‘As natural as possible, but we’re not completely ruling out intervention if it’s necessary.’
Correct answer.
Maybe I thought mastery of the subject matter might endow me with some sort of control, but as the pregnancy progressed I began to see the warning signs. Women have babies, not men; there is no getting round that fact. ‘It’s not our show, chaps,’ said one of the fathers-to-be at the antenatal classes. And as much as I dutifully went along to all these gatherings, being supportive and nodding and listening along with all the other silent, embarrassed men, I couldn’t help thinking, What is it exactly that I’ve got to do, then? When the mother is breathing correctly and walking and focusing and contracting and timing her contractions so as not to go into hospital too early, what does the man have to do?
Apparently the answer to this question is ‘make sandwiches’. That was the only instruction which I wrote down that was definitely aimed at me. In fact, making sandwiches is the only other thing that men are needed for during the entire nine months. One sperm at the beginning of the pregnancy, two rounds of cheese and pickle at the end of it. But my enthusiasm was resilient – if this was all I had to do, then I wanted to get it right. The teacher went back to describing the first-stage contractions, hardly pausing to give me the slightest guidance on how we might best do our bit, so I put my hand up.
‘Just going back to those sandwiches a minute, is there a particular filling that’s best for a woman in labour?’
‘Well, um, nothing too difficult to digest, but whatever your partner normally likes.’
‘It’s just that I thought maybe her tastebuds might be affected by hormones or whatever; there might be something that women in labour often develop a violent aversion to.’
‘Maybe best to make a selection of fillings, just to be on the safe side. Now, once the cervix has dilated the full ten centimetres—’
‘White or brown bread?’
‘What?’
‘White or brown bread for the sandwiches? You know, I want everything to be perfect for the baby, so I was just wondering which is best. I know brown is normally healthier, but is it easier to digest? I suppose we ought to have brown if we’re going for a natural childbirth.’
One of the other men picked up the thread and suggested that we make a selection of fillings inside a choice of white and brown bread, which seemed like a sensible suggestion, but at that point a woman with large glasses said that she was sorry if the men weren’t used to being in meetings that they couldn’t dominate but could we shut the fuck up about the fucking sandwiches because we were getting on her tits. The teacher had spent the last hour discussing intercourse, vaginas and breasts, but still blushed to hear such talk.
Because of minor gynaecological problems during her pregnancy, Catherine had been allocated a specialist consultant at St Thomas’s. This was obviously very distressing for her; a North Londoner being told that she would have to travel south of the river. But no problems ever arose, apart from having to drive halfway across London in the rush hour with my wife in labour in the back seat. Once we were in the delivery suite Catherine did everything that she had been told and breathed and pushed and waited and pushed again and produced a perfect little baby girl. I did everything I was supposed to do as well, but the sandwiches never came out of the bag. Of course I dabbed her forehead and said, ‘You’re doing really well,’ and, ‘That’s really brilliant,’ and things like that, but that’s not the way I normally talk, so it can’t have sounded very convincing. But then nothing about that day was very normal. Having this alien finally pop out of her was quite the most surreal experience of my life. The baby was handed to Catherine and she immediately seemed comfortable and confident with it. Her overjoyment gland had secreted gallons of the overjoyment hormone and she burst into tears. And although I was deeply moved by that moment, I secretly felt guilty that I was clearly not deeply moved in the way that she was. So I managed a wan smile, unsure whether I should try and cheer her up or pretend to cry as well. I think I was probably in a deep state of shock.
Although that was the moment I technically became a father, it didn’t really sink in for another couple of hours. Catherine was asleep and I was slumped in the leatherette chair by her bed. A toy coughing noise started to come from the cot and, since I didn’t want Catherine to be disturbed, I nervously picked up the baby myself. She seemed so fragile and tiny, and I carried her to my chair as if she were some priceless antique vase.
‘Hello, little girl, I’m your dad,’ I said. And then for the next hour or so I held her in my arms, just staring at this perfect little model of a person while an enormous sense of responsibility welled up within me. This baby was completely dependent on Catherine and me. We hadn’t been made to take any exams or attend any interviews, but here we were, suddenly in charge of a child. It felt moving, thrilling, awe-inspiring, but most of all terrifying. As I sat there looking at her, I thought about all those proud parents who had brought their babies round to our house, and I smiled when I thought how foolish they had all been. They had really thought that theirs were the most beautiful babies of all, when it was obvious to anyone that this little girl in my arms was by far the most beautiful creature the world had yet seen. I was sure that everyone would recognize this fact once they saw her. She was so innocent, so unspoilt, so new. I wanted to protect her from everything in the world and show her all the wonderful things on earth at the same time. When she eventually became restless I walked her across to the window and, while dawn was breaking over London, I looked down over the city from high up in St Thomas’s Hospital.
‘That’s the River Thames down there, little girl,’ I told her. ‘And that’s the Houses of Parliament. That clock there is Big Ben and that big red thing going over the bridge is called a bus. Say, “Bus.”’
‘Bus,’ said a babyish voice to my astonishment. Either I had fathered a genius or Catherine was awake and watching me. The baby had been growing increasingly uncomfortable and Catherine took her from me and placed the baby on her breast where she fed as if they had both been doing it for years.
Catherine and I had agreed on the name Millie for a girl weeks before the birth. But now that a baby girl had actually come along I felt an urge to name her after my late mother. I shared the idea with Catherine, who said it was a beautiful thought.
‘Your mother sounds like a wonderful person, and I wish I had met you earlier so that I could have known her. It would be a lovely thing to name this baby after the grandmother she will never meet; it’s a touching and poetic idea. The only trouble, my darling husband, is that your mother’s name was Prunella.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t you think the world is a cruel enough place into which to bring a new human being without lumbering it with the name Prunella?’
We agreed to sleep on the idea and we took Millie home two days later.
Once in the house, we put the baby in the middle of the lounge and I thought, Now what do we do? That was when I realized that I had only revised for everything up to this point. So much of our focus was on the day of the birth itself that I’d only given the slightest thought to what happened after that. Nothing had prepared me for the way she would totally disrupt my life. Not even every parent I knew telling me that the baby would totally disrupt my life prepared me for how much the baby would totally disrupt my life. It was like having your most difficult and demanding relation come to stay with you for ever. In fact, it would have been easier to put up with my ninety-year-old great aunt coming into our bed at three in the morning; at least she might have gone back to sleep for an hour or two.
When I first started to feel like a parent that night in the hospital, I was already lagging a couple of hours behind Catherine, and now the gulf between us continued to grow. I felt redundant almost from the outset. Normally when there had been something that Catherine had really wanted, I had been the one who got it out of the box and wired up the speakers. But when we took this baby hom
e, I was the useless one who had no idea what to do. There seemed to be no logic or system to follow. Sometimes Millie slept and sometimes she cried all night. Sometimes she would feed and sometimes she would refuse. There were no rules or routine, no rhythm or narrative to her – for the first time in my life I seemed to be confronted by a problem which had no solution. Life was out of control; I had no idea what was making this baby scream and what course of action should be taken, whereas Catherine just seemed to know. She could tell when Millie was hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, grumpy, tired, sad, whatever. Although the baby didn’t seem to cry any less when she applied the appropriate remedy, I never dared question the confidence with which she told me the reason for the baby’s distress. Millie was supposed to fill me with joy and fulfilment, but my strongest sensation was an overwhelming anxiety. It was anxiety at first sight. I wasn’t in love with the baby, I was ‘in worry’ with it.
But with Catherine it was like first love all over again. It was an overwhelming, all-consuming, total obsessive love. Her every waking thought was of Millie.
‘Mind the red car,’ I would say in a panic as she drove along, staring at her baby strapped in the back seat.
‘Aah. Millie’s got a little hat that colour,’ she would say dreamily.
‘Ow! I’ve cut my hand open with the bread knife.’
‘Ooh, show Millie; she’s never seen blood.’
‘Did you read that article about the USA trying to force Europe to import its bananas from American multinationals?’
‘Millie likes bananas.’
She put Millie’s name on the answerphone. ‘Hello. If you would like to leave a message for Catherine, Michael or Millie, please speak after the tone.’ Being a baby who was as yet unable to use the phone or speak English, it was not very surprising that Millie didn’t get very many messages of her own.
Everything came back to the baby. I was in a shop buying a new stereo and Catherine said, ‘Well, I think you should buy these speakers because they’ve got a really good bass sound and that’s supposed to help relax the baby.’ Obviously the most important criterion when buying myself a new stereo is which one is best for relaxing the baby. I already had my heart set on another pair of speakers, but God forbid that I should appear indifferent to the needs of The Baby. ‘These are better,’ I said. ‘The edges are rounder – she won’t hurt herself if she falls against these.’ And Catherine was delighted with my choice.
Suddenly I never seemed to be doing anything that I actually wanted to be doing. This struck me on our first family holiday together. I realized it wasn’t a holiday at all. That having Millie crawling around a rented cottage with extra-steep unguarded stairs and loose electrical sockets and a real log fire spitting out glowing splinters was even less relaxing than sitting at home watching her stuff half-chewed rusks into the video. My first holiday as a parent was when I realized I had become a teenager again, that I was grumpily being dragged along from playground to children’s farm and it was all completely stupid and pointless and pathetic. ‘Look, Millie, look at the llama eating the hay.’ Yup, she definitely glanced at the llama then, so that was worth it. Why couldn’t we just have stayed at home in London? I wouldn’t have minded taking her out of the front door every now and then and saying, ‘Look, Millie, look at the dog crapping on the pavement.’ She wouldn’t have been any less impressed. But no, we had to drive all the way to Devon and stay in a freezing-cold cottage so the poor disorientated baby could wake up every two hours and then be strapped into the car seat again because there was a children’s farm eleven miles away where they had llamas and not enough high chairs and a swing not dissimilar to the one at the bottom of our road. All that effort wasn’t for her; it was for us. We had to do too much just to convince ourselves that we were doing enough.
And then, of course, there were the night times. I remembered how Catherine and I used to cuddle up and fall asleep with our bodies still wrapped together. Then Millie came into our bed – quite literally between us. We had tried having her in a cot at the bottom of the bed, but Catherine found that she slept more soundly with Millie at her side, once she no longer felt compelled to sit up in panic at every moan, gurgle or indeed every silence. The baby would drift in and out of sleep feeding at Catherine’s breast – the very breasts that I was no longer permitted to touch – and I would lie there awake, resentfully thinking, Honestly! Has that baby no idea who those breasts are for?
I found it hard to sleep through the constant snuffling and kicking of the baby while I perched precariously on the edge of the mattress. On a couple of occasions I actually fell right out and landed face down on the wooden floor. I discovered that it was quite hard to sleep through this as well.
‘Shhh, you’ll wake Millie,’ whispered Catherine as I checked to see if my nose was bleeding. After a few wakeful nights, Catherine suggested I slept downstairs on the sofa. So now she didn’t sleep with her husband any more, she slept with her new love, The Baby. She seemed to have become completely immune to the feelings of anyone except The Baby. She was besotted, spellbound, obsessed. It was like when she first fell in love with me. Except this time it wasn’t with me.
Millie had pushed me out. She had taken my place in the bed, my social life and my time with Catherine; she’d even robbed me of my birthday. ‘What a perfect birthday present,’ everyone said to me when she was born on the day that I turned thirty. That was the last birthday I ever had. A year later, on our ‘joint’ birthday, Millie got a shape sorter, a ball that bounced in funny directions, a trolley with coloured bricks in, a plastic bath toy, a baby gym, a squeaky book and about thirty cuddly toys. I got a photo album in which to put pictures of Millie. Happy Birthday, Michael! ‘Sorry it’s not very much, but I didn’t have time to go to the shops,’ said Catherine as she filled a bin liner with all the packaging from the toys she’d bought Millie from the shops.
I would have liked to go out that night, but Catherine said it felt funny to leave Millie on her first birthday. I pointed out that Millie was not only fast asleep, she was also completely unaware that it was her birthday and, if she woke up, would be perfectly happy to be settled again by Catherine’s mother. But Catherine said she wouldn’t have enjoyed it and so neither would I, so we stayed in and watched a programme about gardening.
To cap a memorable evening Catherine asked me to pop down to the supermarket for some nappies and, since it was my birthday, I treated myself to two cans of lager and a packet of Cheesey Wotsits. But then, as I returned home, I noticed all the lights were out. I knew immediately what Catherine had done. My wife, God bless her, had secretly organized me a surprise birthday party. The nappy mission had just been a way of getting me out of the house. I checked my hair in the car mirror, let myself in, tiptoed into the lounge and went to switch on the light, ready to appear surprised and delighted as everyone shouted, ‘Happy Birthday, Michael!’ I braced myself and flicked the light switch. I probably did look really surprised. The room was completely empty. So was the kitchen. I went upstairs and Catherine was fast asleep in bed. I went back downstairs, flopped onto the sofa, drank a can of lager and flicked between the television channels. My Cheesey Wotsits had a free Star Wars card inside, so that was some consolation. ‘Live life to the max’, said the ad on the telly, so I drank my second can of lager before going to bed.
I had thought my youth and freedom would last for ever. When I was eighteen Pd left home and rented a shared flat, thinking that at long last I was free, that now I could do whatever I wanted – for ever. No-one had told me that this emancipation was only temporary, that I’d only enjoy total liberty for a very brief period of my life. I had spent my childhood doing what my parents wanted to do and now my adulthood seemed doomed to be spent doing what my children wanted to do. I was back in the jug again; my home had turned into a prison. I could no longer come and go as I pleased; there were bars on the upstairs windows, security gates on the stairs and monitors and locks and alarms, soon there would even be a stinking potty
to be slopped out. This baby that had arrived was part warder and part prison bully. She would not permit me to sleep beyond 6 a.m., after which time I was her gofer, her lackey, fetching and carrying just for her amusement. She would humiliate me by throwing a piece of cutlery to the floor and then demanding that I pick it up, and when I obeyed her she would do it again.
Any prisoner dreams of escape. Mine happened subconsciously at first. I would lie in the bath and allow my ears to slip under the water so the soundtrack of crying babies and angry shouting would become a dull and distant babble. Once, when Millie was asleep in the buggy, I offered to push her out across Hampstead Heath so Catherine could have a lie-down and relax in an empty house. As I pushed the buggy up and down the only steep hills in London, I realized that the reason I had made this apparently generous offer was just to get some time to myself, because now I needed to escape from Catherine as well. She made me feel as if I always did everything wrong. I headed for the Bull and Last and had two pints sitting in the pub garden, feeling more relaxed and carefree than I could remember. Millie stayed asleep the whole time we were out, and soon all my cares and tensions were washed away on the foamy tide of beer. When I arrived home I felt completely serene and at peace with the world, until Catherine’s furious face at the window brought me back down to reality with a disappointing bump. Oh no, what have I done wrong now? I thought to myself. I decided I would try to ignore her obvious displeasure, but as I cheerfully strode up the front path with my hands in my pockets she came to greet me at the door.
‘Where’s Millie?’ she said.
‘Millie?’
‘Yes, your daughter that you took for a walk on the heath . . .’
I now know that it is possible to run from my house to the Bull and Last pub in four minutes and forty-seven seconds.
I suppose that on that occasion I have to accept some of the blame. Most of the blame. But Catherine seemed to find fault with everything I did with the children. I dried them with the wrong towel, I mixed their baby milk with the wrong water and I put the wrong amount of lotion on their bottoms. I got the impression that Catherine found it quicker and easier to do everything herself. I would dutifully be there at dressing time, feeding time and at bath time, hoping that I might be of some use, but generally I just got in the way. I was offering to be hands-on, but in reality my hands were just hanging down by my sides, not quite sure what to do with themselves. In babyland she was queen; I was Prince Philip, hovering awkwardly in the background making stupid comments.
The Best a Man Can Get Page 4