Mad Cows (23 page)

‘Seb! Seb!' Sebastian's toddler waddled up to him. ‘Poopies.'

Sebastian's eyes darted around helplessly. Ophelia and Laeticia both sprang into action.

‘I
was
tempted to work on a Disney characterization . . .' simpered Laeticia, beating Ophelia to the honour of bum-wiping Sebastian's two year old, ‘but then I chided myself for not being more
original
.' Ophelia's smile deflated with the speed of a ruptured party balloon. ‘
I've
been stitching away at a little ladybird ensemble,' Laeticia added with mock modesty.

‘And what about you?' Sebastian asked Maddy, sucking on his Mont Blanc fountain pen. ‘Are you helping to extend your child creatively?'

‘Well . . . he's got an ear-wax deposit you could sculpt. Will that do?'

Maddy sensed all three of the Creative Play Evangelists place a cross next to Maddy's name in the mental box marked ‘Good Mother?'

‘I found that flash cards helped kick-start creativity,' Ophelia advised. ‘Tarquin started talking at six months!'

‘Winsome couldn't wait to talk!' Laeticia gushed.
‘Didn't bother to crawl either. Just up and off!'

‘I didn't mean to imply that Tarquin's not physically advanced as well! We
are
in my family. My grandma is ninety-two.'

‘Really?' one-upped Laeticia. ‘My Granny's one hundred.'

‘Which is why I got back into my pre-pregnancy clothes so quickly!' Ophelia gestured to her labia-hugging Versace strides, causing Laeticia, in her billowing cheesecloth, to cram herself into a tight, ill-fitting smile.

Gene snobs, thought Maddy. With a couple of competitive mothers like this,
both
kids were bound to grow up to be sadistic traffic wardens with thick ankles and boils on their bums.

‘Practically potty-trained by five months . . .'

‘Gobbledee-gooking by four . . .'

‘Well,' Maddy said facetiously. ‘Jack came out of the womb playing concert piano, mastered CD ROM with built-in modem in the hospital, and is currently learning Sanskrit.'

Make that two crosses, she forecast.

‘I only wish Portia didn't sleep so much so that I could play with her more,' confided Sebastian, patting his baby papoose. The Earth Mother Mafia melted in his direction.

Maddy, who hadn't slept for six weeks, eyed him narrowly. It was a little like Twiggy complaining to Liz Taylor that she just
can't
keep the weight on, no matter
what
she eats. ‘Doesn't getting up four or five times a night kinda get to you?'

‘Winsome's a
fab
ulous sleeper,' Laeticia boasted. ‘It's all in the parenting, you know.'

‘I'm desperate for another child,' Ophelia confided, looking into Sebastian's eyes. ‘I had a Caesarian the first time. I feel, I don't know . . . cheated. As though I haven't found the Fertility Goddess within me . . .'

Maddy gawped at her. ‘
That's
like Terry Waite saying he felt cheated by being released before the electrode torture to his testicles.'

Sebastian flinched as if she'd personally flayed him.

‘Though vaginally I'm beautifully intact. You had a rather . . . traumatic delivery, didn't you, Laeticia . . .'

A hateful look flared into Laeticia's eyes. ‘Yes, but giving birth naturally . . . it did so make me feel like a
Real Woman
.'

Ophelia smiled with asperity. ‘So did eating my placenta – freeze-dried.'

‘
Dried?
' upstated Laeticia. ‘I ate mine
raw
.'

While the babies and toddlers romped unattended on the church floor, this Breast-is-Best Brigade – all divorced, separated or married to workaholic left-wing barristers – pretended that they weren't flirting with the Earth Father whilst lecturing Maddy on ways to become a Better Mother.

‘You're not giving him fluoride?' Oh, well, don't worry. He does have another set of teeth to come and it
might
not affect them,' volunteered a woman whose
baby
was delivered to the strains of Mozart by a Leboyeur-trained spiritualist in a heated swimming pool beneath a full moon.

‘If he's not sleeping, he must be insecure. Perhaps you don't spend enough time with him?' prompted a woman who spent
her
spare time knitting organic mung beans.

‘Perhaps you're spending too
much
time with him?' advised the Leboyeur Lobbyist. ‘What a child needs is independence.'

‘You let him watch
television
? Tobias is only allowed one animated short – the Eastern European ones are best – per week. Otherwise, he'd never fit in his gestalt therapy and Suzuki lessons,' pontificated the sort of woman who volunteered for medical research in order to save rats and monkeys the discomfort of being used to advance the health of human beings.

Sebastian, too, was not short of advice on how to be a Good Mother. ‘Best to begin sex instruction, including oral, at about four or five.' (Such instruction on the estates, Maddy brooded, would guarantee you four or five years inside,
minimum
.) ‘My children will know the erotic details of their conceptions, and they'll be closer to me because of it.' The Earth Mother Mafia sighed audibly, feminine nails sucked to his masculine magnet. ‘I lie my children on the floor and draw outlines of them on paper, then encourage them to stick cut out penises and vaginas on the outlines, and chat about them.'

‘And what does your wife think about this?' Maddy asked, flabbergasted.

Sebastian was swift to point out that he preferred the word ‘companion'. ‘It's a gender-inclusive, non-heterosexist substitute for the word ‘spouse', he explained.

What it
meant
, Maddy decoded, was that he screwed around.

Beaming at each other like Christian Scientists, the Maternally Correct went on to recommend cottonwool balls over nappy-wipes, professionally fitted shoes over hand-me-downs, home-made food over the canned variety. Maddy mused that far more irritating than a baby who won't sleep, eat or behave, is some Ayatollah of Baby Care advising you on
why
your baby won't sleep, eat or behave.

‘The only parental tip
I
have is how to find his missing Lego. Turn off the lights and saunter round in bare feet. One crushed instep later and, ouch! You've found it!' Maddy volunteered, determined to be sociable. ‘Oh, and to blame everything which happens on teething. Including giving up breastfeeding.'

‘Oh, you mustn't give up! Breastfed babies have a higher intelligence,' effervesced Sebastian, his orbs riveted on Ophelia's stupendous mammaries.

‘Oh, what the fuck would
you
know about it? First off, you have no tits and second off, when you're not coming to mothers' groups in a pathetic attempt to come on to mothers, your baby is no doubt tended by
tribes
of domestics from the Developing World who live on
my
estate.'

Maddy caught herself. She hadn't come to fight with the Islington New Labourites. She'd come to make friends. To have a conversation which didn't involve drool or stool. To actually see people synchronizing their lips with their brains. It was just a shame that here the trains of thought were so self deluded. All passengers for Self Delusion, we are now approaching your station . . .

‘I'm sorry . . . it's just . . . I dunno,' Maddy acquiesced. ‘Every time I get a handle on this mothering bizzo, the training manual seems to get revised. Still, I guess there's only one thing you
really
need to remember as a mum . . .' She smiled warmly, trying to make amends. ‘If you shake him too hard he'll get brain damage!'

The stunned mullet expressions on the faces encircling her suggested to Maddy that Mamma Joy's quip had not gone over quite as she'd intended. ‘It's a joke . . . Honestly,' she jibed. ‘I only hit my kids in self-defence.'

The Stepford Mums shrank away from her.

‘Oh, you must never hit your baby,' chided Ophelia.

‘Tell me,' asked Laeticia, stuffing her daughter's limbs into the half-finished ladybird costume, ‘have you thought about therapy?' God, thought Maddy, give a kid Calpol and they'd arrest you for membership of a Columbian drug cartel.

‘
Do
give me your address . . .' pressed the man who liked to give his kids pin-on penises. ‘
What
was your surname again?'

‘Sebastian has contacts with social services,' Laeticia patronized, uncapping his fountain pen and handing it to him. ‘People who can
help
.'

Authorities on the sniff. That was just what she needed. ‘Hey, Laeticia,' Maddy stalled, as she extracted Jack from the clutches of Smarties-Up-Nose and Mashed-Banana-In-Hair. ‘Did you know that ladybirds have a dark side? Oh yeah. Promiscuous Cannibals. Actually, the females often feed and bonk at the same time. Not to mention rampant VD.' It was something Alex had told her.

Bolting out into the rose garden of the church grounds, Maddy was pulled up short by the sight of a young mother, weeping. At last, empathized Maddy, a soulmate.

‘It's my four-year-old son,' she sobbingly replied to Maddy's kind enquiry.

‘I know . . . I know . . .' Maddy sympathized, ready to offer tissues, whisky, bulk-order Mars Bars.

‘
He's not taking to his French!
'

Maddy ran, sprinted almost back to the estate. She refused to believe that she was the only mum who didn't cope. OK, they may look like the Perfect Mothers pictures on Life Insurance Brochures, but to Maddy's mind they were either lying . . . or taking a
lot
of drugs.

23

Egg-flip

GILLIAN ADMITTED THAT
there were always going to be things about which one could do nothing – husbands being unfaithful, the supermarket Express check-out queue moving more slowly than the other lanes, freak asteroids . . . but an under-utilized womb wasn't one of them.

‘That “ideal man” you so kindly sorted out for me,' Gillian poked the polystyrene chest of the Milton Keynes computer dating agency expert. ‘He's
worn out
. What else do you have in stock?'

The assistant, whose desk bore the plastic name-plate ‘Marina', busied her fingers over the chattering computer keys.

‘Ah . . .' She looked up, wreathed in smiles. ‘Now,
this
fella's a catch. Just come free again. The best on our books.'

‘A little like saying Rafsasanji is a nice Muslim' – Gillian snatched the print-out – ‘he's
still
a fundamentalist, dah-ling.'

‘App
ar
ently' – Marina leant conspiratorially close – ‘he's got a beef bayonet which could double as a draught excluder.'

Gillian was not disappointed. At first. It wasn't until half-way through their amorous encounter that he informed her about his operation. Sorry, her operation, at a gender re-alignment clinic.

‘What?' Gillian gasped, as the hideous reality dawned. ‘You're shooting
eggs
into me?'

So far so good. Next month, Gillian vowed to be more discriminating. Before going out with a man in October she promised always to ask herself one very important question:
does he have his own penis
?

24

Mad Cow's Disease

IF MOTHERHOOD WERE
advertised in a job column, it would read:

‘Hours – constant. Time off – nil. All food and entertainment supplied by you. No over-time. No sick pay. No holiday pay. No weekend leave. No pension. Must be good at athletics, home repairs, making mince interesting and finding the pair to the other glove. Fringe benefits, none.'

Now
there's
a career move, Maddy lectured herself. Would
you
take this job?
I don't think so
.

By October, Maddy's self-esteem was on a par with Kafka's cockroach. The repetition, the banality; her life had become bad wallpaper. Maddy couldn't believe
she
had done this to herself, of her own volition.

Sod it. How can you be responsible for anyone else, she lashed at herself, when you can't even find an unused nursing pad?

Oblivious to his mother's angst, six-and-a-half-month-old Jack continued practising his pre-crawl rock as though he had an invisible Sony Walkman strapped to his head. Maddy watched him doing chin-ups on the cot side. It'd be steroids and jockstraps next. No one had told her that babies resemble the most selfish, demanding lover you ever had. Always hungry, but won't eat what you cook. Always tired, yet won't sleep. Chucking things all over the house, yet never picking up after himself. Throwing tantrums, yet never saying he was sorry. And possessive! Jack was jealous of other people coming anywhere near her. He hated her being on the phone . . . wouldn't even let her go to the loo on her own. All day long, he just sat around in his vest, waiting to be amused.

But amusing him was hard. No matter where Maddy ventured on the estate, the feeling that she was being watched intensified. Her skin crawled and the hairs on the back of her neck looked as if they'd been spiked with gel. She felt sure it was the police. But the only life form she bumped into on a regular basis was Fin. On Maddy's list of People You'd Least Like to Be Stuck in A Lift With, the loan shark was number five . . . After Dwina, Peregrine, Slynne and Newt Gingrich.

‘Ya know, it's single mums like you what provide me regular income. Hand over their child benefit book every two weeks and I'll keep off their back for a while.' He had her pinned up against a poster: ‘A safer, happier place to live,' promoting the success of the local Neighbourhood Watch scheme. ‘Uverwise . . . just cause you're female, don't fink you can get away wiv not payin' me back. I'm not opposed to a bit of slappin'. Usually get anuva girl to do it for me. If that don't work . . . well, negative client care outcome is not unheard of, right?'