The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (9 page)

“Do you need her permission? Can’t you just go ahead and get the sperm or whatever and go for it?”

“On my own? Is that what you’d do, if you hadn’t met Joel, at our age?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ve always seen children in the context of a relationship…”

“And what makes you think I’d be any different?” Becky snaps. “Why would I not want my children born in the context of a loving relationship?”

“I didn’t mean that.” Though I suppose I did. I meant she was going to have to acquire the sperm anyway, so I wasn’t quite sure how Cara’s role was as central as that of Joel. “What does Cara think about children generally?”

“She doesn’t think about them much at all.” I look around at the bathroom with clear-glass double hers-and-hers sinks and open shelves that looks like a branch of a chic apothecary. “Though she once said,” Becky continues, “that she doesn’t know anyone who’s been improved by having children. That was her word,
improved
.”

“Ouch. What could she mean?”

“I think I want a child. I don’t know. Let’s say I want one and I want her. Except it’ll probably turn out that I can’t have them anyway so I’ll risk driving her away for nothing. I’ve got to get on with trying but at the same time I’m scared of trying, as then I’ll find out that I can’t, so it’s just easier not to do anything at all. But then I’ll resent Cara for making me not try when maybe she’d be happy for me to try anyway. What am I going to do?”

“We could write a list. Of all the different options. Let’s have a think, I’ll help you. We can work it out together. I’ll write it up for you, make it all clear, then everything else will follow. Decision one: have a baby or not have one. Two: what health questions need sorting. Three: when. Four: Cara or not. Five: who’s the father. Honestly, there’s nothing in life that can’t be helped with the aid of a good list.”

Becky snorted. “You and your lists. I’ve kept the one you did for me when I was trying to decide whether I should come out. Do you have your highlighter pens at the ready?”

“I do my lists on a computer these days. You may mock, but it will really help you. At least we can get things straight in your mind so that you can speak to Cara. You need to talk to her as soon as you know what you need to say.”

“You’re one to talk. Or not, as the case may be.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were telling me the other day that you’re going to divorce Joel because he doesn’t disinfect his socks.”

“No, I wasn’t. I just feel there’s quite a lot of things he does that piss me off. I’m writing a list.”

“I know you are, all about whether I should have a baby or not.”

“Yes, that one, but another one too. I’m writing one about Joel.” Becky seems drunk enough for me to be able to begin explaining The List to her. I have to confide in someone. “A list of all the things he does that are really thoughtless, and after six months I’ll go over it and this way I’ll know my criticism of him is fair. He does quite a lot of things that make me unhappy.”

“And he does a lot to make you happy.” Becky is now on the loo, poking at her stomach. “Stupid crusty ovaries. Name me one thing that Joel does to annoy you.”

“I don’t know…” I pretend to be vague but I’m actually working out which of the transgressions I’ve noted so far is the most illustrative. “He leaves shit-filled diapers on the floor.” Take that—sure to freak out a childless person.

“Having changed the diaper in the first place. Lots of men don’t ever change diapers. Does he get a point for that, then? A plus point for being the sort of man to change a diaper?”

“What? Why should he get a medal for changing a diaper? I change a hundred bloody diapers for every one of his. It goes without saying that he should change a diaper.”

“Yes, but you can’t just count up the negative bits of a relationship without thinking of the good bits, can you? God knows what Cara would come up with against me if she did that.”

There is a banging at the door. Becky covers up her stomach and opens the door.

“Cara,” she says. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to know.”

“Know what?”

“That whoever was in here was not merely evacuating.”

I think Cara has the most beautiful clothes of anyone I know. If Armani had made clothes in a 1940s world with no rationing, this is what they’d look like. “I had assumed it was that ghastly man doing his drugs, so I’m rather relieved to find that it’s you two, holed up cozily together.” She raises a single eyebrow. I wish I could do that.

Becky is grappling with her pants. Cara’s eyebrow goes up still further. “What are you two up to? Should I be jealous?”

“God, no,” I stammer. I always stammer and blush and fumble around Cara.

“I was only teasing,” she laughs. Of course—nobody would ever transgress if they were lucky enough to be with Cara.

“We were just talking,” says Becky, grumpily. “What, like there’s a law against it?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Am not.”

“I think you’ll find that you are.”

“Am not, am not, am not.”

If Becky goes on behaving in this way, then they’re really not going to need any children, since the household already contains one ready-made teenager.

“Sorry, Cara,” I mumble. “We’ll get out of the loo now.”

“Don’t worry about it. I love your dress,” she says and strokes my arm while looking me up and down. Thanks to the control pants and my weight loss I sense that I might make the grade. “What a lovely froth it is.”

I’m sure I feel a spark, but that may just be the static created by her rubbing the, in fact, rather cheap viscose of my high-street
purchase. She leans over and whispers in my ear. Her breath is actually cool; it feels as if it would smell like she’d just had a scrape and polish with a dental hygienist.

“Can you look after her?” she says. “She seems to have hit the champagne a bit early.”

I nod.

“Thank you,” she says, giving my arm another stroke. As if I had any choice in the matter. I can’t imagine anybody refusing Cara anything.

I drag Becky off in search of Joel, who is chatting to a girl who’s running her fingers through her hair and who quickly recedes on being introduced to the wife.

42
) Is weirdly attractive to other women. It’s his disheveled charm, I guess—though I should know, I fell for it myself.

All right, all right. It’s not as if he can help it. Though I’m not sure he needs to listen quite so intently to what strange women have got to say to him. “You’re great, Joel,” Becky begins to say to him. “Really great. I hope Mary appreciates you.”

“I’m sure she does,” he says. “In a secret, special way.”

“Just tell her to remember all the good things, too, not just the bad ones.”

“I do,” I interrupt. “Really I do, Becky.”

“Promise me, Mary. Give credits as well as debits.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Joel.

“Nothing. I promise, Becky.” I look around, frantic for distraction. “I didn’t know you’d invited Mitzi.”

“I didn’t. Cara did. Cara thinks Mitzi’s one of the few acceptable people she’s met through me. Wasn’t really through me anyway, was it? It was through you two. They’ve really taken to each other. Ring each other up and stuff.”

“They would, wouldn’t they?” I say. Cut by a tailor—no, costumier—from the same expensive cloth made by “an amazing collective in India, they’re artists, really”: blonde Mitzi and dark Cara, Rose White and Rose Red, like two sisters in a children’s story. Cara greets Mitzi with an extravagant enthusiasm, which is followed by them standing a foot apart, still clutching each other’s hands, swapping compliments.

I feel a pang of jealousy. It’s always unnerving to see two people who only know each other through me become friends in their own right. When they finish admiring each other’s shoes, Mitzi comes over to join us.

“All right, Mitzi,” says Joel. “How have you been?”

“Well. Busy, frantic.”

“Really?” he says. “Doing what?”

“Raising four children in a complicated world, Joel, to begin with.”

“Yeah, but when are you going to go back to work?”

43
) Insistence that “work” is something only done in an office, factory or building site.

“Because working in TV is such a valuable contribution to society, isn’t it?” says Mitzi, giving him that pouty smile of hers.

“Better than shopping.”

“I don’t do much of that.”

“Really?” he says.

“No, I never buy anything any longer. I make and knit everything these days.”

“Mary showed me your goody bags. Quite the Maria Von Trapp with the sewing machine, aren’t you?”

“I like to think I have the spirit of Maria trapped in the body of the Baroness.” Mitzi smoothes her dress over her hips as she
says this. Her body is very toned, I observe. I notice Joel is looking too, which was the aim, I suppose.

“And the mind of the Hitler Youth post boy,” he adds.

“You’re so funny.” Their exchange finishes with a look that I’ve seen between them before, one that suggests they know something the rest of us don’t.

“So, what have you been so busy with?” I say to change the subject. Joel wanders off, perhaps to find the flicky-hair girl again.

“The house in Norfolk.” Ah yes, the house in Norfolk. “It’s a nightmare. We’ve got a brilliant architect, quite brilliant, you’ll be hearing so much about him in the future. But not everyone understands our vision, which is amazing and unprecedented and probably going to be the blueprint for all future conversions. The magazines are already ringing us about it. The local authorities are having ten types of hissy fit about the wind turbine. You’d think they’d want us to help the environment, since Norfolk will be the first one under water come the floods.”

“What’s their problem?”

“Something about the original flint and brick not being obscured is the official line. I think it’s more likely to be resentment at second homers.”

“They’ve got a point, I suppose.” Second-home ownership is something on my long list of Things That Make Me Angry and I’m not even a poor, priced-out-of-the-market local.

“You think? Oh well, then, that means you’ll be turning down our invitation for you all to stay to christen it for the half-term week at the end of May. To celebrate the building work being done.” There is a steely edge to her voice that suggests she will be brooking no more delays from pesky bureaucrats or the builders. “It will have been a year since it began.”

“Sorry, was that an invitation?”

“Well, if you can find it in your heart to forgive those who
own a second home, then Michael and I would love to have you to stay,” she says.

“Yes please. I’d love to see it. I think second homes are marvelous things, so long as they are shared with pauper friends.”

“Of course. It’s so beautiful, really it is. We can see right out over the marshes to the sea and the children can do all sorts of lovely old-fashioned things like cover themselves in mud and learn to sail and go crabbing.” It sounds like an upmarket children’s clothes catalog made flesh. I can see it now: “Molyneux, 6, likes dune jumping and crab sandwiches, wears Sloppy Joe in Teal.”

“We’d love to.”

“And just think, no horrid flights to get there either.”

“Enough, enough. You had me at ‘free holiday with friends.’ Thank you so much.” We look around the room. “I gather that you’re bezzie mates with Cara these days.”

“She’s great, isn’t she? I do hope your friend Becky doesn’t screw this one up.” We watch as Becky gesticulates wildly in conversation with one of Cara’s clients.

“Or vice versa.”

“I don’t think Cara screws anything up,” she says.

I’m woken at 3 a.m. by the smell of bacon and then can’t get back to sleep.

44
) Gets up in the middle of the night when drunk to make carnivorous snacks for himself. Not just toast or biscuits like a normal person.

45
) Obviously doesn’t wash greasy meat-produce-smeared pans or surfaces after these midnight feasts.

My mind is whirring with the combination of a couple of glasses of champagne, envy and the smell of pork products. I keep
going over my conversation with Becky in the loo. So stupid of me not to think that she might want to have children. She’d be such a brilliant mother, firm but fair, involved without interfering. She’s generous, too, and has more love to give than perhaps cool Cara is able to absorb. In the early stages of a hangover, I let myself think about not having children, but since I do have them, this can only happen in the event of a terrible accident or the courts ruling that I am an unfit mother. Perhaps I am. I feel sick at the thought of either of these occurrences and know that I will not sleep until I’ve gone to their room and checked that they are breathing.

I open the door and stare at them, enjoying my children at their most angelic, asleep. Gabe has a permanent cold and his tiny body gives out improbably loud snores. Rufus has pressed his whole body against the wall with the residual fear that he might fall from the top bunk, his thinking through of the consequences of “what if” remaining strong throughout the night. They are my life. Today, I think, I’ll tell them that, instead of merely telling them off. I wish I loved being with them as much as I love them, but it’s so hard in the bad and boring bits of the day.

Looking at them, I know that Becky should have children. She’d be all the love but none of the ill-temper. She’d work in the office efficiently and guiltlessly and then come home to love instead of to hector. She wouldn’t have a problem with the mess of it. I should tell her to go for it, whatever Cara says. But then if I tell her how brilliant it is to have them, what if it turns out she can’t after all? I’d be making it so much worse. How insensitive of me to even think it. Should I tell her how awful children are to make her feel better if she can’t have them? But then that might sound ungrateful coming from someone who’s been blessed.

I give up and think about what she had to say about the other list, my list. Maybe she was right in her drunken way, maybe I
do need to outline Joel’s plus points too. I’m sure it won’t take long. It would be the first thing he’d complain about if I showed him The List—he’s always telling me how I don’t appreciate all that he does for me. I suppose The List could work like a bank account, with credits and debits—or, if it were like kids’ charts, with smiley and unsmiley stickers. I start drawing up The List in my mind; how many columns, how many points, how does it work? It must be scrupulously fair, of course.