’s not that I don’t care about my appearance but I know no one gives me a second glance any more anyway, so they are hardly going to notice one wee stain. Grooming is a thing of the past when you have to get a child to the childminder and yourself to work on time.
Where once I would practically dance into the office, throw my (designer) handbag onto my desk and set about working on the features for next month’s issue, now I saunter in the back door, sit down, bury my head in organising my desk and offer to cover all the boring, respectable features that don’t actually require me to leave the office or speak to anyone face to face.
This morning is no different. I say a few hellos to the team before plonking myself down with my morning coffee and sausage roll to open the post. Somehow in the proper daylight the Weetabix stain on my trousers has morphed from an eeny-weeny mark to one not too dissimilar to that birthmark on Gorbachov’s head.
Running my fingers through my hair, I realise, not for the first time, that I have forgotten to brush it again before leaving home. No wonder Susie, the normally very friendly childminder, had looked at me in an alarmed way as I dropped Jack off. Searching through my tatty Dunnes Stores Better Value handbag for a mini-hairbrush, I am needless to say more than a little dismayed to find the bottle of Calpol I keep for emergencies has sprung a leak and, yes, I can still brush my hair, but only if I don’t mind it being strawberry-flavoured and slightly pink in colour all day.
I give my hair a quick detangle with my fingers, hoping that everyone is thinking I’m trying the new just-fell-out-of-bed look, and go back to my hiding place behind my monitor. From the other end of the office I can hear Louise laughing uproariously. She was at some launch or other last night and apparently everyone who was anyone was there. It was a scream, she says, and she had a hundred admiring comments for her new dress which she bought in some boutique in Belfast. I try to look interested but all I really want to do is staple her head to her desk so I don’t have to look at her smug and gorgeous face any more.
I shouldn’t be jealous. I attended a launch myself yesterday. One of the local supermarkets was launching their new improved Mother and Baby Club and I was invited along to find out all about their groovy new parking facilities and padded trolleys. All the best mummies were there. And I stress, they were mummies – the posh version of mammies.
The post generates its usual share of gems. At least, being Parenting Editor, I can always expect some interesting samples. There is a book on raising your toddler to be politically correct, some toilet wipes and a dummy which promises to soothe even the most fractious of children.
And for the glamorous mummy-on-the-go, well, there was a sample of Tena Lady because we all know the busy working mum can’t smell of wee. I switch on my computer and smile as an image of the lovely Dermot flickers onto the screen. Dermot is my escape – my little fantasy where I can pretend I am still me and not just a mammy or Grace Adams, Parenting Editor of Northern People magazine. Amid the cute pictures of Jack grinning at me from the gaudy-coloured frames proclaiming ‘I love Mummy!’, beside the piles of parenting magazines, nappies and nipple-creams (again, samples) which clutter my desk, there is Dermot – all be-suited and handsome. He looks at me, his eyebrow raised in that quizzical and sexy manner of his, and I wish, oh really wish, we really were heading out to the BAFTAS for a date. I sigh, sip my coffee and finish the sausage roll. I cannot lose myself in another daydream today. There is work to be done. I have to come face to face with thirty screaming toddlers at Cheeky Monkeys Day Care Centre for a feature on ‘Messy Play’. And when all that is done, I have to find the answers to the parenting problems submitted to me by overwrought mummies and daddies all across Ireland. Oh, if only my readers knew that Jack had cheese and ham for breakfast this morning because today his favourite Weetabix was “Icky, Mammy, icky!” or that I’d let him watch CBeebies videos until nine-thirty last night just to get some peace and quiet.
I already know this is one of those days when I will need two Nurofen and a power nap in the toilets before lunch-time. If Louise keeps on screeching in her high-pitched giggle, it might even be before tea break.
I open my email and find my daily reminder from lifecoaches.com to take each day as a new challenge, relax, breathe and remember: “I am a strong, confident woman. I can do this!” Breathing in, holding for five and breathing out, I feel myself relax and get ready for another day.
And then the phone rings.
I would say it is a pretty poor reflection of my ability to be an award-winning journalist that I mentally cringe when the phone rings at my desk. I frequently toy with the idea of not answering it and doing that oh-so-American thing of screening my calls. I imagine that wouldn’t go down the best with the powers that be.
“Good morning, Grace Adams speaking!” I trill down the phone.
“Hi, Grace.”
Sighing with relief, I realise it is only Aidan – fresh from his slumbers and ready for another day of scratching himself on the PlayStation before heading out for his bar job in the evening.
“Do you know where my phone is?” he asks.
“No,” I reply. “Where have you looked for it?”
“I haven’t yet. I thought you might know,” he says.
My blood pressure rises.
We have this conversation every morning. Sure enough, it might not be the phone we are talking about – it might be the keys, the bills that need paying, the wee doodah you use to bleed the fecked radiator in the front room �
� but the premise is the same. He asks, I tell him to look, he looks, he finds. Why he can’t realise he would be better served to just cut out the middle-woman and look himself is beyond me.
But this morning, in a remarkable turn of events, I don’t need to answer. By now he has looked around him and found said item two feet from where he is standing. He informs me of this and I get ready to hang up and go somewhere to faint with shock.
However, just then an unexpected noise comes shooting down the phone line.
“Do you want to go out tomorrow night, Grace?” he asks and I start to wonder if my cholesterol-stuffed heart can really take the impact of two such shocks in one day.
We don’t go out. Not any more. Not since we became parents. We tried it once when Jack was one and it was an unmitigated disaster. I spent the whole night worrying about whether or not Jack would settle without me, and himself spent the whole evening telling me why we needed to get out more. Both of us drank ourselves silly, talked shite about the wee man, ignoring the real issues in our relationship, before going home and falling straight to sleep. As I threw my considerable guts up the next day, I vowed never again. Seeing my whiter-than-white pallor, himself agreed that was not a sight he ever wished to see again either so we became Mr and Mrs Bottle-of-Wine-on-a-Saturday-Night. In other words, we became so boring we even bored ourselves.
Soon the bottle of wine would involve him on the PlayStation and me watching a chick flick on my own in the other room, and even that went by the wayside when he got the bar job. So, if I’m honest, I’ve become a sad old wino on a Saturday night on my own and he has become the life and soul of the staff-party scene at Jackson’s Bar.
How we manage to survive as a couple is slightly beyond me so I guess, if I’m trying to operate in the spirit of willingness to save what’s left of our marriage, I’ll have to say yes to his night out – even though I have nothing to wear.