by Zoe Deleuil
And meanwhile, I seemed to be existing on toast and lukewarm sugary tea, up half the night, too tired to do anything during the day except half-finish cleaning up the kitchen or think vaguely about what to have for dinner. And Paul never seemed to be around anymore.
Was this what it was like, being a mother? The closing down of anything that was once enjoyable – going to bed after a long day at work, getting up full of energy after a rejuvenating eight hours of sleep, reading a paper, eating a plate of good food?
At the traffic lights, a long-haired elderly woman stood waiting, her arms wrapped around the traffic pole like a pale and delicate climbing plant. She looked down at the baby, who twinkled his eyes back at her, and the two of them seemed to communicate in some pre-verbal way, cooing and blinking at each other.
‘It’s a real achievement to have such a contented baby,’ she told me, and was gone.
10
A few days later, after another pre-dawn wake up, I decided to try a mothers group, as Jennifer had suggested. The address in one of the midwives’ brochures led me to a small, yellow brick building I’d only ever rushed past in my old life, on the way to the Tube or the pub or the movies. Inside, an A4 photocopy pinned up next to the reception provided the room number of Tiny Toes Mothers Group, and I sped up as we were running late, recognising the room by the row of prams parked outside it.
Through the glass panel in the door, I saw a circle of women seated on yellow square cushions, all with babies slumped in their laps or feeding or making light dents in their own cushions in the midst of the gathering. I found a cushion and sat down awkwardly, wondering if the baby would somehow sense that he was among his people for the first time.
‘Hello,’ said the one woman without a baby, who stood out with her clear voice and perfectly braided hair and well-rested, made-up face. ‘Welcome. I’m Diane. How old is your baby?’
‘Four weeks,’ I said, and all the other women, whose babies looked a little older and who seemed so much more senior and knowledgeable than I would ever be, murmured their congratulations and looked lovingly at him as I settled him in my lap.
That hour at Tiny Toes was the easiest I’d spent awake since the baby was born. Diane guided us cheerfully through a few nursery rhymes and talked about breastfeeding and offered her help to anyone who needed it. The babies were all weirdly content, sleeping or feeding while the mothers talked about their births freely. The sight of a lone man, bobbing his head at the fishbowl window before disappearing, intensified the feeling of being in a protected bubble, so different to being out in London with a pram.
‘Where did you have your baby?’ I asked the woman next to me.
‘Homerton. It was – well, I won’t forget the experience, put it that way.’
‘Yeah. I know what you mean,’ I replied, stroking my baby’s cheek, wondering if she wanted to say more.
‘I had a room overlooking the car park … and I remember seeing my boyfriend getting our suitcase out of the car and somehow losing control of the birthing ball. It went bouncing away from him across the car park and he was kind of chasing it, looking all panicky. I laughed so hard I threw up and my waters broke, pretty much simultaneously.’ She looked at me and shook her head slowly. ‘And it only deteriorated from there. How about you? Homerton too?’
‘Yep. It was a long labour … better once I got some pain relief.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Nope. They kept saying that if I could make it past the next bit I’d be okay and then eventually they said it was too late and I had to go without.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘It was. I got my revenge though. Screamed the place down. The midwife threatened to leave me to it at one point.’
‘My God.’
‘I don’t think she meant it, but I was out of control.’ She looked regretful.
‘Well, I think you’re amazing for getting through. It was so much harder than I expected. It’s all harder.’
‘I know.’ She stared at her baby, a big boy with gentle, happy eyes, gurgling up at her. ‘You have some pretty dark moments.’
Were you allowed to say that? Maybe you were. She’d said it, and she’d been in this strange new world longer than me. We sat together, all of us, and I realised there was a community here that I had never before been aware of. We might not have been the liveliest company, all of us a bit tired and broken, and not up to much in the way of witty conversation, but there was a connection between us, and a secret happiness, too.
As I opened the door of the apartment and stepped into the hallway, I saw Paul and Rachel sitting at the dining-room table. Rachel was leaning towards him, her dark hair covering the side of her face so I couldn’t see her expression, the lamp above illuminating them like they were on stage, performing a scene of two people having an intense conversation.
As I shut the door behind me she pulled away from the table, sat back in her chair and glanced over at me with a guilty, almost frightened expression, as if I had interrupted something private or illicit.
The baby began to howl and I waited a moment, hoping Paul would respond to him, but he got up and left the room.
‘How are you, Rachel?’ I asked, and for some reason my voice quavered.
She didn’t look at me, just rubbed her neck slightly as if thinking about something. ‘I think I’m going to travel down to Bristol. On Wednesday.’ She spoke very carefully, still not meeting my eyes. From the set of her face she appeared to be holding something back from me.
‘What are you doing down there? Seeing friends?’ I asked, somehow resurrecting my former social skills.
‘Staying with a friend for a couple of nights – she’s just got back from a year in the States and we have a lot to talk about. I’ll be back on the weekend.’
‘Oh, okay. Well, maybe that’s a good idea. Give you a chance to have a break from all this baby stuff. It’s probably not much fun for you.’ My voice came out nervous and appeasing.
She said nothing, but I sensed her full attention on me as she continued stroking her neck, her silver bangles clinking against each other.
Uneasy, I opened the fridge. There appeared to be nothing planned for dinner, so I got a packet of pasta and a tin of tomatoes from the cupboard.
‘I guess I’ll make some dinner.’
‘Yeah.’ Her voice was flat.
‘Did you have any plans?’
‘No.’
Why was she like this – sometimes totally normal, and other times so icy cold and unresponsive? Or was I being oversensitive?
‘What are we doing for dinner? Pasta?’ said Paul behind me, his voice husky and tired. I turned around, trying to gauge his mood, but he was shifting things around in the fridge and I couldn’t see his face.
‘I guess so. There’s nothing else to eat.’
‘You sit down. I’ll cook,’ he said, so I joined Rachel at the table.
‘So, Simone, I was thinking maybe tomorrow we could go out, have a look around London,’ said Rachel, her tone suddenly friendly and normal again. ‘Maybe you could go to a movie, if you like, and I could stay with the baby.’
A movie. A dark cinema. Nothing except me and the story, not even having to read words on a page. My beloved movie stars, with their charismatic, expressive faces, so easy to stare at. Slowly building tension. Atmospheric rooms. American landscapes.
‘That would be really nice, to go to a movie again,’ I said, smiling at her but feeling a little off kilter at her sudden change of tone.
‘Maybe we could go to Marylebone as well? In the morning?’
‘To Marylebone? What for?’
‘To have a look around the shops. I need to get some more makeup and some winter clothes. Maybe try on some boots.’
What for? I wanted to ask again, but it would seem rude. Looking at her eager face, I didn’t have the energy to argue. ‘Sounds great. Let’s do it.’
We’d need to get a Tube the
re, and I didn’t know if I could face it. Catching a bus to Angel and going to a movie was one thing, but burrowing down into the Underground and travelling through its busy centre was something else entirely. The prospect of being out all day in London daunted me: close tunnels with blank-faced commuters, the icy winter air hitting your tired face when you come up from the tunnel, weaving through it all with my red sleepless eyes and my heavy dragging body and the baby such a delicate package that it required its own wheeled carriage; a baby who had no need for coffee, no need to be outside, no need to eat authentic Texan barbecue ribs or to try on expensive velvety winter clothes or to gaze into a Rothko. Nothing in this whole vast noisy city was of the slightest interest to him for more than ten minutes before he became overstimulated and started to flap. Which meant that, sadly, nothing in it was of much use to me either. And that was depressing, in a way.
London had always felt to me like a magical toyshop, glowing a deep golden yellow from the street, mysterious and piled with riches. But now, with the baby, it felt like the lights had gone out. Suddenly the shutters had been drawn down, and it had closed for the season. It would reopen, one day, perhaps, but right now the owners were on sabbatical.
I sat back in my chair, feeling my attention start to drift as Rachel chattered on about the shops she wanted to visit, the things she wanted to buy. Did I even need to be here in this rushed, temperamental, expensive place anymore? I’d assumed that after the baby was born I would go back to work and continue my life here, but now I wasn’t sure. The baby seemed unsuited to city life. He needed somewhere quiet and unpolluted and friendly, like Perth.
I pictured my childhood there: rainy afternoons in winter warming myself next to my grandmother’s Metters stove, balmy nights outside playing hide-and-seek with a torch, rinsing off under a beach shower, tearing around on my bike in my heavy-duty Saturday clothes, exploring the building sites and wetlands around our house. I’d always assumed my kids, if I had any, would be born there, that they would have a childhood like mine. But I also knew that thought had never crossed Paul’s mind, that he had assumed I’d settle here, now we had a baby together. I understood better my parents’ cautious reaction to the news of my pregnancy. London was impressive, but it wasn’t nurturing, or a place that loved its inhabitants nearly as much as they loved it.
So many people had lived here over the centuries. They had led their small or big lives here, and the city, with its trade and banks and vast art galleries and elegant royal parks and hard pavements, outlasted every single one of them.
‘Are you still with us, Simone?’ said Paul. He was draining the pasta that I’d forgotten about.
I looked up. ‘Huh? Oh, sorry. I think I went off into some weird half-sleep. Do you need a hand?’
‘That’s okay. It’s ready if you want to eat.’
Paul set a big pot of pasta on the table then dumped a tangle of spaghetti onto my plate, then Rachel’s and his. He sat down and started eating, fast and focused, as if he’d been starved for days. Rachel stared at him, her expression oddly resentful as she took a tiny forkful and twirled it around on her spoon.
‘Did you see that story in the paper about the woman who jumped off a balcony in South London holding her baby, Simone?’ she said suddenly, turning her attention to me.
‘No. But that’s terrible. Did they die?’
‘The baby did. The woman didn’t. She’ll go to jail, once she gets out of hospital, I suspect. The law is pretty tough on that kind of thing.’ Her eyes were shining.
‘Poor baby,’ I said, my eyes prickling suddenly with tears. ‘Poor mother, too.’
‘Poor mother? Really? Why would you say that, Simone?’ Rachel tilted her head at me.
‘Because I can see how it could happen. No support, maybe. No money. No sleep, definitely. Mental health problems. Or maybe too young to cope with the responsibility.’
Paul stopped eating and looked out the window, in the direction of the Golden Lane Estate where I sometimes saw the lit window of my fellow night villager. Rachel, meanwhile, continued staring at me in disbelief.
‘So you’d forgive her, let her off the hook? For killing her own baby?’
‘When something like that happens, it’s the system that’s failed, not the mother,’ I said, suddenly beyond caring what she thought of me. ‘I can imagine someone getting that desperate. Not having sleep does strange things to you.’ I jammed some pasta into my mouth, propping my head up with my hand, too tired to continue my line of thought.
Paul and Rachel sat in silence, and when I looked up again, she was staring at him in a meaningful way, as if I’d proved some shameful point about myself, while he kept his eyes on his half-empty plate, not looking at either of us. Was she signalling to him that she thought I was a danger to the baby? There was something confrontational about her. It was as if she had come here on false pretences. She’d said she was here to help, but it was more than that; it was as if she had come here to settle some score, or make me look bad, or ruin what we had together. Or was I imagining it all?
Things hung in the air, and for some reason I bit my lip hard. The sharp pain of my tooth cutting through and the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth distracted me from the suffocating tension in the room. She was really starting to get to me.
Later, I lay beside Paul in bed, who seemed distracted as he flicked through an old Guardian newspaper that had somehow made its way into our bedroom.
‘What’s the matter? You’re so quiet,’ I finally asked him. He had a tendency to stew, and while usually I’d leave him to it, right now I felt like we needed to communicate with each other.
‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
‘Is it me?’
‘No. It’s not you.’ He kept his eyes on some news story about a new solar bridge at Blackfriars, and I had no idea what he was thinking. You can sleep with someone, share a living space with them, even have a baby with them, and still they have a whole interior life you know nothing about.
‘Is it something going on at work? Or having Rachel here?’
‘No. Nothing’s going on,’ he said quickly. ‘Is it okay for you, having her here? You see her more than I do. Have you been talking to her much?’
‘Well, not really. I was out today though. What were you talking to her about when I came in earlier?’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
‘Really? It looked like I interrupted something. She kind of jumped when I opened the door.’
He finally looked up from his newspaper and met my eyes. ‘She … was telling me that she’s a bit worried that you don’t want her here. She said she wants to help you but she doesn’t know how.’ He looked miserable, more miserable than the situation warranted, I thought. ‘Would you mind if she took the baby out sometimes, on her own?’
I looked at the baby, asleep beside me in his cot, close enough to touch. ‘She can’t take him out on her own. He’s too little.’ I closed my eyes for a moment. Summoned up some patience. I thought he would nod in agreement at this, but he only looked more upset.
‘Is there anything she could do to help you? I feel like I need to come up with some ideas. Or, if you like, I can always ask her to find somewhere else to stay when she gets back from Bristol.’
‘Well, what would be helpful would be if she got up a little earlier sometimes and sat with the baby so I could sleep. Or went out herself so I could sit on the couch in my undies and watch total crap on TV without an audience. Or cooked dinner. It’s a bit tiring, having someone here all the time, having to keep quiet in the mornings while she sleeps, having to wait for her to finish in the bathroom, having to think about food …’ I trailed off, realising I was starting to rant, and she was his family, after all. Next to her, I was a relative newcomer.
‘Well, she did cook the other night, didn’t she?’
‘Yeah, she did. And it was good. But that was one dinner.’
‘Fair enough. I could probably do some more of that too.’
; ‘Yeah, you could. When are you taking some more time off? I’m with the baby all day while you’re at work. I don’t know what to do with myself.’
‘I have asked about taking some more time off. I thought maybe we could go stay at my parents’ for a bit, and give you some rest.’ He turned towards me and stroked my face. ‘How are you feeling, generally? Maybe you should do something for yourself. You’ve been through a huge change. Maybe it would help to go and get some new clothes, whatever you want.’
‘Some clothes that fit, you mean. Some mum clothes. Topped off with a mum bob, I suppose.’
‘No. Not topped off with a mum bob.’ He looked confused. ‘What the hell’s a mum bob? I thought you might like some new clothes, something for you. After everything you’ve been through it might be good to focus on yourself for a change. Take my card. Buy some things when you’re out with Rachel tomorrow.’
A long pause. He was probably right.
‘Maybe. I’ll think about it. It feels a bit weird, though, spending your money.’
‘I don’t care. It’s yours too. Spend as much as you want. I’ll get you your own bank card, if you like. Or put money into your account.’
‘Okay.’ I was drifting irresistibly into sleep, unable to continue the conversation. Paul said nothing beside me. I switched off the bedside light and moved into my pre-baby sleep ritual, turning over to face the window and shifting so that my back was pressed slightly against Paul’s warmth. The darkness was kind to my tired eyes, and I had one long, complicated yawn and stretched out my legs, one after the other, to the very bottom of the bed, then flipped the quilt so one foot poked out slightly for temperature control. Sleep. Beautiful, deep, restorative sleep.
And then, of course, the baby woke. His cry was low but insistent, and I felt a sudden despair at my inability to escape, to rest and have time alone. When would I get my nights back? When would I fall asleep knowing I wouldn’t be woken?
‘For God’s sake.’ I turned on the lamp and reached for the baby, who was lying in a cot bolted to my side of the bed, with one side missing so I could find him easily in the dark.