“Kate, we have to talk.”
“Not now, Rich, I need a bath.”
STILL OUT OF BATH OILS, I find an old packet of lavender salts at the bottom of the airing cupboard. It promises to “soothe and motivate”: I add some of Ben’s Pirate Pete bubbles, which turn the water school-uniform navy.
Climb into the scalding blue lagoon and lie back with my favorite reading matter — in recent years, let’s be honest, my only reading matter. Better than any fiction, Jameson’s “Country Property Guide” is a glossy brochure crammed with photographs of desirable properties for sale around the British Isles. We could exchange the Hackney Heap for, say, a converted mill in the Cotswolds or a pocket-size castle in Peeblesshire. (Where is Peeblesshire? Sounds a bit far.) The pictures are fabulous, but what I really like are the specifications. On page 18, there is a house in Berkshire with annex study with a barreled ceiling and gardens full of mature fruit trees. What is a barreled ceiling? I’m not quite sure, but I want one. And mature fruit trees! I picture myself wafting through a wood-paneled library where there would be freshly cut blossoms in tall vases on the way to the country kitchen boasting a blend of traditional cupboards and up-to-the-minute appliances. Standing next to the Aga — not for cooking in, I would be using the Neff double oven for that — I would write dates on the labels of the jelly made from apples picked from mature fruit trees in extensive gardens while my children played contentedly in the recessed nook upholstered in tasteful fabrics.
“Kate’s porn.” That’s what Richard calls the Jameson’s brochure when he comes across a copy stashed guiltily under my side of the bed. He’s got a point. All the mouth-watering pictures, laid out for my viewing pleasure, allow you to take possession of those lives without having to go through the trouble of actually leading them. The more depressed I get in my own house, the more consuming my property lust.
Thinking of Rich reminds me of our pesto fight and I wince at my part in it. His very kindness and sanity are enough to inspire the opposite in me. Why? Richard thinks that I indulge Paula, that I let her get away with things no employee you give generous pay and conditions to should be allowed to get away with. He thinks she’s a reasonably bright twenty-five-year-old girl from Kent who, while being pretty nice to our kids, tries to take us for every penny she can. He thinks she’s lazy, moody and shrinks his socks if he asks her to do anything outside her job description. He thinks she has too much power in our house. He’s right. But Rich doesn’t worry about child care the way I worry; men think about child care with their wallets, women feel it in their wombs. Every twist in the relationship with the person minding your young is a tug on the umbilical. Phones may have become cordless, but mothers never will.
Me, I look at Paula and I see the person who is with my children all the hours I’m not, a person I have to rely on to love and to cherish and to watch out for the first symptoms of meningitis. If she leaves the place in a mess, if she makes a petty point of not putting the dishwasher on because it contains adult as well as junior crockery, if she never gives me the correct change from the supermarket and “loses” all the receipts, then I’m not going to make a fuss.
People say the trouble with professional women of my generation is that we don’t know how to behave with servants. Wrong. The trouble with professional women of my generation is that we are the servants — forelock-tuggingly grateful to any domestic help, for which we pay through the nose, while struggling to hold down the master’s job ourselves.
When I first went back to work, I put my four-month-old daughter into day care. There’s a nursery about ten minutes’ walk from us, and I liked the sunny, resilient Scotswoman who ran it. But gradually things started to get to me. The Baby Room was small and lined with twelve cots. I’d persuaded myself it was cozy when we first went to look round, but every day I dropped Emily off it looked more like a Romanian orphanage styled by Habitat. When I asked Moira how the little ones could take a nap with all the noise from the big kids next door, she shrugged and said, “Och, they get used to it in the end.” And then there were the fines. If you picked up your child any later than 6:30 from Children’s Corner, they charged you ten quid for the first ten minutes, fifty pounds for any longer. I was always later than 6:30. Shame sloshed around like bile in my stomach on the sprint from the Tube to collect her.
Surrounded by thirty other kids, Emily picked up every infection going. Her first winter cold ran from October through March and her baby nose was encrusted with verdigris. Having provided the bacteria for the infection, the nursery was always extremely keen that you keep your sick child at home, with no reduction in fees. I can remember hours on the phone at work pretending to be calling clients, talking to temp agencies or begging help from friends. (And I hate asking for favors: hate the feeling of being indebted.) Then, one bitter morning, I had to drop a feverish Em off at the house of someone who knew someone in my postnatal mother and baby group who lived in Crouch End. At the end of the day, the woman reported that Emily had cried constantly, save for an hour, when they had watched a video of Sleeping Beauty that seemed to comfort her. That day my daughter formed her first sentence: “Want go home.” But I was not there to hear it, nor was I at the home where she so badly wanted to go.
So, no, Paula is not ideal. But what is ideal? Mummy staying at home and laying down her life for small feet to walk over. Would you do that? Could I do that? You don’t know me very well if you think I could do that.
I GET OUT of the bath, apply some aqueous cream to scaly pink patches on hands, back of knees and ears, wrap myself in a robe and go into the study to check messages before bed.
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Katharine, I don’t remember mentioning drink, but disorderly sounds great. Bed for a week could be a problem: may need to reschedule the diary. Perhaps we should make it an oyster bar?
love Jack
Love? From major client? Oh, God, Kate. Now see what you’ve gone and done.
Cut Ben’s nails, Xmas thank-you letters? also letter bollocking council about failure to remove Christmas tree, humiliate ghastly Guy in front of Rod to show who’s boss, learn to send txt messages, Ben birthday — find Teletubbies cake, present — dancing Tinky Winky or improving wooden toy? Dancing Tinky Winky and improving wooden toy. Emily shoes/schools/teach her to read, call Mum, call Jill Cooper-Clark, must return sister’s call — why Julie sounding so pissed off with me; only person in London not seen brill new film — Magic Tiger, Puffing Dragon? Half term when/what? Invite friends for Sunday lunch. Buy pine nuts and basil to make own pesto, cookery crash course (Leith’s or similar). Summer holiday brochures. Get Jesus an exercise ball. Quote for stair carpet? Lightbulbs, tulips, lip salve, Botox?
9 The First Time I Saw Jack
7:03 A.M. I am hiding in the downstairs loo with my suitcase to avoid Ben. He is next door in the kitchen, where Richard is giving him breakfast. I am desperate to go in, but tell myself it’s not fair to snatch a few selfish minutes of his company and then leave an inconsolable baby. (The book says children get over Separation Anxiety by two years, but no age limit given for mothers.) Better he doesn’t see me at all. Squatting in here on the laundry basket, I have time to study the room and notice swags of gray fluff drifting down the window, like witch’s curtains. (Our cleaner, Juanita, suffers from vertigo, and quite understandably cannot clean above waist height.) Also the mermaid mosaic splashback was left half-tiled by our builder when we refused to give him any more cash, so is all tits and no tail. In the Bible, Jehovah sent floods and plagues of locusts to punish mankind for their vanity; at the end of the twentieth century, he saves time and sends round a plasterer and a couple of brickies.