In my self-denial, I have so far eaten two chocolate Barbie rolls and a bowl of Twiglets and poured a half-bottle of gin into the homemade lemonade I bought at Marks & Spencer and decanted into a pink jug to pass off as my own.
It’s a hot night: viscous, thirsty for rain. The fan I dug out from under the stairs is no use; it sits on the kitchen table, sluggishly stirring the soupy air. There was an attempt at thunder earlier, just as we were leaving the swimming baths around four, but it was more like a ripping of brown paper than the full-throated roar we need to scare off the heat. Christ, the heat! And the smell! I am out in the garden scraping the rug over which Joshua Mayhew threw up. The oatmeal vomit is studded with pastel minarets of Iced Gems.
I did notice Josh looking pale and clammy during Pass the Parcel and managed to get him out into the hall, but as I was struggling with the front door he deposited his birthday tea on the runner. When his mother turned up, she shrieked, “What has happened to poor little Joshey?”
I managed to suppress the obvious reply: What has happened is that little Joshey has carpet-bombed five hundred pounds’ worth of Uzbekistan kelim. If it had been the contents of my child’s stomach, I would have been down on my knees proffering a checkbook. But Imogen Mayhew, a person so wholesome her entire being seems to have been woven from chamomile, just demanded to know if Joshua had been allowed to have “excess sugar.”
I laughed a tinkly hostess laugh and said that sugar was a traditional staple of birthday parties, but Imogen did not join in the laughter. She left with a look which suggested I can expect imminent litigation against my Nigella fairy cakes. Then, as soon as she was out of the door, I had another encounter with Angela Brunt, who was kneeling by the coats and scraping strawberry Frube off Davina’s green velvet. “Have you got Emily in anywhere yet, Kate?”
“No.”
“Well, Davina has a guaranteed place at Morton’s, but her second interview at Piper Place is on Thursday and that’s the one we’re holding out for because it opens the door to so many other things, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, doesn’t it.”
After washing my hands to try and remove the smell of vomit, I go into the sitting room where Richard has crashed out on the sofa, a Sunday Review section tented over his face. Every time he breathes out, he inflates the breasts of Madonna, whose picture is on the cover above a feature entitled FROM VIRGIN TO BLESSED MOTHER. Perhaps I should call Madonna for a mum-to-mum chat about how to sponge vomit from a kelim? Presumably at her daughter’s parties she has a designated sick-wrangler. How much do I hate the celebrity Having-It-All Mother who boasts about how fulfilled she is when you just know she has a fleet of substitute mothers doing it all for her?
“Rich?”
“Hmmmmm?” The paper slides down onto the bridge of his nose.
“We have to get Emily down for Piper Place.”
“Why?”
“Because it opens so many doors.”
“You’ve been talking to Angela Brunt again.” His sigh is so big it’s practically a yawn.
“No.”
“Katie, that woman’s poor kid is so pressurized she’s going to end up as the neighborhood crack dealer.”
“But she can play the oboe.”
“All right, the neighborhood’s oboe-playing crack dealer. Your daughter knows all of Mary Poppins by heart. Give her a break, OK?”
Richard spent most of Emily’s swimming party in the deep end with Mathilde, mother of Laurent, who is in Em’s class at school. I was in the shallows, pulling ten screaming children round on a snake made of orange tubing. On the way home in the car, Rich sighed and said, “Frenchwomen do keep themselves in good nick, don’t they?”
He sounded exactly like his mother.
“Mathilde doesn’t work,” I said crossly.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“After the age of thirty, body maintenance is a full-time job. And I already have one of those, in case you haven’t noticed.”
For a second, he rested his head on the steering wheel. “It wasn’t a criticism of you, Kate. Not everything’s a criticism of you, you know.”
After the kitchen is clean and I’ve crawled the length of the hall pinching up orange Wotsit dust with my thumb and forefinger — if I use the Hoover it’ll wake them — I sit down for five minutes to watch TV. An hour later I’m woken by the phone. It’s Barbara, my motherin-law. “I hope you don’t think I’m talking out of turn, Katharine, but Richard did sound awfully fed up when I spoke to him earlier. It’s not my place to say anything, of course, but let things go in a certain department and before you know where you are — well, the whole shop closes down.”
“Yes, Barbara, but it’s been Emily’s party and—”
“Anyway, Richard’s father and I are coming down on Saturday to take in that marvelous show at the Royal Academy.”
I realize that the pause indicates I should say something. “Oh, that’s nice, Barbara. Where will you be staying?”
“Now don’t go to too much trouble, will you? You know Donald and me: hot water and a clean bed and we’ll be right as rain.”
9:40 P.M. Upstairs, Emily is still awake but wild-eyed with tiredness after her big day. She has shucked off both duvet and nightie as usual and lies there on the sheet, her body casting a mother-of-pearl sheen in the darkened room. Over the past year — can it really be a whole twelve months since she turned five? — her distended baby’s potbelly has disappeared; her tummy dips now and rises towards the contours of the woman she will become. More beautiful for not knowing she is beautiful. Want to love and protect and never ever hurt her. Make silent vow to be a better mother.
“Mummy?”
“Yes, Em.”
“Next birthday, I will be seven! Then I will be eight, nine, ten, ’leven, twelve, fourteen, twenty!”
“That’s right. But you don’t want to grow up too soon, sweetheart.”
“I do.” She juts that chin of hers. “When you’re a adult you can go to Morantic.”
“What’s Morantic?”
She rolls her eyes in incredulity, my world-weary sophisticate of six. “You know, Morantic. It’s a country where adults go out to dinner and kiss.”
“Oh. Romantic.”
She nods, pleased I’ve heard of it. “Yes, Morantic!”
“Who told you about Morantic?”
“Hannah. And anyway you have to go with boys, only sometimes they’re too naughty.”
I stand here in the thick hot dark thinking of all the conversations we will have on this subject in the years ahead and of the ones we won’t have, because she will need to have secrets in order to grow away from me and I will need to have secrets to keep her close. As I bend to kiss her, I say, “Morantic is a fantastic country. And you know what? When you’re ready to go there, Mummy and Emily will choose some lovely dresses together and we’ll pack you a bag.”
Perhaps seeing something sorrowful in my expression, my daughter reaches out and takes my hand in her small one; it triggers a flicker, no more, of holding my own mother’s hand, its coolness, the meshing of its bones.
“You can come to Morantic too, Mummy,” she says. “It’s not very far.”
“No, love,” I say, leaning down to extinguish the Cinderella light. “Mummy’s too old.”
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Dearest Katharine,
Perfectly understand your reservations about our meeting again in this life and appreciate the suggestion that your esteemed colleague Brian Somebody might take over the handling of my business. Weirdly, I find myself unwilling to do without you, Kate. Reddiness is all.