Bridget Jones's Baby (10 page)

I slumped at the table, head on my arms. I just wanted it all to stop. Apart from the baby.

Mark came over and put his arms round me. “It's all right, it's all right. You're doing fantastically well.”

“You haven't actually killed us, “said Daniel, freakishly clearing out the sink. “Unless powdered glass is at this moment puncturing all our intestines.”

“It has actually been a near-death experience for us all,” said Mark, starting to laugh.

“So now can we all sort of unite and pull together?” I said, hopefully.

“Push, surely,” said Daniel.

Everyone settled down then, and we drank our tea nicely like the sort of well-behaved family you see in old-fashioned movies from the 1950s: unlike modern TV shows where the children snap out sassy and slightly insulting lines at their gay parents written by sophisticated writers' rooms in Hollywood.

“What about our parents?” I said, suddenly sitting bolt upright.

“We have to tell them, of course,” said Mark.

Oh God, I thought. The village! Grafton Underwood! Admiral and Elaine Darcy! Mum, Una and Mavis Enderbury!

“Parents?” said Daniel.

“Yes,” said Mark. “Do you have parents?”

“Not that I'm ever going to tell.”

“Interesting. It is the Queen's visit rehearsal next Saturday, Bridget. I understand you are planning to be there?”

“You mean we should tell them there?” I said, horrified.

“Separately, privately, of course.”

“You can't tell I'm pregnant yet, can you? I can't go if everyone in the village is going to notice.”

There was a slight pause, then they said:

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Can't tell at all.”

“I seriously think the baby's going to come out flat, Jones.”

S
ATURDAY 28
O
CTOBER

Grafton Underwood: Queen's visit rehearsal.
“Family values!” Mark's father, Admiral Darcy, was bellowing into the microphone.

The entire village was assembled, together with the Lord Mayor, and representatives from the Palace, who were checking out the scene.

“Family Values and Village Life shall be our theme,” the Admiral thundered on, “as, for the first time in her thousand-year history, the Ethelred Stone, and its gracious vestibule, the village of Grafton Underwood, welcomes a reigning monarch to our strawy rooftops!”

“Strawy rooftops!” said Uncle Geoffrey, way too loudly. “Is he on the sauce already?”

I glanced at Mark, on the other side of the group, who was trying not to laugh. We had arrived in Mark's car, driven by his driver, but I'd jumped out first, round the corner from Mum's house, so we could appear to arrive separately. We didn't want to set everyone off just yet.

“And today,” Admiral Darcy went on, “we are honoured to have with us the Clerk to the Northamptonshire Lieutenancy here to approve our plans for the visit of Her Majesty, and guide us in our protocol for the Reception Committee, and for the seating plan.”

“Admiral.” Mavis Enderbury raised her hand. “Can I just ejaculate for a moment over the luncheon.”

“She just means she wants to sit next to the bloody Queen,” Mum hissed to Una.

As the speech ended and everyone started to disperse, Mum turned and spotted me. Her eyes went straight to my boobs and bump.

“Bridget,” she said. “Are you
preggy
?”

Gaaah! Was it that obvious already? But Mark, Daniel, Tom, Miranda and Shazzer all said you couldn't tell.

“She is, she's preggy, Pam!” said Una.

Everyone was staring.

“Do you have to say ‘preggy'?” I said, queasily.

“Oh Bridget!” said Mum, delighted. “Oh, what
perfect
timing!” She suddenly looked coy. “Is it Mark's? He's here, you know. We were all just saying, now that he's got divorced from that frightful intellectual woman, maybe you two had seen sense at last. Do you remember how you used to play with him in the paddling pool? Bridget, is it Mark's?”

“Maybe. I mean, there's at least a fifty per cent chance.”

Saw Mavis Enderbury listening in with an evil look of triumph in her eye.

“A
fifty per cent chance
?” said Mum. “Bridget! Did you have a threesome?”

Back at Mum and Dad's house there were tears and drama.

“I've waited all your adult life for you to have a little baby and now you have to do it like this, in front of the cream of Grafton Underwood and Mavis Enderbury. I've never been so humiliated in my entire life.”

“But, Pam,” Dad said gently, “it's a baby. It's our grandchild. You've always wanted a grandchild.”

“Not like this,” wailed Mum. “This isn't how it was supposed to be.”

“Have you had it checked out?” blurted Una. “I mean, at your age it could come out a mongol.”

“Una!” I said. “You cannot say ‘mongol' in this day and age. Mum, I did not mean to embarrass you. I was led to believe by reliable sources that the bump was not visible to the untrained eye. I came to the Ethelred Stone because you've been going on and on about it and I wanted to support you. I was going to tell you quietly, here, just with our family. It's a baby. It's a life. It's your grandson. I thought you'd be happy. If you're going to be like this, I'm off.”

As I stomped back to where Mark's car was waiting, I passed Admiral and Elaine Darcy's manor house and heard raised voices behind the tall privet hedge.

“What kind of carry-on is this, boy? We're not docked in some Caribbean port! You'll put the whole Royal Whatsit in jeopardy and make us look like bloody fools!”

“My dear Admiral…” I heard Elaine Darcy remonstrate.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy. What's the matter with you?”

“Father, I've explained to you the reality of the situation, and I'm afraid that is all I have to say. Goodbye.”

There was a pause. I heard Mark's footsteps scrunching away across the gravel, then the Admiral continued, “Why can't he just stay married and bloody reproduce like everyone else? Do you think he's queer?”

“Well, you wanted to send him to Eton, dear.”

“What? What are you bloody talking about?”

“I'll never forgive myself.”

“For what? What, woman?”

“All those nannies, boarding schools: for delegating the upbringing of my only son.”

There was a silence.

“Anyway,” said the Admiral, eventually. “Jolly good. Stiff Upper Lip.”

Dad came hurrying along and caught me skulking along the hedge.

“Let's sit down, pet.”

We walked along a bit from the Darcys' house and sat on the grassy bank.

“Don't worry about your mum. You know how she is: mad as a bucket, mad as a snake. She'll come round when she's got used to the idea.”

We sat quietly for a moment. You could hear the stream, the birds, voices in the distance: the old, simple scene.

“It's the expectation which undoes everyone. Every time. It should be like this, it should be like that. The trick is to deal with what is. You always wanted a baby, now, didn't you?”

“Well, always in about three years' time for about two hours,” I said sheepishly. “But I realize now, yes, I did.”

“And now you're going to get your baby. And he's going to be the luckiest baby in the world because he's got you as his mother. There won't be a more loving, kind mother than you—think of the fun that little chap's going to have with you. Now you go out there, do your best, and don't get caught up in everyone else's nonsense. It'll turn out fine, I promise you.”

Dad walked with me to Mark's car, with the waiting driver, promising he wouldn't tell Mum. When Mark appeared, looking upset and shaken, Dad clapped him on the shoulder in a manly way and gave him a conspiratorial smile. But he didn't say anything. That's the brilliance of Dad. He knew Mark would hate it, and that he didn't need to.

As the car purred off, I took a leaf out of Dad's book and simply put my head on Mark's shoulder and closed my eyes. As I drifted off to sleep, I'm sure I heard Mark whisper, “Even if the baby does turn out to be Daniel's, I still want to be his dad.”

S
ATURDAY 4
N
OVEMBER

5 p.m.
Just got back from baby shopping in John Lewis department store with Mark and Daniel. They always say if anything really bad happens you should go to John Lewis, because nothing really bad ever happens in John Lewis.

Mark was holding a huge pile of baby books and a box of muslin baby blankets that said “Huggy Swaddle.”

“Swaddling?” said Daniel incredulously, holding a miniature Chelsea football outfit. “You're into swaddling?”

“It can be effective,” said Mark, with the air of an expert witness who had been called on to advise on military intervention versus peacekeeping, “if it's not too tight.”

“…and you're an Egyptian peasant in the fourth century B.C.”

“It promotes sleep,” said Mark, picking up a wipe-warmer, as if hardly aware of Daniel's presence.

“What? When they're strapped to a board? Isn't that a little Abu Ghraib?”

“Yes, you have no sense whatsoever as to what is and isn't appropriate in terms of what you apparently consider a ‘joke.' Presumably, you would have the child screaming all night till he falls asleep, drunk on teaspoons of whiskey.”

“You take that back!”

They were quickly removed from the store by the John Lewis security team. Nothing bad is ever allowed to happen in John Lewis. Sadly, it is not so everywhere.

S
UNDAY 12
N
OVEMBER