by Poppy Dolan
But the grumbles continue from Emmeline’s tiny lungs and the pitch rises that one scary notch.
Before I let myself think it through properly, I blurt out, ‘I could take her for a walk round the block, settle her? If you want a breather?’
Jules blinks slowly. ‘You bring cake and you babysit. Are you my guardian angel or something? Do you want to do the ironing and fix the dishwasher while you’re at it? Plus, I have a PowerPoint presentation that needs jazzing up.’ She digs a hand through her handbag at the foot of the sofa, and pulls out her keys. ‘Let’s get m’lady in the buggy, then she’s all yours!’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jules smile this much. It’s unnerving.
With repeated instructions not to ‘hurry back’, Emmeline and I are bundled up against the cold and strolling through the frosty, sunny day. I think Jules could be heard whooping as she ran a hot bath, even before I reached the end of her road. I have a quick look on AroundMe on my iPhone for a local park (this posher part of Southwest London not being my natural ‘hood) and off we go.
Emmeline watches me, hazily, like a small, drunk, bald woman who’s been at the sherry and was now trying to read the instructions on a Findus microwavable lasagne. She has a hat that I’m feeling a bit jealous of – avocado green and purple stripes with a giant yellow bobble on the top.
Should I tell her that? Will she understand the compliment? Does she understand anything? I might just be a pale blob in skinny jeans obscuring her vision, for all I know. Or she might be taking everything in, as accurate as a Dictaphone and just as incriminating in the wrong circumstances.
Well, now there’s just an awkward silence. I wouldn’t be all weird and quiet like this with a completely grown-up friend, so I especially shouldn’t blank a tiny, defenceless one.
‘Nice hat,’ I chirp. ‘I like the contrasting colours. Edgy. Especially for babywear. I’ve seen that stuff, it’s all pastels, tiny prints. Not easy to pull off, I should think. But I like your direction.’
Some white, sort-of milky stuff runs out of Emmeline’s mouth. It doesn’t go with the hat, and that’s the least of our problems.
‘Erk. Sick. Right, Mum said there’s all sorts of stuff in this bag.’ I wheel us over to a nearby hedgerow and delve into the baby bag for a flannel.
‘Ha! See, we’re golden. Let’s just dab at this manky stuff then we’ll continuez tout droit to the park, sweety. Done!’ I felt a small burst of success. One clean baby. And the park in our sights.
Through the park gates, I head for the swing sets. I know Emmeline is far too tiny for them – even with all my baby ignorance I know that – but it just feels like the place you should loiter by when you have a pram. And so I loiter, in a quasi-maternal way.
And I seem to be pulling it off; the two other mums having a natter on the bench don’t turn on me and dig lynching ropes out of their baggy holdalls to drag me out of mumsville. In fact, one calls over, ‘She’s so gorgeous!’ and like the coward and weirdo I am, I accept the compliment just as if Emmeline is in fact mine. It feels creepily good. The mums sweetly nod and smile then go back to their dissection of Karen’s outfit at last week’s Tumbletots. I really hope Karen is an adult, and not a badly dressed toddler they’re slagging.
‘Shall we examine all this stuff, Baby?’ I half-talk, half-coo. I decide ‘Baby’ is the right sort of cutesy name; trying out ‘Sweety’ just then had made my stomach turn. For some reason, using her full name out loud sounded ridiculously formal, so Baby it was. Hey, it didn’t hurt Frances in Dirty Dancing.
Picking her up, I simultaneously kick down the pram brake with my foot, feeling a rush of multitasking smugness. Placing Emmeline on my hip and feeling her weight there, even through the thick wadding of her starfish-like onesie, connects with that something swishing about in my hormones that makes me feel dizzy with baby love. For a second, it feels perfectly right. More than that: it feels like the only thing that’s right – that the reason I’m breathing in and out is to have the energy to hold her; the reason I have eyes is to see every little chubby fold around her neck or every strand of downy hair; the reason I have muscles and limbs is that I could fight off any bird or squirrel or golden retriever that might go crazy and want my baby for its tea. I mean, this baby.
Whoah. The baby crazy dizzy spell is ramping up. It’s bonkers how my hormones can melt my brain into mush in a matter of seconds. It scares me and annoys me at the same time. It’s like walking past the window of a French patisserie, seeing all those gorgeous, shiny cream cakes and rushing in with my purse held aloft, only to find the cakes each have a Alice in Wonderland label with a huge price tag, a hug calorie count and a scrawled note that says, ‘Eat me and everything changes …’ And the hunger fades away. Holding Emmeline has stirred up a sort of hunger. Shame I don’t know what I’m hungry for.
She just continues to regard me in her drunken-lady vagueness. I have to remind myself that a teeny tiny bit of maternal feeling right now is appropriate; but welling up and making an escape plan to change our names and keep Emmeline – or should I say Iris – forever would be plain wrong. It’s like when you let yourself imagine Ben Fogle as your dream husband. There’s nothing wrong with it, for a fleeting second, as you think of the country walks, bounding dogs and gloriously blonde children, but should you find yourself hiding outside his house with some chloroform and a big sack, you’ve probably broken the rules of social etiquette. So I can allow myself to think how nice it is to have a pudgy baby at my side, just a bit. But maybe I won’t tell anyone about it right now.
We walk, this pink-cheeked starfish and I, around the swings, the bouncy little horse things, the roundabout, the slide, and all I can hear is a soft silence only broken by the occasional bird, the yelp of a distant football player on the park green and Emmeline’s snuffly breaths in my ear. ‘Well this is nice,’ I say softly to her. And I take her silence as agreement.
But now it’s a bit too quiet. And I’m not sure what to say.
‘Come here often?’ I can’t even laugh at that myself.
I desperately want to get my phone out and text Lydia. How do you entertain a baby? But it’s not exactly her forte. If I text Pete, he’s likely to take this as a sure sign, track me down using the GPS on my phone, throw me in a bush and get our own baby in the works. I told him I was meeting up with Jules today, but as this visit is all part of my field research I don’t want to throw off the test environment with too much bias. And Pete is about as biased as a man wearing a giant sign saying ‘Babies Are Great!!!!’, dressed as a baby, singing, ‘Yes, Sir That’s My Baby’ and poking pinholes in condoms.
I definitely don’t want to text Jules. This is her window of grown-up time – there is probably a slice of lemon being dunked into her G&T right now – and I don’t think it fills people with confidence if you admit ‘Your baby is like a confusing alien species to me. Should I be teaching it about the life cycle of a vole? Should I be parping its belly button? It doesn’t seem to blink – is that normal?’
Mum would be the best oracle to consult right now. But like anyone over sixty with a phone, she doesn’t like to have it switched on. You know, in case she needs to call someone and it’s out of battery, so she conserves the battery. And so never knows if she ever needs to call anyone because there are 563 voicemails that will never ever be discovered, like embalmed organs in a pharaoh’s tomb.
And I think I won’t just yet give my mum a hint of my maternal ponderings. If I did, she’d probably act as Pete’s getaway driver as he studied the GPS tracking my whereabouts. But it’s nice to know that when I do (see, I didn’t say ‘if’! Progress) have one of these drool machines of my own, she’ll be there. Like a Mary Berry-Supernanny hybrid, popping slices of carrot cake into my mouth and advising me on feeding routines, because I won’t have the time, energy or brain power to bake or think for myself. If only I could give Emmeline some cake; that always breaks awkward tensions. There is no end to the pointless but enjoyable chats you can have about crumb s
tructure, size of portion, interesting new ingredient (beetroot, courgette, rosewater).
Something flickers in the sepia tones of my childhood memory. ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. How does that go? Could I sing that to Emmeline? That feels appropriate and right, and there’s no one here that I care about embarrassing myself in front of. The mums have probably seen it all before, and the birds are going to quickly decide I’m no competition.
Except I can’t remember the sodding words, apart from the chorus. Crooning that on repeat in a CBeebies voice would probably end up sounding like one of those horror movies where the ghost of a little Victorian girl kills everyone with a machete. Oh, but the other teddy bear one – my mum was singing that with the twins on their last visit. ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two step, tickly under there.’ Not so much a song as a cheery chant, but it’s all I have right now, as the baby starts to grumble and wriggle unhappily in my arms.
Actual tickling is out as Emmeline is encased in three layers of down, so as I merrily recite the poem I instead hop from foot to foot for the ‘steps’ then give a sort of shimmy to gently jiggle her about. There’s a smile on the first go, an open-mouthed gurn on the second. I’m going for the giggle, please God let it be a Fairy Liquid-ad kind of giggle. If it is I’m sure my heart will explode out of my chest and I’ll never take another Pill ever again, ever.
There’s more football shouting in the distance, the crisp air tingles at my cheeks, I’m in a park in London singing a rhyme about bears and tickles to a baby. And I’m loving it.
Just as I really ramp up the shimmy to give Emmeline a sort of budget Universal Studios ride of her very own, the calls of the footballers come closer and at the edge of my vision I see someone running for an escaped ball that’s heading our way. But I don’t care. I’m in teddy town, and I am the shimmying major. Take that, Jools Oliver! In your face, Gwynnie! I am the true Earth Mother in town, so you can all go suck it! I’m combining shimmies with knee lunges and Emmeline gives me giggle after precious giggle as we straighten up again.
‘Ellie?’
Oh Christ.
I whip around. ‘Joe?’
He is smiling. ‘Funny seeing you here. Like this.’ He nods at the swings and slides.
‘Hi! Wow! Yeah, crazy right?’ It takes a while for my voice to shift out of ditzy pantomime mode. ‘This is Emmeline.’
For a moment, we all pause. Joe is scrutinising the baby. Emmeline is scrutinising the dark blob holding a ball which is Joe.
‘Emmeline, this is Joe.’
Joe releases his laugh at this point. ‘Nice to meet you. Charmed.’ He dips into a bow.
‘She’s not mine,’ I blurt out, suddenly seeing myself from a distance – with a pram, a baby, off my head happy, in my childbearing years. ‘She’s my friend’s. My friend’s baby.’ I’ve gone a bit Rain Man in my panic.
‘Well, yeah.’ Joe scratches the back of his head with a muddy hand. ‘I guessed that, seeing as you didn’t mention being a single mum or anything. Or are you in it for the benefit cheque?’ He puts on a mock-Jeremy Kyle scowl, shouting his last word: ‘You people make me SICK!’ Unfortunately that last bit is a bit too shouty, and Emmeline starts to cry, wriggling into a rigid comma shape in my arms, so much so that I have to let her hang over the crook in my elbow, like a very pissed off and noisy handbag.
‘Shit, sorry,’ he comes back down to a soft whisper. ‘I’m never good with the really tiny ones. I like them when they can take a joke. Sorry, Ellie. I’ve ballsed up your babysitting. I’d better get back to the game, anyway.’
‘Ha ha, no worries!’ I can feel panicky beads of sweat dotting my forehead like Lydia’s favourite studded boots. ‘She’ll be fine in a moment. You go.’ I’m rubbing her back gently, with a pat every now and again. It seems to be working. She’s loosened into more of a damp tea towel over my arm. I hoist her back on to my hip.
‘I play for my brother-in-law’s team.’ Joe points over his shoulder to the green behind. ‘He takes it pretty seriously. I find the marrieds do rely a lot on their team sports to get them through a weekend.’ He rolls his eyes at me, as if I understand the subtext. Which I don’t. ‘But I’ll see you at baking class, yeah? Catch you then. And bye, Emmeline.’ He tips an imaginary cap her way.
I watch Joe sprinting back, effortlessly on long lean legs. ‘When you’re older, you will enjoy these kind of sights,’ I say to the baby. ‘Very much so. It’s one of the best bits about getting older. It compensates for the sagging bum.’
And then I stupidly, slowly piece together a few things Joe just said: single mother, marrieds ‘getting through’ the weekend. He thinks I’m single. To be fair, I have made the baking class an issues-free zone, so never bring up home stuff, let along baby stuff. It’s the one hour in my life when I don’t have to think about relationships and procreation and I’m making the most of it. And it’s not like Joe needs to know I’m married to be my friend – I’m still me, when it comes down to it. You don’t get a branding on your earlobe when you’re hitched, and it doesn’t change fundamentally who you are. I’m still a clumsy fool who knows all the lyrics to TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ and I still get flustered talking to hot boys. It’s nice to spend time with just one person who doesn’t view you as a walking incubator, anyway.
‘On second thoughts, don’t be in a rush to get older, Baby. Life gets complicated. It’s not all rusks and bath times. It’s all countdowns and eggs going bad and disappointing your mother.’ I carefully tuck Emmeline back into her swish stroller. ‘But,’ I add, not wanting to damage her for life, just in case she is an emotional sponge dressed in Jojo Maman Bebe, ‘there is this thing called wine, which is pretty great. And a film called Thor, which I hope they still have on DVD when you get older. If they don’t, I’ll lend you mine.’
And as we amble through the leafy streets of posh South-West London, I outline the entire plot of Thor for her, just for good measure. I think only good mother material would do such a thing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Operation Be Nicer to Pete is in full flow and I am bringing out the big guns: sausage sandwich in bed for breakfast, made by me; bit of an intimate thing I don’t need to go into more detail about; a skedaddle to the bus stop at the end of the road, and my hands over Pete’s eyes as the bus comes along, so he can’t see the destination. The surprise is kind of spoilt when we join the queue for the London Eye on the South Bank, but I enjoy stringing it out, nonetheless.
‘Are we going on The Eye?’ Pete asks, with a half-bitten down smile.
‘Nope. It’s a decoy. I just want you to queue here for twenty minutes, then I’m going to throw you off the scent by making you join the queue for the aquarium. And then taking you on the Tube to King’s Cross, having your photo taken at platform nine and three-quarters. BUT then coming back to South Bank and just having a Strada pizza. That’s the surprise: the pizza. But I want you to work for it.’
‘Phew.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Because The London Eye is so lame.’
My outraged badger face is all the confirmation he needs. He pulls me into a massive hug, jostling the Primark bags of the Italian tourists in front. ‘Oh, Smells,’ he says into my hair, ‘I’m just yanking your chain. This is a brilliant surprise, thank you. It’s great, a real treat. Not sure what I’ve done to deserve it but thanks.’
His woollen jumper scratches my cheek a little but it’s still a cosy place to be. ‘It’s just for your general Peteness. And I know I’m a bit odd sometimes, a bit trying. So the next time you’re annoyed with me you have to remember this, and these.’ I lean back, and fish about in my trusty book bag. Out comes the homemade mince pies in a cake tin.
‘Oh,’ he murmurs lustily, ‘come to Daddy.’ He eats one in two bites. ‘Mmm, that’s the business.’
The Italian tourists, perhaps hungry from their Primark shopping bloodbath, eye us jealously as we munch through a second pie each. If this were a Richard Curtis movie, and if I was Emma Thompson
, I would share them around. But it isn’t. And I really don’t want to.
As we shuffle along, closer to getting in our pod, I tell Pete about Nigella’s recipe for mince pies and why I think it has the edge on Nigel’s. Their names are so similar – as are their approaches to the use of cream – but in some ways they are poles apart. As I’m prattling on about candied peel, Joe’s comment about ‘marrieds’ comes back to me. Are we a tribe? Are we so different from the ‘singles’ out there?
Our egg-like carriage inches towards us and we all try to look nonchalant about stepping into a giant glass sphere that’s going to rotate on a steel frame. As the doors shut in a pleasing Star Trek manner behind us, Pete takes a seat on the little central bench. Being so tall, he’s letting the shortish Italians crowd right up against the glass, taking in the view between their neon cagoules. I love that he’s always thinking about other people.
‘What do you think your life would be like if you hadn’t married me? Would it be different?’ I ask, in precisely the kind of question format that generally gives woman a bad, needy name. But sod it, this tribe thing is niggling away at me.
He looks out to the grey, gungy waters below, the worn bricks of Parliament, cars tootling over bridges. I can see he’s mulling it seriously.
‘Now don’t take this the wrong way,’ he turns to me. I brace myself to take it very, very badly indeed. ‘But … I’d be a lot thinner.’ He slips his hand into my bag for a second go at the mince pie tin.
‘Gah!’ I roll my eyes. ‘Come on, really. Do you think we live in a different way because we’re married? Is it a tribe thing? Are we stereotypical, predictable?’
I get massive evils off the two other couples sharing the pod with us.