Confessions of a Bad Mother (17 page)

Apart from that we have one other activity, which is playing with the
toy garage. We push the cars down the slope, and sometimes, for variety, jam
them in the lift. Then I unjam them, while working out exactly how long it is
until they can both start some kind of full-time education. Two years.
I’m not sure I can make it that far.

I take a deep breath and tackle nurseries. After a mixture of phoning
and SAS-style swoops, I finally discover three in the immediate area that take
children in nappies. All the others require them to be dry by two and a half,
which is a clever trick, says my mother, since their bottoms and other bits
only start getting under their control at about that age. The posh
mummies’ venue of choice is a well-appointed house with garden, and
positively swarming with nursery assistants. Round here it’s clearly
regarded as the Savoy of nurseries. It even takes babies. But the rows of
sleeping mats, and the girls in plastic gloves changing nappies, puts me in
mind of orphanages I’ve seen on the news, and despite the lovely building
and great word of mouth, I can’t face it.

The second one is in a cavernous church hall, and is Montessori. I have
a reflexive aversion to the M-word, having done time at a weird Montessori
primary school. But I overcome it and take Lawrence to see the Head, who sits
down with him and gets out some of the superb wooden learning aids, such as
beautifully turned cylinders with lids in ascending size. She gently encourages
him to line them up in order, and he clearly enjoys himself. We go away happy,
and I am in the process of weighing up the long walk, versus the wonderful Head
versus the slightly gloomy church building, when it burns down.

That leaves Treetops, also in a church but a cheerier one, and only a
short buggy-push away. The staff are seemingly more qualified in playing in the
Wendy house than actual teaching skills. But Lawrence is two, not twelve, and I
want him just to get out of the house for a few hours and have a nice time, not
start his GCSEs.

On the day he’s supposed to start there, he refuses to leave
without his toy supermarket trolley. We line up to cross the road, and as I
bend down to do up Lydia’s shoe I realize he isn’t holding my hand.
When I look up again he is in the middle of the road with his trolley, and
there is a car in front of him. It seems to have stopped, but the scene looks
like a freeze-frame. When I dash out – will it rev up again and run him
down? – I grab him, and the wretched trolley, but feel so sick we have to
turn back. I ring Treetops and ask if he can start the next day instead, but
don’t think I can ever take them out of the house again.

‘Jesus,’ says Peter. ‘Still, these things
happen.’

‘No, I can’t do this. We’ll just have to move to New
Zealand.’

The next day, Lydia takes her first step.

‘You clever girl!’ says Peter.

‘Bit of a waste, as I’m never letting them out
again.’

I do take Lawrence to Treetops, hang around for the first couple of
days, and drift off home for another day of jamming cars in the toy garage and
watching
Fireman
Sam
.

Very quickly, the route to nursery becomes boring. As my interest in
cars has increased under Peter’s influence, I start teaching Lawrence how
to recognize them by their badges. It alleviates the monotony of passing the
same takeaway, newsagent and dry cleaner’s, and will be a useful
grounding should he follow the Calman tradition and go into design.

‘What’s the blue oval?’

‘Ford.’ And so on. Lions quickly become
‘Peugeots’. And within weeks he is identifying a Metro, which has
no distinguishing features, and – spooky, this – a Vauxhall
with
no badge
. But as usual, we have succumbed to Short Termism.

‘Lawrence, look up at the lovely pink sky!’

‘Vauxhall!’

Still, to look on the bright side, Lydia is now pushing the double
buggy. The time when we can rid ourselves of the beastly vehicle is in sight.
As Shea, my old nanny, always says:
One door closes: another door opens.
You just have to make sure a child isn’t standing on the other
side.

Although Treetops doesn’t mind nappies, Katarina is encouraging us
to give them up.

‘But nappies are so convenient, so easy!’

‘Yes, but he needs to learn to use the toilet.’

I tell her about the perverse couplings with Champagne doll and the
Playmobil pilot.

‘I’m no good at this. Honestly.’

‘I’ll help you, don’t worry.’

In the end she pretty much does the whole thing. I am not shirking;
I’m learning to delegate. Anyhow, the job needs someone with a
combination of attributes that I don’t possess, i.e. patience and
persistence. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice says:
You’re
going to become
dependent on her.
But I shove it away. After all,
I’m dependent on Peter. You can’t spend your whole life avoiding
anyone useful in case they leave. I mean, John Lewis used to do this wonderful
mascara for £1.95, then suddenly they stopped. I pleaded with the
cosmetics buyer, but eventually I got on with my life. One does. Anyhow,
I’ve got more important things on my mind. Are we going to keep Lawrence
at Treetops until primary school, or take the advice of someone we don’t
know very well – admittedly an expert in these matters, well OK, a
teacher – who’s begging us to see the local prep school? We weigh
up the pros and cons.

‘OK: pro.’

‘Small classes. Plenty of sport.’

‘Expensive. And plenty of sport.’

‘Rich peer group. Might take him on good holidays.’

‘Rich peer group. All his friends will have their own villas in
Mustique.’

‘Well, if you’re going to be silly.’

‘Excuse me! Your friend John’s girls go to a school where
fourteen year olds have their own cars and
drivers
.’

‘That’s a total one-off.’

‘No it isn’t: the chauffeurs all drive them to their second
houses in Rock. You just don’t like state schools because the one you
went to was full of skinheads.’

‘And
you
don’t like private schools because the one
you
went to was run by a nutter.’

‘So?’

‘So?’

‘Copycat.’

‘
Nyer!
’

Out of curiosity we phone anyway. The Head is charming.

‘And how old is Lawrence?’

‘Two.’

‘We normally hear from people a little earlier than this’
(i.e. before conception).

‘Ah, well, you see, we’ve just moved. From
Islington
,’ I add, going for the sympathy vote.

Mrs Adams said we should call.’

‘Mrs Adams! Oh, I know her work well!’

We barely know Mrs Adams. We know her son, sort of. But she teaches the
older boys, and her name clearly opens doors.

‘Bring him along next week.’

The nursery department is in a rather style-free prefab, but with slides
and other outdoor kit, a big grass field to play in, and flower beds. A dinner
lady brings us some coffee and we look at the children’s work on the
walls.

‘So what d’you think?’

‘Mmm. Good biscuits.’

Lawrence is clutching the favourite toy he’s been asked to bring,
a crane he and Peter have made out of Duplo. This is where having a child who
won’t shut up comes into its own. He chats to any adult who stands still
long enough, or who can’t get away. One day I leave him outside Oddbins
– he stops there automatically now – and find him delivering some
kind of talk to a woman in a wheelchair. I don’t know whether she’s
charmed, or has just lost the will to push herself away. Anyhow, it’s
just the sort of thing to get him through the selection process. The only
problem is getting him to stop. The Head takes him away to talk about his
crane, and when they return, he’s still babbling behind her.

‘He’s had a lovely time.’

‘Oh, good. Er, is that it?’

‘We’ll write to you by the end of next week.’

‘So what d’you think?’

‘The teachers are very nicely dressed,’ says Peter.

‘Oh, well that settles it.’

Meanwhile we carry on at Treetops. Then I come in one day to get
Lawrence, with Lydia as usual, and a small boy approaches.

‘Baby!’ he says. ‘Baby!’

‘That’s right …’ I say. He grabs her leg and
starts to pull.

‘Baby!’

I’m crouching with her on my lap. He pulls harder and she starts
to slide off. I growl at him: ‘
Get off !
‘ He doesn’t.
We tussle until I wobble backwards and we all end up on the floor.

‘Don’t do that, Jason,’ says one of the girls.

Whenever I come in after this I hold Lydia up, like a rifle in a swamp.
But Jason isn’t the only problem. There is also Maurice, as strong as
Jason, but even more unpredictable, a sort of Charles Bronson character in
shorts. He scares
me
.

When I ask Lawrence: ‘How was nursery today?’ he says:
‘I don’t like Maurice.’

‘Did you play in the kitchen corner? Did you build
a—’

‘I don’t like Maurice, Mummy.’

I like Treetops because the staff are laid-back, and you can pick your
own hours. Plus they serve fruit at break-time and it’s only £20 a
day. On the other hand, if your child’s too scared to go, it’s not
such a bargain. Luckily, we can avoid a decision by awaiting the letter from
the prep school. When it arrives with a yes, we are all relieved. We have made
the right choice. Probably. We think. Definitely. Probably.

Sitting on the downstairs loo in our new house, I browse the pinboard.
Amongst the curry menus, next to an ad from someone called Krysta offering
‘
cleaning and irony
’, a newspaper cutting catches my eye.
It’s a cartoon I once cut out of the
New Yorker
, showing a
sensible-looking couple sitting in armchairs.

‘
Now the kids have grown and gone
,’ says the man,
‘
I
thought it might be a good time for us to have
sex.
’

And I realize it’s not as funny as it was before.

I treasure the
memory
of sex, but it feels like too much effort
– like hearing there’s free money being given away in Oxford
Street, but it’s rush hour and you have to get on the tube. Anyhow, what
I really fantasize about is sleep. Toddlers need at least ten hours, say the
books, and I need eight. Sex? This tired, I wouldn’t cross the room for
George Clooney. After several days on less than four hours a night, I change
personality. It starts with wanting to kill people over parking spaces, and
attacking Peter over his nose hair. Then within a fortnight I’m signing
up for cults with smiley people at stations and saying we should make a move to
Devon and create a sustainable community built entirely from peat. Why is sleep
deprivation used by despots around the world as a torture? Because it
is
one. So why the fuck should we worry about
sex
? It’s just one
more thing TO DO, one more thing on the Giant List of Life:

Meet non-useless, non-psychopathic man.

Have children.

Try to restart career.

Go to a film/play/gallery/somewhere that’s open after 6 p.m.

Read a book that doesn’t have the words ‘Little’,
‘Hugs’ or ‘Bear’ in the title.

Have an uninterrupted conversation.

You see? I didn’t even intend to leave it out. And – be
honest – did you notice? The trouble is, it’s so –
expendable. I like it, but it’s amazing how easy it is to do without it.
Wine I can’t live without. Or meat. But sex … I’ve never
heard anyone on
Desert Island Discs
ask Sue Lawley for a vibrator.

My mother’s generation were of the view that if anything went
wrong in a marriage, it would invariably be because
He wasn’t happy in
bed
. Which was always
Her
Fault
. And we know the medical
profession still think that way because of the speed with which they send round
the thin young nurses with the contraception leaflets. Think: what do women
most want after they’ve given birth? If you answered
‘
Penetrative Sex
’ you are either (a) a doctor, or (b) a
(very stupid) man.

This idea, that men go to pieces if they have to do without it for two
minutes is bollocks. We go without chocolate – sometimes for days. And
even if it isn’t bollocks, no new mother has it as her top priority. All
you want is sleep. And once a man is as deprived of it as you are, he
won’t remember what sex is either. He’ll either want to rest, or
die.

Nearly two years after having Lydia, we are at the epicentre of
toddler-induced exhaustion. The books acknowledge that babies make you tired,
but babies can be put in slings and walked about, or driven around, or knocked
out with nipples. A two and a three year old just crush you with an energy that
makes nuclear power look feeble. Steven Spielberg’s first film,
Duel
, has a man being pursued by a seemingly driverless lorry. Wherever
he tries to go, it follows him, bearing down on him in a terrifying way.
It’s clearly a metaphor for life with the under-fives, and in the path of
it, who thinks about sex?

The writers of books on the subject generally recommend you talk about
it. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to do that. (Well, not to their man
anyway.) The experts think we should all be ‘open’ about it. They
love the word ‘open’, which is probably why no woman I’ve
ever met takes their advice. Another word they love is
‘initiate’.

‘I’d like to initiate sex,’ says Peter, if he wants to
creep me out. He did try to inject it with a bit more allure, once: tried the
Warren Beatty tactic. At about 8.30 he rang me up and said, ‘I’m
ten minutes away. Take off your pants.’ But his train got stuck outside
London Bridge, so I put on my thick socks and ate a whole trifle for four.

I’ve got a book from the eighties that advises you not to
criticize while on the job – i.e. don’t say: ‘
You are
total
crap
’ while they’re actually Doing It – but
wait until you’re dressed and then say: ‘
I’d like to make
some time to
talk about sex.
’ This puts me in mind of applying
at some kind of desk.