Mad About the Boy

by Helen Fielding

  How was I going to get him out of the playground? And they were having such a nice time running about but then had only got five minutes left on the car because it was in a loading bay.

  ‘ILLYYYYYY!’ I yelled.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  I turned. It was Mr Wallaker. ‘A muffler? Are you cold? Doesn’t feel very cold to me,’ he said, rubbing his hands as if to check out the general temperature. He was wearing a blue businessman-type shirt and I could sense his lean, annoyingly fit body through it.

  ‘Bbdentist.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  I quickly moved the scarf, said ‘Bbdentist’ again and put the scarf back. There was a quick flicker of amusement in his eyes.

  ‘Mummy’th mouth’th all funny,’ Mabel said.

  ‘Poor Mummy,’ said Mr Wallaker, bending down to Mabel. ‘What’s going on with your shoes? Have you got them on the wrong feet?’

  Oh God. Was so preoccupied with Botox trauma did not notice. Mr Wallaker was swapping them efficiently.

  ‘Billy won’t come,’ said Mabel in her deep gruff voice, looking at him with her grave expression.

  ‘Really?’ Mr Wallaker got to his feet. ‘Billy!’ he called down authoritatively. Billy looked up, startled.

  Mr Wallaker jerked his head to beckon him, at which Billy obediently trotted through the gate towards us.

  ‘Your mum was waiting for you. You knew that. Next time your mum is waiting for you, you come straight away. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wallaker.’

  He turned to me. ‘Are you OK?’

  Suddenly, horrifyingly, felt my eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Billy. Mabel. Your mum’s been to the dentist and she’s feeling poorly. Now. I want you to be a little lady and a little gentleman and be nice to her.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wallaker,’ they said, like automatons, putting out their hands to hold mine.

  ‘Very good. And, Mrs Darcy?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wallaker?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that again if I were you. You looked all right in the first place.’

  When we reached our road, I suddenly realized I was driving on autopilot and had got the whole way home without noticing anything.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, thinking, ‘They know, they know, we’re on terribly flimsy ground, and their mother is a Botoxed, failed cougar idiot who’s going to crash the car, and doesn’t know what she’s doing, what she’s supposed to be doing or how she’s supposed to do it, and they’re going to be taken into care by the Social Services and—’

  ‘Do dinosaurs have cold blood?’

  ‘Yes. Ubf, no?’ I said as I parked the car. Do they? ‘I fwmean, what are they? Are they repfhtiles or like phwdolpfhwins?’

  ‘Mummy, how long are you going to carry on talking like this?’

  ‘Can we have spag bog?’ said Mabel.

  ‘Yupf,’ I said, parking the car outside the house.

  When we got inside it was all warm and cosy and I soon had the spag bog (supermarket ready-prepared and possibly containing horse but still) bubbling on the stove. They were sitting on the sofa listening to the annoying American-cartoons-where-actors-talk-in-high-pitched-hysterical-voices, but looking so sweet. Leaving the horse spaghetti, I sat down with them and pulled them into a hug-knot, and I buried my frozen face in their messy heads and soft necks, feeling their little hearts beating against mine, and thought how lucky I was, just to have them.

  After a while Billy raised his head. ‘Mummy,’ he whispered softly, a faraway look in his eye.

  ‘Mbffff?’ I murmured, heart overflowing with love.

  ‘The spaghetti is on fire.’

  Oh dear. Had left spaghetti in the pan with the dry bits leaning over the edge at a sharp angle, intending to squidge them down when the other end softened, but somehow they had tilted down and caught fire.

  ‘I’ll get de fire extinglewish,’ said Mabel calmly, as if this were an everyday occurrence. Which of course it is not.

  ‘Noo!’ I said, berserk, grabbing a tea towel and throwing it on the pan, at which the tea towel also caught fire and the smoke alarm went off.

  Suddenly felt the splash of cold water. Turned to see Billy pouring a jug of cold water over the whole thing, extinguishing the flames and leaving a smouldering, but extinguished, mess on the cooker. He was grinning delightedly. ‘Can we eat it now?’

  Mabel too was looking thrilled. ‘Can we toast marshbellowth?’

  So (once Billy had turned the smoke alarm off) we did toast barshbellows. On the fire. In the fireplace. And it was one of our nicest evenings.

  THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR

  Saturday 22 June 2013

  136lb, calories 3844, packets of grated mozzarella consumed 2, boyfriends 0, possibility of boyfriends 0, combined alcohol units consumed by self and the friends 47.

  ‘Well, at least she’s not a Born-Again Virgin,’ said Tom. ‘Rather the opposite if you ask me. More like a Born-Again Nymphomaniac. With a frozen face. Have we run out of wine?’

  ‘There’s some more in the fridge,’ I said, getting up. ‘But you see—’

  ‘Tom, do be quiet, darling,’ chided Talitha. ‘Her face looks really, really good now the drooling’s stopped.’

  ‘The key thing is, she has to get over the toy boy,’ said Jude, who is STILL going out with Wildlifephotographerman.

  ‘It’s not just that, it’s—’ I tried to get in.

  ‘It’s the ego, it’s the ego which is at stake.’ Tom was pretending to be professional but was completely drunk. ‘It’s not a rejection. A person who goes from one extreme to the other like that isn’t rejecting you. He’s just caught between his heart and his head and—’

  ‘Bridget, I did warn you that one must never, EVER fall in love with a toy boy,’ interrupted Talitha. ‘One has to be in control, otherwise the whole dynamic becomes a total disaster. I forbid you to re-engage with him. Tom, darling, could you just fix me a teensy-weensy vodka with lots of ice and a splash of soda?’

  ‘He’s not going to re-engage with me. I sent him a texting rant about farting,’ I said.

  ‘Number one,’ said Talitha, ‘he will re-engage, because his exit was a bang not a whimper, and number two, you are NOT to re-engage or it will become a whimper. Once a man has dumped you, taking him back is a sign of low self-esteem and desperation and he will do NOTHING but fuck you around.’

  ‘But Mark took me back and—’

  ‘Roxster,’ said Tom, ‘is not Mark.’

  At this, I burst into silent, gasping sobs.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Jude. ‘We have to find her someone else and quickly. I’m setting her up on OkCupid. What shall I put as her age?’

  ‘No, don’t,’ I sobbed. ‘I have to Take the Stick, like it says in Zen and the Art of Falling in Love. I have to be punished. I’ve neglected the children and—’

  ‘They’s fine! You’se gone mad. Where’ye put your iPhoto library?’

  ‘Jude,’ said Tom, ‘leave her alone, leave her to me. I. Am ssprofessional. I. Am a doctor of pyscholosphy.’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Thanks you,’ said Tom. ‘You are dealing with six things in a relationship. Theirs fantasy about you. Theirs fantasy about the relationship, your fantasy about them, their fantasy about your fantasy about themselves and – how many is that? Oh. Their fantasy about . . . thems!’

  Then Tom rose sententiously, walked calmly, if unsteadily, to the fridge, returned with a packet of chocolate buttons and a bottle of Chardonnay, and pulled a packet of Silk Cut out of his jacket pocket.

  ‘Some things neeever change!’ he said. ‘Nows opens your mouth and takes your medicines. Thassas a good girl.’

  When I woke up in the morning, I was all tucked up with a selection of soft toys, a copy of Thelma and Louise, and a note from all three of them saying: ‘We will always love you.’

  However, when I picked up my phone there was also a text from Jude with an OkCupid login and password.


  THE YAWNING VOID

  Monday 24 June 2013

  135lb, texts from Roxster 0, emails from Roxster 0, phone calls from Roxster 0, voicemails from Roxster 0, tweets from Roxster 0, Twitter messages from Roxster 0.

  9.15 p.m. Children are asleep. OH GOD, I’M SO LONELY. I miss Roxster. Now that the bubble has burst, and I have realized Mark is still gone, the children still have no father, and all the other complicated, unfixable things, I just quite simply and straightforwardly miss Roxster. Is so weird going from total closeness to . . . nothing. Total cyberspace emptiness. The text is silent. No emails from Roxster. He no longer tweets. I cannot get on his Facebook because to do that I would have to join Facebook which I know is emotional suicide, and then ask to be his friend on Facebook and then find loads of pictures of him snogging thirty-year-olds. Have reread the old messages and emails and there is just nothing left of Roxby McDuff now, at all.

  Had not really stopped to think how much Roxster meant to me because I really was being Buddhist and staying in the moment. Had not realized we were building a little world together: the farts, the vomit, jokes about food and our favourite pubs, and the barnacle’s penis. Every time something funny happens want to text it to Roxster. And then realize, with cold, lurching remembrance, that Roxster doesn’t want to hear about all the funny little things any more, because he’s doubtless hearing funny details of the life of someone who is twenty-three and likes Lady Gaga.

  10 p.m. Just got into bed. Cold empty boring bed. When am I ever going to have sex again or wake up with someone as young and beautiful as Roxsterrrrrrrr?

  10.05 p.m. Fuck him with his fucking curry! I absolutely do not care about Roxster any more whatsoever. Pah! He was simply a curry-eating . . . Callow Gigolo! Have deleted him from contacts and will not correspond with or see or ask to see him ever again ever. He is deleted.

  10.06 p.m. But I lurrrrrrrrrrve him.

  Tuesday 25 June 2013

  Number of mean texts made up to send to Roxster in case Roxster texts me 33.

  9.15 p.m. OH GOD, I’M SO LONELY. Keep thinking maybe Roxster will text that we should have a drink, and keep making up imaginary haughty texts in reply:

 

 

  Or:

 

  Wednesday 26 June 2013

  9.15 p.m. OH GOD, I’M SO LONELY.

  9.16 p.m. Have just had brilliant idea! Will text Leatherjacketman!

  9.30 p.m. Texting exchange went as follows:

  Me:

  10.30 p.m. Leatherjacketman:

  Thursday 27 June 2013

  9.15 p.m. OH GOD, I’M SO LONELY. Maybe will call Daniel and see if he will take me out to cheer me up!

  11 p.m. Daniel has not replied. Is not like Daniel. Maybe he is currently getting married.

  Friday 28 June 2013

  3 a.m. Billy just got into my bed, sobbing. I think he’d had a bad dream. He put his arms round me, all hot and sweaty, and clung to me. ‘I need you, Mummy.’

  He does. They do. And there’s no one else. I can’t afford to get into a mess like this, trying to fill up a void with stupid men. Come on, pull yourself together.

  7 a.m. Woke up sleepily and looked at Billy, warm and exquisitely beautiful on my pillow. Started giggling, remembering wailing self-pityingly about Roxster, ‘When am I ever going to wake up with someone as young and beautiful as that again?’

  You see? Simple! Even younger and more beautiful.

  JUST THE WAY THEY ARE

  Friday 28 June 2013 (continued)

  10 a.m. Starting to feel worried about Daniel. For all his, well, Daniel-ism, since Mark died he has always got back straight away if I call. Ooh! Telephone.

  10.30 a.m. Had forgotten about conference call with George from Greenlight, Imogen and Damian.

  ‘Right – we’re all in the office, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ George began. ‘Now here’s the thing.’ There was sploshing in the background. ‘If you talk to Saffron about the pages you are not to give her any idea that you are not one hundred per cent in love with Stock—’

  ‘George?’ I said suspiciously. ‘Where are you and what is that sloshing noise?’

  ‘In the office. It’s just . . . coffee. OK. Ambergris is into Stockholm so don’t—’

  There was an odd, rubbery, slithering squeak, a giant splash – I mean, really like something huge had fallen into a large body of water – a muffled shout, then silence.

  ‘Right!’ said Imogen. ‘Shall we see what happened there and call you back?’

  11 a.m. Just called Talitha to see if she had spoken to Daniel lately.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  The thing is, Daniel has always had addictive tendencies, which have got worse as he has got older. There was a period when everyone was saying, ‘I’m so worried about Daniel,’ in judgemental voices, as he behaved increasingly outrageously at dinner parties. Various glamorous women tried to ‘fix’ him until eventually he was shipped off to a treatment facility in Arizona and returned looking fresh-faced and a little sheepish. As far as we all knew, he was fine. But it seems a recent break-up with the latest glamorous woman catapulted him into a dazzling spree, taking him through the entire contents of his 1930s cocktail cabinet in a single weekend. He was found in a terrible state last Monday morning by his cleaning lady and now he is in the drugs and drink ward of the same hospital where I went to the Obesity Clinic.

  Oh God, oh God, and I let Billy and Mabel stay the night with him.

  11.30 a.m. Imogen just called back. It seems that George, rather than, as claimed, being in his office slurping coffee, was in a dinghy on the Irrawaddy River to which he had retreated from his luxury indigenous-style houseboat in order to ‘get a signal’. Somehow, the swell from a passing executive speedboat had unbalanced the dinghy, catapulting George into the murky waters of the Irrawaddy, shortly followed by his iPhone.

  George was fine, but the loss of the iPhone was catastrophic. I decided to leave Greenlight to deal with the aftermath and hotfoot it round to see Daniel.

  2 p.m. Just back. Scary. St Catherine’s Hospital is a bewildering visual mix of Victorian prison, 1960s doctor’s surgery and the Yemen. I wandered, unfocused, until I found the right block, bought Daniel newspapers in the gift shop and a card with a duck on it saying: ‘Stay afloat’, adding in pen: ‘Dirty Bastard’, then impulsively put inside: ‘Wherever you go and whatever you do I’ll always love you.’ One doesn’t want to ENABLE, but I could imagine everyone was going to come in and tick him off.

  The ward was a ‘locked ward’. Pressed on the green button. Eventually a lady in a burka appeared and let me in.

  ‘I’m here to see Daniel Cleaver.’

  She didn’t seem to recognize the name, just another one on her clipboard.

  ‘Over there to the left. First bed behind the curtain.’

  I recognized Daniel’s bag and his coat but the bed was empty. Had Daniel done a runner? I started trying to tidy up, then a strange tramp-like figure appeared in winceyette hospital pyjamas, unshaven, with wild hair and a black eye.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘It’s me, Bridget!’

  ‘Jones!’ he said, as if a light bulb had come on in his head. Just as quickly it went out, and he stumbled over to the bed. ‘You could at least have told me you were coming. Might have cleaned up a bit.’

  He lay down and closed his eyes.

  ‘Silly arse,’ I said.

  He fumbled for my hand. He was making
a very strange noise.

  ‘What happened? Why can’t you breathe?’

  A flicker came into his eye, a glimpse of the old Daniel.

  ‘Well, the thing is, Jones,’ he said, pulling me over to him, ‘went on a bit of a bender, to tell you the truth. Pretty much drank through everything. I delightedly fastened upon what I took to be a bottle of crème de menthe, you know, the green stuff, drank the whole thing down.’ His face broke into the familiar rueful smirk. ‘It turned out to be Fairy Liquid.’

  We both started shaking with laughter. I know it was a potentially tragic situation but it was pretty funny. But then Daniel started choking, making a wheezing noise, and bubbles started appearing out of his mouth. You could see exactly what had happened. It’s like when you run out of dishwasher tablets, and think it would be a good idea to put washing-up liquid in instead and it all froths up inside.

  The nurse rushed over and sorted him out. Then he picked up the card and opened it. For a second he looked as if he was going to cry, then he shoved it back down on the table, just as a glamorous leggy blonde appeared.

  ‘Daniel,’ said the blonde, in a way which made me want to flick my hair at her and give her nits. ‘Look at you! You should be ashamed of yourself. It has to stop.’

  She picked up the card. ‘What’s this? Is this from you?’ she said accusingly. ‘You see, this is his problem! All his bloody friends: “Dear old Daniel.” It’s just completely enabling.’

  ‘Best be off then,’ I said, getting up.

  ‘No, Jones, don’t,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Oh, please,’ snorted the girl, just as Talitha appeared carrying a basket of edible gift items, wrapped in cellophane and topped with a big bow.

  ‘You see? You see?’ said the glamorous girl. ‘This is exactly what I mean.’

  ‘And WHAT do you mean by that . . . sugar?’ said Talitha. ‘WHO exactly are you and WHAT does this have to do with you? I have known Daniel for twenty years and slept with him, on and off, for most of them . . .’

  Almost burst out, ‘What??’ Was Talitha sleeping with Daniel when I was sleeping with Daniel? But then I thought, ‘What’s the point?’