Souper Mum

by Kristen Bailey

  Annie has bought into Luella’s spiel and is clapping her hands like a seal, far from the po-faced lawyer I wanted her to be, sitting there defending me and looking over paperwork for missed dots and uncrossed t’s. I think the Strictly comment did it – she’s been trying to get tickets since forever. That’s not to say that Luella being here doesn’t fill me with some hope, some comfort too. But she’s evolving this into something else. Drawing lines in the sand I can do. But battles where I am supposed to be this epic housewife/mother-style David character taking on the behemoth that is McCoy and his Goliath empire sounds tiring, time-consuming. Plus, I have no slingshot. Not even any rocks to put in it. Man, I even look stupid in gladiator sandals. They make my legs look like trussed-up sausages. Annie and Luella sit down to plan my course of attack while I nod and grab the plate of biscuits in front of me, breaking them off and sharing them with Millie, beige coloured crumbs becoming dust in her fingers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It’s Saturday. This means two things in our house: no work, no school. It also means that, whereas breakfast every other day of the week is hurried cereal and buttering holes into toast, we get up and make extravagant breakfasts that usually revolve around pancakes and bacon and setting off the smoke alarms. Our rituals do not seem to have been interrupted by this week’s events bar a new inclusion to the proceedings: a newspaper at the breakfast table being scanned through by Matt and myself. It means I don’t notice Ted squeezing half the honey bear on to his plate. Jake peers over when he sees my picture on the front.

  ‘You in the papers again, Mum? You look nice there.’

  I give him a hasty kiss on the forehead. Jake, ever the charmer. Hannah’s face is all scrunched up and she entertains Millie with a strawberry.

  ‘Yeah. But this time, this woman has written some really nice things about me and not told lies.’

  The children are not that bothered. Matt reads between mouthfuls as Ted realises retrieving his pancake is going to be like tackling fly paper. Matt left the house this morning at seven to buy ten copies of The Guardian. I’m not sure what he intends to do with ten copies but this is the seventh time he’s reading the article.

  ‘You know, I think it’s good. I think you come across likeable and more importantly, as though that Elswood fella was talking out of his arse.’

  Jake and Ted always like it when Matt says this. It gives them an excuse to grab their butt cheeks and make them talk. Over pancakes is not the place, though. I grab another copy of the paper, re-reading things Jill Robertson wrote:

  ‘… what is most evident is that Mrs Campbell is a far better spokeswoman for the modern family. Her life, although frenetic, is a much better indicator of what mothers endure on a daily basis and her honesty, to say that at times she finds the domestic ennui difficult and overwhelming, more realistic and less condescending than when it does come from our celebrity peers …’

  I read the word ennui again. Meaning boring? I keep looking over at Matt, hoping he’s not taking too much offence.

  ‘… in trying to manipulate what McCoy assumes to be her domestic failings to bolster his preachy attitude towards food and gain a few more viewers, he has shown himself to be part bully, part food snob … she’ll be the first to admit her culinary skills no way match McCoy’s but she can identify a daikon and her children “usually” get their five a day … “Maybe three and half most days,” she says, laughing …’

  I stuff some blueberries into Millie’s mouth when I read that bit. I scan again, looking at the picture they took of me in the restaurant where they interviewed me. I’m wearing a green jersey dress that Luella chose for me from Zara over tights and some brown heels. Big knickers and an even bigger bra held everything in. I see Matt’s eyes scan over the picture. I say nothing.

  ‘I don’t look too mumsy? I wanted to wear jeans but Luella wanted me to look a bit more elegant. I don’t look like I’m trying too hard, do I?’

  Matt shakes his head.

  ‘And what about the bit about Dad? Not too much? You think he’ll be OK with that?’

  The journalist asked me where I learnt to cook. My mother? I froze a little to hint at my shock and went to tell her no, I learnt from my dad. With two young brothers in the house, learning to fix cheese on toast for them after school, heat up tins of beans, and boil pasta a necessity. By fifteen, I learnt all the other bits and bobs from watching Ready Steady Cook. Ainsley Harriot once taught me very interesting things you could do with a red pepper. The piece is sympathetic about that yet not to the point where I sound like an orphan in an apron. Neither does it draw out the drama too much.

  ‘No. I think he’d approve. It’s a great piece. I think we’ve done well.’

  He envelops a whole pancake in his mouth to the wonder of his boys, who try the same but end up with honey all over their chins, noses, and hair. The phone rings and Matt goes to answer it.

  ‘Buongiorno, mamma …’

  I swing my head around. When it’s in Italian, it’s Matt’s mother. Ringing to dissect the article and my skills as a mother and give her five pence share to the proceedings. I study Matt’s face, trying to listen out for the words I know.

  ‘Si, mi fa piacere che hai letto l’articolo. Hai comprato quante copie? Si, si … sono sicuro che questa sai la fine. Si, certo, i ragazzi mangiano bene.’

  Something about chairs, children, and eating? I pretend to clean the boys’ faces.

  ‘Beh … è molto gentile da parte di Zio Dino, ma cosa me ne faccio con dieci chili di mozzarella?’

  Cheese and dinosaurs? Must get that Italian for beginners book out again. I wonder what Gia Campbell makes of all this attention. Maybe she’s happy someone’s pointed out what she’s been harping on about for the past eight years. I don’t bake enough, I seem to have a food philosophy based around potatoes and mince. Matt dips in and out of English.

  ‘Mum, you’re always welcome here but really, I’m sure the article has wrapped everything up. Really? OK …’

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.

  ‘Is Nonna coming?’ asks Jake. Matt puts his hand over the phone receiver.

  ‘She wants to talk to you.’ I grimace, taking the phone reluctantly, knowing I have to at least play courteous and dutiful in front of the kids. This has little to do with monster-in-law clichés. It’s just that because of her thick Italian/posh Edinburgh accent, I can’t make out half of what she says. I try to recall my basic Italian. Como va? Come stai?

  ‘Gia! Comma sty?’

  There is a short pause as she tries to work out I’m not talking about punctuation or a pig’s place of dwelling.

  ‘Juliet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good morning. I am reading the paper. I like your hair.’

  ‘Thank you, Gia.’

  Awkward silence #1.

  ‘I am so sorry this whole thing got blown out of proportion. I didn’t mean to embarrass the family.’

  ‘I am not being embarrassed for you. I am good.’ There are words in between that I didn’t catch.

  Awkward silence #2.

  ‘I am sending you trees.’

  ‘Oh, like something for the garden?’

  Awkward silence #3.

  ‘No, for eating. Formaggio! Chess!’ I am lost.

  ‘OK. Thank you. I will look out for that.’

  ‘Give me to Matteo. Ciao, Juliet!’

  I hand back the phone and shrug my shoulders. Matt smiles and mumbles something before hanging up.

  ‘She’s sending us some mozzarella.’

  ‘How? In a jiffy bag?’

  Matt shrugs his shoulders. ‘She’ll find a way.’ He turns to tackle the boys with the box of wet wipes. I look over at Hannah, who’s pushing bits of pancake around her plate, staring into the honey bear more meaningfully than anyone should have to.

  ‘You OK, Han?’ She shrugs her shoulders as I look to Matt, hoping for some back up.

  Hannah finally pipes up.

 
‘Is this going to make people at school gossip again?’

  Matt listens in to the conversation while retrieving a blueberry from Jake’s nose.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, people have been saying stuff. Imogen says her mum said … she said you’re a …’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘First, she said I was an accident … then she said you were an embarrassment.’

  Matt squeezes that little bit too hard so the blueberry and a large piece of dried-up snot flies out of Jake’s nose and onto Millie’s tray. Millie proceeds to eat it while Matt and I stare at each other.

  ‘Well, Imogen’s mum can hardly talk. She’s got a mullet.’

  ‘Matt!’

  I turn to Hannah in my best motherly pose, considering I’m in a badly fitting vest top and cow print PJ bottoms.

  ‘Hon, there were no accidents. You were a surprise. A good surprise.’

  Matt nods. Surprise is a slight understatement. My period was six days late. I put it down to exam stress, drinking, and a shoddy diet. Three days later I took a pregnancy test with Annie. Two weeks later I told Matt. He cried. Big fat man tears rolled down his cheeks. It was the same sort of shock I expect people feel when they hear they’ve been adopted or this whole time they’ve been raising you the wrong sex. That a seismic shift in your identity had occurred, skewing a once flat and calm horizon. I felt nothing for days. The surprise of that little blue line numbed me into paralysis. Matt intervenes.

  ‘Imogen’s mum is just jealous because she got lumbered with her instead of you. I reckon her mum …’

  I kick Matt under the table, knowing the sort of explanation that will come out of his mouth.

  ‘Were we accidents too, Mum?’

  I look over at the twins. If Hannah was our accident, the twins were our bolt-from-the-blue, knock-you-for-six type of surprise. We were going to try for one more, a boy to complete the family. Then the scanner thought our son had an exceptionally large appendage or that was another leg. Twins. Twin boys, no less. Matt stared so hard at the screen a little bit of drool came out of the corner of his mouth. I look over at Millie. She was the one born out of laziness. You go down the shops and buy some condoms. I can’t be bothered. Oh, let’s just do it, if it happens, it happens. Probably won’t.

  ‘No, no one here was an accident. And to call someone an embarrassment is not very nice.’

  Hannah nods in agreement.

  ‘She says that about Ciara’s mum too. And Liam Baxter because he has two mums.’

  Matt and I look at each other, slightly horrified a mother could be so indiscrete.

  ‘Which is silly. Because Liam Baxter still has a dad, it’s just that his mums are gay and she doesn’t get it.’

  Matt and I hold our breath as little boys’ ears prick up.

  ‘What’s gay?’

  Hannah interjects, ‘It’s like when a man and a man love each other. Or a woman and a woman. And they can get married and stuff and have babies.’

  The boys don’t look too perturbed by the idea.

  ‘Like Uncle Ben. He goes out with men.’

  ‘Hannah, how do you …?’

  ‘They showed us a video at school about liking all different types of people. Gay people, Muslims because everyone thinks they’re terrorists, and if you’ve only got like one mum and your dad’s run off like Carly Matthews at school. I know about Uncle Ben because last Christmas he brought that bloke with him that you told me was his friend but I saw them kissing in the garden.’

  Matt and I stare at each other, trying to take it all in. The boys have heeded Hannah’s reasoning without as much as a hint of a need for further explanation. They simply shrug their shoulders and ask to be excused so they can turn the living room upside down. I usher them away as I clear up. I guess to them such ridiculous stereotypes that a man should be with, and only be with, a woman have not yet been set in stone, a fact pretty much exemplified by the fact that up until last year, Jake was pretty certain he wanted to marry The Little Mermaid. She wouldn’t be able to walk down the aisle, Hannah had told him. Jake didn’t care. He said he’d have an operation to become half fish and live under the sea. I guess people had done far worse to suffer true love.

  ‘So when Imogen’s mum talks crap …’ adds Matt.

  ‘You shouldn’t really listen?’ finishes Hannah. I’m still reeling from Matt having said ‘crap’ and it being out in the atmosphere like that for Jake and Ted to hear, memorise, and repeat in school.

  ‘Pretty much. Try not to listen to them. Just remember we’re all nice people and should try and be nice to everyone.’

  I’ve overdone it with the nice. I can tell as Hannah has her eyebrows all arched and her mouth scrunched up like she knows I’m trying to be a parent and it isn’t working. Matt laughs under his breath.

  ‘And what about that stuff with that TV chef man?’

  ‘Well, it’s done with, Han.’ Matt draws a line in the sand by holding up the newspaper article, showing me at my normal, non-crazy mum best. I look to Matt. It’s done with. The end. Hannah looks semi-satisfied and runs off to be with her brothers. That leaves Millie around the table wondering if she’s still hungry, tired, or in need of a nappy change. She looks up to both of us.

  ‘Is that what you told your Ma then?’ I ask, cradling a lukewarm cup of coffee. Matt starts to pile sticky plates on top of each other in his efficient Saturday husband way.

  ‘Pretty much so. I mean, no point dragging this out, eh? Look what happened to Han at school – the girl doesn’t need that sort of grief.’

  I nod, a little sheepishly though, given I know what I’m going to say next.

  ‘But what if this wasn’t the end?’ Matt looks at me curiously. ‘I mean, that publicist said this could go somewhere. There’s the possibility of an extended career as a media chef-type mother.’ Matt bursts into laughter. I try not to act offended.

  ‘What? Jamie Oliver in a skirt?’

  ‘I don’t know. She just said there is mileage in this. What do you think?’

  He looks at me like I’ve just said I’m going to fly to the moon in a spaceship made of sliced ham. He shakes his head and starts to transfer plates to the sink – his silence pretty much confirming what I thought he’d think.

  ‘I mean, maybe we should capitalise on the moment. If there’s a quick buck to be made out of this, it could be good in the long run.’

  Matt turns from the sink, annoyed.

  ‘Or not? The last week has been manic – look how emotional it made you to have our lives under scrutiny from people we don’t even know. I’m not sure it’s worth it.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like that.’

  ‘Well, it has been so far. I say think it through properly – the market is flooded with these chef types and most of them are TV saps. Why be one of them?’

  ‘Why not? I could shake the market up? Be that down-to-earth mum who’s more in touch with the public.’

  ‘With one difference … you can’t cook.’

  I inhale sharply. The best/worst thing about Matt is that he tells it like it is, straight from his Scottish hip. There are advantages of being told the truth, of not having someone blow smoke up your arse, but sometimes you crave the little white lie to feel like he might care enough to temporarily bolster your self-esteem.

  ‘Excuse me? I cope. The children have survived this far … you too. Last week, we were in this very kitchen and you said I was all right …’

  He shakes his head. ‘All right for a mum but you’re not chef standard …’

  ‘Exactly … millions of mothers out there and who really knows what they’re doing? I’d be speaking for them.’

  ‘Did you tell Luella about the lasagne you dropped on the oven door?’

  Matt often brings this up. He uses this story in the same way I bring up the time he dried the bed sheets without noticing Ted had been storing a carton of Ribena in the dryer.

  ‘It was an accident.’ It was me having slav
ed a whole afternoon trying to cook a lasagne to impress Matt’s mother. A young Jake hovered behind me as I bent down to retrieve it from the oven. An oven glove slipped. A tray of lasagne fell to the oven door, cracking it and taking it off its hinges. I sat there crying, trying to scoop it off with a fish slice. Often, if the oven is hot enough, you can still catch the smell of two-year-old béchamel.

  ‘I am sure there are millions of mothers out there who have done similar.’

  He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, you’re asking me and I think this isn’t a good idea. It’s not us at all.’

  He talks about us collectively like he probably should but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make me feel resentful that the decision has pretty much been made for us. I’m about to tell him as much when the phone rings. Please don’t be Gia again.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jools. Luella here. Great, great article. Loved it. Think it struck a very genuine chord and you look radiant in the photo. This is all very good.’

  I’m well, thank you for asking, Luella. Matt moves over, pretending to wipe down Millie’s high-chair when really, he wants to eavesdrop.

  ‘So, I’ve been doing some research and this is what I know …’

  She then launches into further analysis of the article from the exact number of column inches it’s scored to a scarily in-depth analysis of the message board reaction. HelenOfTroy thinks I’m brave to be deprecating the McCoy empire; Lewes4256 has a crush; MotherofFive thinks I’m trying to be a martyr for housewives everywhere but we all don’t need to be pitied. I nod and take it all on the chin.

  ‘And so we now have to await the Sunday tabloids. My sources tell me there might be a comeback. I need you to be prepared for this, so I’ll be around at about four o’clock.’

  ‘Well, four is fine. I’ll bake a cake.’

  ‘Lovely. I’m allergic to walnuts but everything else is good.’

  I was being sarcastic but now, along with the school laundry, the dishes, the upstairs bathroom where Ted missed the toilet bowl, the homework, and trying to cut Millie’s nails so she doesn’t claw her eyes out with her little talons, it’s another thing to add to my list. The phone still to my ear, she bids me farewell as I flick through recipe books. Matt looks at me and mouths Luella’s name. He looks confused as to why I haven’t ended this conversation yet. Cake, cake, cake.