A few days later, she says:
‘I know it’s a long way off, but when we go shopping for my first bra, don’t embarrass me.’
An outbreak of bra-buying is currently under way in her class, causing those who haven’t yet got one to feel they’re – well, behind the curve.
I smart a bit at this, as I pride myself on being rather good at this stuff.
‘Well, weirdly enough, I wasn’t planning to embarrass you,’ I say. ‘And in any case you don’t have to take me along at all, though it would be nice.’
I look away, trying not to sound as if I’m emotionally invested. ‘How would I embarrass you, anyway?’
‘You know, by holding it across my chest in the shop and saying loudly: “Oh no, you’ll need a C!”’
‘Because that is so my style.’
She looks a bit deflated.
Careful now . . .
‘How awful,’ I add. ‘Who on earth would say that?’
‘Miss H. She told us in PSHE.’
Even my mother managed to perform that ritual without humiliating me in public, and she used to sing in the street. Actually, she was pretty good at the delicate stuff. She never criticized the Biba ‘Midnight’ eye shadow I began wearing at thirteen. And even before that, at the first sign of Hair in an Embarrassing Place – i.e. my face – she went to the chemist for the pungent ammonia and hydrogen peroxide to bleach my upper lip, while I hid behind the blinds, wondering if I was turning into a werewolf. I was still at primary school.
The first time their body mutinies, in whatever way, is a milestone but one that it’s easy to overlook or dismiss. I must make sure to follow my mother’s example – I don’t say that very often – and not belittle any of Lydia’s concerns. It’s so easy to say: ‘Don’t be silly! Of course you don’t look fat/ugly/weird/short/like an alien,’ and make them furious. One must tread carefully.
‘So,’ I say, ‘if you are going to buy a bra, of course I’ll come with you. If you want.’
‘I know! You just said that!’
‘Er, well, I don’t know. You might want to go with your friends. Or get it online.’
‘Why would I do that? I’m obviously going to need to try it on.’
‘Of course.’
‘There is one thing, though.’
Brace yourself.
‘I probably will need to get two. So I can put one in the wash and wear one.’
‘Good idea!’
It seems my financial prudence is finally rubbing off. And I don’t say:
It would be an even better idea if when one is dirty you put it in the machine and do the actual washing rather than leave it lying on the floor, which I bet you will.
‘I remember my first training bra,’ I say. ‘Though why were they called “training bras”? Training them to do what?’
‘Ha! Of course I want you to come with me. So stop worrying about it, OK?’
‘I’m not.’
‘All right, Mummy. Whatever you say.’
Then the tables are turned.
I buy myself a new top that I hope should place me safely in the respectable-but-not-entirely-sexless middle ground between Ageing Slapper on Budget Hen Night and Regional Manager of Executive Parking Designation Invited to Take Early Retirement. I’ve also bought a small wheelie case.
Last year Lydia’s lot went on a school trip and she was the only one whose bag was wheel-less. Is disabled luggage now a Thing?
‘I had to carry it!’
‘For God’s sake, listen to yourself. When I was young, we had to stuff every piece of clothing we owned into a huge plastic bag and drag it to the launderette. You don’t even know what that is.’
‘And you went up the chimney and down the mines at the same time,’ says Lydia, exchanging a smirk with Lawrence.
‘Oh, ha ha. Well, I’ve got you a wheelie case now, so you can be nice to me for a change.’
It’s actually for me as well, but I don’t say this. Instead I put on my new top and admire it in the mirror while she unwraps the case. A sticker on the side says ‘Expandable by up to 20%’. She bends down, peels it off and before you can say ‘tits up’, has stuck it to my chest.
Peter and Lawrence laugh their heads off.
‘Right,’ I say, twisting away so she can’t grab it back. ‘I’ll wear it to take you to school.’
Credit Crunches
‘Two girls at St Bollocks are pregnant,’ says Lawrence.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Who told you that?’
After a guilty pause:
‘Jack.’
‘Mr Reliable.’
‘Yeah! Me and Tom counted how many lies he told today.’
‘How many?’
‘Forty-three. Huge ones!’
Our children never lie.
Except . . .
Though it’s hard to believe – looking at that round, innocent face – it appears there has been some, as Hillary Clinton would put it, mis-speaking about a detention.
‘I’m putting you in charge of that,’ says Peter, his way of sliding out of anything he doesn’t want to do.
And it matters, because it’s vital we establish mutual trust now. He’s given up the bath toys, gone to his first disco and begun borrowing my phone.
There’s no time to lose.
Except it’s not fair to make me deal with this. I have no powers of deception, whereas Peter is so convincing I sometimes overhear him lying on the phone and am completely taken in. If he gets a cold caller trying to sell him anything, he’s quite capable of saying he can’t talk just at the moment because he’s on his way out to hospital with a tumour, and I find myself thinking: ‘Shit – are you?’ If Lawrence has learned to dissemble from anyone, it’s his father – not me.
Also, as someone who’s never learned to prepare what I’m going to say before I say it, I’m at a further disadvantage. In my family you had to grab the chance to speak whenever there was a gap, whether you had something relevant to say or not. And my formative years were heavily influenced by a youth improvisation class in which we were always just given the first line and had to make the rest up. So I just start talking, and hope it will magically come together by the end.
This time, though, I try doing the same as when I’m abroad: formulate a statement in my head first to see if it makes sense. To my surprise, it’s not bad out loud either: compassionate but morally unequivocal.
‘I saw the detention in your home book,’ I tell him. ‘You know, you can lie to me. And I may not even find out. But our relationship will be far better in the long run if you don’t.’
Yep, I’m really pleased with the way I’ve put this; I think I’ll put another Effectiveness badge on my fleece.
‘Look, Mum,’ he says. ‘There’s the new Renault!’
And I look round.
It’s not just the sense of being outmanoeuvred that’s unsettling, but the discovery of yet another stage of juvenile development I seem not to know about. I mean, we lied to our parents, obviously, we had to – but my little Lawrence? And he’s years away from operating at full strength.
Peter points out that he hasn’t actually lied, just not told us.
‘He’s trying out Need to Know,’ he says. ‘I mean, a few years from now he’s not going to be telling us everything he’s done on a night out, is he? So he’s – you know, limbering up.’
‘Yeah, well thanks for your help.’
‘Did you tell your parents everything?’
‘Just – go away.’
Though I hate agreeing with him, I wonder if this is indeed a kind of resourcefulness that will stand the lad in good stead.
A child with guile is less likely to be taken advantage of; it’s vital as part of the even more essential life skill of Questioning Authority. In the event of being told to stay at their desks while a plane was crashing into their office block, or to wait in a burning building, would they ignore it and run for their lives?
This matters because, let�
��s be realistic, they’re going to need to mistrust the powers that be. Well, we all should, all the time, but especially now.
The economy’s in trouble and why? Because the banks have been Not Telling Us Stuff, big time. Several have collapsed. Confidence in the financial system, in credit itself, has plummeted. And while that doesn’t sound entirely bad, it could get much worse. By the time they’re old enough to earn a living, we could be at the end of the financial system as we know it.
So the very least I can do is try to explain this to them, even though I don’t understand it. It’s just that Peter understands it even less.
‘How could the banks have been giving out money they hadn’t even got?’ says Lydia, dismayed to discover that fairy tales and the real world aren’t in fact separate as I’ve always claimed.
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘I have no idea.’
What I do know is that our holiday this year – assuming we dare go on it – will cost 30 per cent more than before.
‘You used to have to hand over only 67p to get a euro,’ I say. ‘Whereas now it’ll cost you almost £1.’
She is horrified.
‘And – that Coke that was two euros, a few years ago cost £1.34. Last year it was £1.70, and now it’ll cost us £1.96.’
‘WHY?!’
‘Er . . . because money goes up and down. It’s . . .’
Luckily she loses interest at that point and runs off.
And we too have done some editing of the facts, for we are facing our own credit crunch. Peter has cast off the yoke of salaried employment – or rather, it has cast him off – and we are now both self-employed. As Oscar Wilde so nearly said, to have one freelance writer in the house may be regarded as amusing; two really is careless. We have told the children there will be less money coming in, but have at no point used the words ‘running’, ‘out’ or ‘of’.
There’s frankly never a good time to become self-employed. Lawrence needs new shoes and is starting to hang over the sides of the chair we got him from IKEA to go with the cabin bed when he was about six. I’ve already given him my old desk, and my father’s drawing board is behind the dirty washing box, ready and waiting for whoever becomes an artist – because one of them is bound to, right?
‘You do realize they’ll probably be doing all their drawing on screens by then?’ says Peter unhelpfully. ‘If any.’
And he tells me not to be negative.
I also know, from a tip my mother gave me, how to see off the perpetrators of store cards and other extortionate forms of credit:
‘I’m afraid I don’t have a regular income.’
They whip those forms away before you can say, ‘That’ll be 29 per cent – a month, you sucker.’
And it will soon be Christmas.
We’re being bombarded with catalogues of useless accessories from companies who have bought our address in the deluded belief that we have any spare money. The most optimistic of these, a well-known candle and scent brand, invites us this Christmas to ‘define his boundaries’ in study, car or den with something called a ‘Scent Surround Cube’ costing – how can it? – £95.
‘My boundaries are defined already,’ says Peter, ‘with a uniquely invigorating mix of compost, sock and bin.’
He’s always been keen on recycling and reusing, and has recently discovered Freecycle, leading to visits from women in multicoloured knitted Peruvian hats who come and remove our unwanted electronic goods.
‘See?’ he says. ‘I can still get attention from other females.’
‘I’m going out to forage,’ I say. ‘Try not to give away my computer.’
Remembering the ‘distressed’ kitchen stools we once picked up there, I go to the dump and return with a fake leather and chrome office chair for Lawrence.
‘Kids,’ I say, ‘Look at this. It was just sitting there – completely free!’
They are in awe.
Lawrence and Peter set to work on it with the Jif, and soon his room takes on the ambience of a small advertising agency, albeit one in which visitors are also greeted by several damp towels and an ominously overflowing bin.
Next, I turn my attention to the state of his lace-ups. With a 5p-sized hole in each sole, he can identify different species of leaf on the pavement without looking. I wondered why his socks were coming back wet.
‘But it’s OK, Mummy,’ he adds. ‘I could use my birthday money to buy some new ones.’
I feel terrible; I’ve overdone the ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ dissertations and turned into my father. At least he had the justification of having been poor.
‘No, you don’t have to do that,’ I say. ‘I’ll get you some new shoes, but you’ll have to save up for the luxuries, the way I used to.’
‘I know! You told me a million times.’
I’ve been trying to establish this habit since well before the financial crisis. It resulted in the single bout of car-washing last summer and a recent, one-off session of leaf-raking, leading me to wonder if he regards paid labour the same way he saw nursery after his first day, as a novelty you experience only once.
At least he knows how to save. Whereas he lovingly tends his cash, taking it out of its box regularly as one would exercise a pet, Lydia is only fleetingly intimate with hers. She spends her pocket money on the day – if not before – and is absolutely a product of the shallow, consumerist society that is now being shown up for what it is: shallow and consumerist. Her room is littered with ponies and assorted other species, each member of which – at the moment of purchase – she believes will ensure lasting happiness. And lately, when we watch TV, she has taken to calling out names of the products in the ads like a competitor in a particularly unnerving pub quiz.
‘Fragrances the whole room . . .’ says a smooth voice.
‘Ambi-Pur!’ shouts Lydia, followed by a sideways glance at me. ‘I know, Mummy: “fragrance” is not a verb.’
Last night in the bath, when I brought in some tangerine slices, she looked up at me and said:
‘Why not enjoy the Christmassy taste of orange?’
And, when I gave her an apple after supper recently, she said not ‘Yum!’ or even, ‘You have the rest,’ but:
‘Join the AA.’
So on the one hand her brain has indeed been completely infiltrated by advertising. On the other hand, it was gratifying to see the extent to which Britain’s leading motorists’ organization had so comprehensively failed to reach its target.
Still, she is only eight years away from her first credit card – if they still have them by then, and now, in the midst of the debt crisis, I’m already imagining her as one of its victims.
‘I’d already got four hundred handbags and two thousand My Little Ponies,’ I can hear her confessing on You and Yours. ‘I’d even lost my home. But the bank kept encouraging me to take out more loans.’
She wants a junior potter’s wheel for Christmas and is leaving nothing to chance. There is only one in the shop and it might get sold to someone else. At 7 a.m. one day I come in to wake her up to be confronted by a piece of A4.
‘It’s a map of the toy shop, Mummy! So you know where to go.’
The shop is about a hundred metres from our house. And the junior potter’s wheel – and the till – are clearly marked with giant arrows. And to ensure the absent-minded parental brain doesn’t get confused on the way out like one of those poor satnav victims, the door is labelled ‘Door’.
So we buy it, and she plays with it once, and I continue my increasingly desperate efforts to imbue her with the joys of deferred gratification:
‘If you save it up you’ll have more, see?’ – which have so far come to naught.
However, by focusing as usual on the negative I have underestimated her brother. One afternoon he lays aside his Geography homework and in his smart new shoes, fixes her with a sympathetic yet firm look, like a very small doctor.
‘Lydia, look: if you save £20 I will give you five.’
‘Five poun
ds? That’s a lot,’ I say. ‘It’s – er, 25 per cent.’
‘I’m trying to teach her to save.’
Her eyes light up at the thought of a fiver but she’s less clear on the method by which to achieve it. He, by contrast, has accumulated £60.
‘How did you get so much?’
My mind flashes back to Lydia’s school Open Day, when he discovered a worrying talent for shove ha’penny. And I recently found a gaming chip in his bedroom which he claimed was a novelty bookmark.
‘By saving, obviously. See, Lydia? You could have this much if you just don’t keep spending it.’
He’s right; if she would only curb her addiction to small fluffy animals. But the savings–interest concept eludes her.
‘Mm, will I really get £5?’ she murmurs dreamily, and before her brother or I can explain the terms of the deal, in her mind she has already got the fiver and is leaping to her feet to go and spend it on a purse filled with tiny plastic horses. Just then, their father comes in.
‘Who wants to wash the car with me?’
‘Me!’
‘Me!’
They’ve been promised £2 each, and when Peter reports to me at suppertime, I get a surprise.
‘Lydia actually did the most.’
The connection between effort and reward finally established, she flops down with her chammy leather, glowing with pride.
The following morning I find Lawrence on the landing doing sit-ups.
‘Hey, Mum. Come and join me!’
I lie down beside him and lift my head towards my knees slowly and not at all smoothly, like a DVD on picture search. The last time I visited a gym I was childless and could still bend all the way into a squat without getting stuck and falling sideways like a crashed robot.
‘Good, Mummy!’
I have a pain in my middle as if I’ve had an organ removed without anaesthetic, but there is a glimmer of achievement.
‘I should really do this every day,’ I say.
‘You can. I’ll be your personal trainer!’
‘Tell you what,’ I say. ‘I’ll pay you 20p a go. I need a chart with boxes to tick, though. That’s the only thing that works with me.’
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 8
