Mad Cows (25 page)

‘Hey, Fin, you know I'm really not your type,' she said, biting one of his fingers and breaking free. ‘For starters, I have a
pulse
.'

‘Ja have anyfink to say to me?'

Maddy paused as if in thought. ‘Um . . .
who moved the rock
?' If only Darwinism could be rewritten as Survival of the Wittiest.

‘I was finkin' more along the lines of, “Fanks, Fin old son. Here's your dosh.”'

‘Look, it's been lovely, it really has,' Maddy clasped
the
pram handle, ‘but I have to hyperventilate now.'

‘How's that fat, black cow whose flat you're in? Still resortin' to non-traditional shoppin'? Reckon the cops would be interested in her “differently acquired” possessions, don't chew? Not to mention her lodger. Still keepin' you a nice cosy little spot in Holloway at the taxpayer's expense, in't they? I want that money by this time tomorra . . . uverwise . . .' He cast his cold reptilian eyes in Jack's direction.

‘What the hell do you mean?' Maddy lurched back into the oasis of toxic light in the stairwell.

Fin took hold of Jack's stuffed Winnie the Pooh and decapitated it with his teeth. Evidently not the parental type. Maddy's heart contracted.

A police helicopter swooped into view, its searchlight raking the street. A calisthenics workout erupted in her ribcage. Prickles of fear tap-danced up and down her spine. Displaying all the athleticism of a tree-sloth, Fin sauntered casually into the nearest cul-de-sac of his miserable kingdom.

Maddy tried to tell herself that they weren't looking for her. ‘You're obviously paranoid.
Just ask any one of the psychotic multitudes who are after you
.'

On jellied limbs, she quivered towards the supermarket. On the corner two men offered her some smack in exchange for sex. It had got so bad of late that even prostitutes were refusing to come on to the estate. The press euphemistically referred to this inner-city war zone as having ‘special policing needs'.

In the market she bought fresh vegetables for Jack, adding it to a tab she couldn't pay. Children weren't a necessity, they were a bloody luxury item. What if Jack got sick? How would she cope? Maddy knew that on these estates, kids died at twice the rate of their middle-class counterparts. Their diets were worse, they were shorter, they weighed less. No wonder Jack was grinding his
tooth
. The poor kid was tense. Lately he got hysterical whenever she went near him. Maddy presumed he'd thought the gonk slippers she'd borrowed from Mamma Joy were going to savage him. But maybe he too was having a nervous breakdown?

The truth was that Gillian and Alex were spot on. She was not worth a pinch of pelican shit. At first, Maddy tried to ignore her guilt feelings. And yet, the sonar echo was there in all her thoughts. It resonated from the murky depths like a wreck:
she was a bad mother
. Maddy felt she made
Medea
look like good mother material. Jack didn't need a Child Disability Allowance; he needed a
Mother
Disability Allowance. He'd be one of those kids who won the right to divorce his parent. It was a dead cert. The god-damned humiliation of it was too much to bear. Why didn't she just get it over and done with now? Dwina was right. There were lots of wed un-mothers out there desperate for a little one. There was a birth dearth, wasn't there? She lay awake at nights drafting the ad: ‘Adoption. One nine-month-old. One prev. owner. A Steal. Take tyke out for a test perambulation.'

Eyes peeled for the King of the Kleenex Climax, Maddy darted back out into the rain. She was ploughing across the street when Alex's Adonic face loomed at her out of the gloom from the side of a double-decker bus. She skittered to a halt, spot-welded to the road. Her face levelled with his Cheshire cat grin – the tip of his tongue a pink colossus of temptation as he advertised his new BBC series. At this porous proximity, she felt an unexpected pang; the pang, she admitted wretchedly, of unrequited love. Oh well, it
was
the safest form of sex. She'd have to ring Lex and Pet and tell them how happy she was for them – say, at 3 o'clock in the bloody morning.

She was still soldered to the spot when the prowl-car skimmed around the corner. It fish-tailed to avoid her; the metre-wide speed bump laid in the Tarmac to deter joy riders acted as a Thorpe Park amusement attraction, sending the cop-crammed Panda rocketing ozone-wards. Maddy took the traditional option of the wanted felon and did a runner. Dodging potholes, she grand-prixed the pram down a sidestreet, realizing, with a sickening chill, it was a dead-end. An underground car park afforded an exit, but Fin was already scuttling into it – a spider into its hole. Bloody hell. Some people get all the breaks – County Mounties behind and the Pooh Decapitator in front. It was like being asked to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair.

Terror-stricken, she wheeled around to see eight
huge
, shiny black shoes speeding towards her. Maddy experienced the pressure of pure terror. It felt not unlike trying to open a car door underwater – seconds away from sinking without trace.

‘Where's the fire?' demanded one wheezing constable, braceleting her wrists with his hands.

‘I think we should have a little chat,' coaxed another. This, thought Maddy, was police talk for ‘You're nicked, dillbrain.'

‘Um, is this little chat where you warn me of my legal rights? Or where I warn you that my old man's the police commissioner?' Maddy bluffed halfheartedly.

‘I'm turning out your pockets.' Pine-fresh breath Listerined its way into Maddy's face, as a second gumshoe rummaged through her soggy collection of snotty hankies, gnawed carrot stubs and corroded dummies.

The third cop cocked his bald head and considered her. He wore the kind of glasses which magnified eyes. ‘What's yer name?'

Maddy faced him, feet leaden, face ashen. Always tell the truth, even if you have to lie to do so; it was something living with Alex had taught her.

He scratched his St Paul's Cathedral dome. ‘We'll have to take you down the nick.'

God almighty, now
there
was some oppressively familiar dialogue. ‘Petronella,' she replied effortlessly. ‘Petronella de Winter.'

‘I'll have to do a PNC check. Delta Tango Receiving 493. Name check. Over.' The first cop stroked his pelt of facial fur with one hand, while cradling his walkie-talkie with the other. ‘Hackney Estate, Paradise Way, Stop and search,' he staccatoed. ‘De Winter . . . Petronella . . . Foxtrot . . . White . . . Over.'

This was it then. The epicentre of terror. When Jack did file for parental divorce,
this
would be the first incident he'd cite in the proceedings. She clung to him, a Himalayan range of goose pimples up and down both legs, while fate secreted the lead weights into its boxing glove for another bloody round.

The radio sputtered. ‘No trace.'

‘Garn on then. Piss off.' The eight shiny black shoes, looking like a fleet of miniature limousines, went into reverse. ‘Go on. Fuck off before I change my mind.'

Shit a brick, Maddy thought profoundly.

After tongue-kissing Mamma Joy's doormat, Maddy put the butt of a birthday candle in a rissole which would have been better employed as a tennis ball, and surveyed the wreckage of her life. The psychotic psychiatrist with an interferiority complex, the
Defective
Sergeant, the Great White Loan Shark, Alex the Earth Father, Gillian and her biological time bomb with the dicky fuse and the four policemen she'd lied to who, right this minute, were back at the Clue Factory contemplating her wanted poster. The list of people after her was getting longer than the Trump-Maples pre-nuptial agreement. No wonder
she
had the spiritual buoyancy of the bloody
Titanic
.

Maddy flicked around the TV, but the only movies available were
The Three Faces of Eve, Sophie's Choice
and
Rosemary's Baby
. ‘Happy Bloody Birthday,' she said to herself, shuddering at the inauthentic taste of processed meat. Jack, who was cruising his way around the furniture, turned to her and said his first word.

It was ‘Dad'.

It was then that Maddy decided motherhood did not have to be a game of solitaire. It was time to let the whole family play.

29

Girls' Night In

‘SHOCK! HORROR! INCOMPREHENSIBLE
amazement!' Sonia, a ‘warm spring' with a corrugated permanent which had gone from brown to grey to brown again, flopped into one of Gillian's velvet armchairs. ‘Old what's-his-name openly displayed an interest in how to turn on the dishwasher today.' Ignoring the wineglass Gillian offered, she seized the bottle, chug-a-lugging. ‘It's only taken him ten frigging years of marriage.'

Marion, a ‘cold summer', appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Asleep.
Fin
ally,' she said, plugging in her baby intercom.

‘How's
your
husband?' Gillian enquired, tilting a wineglass in Marion's direction. ‘Does
he
help with the “domestics”?'

She too humphed into an armchair. ‘Love, he
does
the domestics. Got another note yesterday. “Dear Marion, Gone off with Personal Trainer. Have tuned carburettor; topped up dishwasher salt; new video in machine.”'

‘No!' Gayle, a young ‘warm autumn', appeared, readjusting her maternity bra. She too connected her baby alarm. The living room wall was now bristling with plastic illuminated boxes. ‘What did you do?'

‘Checked out what video he'd rented.
Four Weddings and a Funeral
.'

‘Aren't you upset?' Gillian probed, with ill-disguised intrigue.

‘Yeah. I've bloody well seen it.' Marion stuffed a wodge of cheese into her lipsticked jaws. ‘It was the au-pair last time. She'll kick him out soon. If she values her ozone layer, that is. Potent digestive tract. The after-effects of a rich meal have often forced me to wear
scuba gear
to bed.'

‘When I married,' – Gayle, with scientific precision, was sorting through the peanut bowl with a long, lacquered talon, extracting all the cashews – ‘I wanted a big happily family: six kids. Well, two years later, it's one and a half' – she slapped her pregnant belly – ‘and flagging.'

‘You think it's hideous
now
!' shrieked Sonia, the mother of a ten-, an eight- and a four-year-old, and therefore the group's matriarch. ‘Wait till they take up the descant recorder!'

A small whimper came over one of the intercoms.
All
three mothers sagged begrudgingly into their chairs and exchanged unenthusiastic looks.

‘It's not mine!' announced Gayle, authoritatively.

Marion swigged at her wine. ‘Well, it's definitely not mine.'

‘Mine neither.' Sonia was equally certain.

‘I wish my toe-rag of a husband
would
go and have affairs.' Gayle placed a pillow behind the small of her back. ‘Believe me, girls, marriage is the chief cause of single Motherhood.'

‘I suppose your hubby never helps you around the house, either,' urged Gillian, topping up the glasses.

Sonia hooted. ‘Husbands always get colds on Saturdays, have you noticed?' She snapped a toothpick between her manicured claws. ‘Old what's-his-name has a metabolism which ensures that he simply
must
spend the weekend in bed with the papers.'

‘If scrotum-breath
does
take the children,' added Marion, ‘he develops some sort of nasal congestion, preventing the detection of dirty nappies. And selective hearing. “Oh, sorry, love,”' she mimicked, ‘“was the baby crying?”'

‘Not to mention selective amnesia.' Gayle put her hand over her wineglass, pointing, by way of explanation, to her protruding belly. ‘He's forgotten how jealous he got of the last one. “Who's Mummy's lovely baby boy?” I said to my newborn, and my husband answered, all sulkily, “
I
am actually”.'

Another staticcy whimper came over one of the baby alarms.

‘It's
yours
,' asserted Sonia, pointing a painted toe-nail in Marion's direction.

‘It's not
mine
. It's
hers
.' Marion tipped her hennaed head towards Gayle.

‘It's a cat,' counter-claimed Gayle.

‘The books do warn that after the birth, men may feel usurped,' prompted Gillian. ‘The books say that men like this—'

‘Should be castrated immediately.' Marion bit into a party frankfurter, deftly illustrating her point.

Gayle shifted uncomfortably, rubbing her distended abdomen. ‘Fart-face was desperate for another one. Came over all masterful. Even when I still had stitches.'

‘I thought children were a contraceptive?' proposed Gillian. ‘I thought that every time you went to make love the baby cried or the toddler toddled in.'

‘Vaseline,' said Gayle. ‘On the doorknobs.'

‘Oh, I tried that, love,' said Marion. ‘Too painful.'

One of the intercoms hiccoughed into life, silencing the women's cyclone of cackles and guffaws. They strained tensely, before slumping collectively into subsiding cushions.

‘Let's give it a few minutes,' yawned Gayle, inspecting a cuticle.

‘Five,' added Marion, lazily wrapping her crimson
mouth
around a canapé so as to avoid lippy reapplication.

‘I'm sorry,' Sonia spoke into the nearest monitor, ‘but the mother you are trying to reach is temporarily disconnected. Please try again.'

The other mothers, mid-bite, swallowed and spluttered and brayed and then recovered and cast a rapacious glance over the remaining crudités.

‘The last time that Life Support System to a testicle came over all “masterful”, he slipped a disc,' Marion confided, chewing meditatively. ‘Whenever he comes near me, I know it'll be casualty in half an hour.'