Confessions of a Bad Mother Page 15

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The front of the coach says Praha. It sounds somehow much further away than Prague. When she gets on, Peter and I are both tearful. Lawrence and Lydia finally tear themselves away from the Pick ‘n’ Mix and run after her calling, ‘I love you!’ and: ‘You’re my best friend in the whole world!’

  The coach turns towards Praha, and we go home to practise being Proper Parents.

  Thank God for nursery school, then. Lydia’s been watching her brother for a year, so knows the routine. At the door she does not cry or hang onto my legs, but grabs an apron and heads straight for the dinosaur sandpit. At the end of the day, I arrive to find her releasing the other children to their mothers.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I say to the teacher.

  ‘I don’t mind!’ she says.

  ‘… And Luke, you can go,’ says Lydia.

  So: the good news is, she’s more than ready for fulltime nursery; the bad news is, she thinks she runs the place. But I don’t care, because I now have five and a half hours of completely child-free time every day. I shall name this Golden Time, when only Very Important Things shall be done. I start by going to a cafe with a newspaper. It is so pleasurable that by the time I get to the second coffee I feel quite degenerate. If only I’d known it could take so little to have an outrageously good time, I’d have had kids earlier. At fourteen.

  Coming out of the school gate at around this time I notice Jay, a mother I always smile at, though I don’t know her, because she wears fantastic clothes and huge, sculptural earrings. She breezes through the other mummies leaving a vapour trail of pizazz, a catwalk in a sea of Boden. She is also a barrister who walks across Africa for mental health – other people’s. She is talking to a small circle of mothers and nannies. Like a tourist passing Speakers’ Corner, I slow down.

  ‘Someone asked me the other day how I do it,’ she’s telling them. ‘And I said, “It’s simple: I put the children to bed in their school uniforms, and give them chocolate for breakfast in the car.” ’ There is a ripple of laughter and approval. And a bell goes off in my head.

  Other people take short cuts and ‘cheat’. What if MOST of them do? What if it’s – universal?

  I go home and tell Peter: ‘We’re not the only ones.’ ‘The only ones what?’

  ‘You know, who don’t heat bottles, and drink while breastfeeding and – generally do it “wrong”.’

  ‘I’m sure we’re not.’

  ‘Yes, but what if everybody’s like that? But none of us wants to own up? So we’re all – sort of hiding. Thinking everyone else is doing it ‘properly’ – but no one is! Or almost no one.’

  ‘What I can’t stand is those bloody celebrities going on about how marvellous it all is, when they’ve got an army of cleaners and nannies.’

  ‘Exactly! And the papers always telling us that if we put them in childcare they’ll become shoplifters.’

  ‘But if you stay at home with them you’re “just a mother”, so you can’t win.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, have you ever met anyone who actually thinks they’re doing a good job?’

  ‘Mrs Thatcher always seems to sound quite pleased with how hers’ve turned out.’

  ‘There you go. For the rest of us, it’s taking short cuts, and having a drink instead of reading them a bedtime story, and feeling guilty all the time … Like when we ate their Easter eggs—’

  ‘You didn’t feel guilty.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Anyhow, it was your idea. Look, shut up. It’s like abortion used to be. It just took one or two women to “confess”. What if I could somehow say that? That it’s OK. We could all “come out”.’

  ‘You’re saying it now.’

  ‘No. I mean to lots of people. To everyone who’s sick of being pressurized to feel nurturing and fulfilled twenty-four hours a day. I’m going to start a magazine.’

  I then outline my vision for the most stunning and brilliant publication ever, which I shall edit from a beautiful office with white Bakelite phones, and a curved, art deco desk. And a view. It’ll be on sale in all the newsagents, and all the schools, and all the playgroups, and reach every mother in the land.

  ‘Great idea,’ says Peter.

  ‘There’s just one problem. I need five million pounds.’

  ‘Ah. What are you going to call it, anyway?’

  It’s something Annie used to say. We stayed with her in Australia. She started her own business when her children were small, and when their father died, she managed brilliantly. But she never thought that. She was always worrying about fucking up, agonizing dreadfully in a way we – then childless – found baffling and hilarious. At the first sign of trouble – one of the kids refusing to do their homework or whatever – she’d turn to us and say: ‘Am I a Bad Mother?’ And we’d say: ‘How would we know?’

  ‘So … here’s the thing. What if other women are also thinking they’re Bad Mothers, while actually being – like Annie – perfectly good?’

  ‘God knows women waste megawatts of energy beating themselves up.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Well, you could always do it on the net.’

  ‘Oh no. I hate all that. And I’m completely untechnical, you know that.’

  A week later I’m sitting in the office of RedSpy, who build skiing and motoring websites. None of them is a woman or has kids.

  ‘Great! It sounds great,’ says Jay, the boss.

  ‘What, you – think you can do it?’

  ‘A website? Sure. What d’you want on it?

  I show them my sheet of A4, with ‘Extreme Breastfeeding’ written at the top.

  ‘This is a section which people can contribute to, about the strangest or worst places they’ve ever done it.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Sam, the designer.

  ‘And I want to add something about sending a team to the next Olympics.’ The young man who was answering the phone has stopped answering the phone and is now joining in.

  ‘And, um, I thought we could have a bit called “Tantrum of the Week” – where mothers describe how they’ve lost it, sort of thing.’

  ‘Great. And—?’

  ‘That’s as far as I’ve got. I thought I could write some features, and maybe commission some.’

  ‘OK, and you’ll probably need a forum.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’ll show you. And how are you going to fund it?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘OK. Great.’

  I’m paying them the money we’ve put on one side in case we ever go on holiday again, so I spend carefully. I write a piece called How To Be Less Mumsy, and one called How To Do Less, and a survey that asks, How often do you get time to yourself ? And When it all goes wrong, where do you turn? My friend Vida, who brought up her two sons in Italy where they ran wild, has written a book in which her neighbour describes her as ‘Una Madre Terribile’, and she writes a piece for me about it.

  I have no pictures. My only idea for the home page is an icon of the Virgin Mary rolling her eyes. After looking at 200 Virgin Marys at a picture library, I get an image in my head of a woman with a cocktail glass, only instead of an olive or a glacé cherry on the rim, there’s a dummy. Sam, the designer, and Becky, the photographer, go off and shoot it. They’ve never seen a dummy before, so I carefully describe what one looks like in case they buy a shop mannequin by mistake. The model is Sam’s flatmate, Toni. Despite having no experience of motherhood, she manages to strike just the right attitude of resignation and fatigue. The forum I call Retell Therapy, because sharing a problem makes you feel better. Then I send a press release headed ‘Join the Bad Mothers Club!’ to a few newspapers and chain myself back to my double buggy.

  17 Just Press ‘Start’

  Sunday morning. Lawrence wakes us to order milk from the twenty-four-hour room service he thinks we have.

  ‘Can you get it yourself?’
r />   ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, you can. There’s a bottle in the door of the fridge. Go and look.’

  ‘I want it warm!’

  This is Katarina’s fault. We never warmed bottles till she came along.

  ‘Tired. Please let me sleep,’ begs Peter.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘5.30.’

  ‘Fuck …’

  ‘Please don’t make me get up. If I have to get up now I’ll die.’ He often gets up first. If I admitted how often, the tiny wisp of my credibility would dissolve altogether. On the other hand, he is more of a Morning Person.

  ‘Mummmmeeeeeee!’

  Lawrence is also a Morning Person. He is at the bedside now, pulling at me.

  ‘OK. Wait …’

  I accompany him down to the kitchen, get the bottle and put it in the microwave. He presses the button.

  ‘I want to do it!’

  ‘OK, hang on … Now, see that one? OK, press that one – not that one – then “Start”.’

  Ping!

  ‘I did it!’

  ‘Now, just give it a little shake …’

  ‘I did it!’ He is delighted with himself. I put on Fireman Sam and get a lie-in until seven. What did they used to have on the charity posters? Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and feed him for life.

  ‘Peter! If we teach them to do more things for themselves, we get more time off.’

  ‘Mmm. Very good.’

  ‘There’s a clear relationship between this ridiculous mollycoddling, driving them everywhere and whatnot, and the fact that parents are so worn out. We’re actually disabling our own children!’

  I remember a story told me by a bloke I worked with, about his son ‘having to have’ a mobile phone. The son, aged fourteen, had gone to stay at a mate’s. ‘When I asked what they did and all that,’ he said, ‘he said they’d rung up this girl they knew – at 2 a.m.! And she invited them round! I said, “Er, and did you go?” And he said, “Nah. We didn’t know how to get there.”’

  ‘You see? No initiative! Now, if the Bad Mothers Club could somehow encourage parents to – Peter?’

  ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’

  But he does agree really. And the next stage of our children’s self-reliance develops the same way.

  Their nursery lies on the right fork of two busy roads, and to avoid crossing where there is no crossing, we walk up the left fork, then cut across a bit of green the children call Railway Park, because it has an edged path down the middle a bit like a mini train track. Usually Lawrence runs along it being a train while I push Lydia. At the end, however, is a ‘kissing gate’, the sort of ‘amenity’ favoured by the Dulwich Estate to remind us all of when it was called Dill Wysse and had cows and sheep roaming through it instead of under-slept women with pushchairs. With a double buggy, forget it. You have to go the long way round, or move to Wales. Even with a single, it’s infuriating. I have to tip Lydia out, keeping the buggy on the fronts of its wheels like a trick skater, and can negotiate the barrier if I position the buggy in exactly the right place, at exactly the right angle and swing the gate just so. I feel like one of those people who helps horses to mate.

  ‘Mummy don’t swear. You’re very naughty,’ says Lawrence.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just so fucking annoying, that’s all!’

  The children are aghast. But I have the solution.

  ‘All right, that’s it.’

  ‘We’re sorry, Mummy.’

  Poor things: they’re so used to being shouted at.

  ‘No, no, I’m not blaming you! We’re just going to walk from now on, that’s all.’

  ‘No BUGGY …?!’

  The next day we set off, wheel-less, as nature intended. Allowing a few extra minutes, we get there easily. I have to be an express train or a goods wagon for part of the journey, but it’s a small price to pay. Less than two years ago I pushed them up the hill from Maureen’s, breathing like an obscene phone caller all the way. Now they’re running. Lydia is quite fast. At a birthday party on Wandsworth Common she suddenly strikes out across the grass, like James Garner in The Great Escape, and has to be retrieved by one of the dads. On the way home from nursery it gets worse. One afternoon she outstrips me and by the time I catch up, limping, she is in conversation with an elderly woman who has got out of her car ‘because the child was on her own’.

  ‘She’s not on her own,’ I say. I have sent Lawrence on ahead to explain this, but he has become absorbed in a ladybird which he spotted on a leaf twenty feet away with his four-year-old eyesight.

  ‘There was no one here.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Yes, but she was on her own—’

  ‘SHE IS NOT “ON HER OWN”. I AM HERE. I AM HER MOTHER. I CANNOT KEEP UP WITH HER BECAUSE I HAVE A BAD KNEE.’

  This is true. I have tripped over some of that nylon binding that the florist likes to leave on the pavement like a rabbit trap, and can no longer run. The woman gets back into her car, to be superior all the way back to My Generation Knows Better Land.

  Fine. I’ve got nothing to worry about except Sports Day, when the school punishes you for your misdemeanours throughout the year by making you run the Mothers’ Race. This is our second year. Last year, the Goddess of Bad Mothers smiled on me and – about thirty seconds before the start – sent forth a plague of rain. But I don’t expect to be lucky twice. Also, I have two children there now, so will need all my cartilage to limp back and forth between events.

  I’ve always been a crap runner, but it never mattered. My parents understood why I spent games periods hiding in the lavatories; they’d done much the same thing. For my mother, being Bad at Games is even a creative sine qua non. But now we’ve got someone in the family who LIKES sport, someone I don’t want to disappoint. Which is worse, to bow out pathetically without even trying? Or make the effort, cripple my knee, and run the risk of being given an ‘I Tried my Best’ sticker by the Head? Eventually I decide a stay in an orthopaedic ward will be a small price to pay for just one proud glance from my daughter. The teacher shouts, ‘Go!’

  I leg it like fury, scattering babies and cool bags, and, to my astonishment, come third. Lydia wins her race easily, despite missing the start by gazing in the opposite direction and being the only girl.

  Lawrence’s races are taking place simultaneously on the other side of the field so I limp across to where his class is doing their ‘stick and ball’ race, a sort of hockey dribble, just in time to see him lose the ball, throw down his stick and hurl himself in a rage onto the grass. Peter, who is still adjusting the wideshot facility on the digicam, goes after him. I feel humiliated; this reflects on ME. I can see Peter trying to persuade him to come back for the next race, and Lawrence getting more and more furious with himself. I catch his teacher’s eye, and look ashamed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I’ve lost three that way already.’

  Lydia skips up, festooned with Winner stickers and sucking a triumphant ice lolly.

  ‘Did you win, Lawrence?’

  ‘NO, I DIDN’T!!!’

  Never mind designer babies. Can we just have two at the same level? I can’t praise Lydia without making Lawrence feel worse. But I don’t want her to grow up thinking everything brilliant she does is just ordinary, and that to get any fuss made of her she has to be Jonathan Miller.

  I tell Peter: ‘This is your fault for making us have them too close together.’

  ‘Divide and Rule,’ he says.

  So we walk home in two teams of two, one of us to distract Lawrence from the ball and stick element of Life, and the other to tell Lydia she is a star.

  Half-term. Fiona invites me and the kids to the Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Wisley.

  ‘I’m a member!’ she says, in case I think she never does anything outside school.

  We set off down the A3. Halfway down, squabbling breaks out and Lydia undoes her seat belt to get a
better shot at her brother. I can see her in the rear-view mirror, but cannot stop. Anyhow, I’m in the fast lane.

  ‘Do your seat belt up NOW! NOW! ‘She throws a book at me: a board book.’OW!!’ I am so angry that when we get there I haul her out and smack her. Fiona and her two watch silently. These were the people I was hoping might one day invite us on holiday. Holiday to Guantanamo.

  ‘Who’d like an apple?’ says Fiona sweetly. Lawrence and Lydia take one, the first time they’ve ever accepted fruit without complaint.

  We go round the garden, and everyone is pretty good. Fiona has brought a picnic, and afterwards we decide that the children definitely deserve an ice cream. There are tables in the cafe area, but they’re all full, so we sit on the steps facing the lawn, with our backs to the dining gentlefolk.

  ‘Keep the noise down, though,’ I say. ‘People are having their lunch.’ There is a slightly tense atmosphere, as if the children are somehow out of bounds. And one couple is already glaring at us.

  ‘Ssh, be very good now,’ I say. But this is a mistake, because Lydia – with a wild look on her face – throws her welly over her shoulder, and it lands right in the glaring lady’s lunch. Thank God she’s too old to come over and thump me, is what I think first, swiftly followed by, this child has embarrassed me in public for the last time. She gets another smack and I promise Fiona never to accept an invitation from her again. I feel dreadful, as if I have poison in my veins. I hate myself beyond imagining. No one in the history of the universe has ever been a worse mother than I am now. What can I do, promise never to do it again? Or am I like an alcoholic, too weak to have any self-control? I am like an alcoholic in one respect: the next day, and for weeks afterwards, I feel the need to confess.

  ‘Have I told you I smacked my child? Twice?’ I want to tell people in the newsagent’s, at the park, over drinks. What am I looking for? Some kind of punishment, then I can feel absolved. And once again, I get my wish.

  The Bad Mothers Club press release has been picked up by the Daily Mail, who interview me, Kath, and three other friends with stories to tell. On the day it comes out, I get a call from ITV’s This Morning. Three of us go into the studio, and I tell the story of Our Day Out At Wisley. Of course, before I can get to the part about no one being perfect and the whole point of Bad Mothers Club, the presenter says: ‘If you can’t look after children, you shouldn’t have had them.’