I never wanted a boy. After Emily, I suspected my body could only make her kind, and anyway I was more than happy to have another girl — beautiful, self-contained, intricate as a watch. “Boys are like so over,” Candy announced to a lunch for female colleagues this time last year. My bump was so big the wine-bar manager had to fetch a chair, because I couldn’t slip inside the booth with everyone else. We all laughed. Nervous, insubordinate laughter, but tinged with triumph — the laugh of the Celts when they knew the Romans’ time was nearly up. But then, three days later, they handed him to me in the delivery room. Him! Something so small, faced with the vast and implausible task of becoming a man, and I loved him. Loved him like a shot. And he couldn’t get enough of me. Still can’t. A mother of a one-year-old boy is a movie star in a world without critics.
He’s so heavy suddenly, my baby: that lithe body is filling out with boyness. Thighs as dense and plump as a boxer’s glove. I carry him to the blue chair, hold his hand and begin to croon our favorite song.
“Lavender’s blue dilly dilly, lavender’s green,
When I am King dilly dilly, you shall be Queen.”
Mothers have been singing this for centuries and still no one has the faintest clue what it means. The singing of lullabies is a bit like motherhood itself: something to be done instinctively in the dark, although its purpose feels magically clear.
I sense every part of Ben relax, his weight shifting inside the Babygro like sand until he is evenly distributed across my chest. You have to judge the moment just right; you have to guess when doze has deepened into dream. I stand up and move stealthily towards the cot, not letting him drop down until the very last second. There. Hallelujah! Then, just when I’m thinking I’ve got away with it, his eyes snap open. Bottom lip trembles for a few seconds like Rick glimpsing his lost Ilsa in Casablanca, then the whole mouth forms a tremulous O and the lungs fill for a reprise of the scream.
(Babies never extend any credit. They have a tyrant’s disdain for fairness. They grant no time off for cuddles received, no parole for long hours spent nursing in the dark. You can answer that cry a hundred times, and on the hundred and first they’ll still have you court-martialed for desertion.)
“All right, all right, Mummy’s here. It’s OK, I’m still here.”
We go back to the blue chair. I hold Ben’s hand and begin the sleep ritual over again.
5:16 A.M. Ben finally flat out.
5:36 A.M. Emily asks me to read a book called Little Miss Busy. No.
7:45 A.M. Paula back today and feeling much better, thank God. Ask her to remember Teletubbies cake for Ben’s birthday on Friday — oh, and candles. And go easy on the biscuits in case the other mums are crazy Sugar Ayatollahs. (Last year, Angela Brunt issued a fatwa on raisins.) Paula asks me for a large amount of cash, sufficient to cater Buckingham Palace garden party, but don’t dare query.
8:27 A.M. So out of it by the time I get to Broadgate that I pick up two double espressos at Starbucks and down them like vodka shots. I read somewhere that people suffering from sleep deprivation are in what’s called a hypnagogic state — a sort of purgatory between sleeping and waking, where surreal images drift across the brain. Like being permanently stuck in a David Lynch movie. This could account for the fact that Rod Task is ceasing to come across as a merely annoying Aussie bully and is starting to resemble unblinking Dennis Hopper with madman’s laugh. I sit at my desk wearing the old pair of glasses I keep in the drawer to give an impression of intense cerebral activity; then I select the most mindless task available, one where making mistakes will matter least. So long as I don’t buy or sell anything I should be OK. I have twenty-nine e-mails. Can hardly believe the first one.
To: Kate Reddy, EMF
From: Jack Abelhammer, Salinger Foundation
Katharine,
I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have worked out the problem we ran into over the holidays. Clearly it was a bad time for you too.
It’s great news about Toki Rubber and the patenting of the unbreakable prophylactic. Amazing recovery of stock. I admire your coolness under pressure. Maybe we can celebrate when you get here on Thursday? Terrific new lobster joint down the street.
Best, Jack
To: Kate Reddy
From: Candy Stratton
What say we hit Corny & Barrw for bottle or 2 so we can get arrestd for disordly cnduct & miss fckg stratgy mtng?
U look wreckd. C xxxxx
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
I don’t have to be drunk to be disorderly. Need to go to bed for a week.
love and kisses K8 xxxxxx
To: Candy Stratton
From: Kate Reddy
URGENT! Tell me you just got that msg.
To: Kate Reddy
From: Candy Stratton
Wot msg?
To: Candy Stratton
From: Kate Reddy
About being drunk and disorderly. Quick. HURRY!
To: Kate Reddy
From: Candy Stratton
Srry, hon. U mst have sent to some other lucky gal.
To: Candy Stratton
From: Kate Reddy
To client in New York actually. Am dead woman. No flowers please.
To: Kate Reddy
From: Candy Stratton
Holy shit. Snd anothr Right This Minute.
Dear Sir, my evil depraved twin, also calling herself Kate Reddy, has just sent U a crazy and offensive e-mail, please ignore.
Anyway, don’t worry. Abelhammer’s American, right? Remember we have No Sense of Humor.
3:23 P.M. Team leaders start to file in for strategy meeting in Rod Task’s office. My eyelids are closing like a doll’s. Only thing keeping me awake is the thought that Jack Abelhammer will sue for sexual harassment. Yanks are obsessed with “inappropriate behavior.” Still no e-mail back from him. Hopes that he will put mine down to charming British eccentricity are fading as fast as the daylight. Lost in a nightmare reverie, I fail to notice the approach of Celia Harmsworth. Extending one bony finger, the head of Human Resources prods the place where Ben sank his teeth in this morning. Feels at least three lifetimes ago.
“Something on your neck, Katharine?”
“Oh, that. The baby bit me.”
A couple of guys seated at the table start to snigger into their Perrier. Celia gives the wintry smirk you see on the face of the wicked Queen when she’s handing the apple to Snow White. Make my excuses and shoot to ladies’ room pursued by Candy. Lighting is terrible in here, but the mirror reveals what appears to be a love bite left by a teenage vampire halfway down my neck. Try foundation. No use. Try face powder. Damn. Bite looks angry and foaming, like an aerial view of Mount Etna.
Candy comes in waving Touche Eclat Concealer and starts to dab it on my neck.
“Hey, did Slow Richard give you a hickey? That’s terrific, honey.”
“No, the teething baby did. My darling husband slept through it all. But I nearly bit him to wake him up.”
Back in Task’s office, my male colleagues are doing what they like doing best: they are having a meeting. If this meeting goes really well, if they drag it out long enough, then they can reward themselves with another meeting tomorrow. With luck, the lack of progress in Meeting One can be reviewed in Meetings Three, Four, and Five. When I first arrived as a trainee in the City, I assumed that meetings were for making decisions; it took a few weeks to figure out that they were arenas of display, the Square Mile equivalent of those gorilla grooming sessions you see on wildlife programs. Some days, watching the men maneuver for position, I reckon I can actually hear the bedside whisper of David Attenborough commenting on the beating of chests and the picking of nits: And here, in the very heart of the urban jungle, we see Charlie Baines, a young ape from the US Desk, as he approaches the battle-scarred head of the group, Rod Task. Observe Charlie’s posture, the way he indicates his subservience while desperately seeking the senior male’s approval….