MADRID
There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby, they engage in an act of production, and the widespread use of the word reproduction for this activity, with its implication that two people are but braiding themselves together, is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads.
Time being what it is, we got older. We thickened and sagged in ways that would have seemed implausible, comical even, to our younger selves, just as our son, before our eyes, began to elongate. We accumulated things; vast quantities of moulded plastic, picture books, scooters, tricycles, bicycles, shoes and clothes and coats and paraphernalia that no longer served a purpose but which we couldn’t quite throw away. Connie and I entered our forties in quick succession, and though we suspected we’d never need a bottle steriliser or rocking horse again, we found we couldn’t quite discard them, and now there was a piano, too, now a train set, a castle, a tangled box kite.
My new salary meant that the fridge seemed fuller, the wine tasted better and we bought a bigger car, took Albie on trips abroad and came back to the same small flat we’d bought together before we were married, cramped and tatty now. We ought to move house, we knew it, but the effort required was beyond me. Five years of commuting against the tide had begun to take their toll, and I was perpetually tired, perpetually stressed and bad-tempered, so that my nightly homecoming brought no pleasure to either Albie or Connie, or indeed myself.
Take, for example, the famous Glitter Wars that scarred the December of Albie’s ninth year. Albie and Connie had been making Christmas cards at the kitchen table, heads close together in that way they had, Phil Spector’s Christmas Album playing, the kind of home-spun artsy-craftsy activity that occupied their evenings while I struggled to stay awake on the 1957 into Paddington, self-medicating with a warm gin and tonic from the station buffet then another from the trolley, hurrying through the rain to a flat that felt too small and entering to no greeting, no loving kiss or filial hug, just a scene of utter disarray; music blaring, tissue-paper and cotton wool everywhere, poster paint daubed all over the table. Here were my son and wife in their own little self-contained world, laughing at a self-contained joke, and here was Albie shaking glitter onto PVA glue and the table, too, and the floor and onto his pyjamas. Anyone who has attempted to clean away large quantities of spilt glitter will know that it is a pernicious and vile substance, a kind of festive asbestos that clings to clothes and burrows into carpets, sticks to the skin and stays there, and now here were great snowdrifts of the awful stuff blowing across the table.
‘What the hell is going on in here!’ I said, I shouted. They noticed me now.
‘We’re making Christmas cards!’ said Connie, still smiling. ‘Look! Isn’t this a beauty?’ She held up one of Albie’s efforts and a shower of gold and silver cascaded to the floor. ‘Your son is an artist!’
‘Look! Look what you’re doing. It’s going everywhere! For Christ’s sake, Connie,’ and I threw down my briefcase and went to the sink to dampen a cloth. ‘Would it kill you to put newspaper down first?’
‘It’s glitter, Douglas,’ she said, forcing a laugh. ‘Because it’s Christmas?’
‘And I’ll be picking it out of my food and brushing it off my clothes until July! Look at this paint! Paint and glue on the table. Is it washable? No, stupid question, of course, it isn’t—’ I stopped scrubbing, threw the cloth down. ‘Look! Look, it’s on my hands!’ I held them up to the light, to show how brightly they sparkled. ‘I’ve got to go into meetings like this. I have to do presentations! Look! How is anyone supposed to take me seriously when I’m covered in this bloody …’ My son was staring at the table now, his brow creased, lips protruding. Here you are, my darling boy — some memories for you.
‘Egg, can you go next door please?’ said Connie.
He shifted off his seat. ‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘I like your Christmas card!’ I said to his back, but it was too late now. Connie and I were left alone.
‘Well, you can really suck the joy out of pretty much anything these days, can’t you?’ said Connie.
But I was not quite ready to apologise yet and the battle that followed, erupting in skirmishes over the remaining days and weeks leading up to Christmas, was too painful and unpleasant to recount in great detail here. The glitter, as predicted, found its way into clothes and hair and the grain of the kitchen furniture; its sparkle would catch my eye as I ate a solitary breakfast in the dark, and the silences, the sniping and bickering continued until Christmas.
If my own mother ever caught me pulling faces, pouting or sneering, she would tell me: if the wind changes direction, you’ll stay that way. I was sceptical at the time, but as the years passed I was not so sure. My everyday face, the one I wore at rest or when alone, had set and hardened, and wasn’t one I cared for much any more.
The day itself was always spent at Connie’s parents, a noisy, boisterous and boozy affair, the tiny terraced house packed with a mind-boggling number of nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles, both Cypriots and Londoners and combinations of the two, the children ever-multiplying, everyone laughing and joking and arguing in a smoky room with the TV on. Later, there’d be ridiculous dancing, four generations trampling walnut shells and Quality Street underfoot. Once upon a time these Christmas Days had seemed like a refreshing change from the rather chilly and restrained affair I was used to from childhood, but since the loss of my parents the event had taken on a melancholy air for me. I was the stranger here, an elderly orphan, an appendix to someone else’s family, and the discord between my wife and me served only to heighten my gloom. There was work at home in my briefcase — perhaps I could sneak off early and do that? No, only lemonade for me. No, thank you, I don’t smoke. And no, thank you, I do not wish to conga.
Of course Albie loved it there, sipping creamy cocktails when no one was looking, flirting with his cousins, dancing on his uncles’ shoulders, and so I sat and watched and waited. We returned home after midnight, Albie falling asleep in the backseat, and I carried him up to our top-floor flat — the last year I’d be able to do this — and fell backwards on to our bed. The three of us lay together, too exhausted to undress, my son’s breath hot and sweet on my cheek.
‘Are you unhappy?’ said Connie.
‘No. No, just a little blue.’ That silly word again.
‘Maybe we need to make a change.’
‘What kind of change?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps a change of scene. So that you’re not tired all the time.’
‘Leave London, you mean?’
‘If that’s what it’s going to take. Maybe find a house in the country somewhere, so you can drive to work. Somewhere with a good state school nearby. What d’you think?’
What did I think? In truth, I didn’t love the city any more. It didn’t belong to us in the same way. I did not like explaining to Albie why there were bunches of flowers tied to the railings, or instructing him to avoid the vomit on the way to the shops on Saturday morning. I was bored of road works and building sites — when would they ever finish the place? Why couldn’t they leave it alone? When I returned at night, the city seemed an unnerving and aggressive place; I could feel my grip tightening on the handle of my briefcase as I left the tube, keys clenched in my other fist. Every siren, every terrorist threat seemed more urgent and more personal. And yes, there was all the great art, the wonderful theatre, but when had Connie last been to the theatre?