Young Wives' Tales

by Adele Parks

  But even while I pity her, I do not like her. And I owe her nothing at all. My emotions are a jumble and so it is unsurprising that the squishy red lips lisping out the well-rehearsed lines that ‘There’s no room in the inn,’Fran’s (rather good) enactment of a weary Mary and the terrified shepherds facing the angel Gabriel cause me to blub.

  The surprise is I’ve forgotten my tissues. Darn. I always carry a small packet, how could I have been so careless? I quietly sniffle and snuffle, hoping I’m not attracting too much attention. It transpires I am, when suddenly not one but two handkerchiefs are proffered at the same time.

  Peter is sitting in front of me. He turns and holds out a handkerchief. It would be symbolic if it was one that I had given him on behalf of the boys on their first Fathers’day, but it is not. I bought his handkerchiefs from BHS; the one he’s offering is Paul Smith. The other handkerchief is offered from my right. I look to see who is making the donation. Craig.

  I hadn’t noticed that I’d slipped into a seat right next to him. Because Lucy and I were battling out our differences in Year Two’s classroom we nearly missed the beginning of the show. Flustered, I rushed into the hall and flung myself into the first available seat I spotted. I wonder if he thinks I did it on purpose. I have no idea whose handkerchief I should take. There’s no etiquette for this particular situation. I grab both and blow my nose noisily, on each, in turn.

  When the performance is over the children file in untidy lines back to their classrooms. A few brave kids break rank to rush into the audience to soak up their parents’praise, and to get and give an excited hug. I’m stunned when Henry and Sebastian are among this number. They fling themselves at me and tuck under an arm each.

  ‘Well done, boys. Stellar performances,’I gush.

  I hope they can’t see I’ve been crying. They’ll be embarrassed and this spontaneous show of affection will be retracted instantly.

  ‘Oh, Mum, we didn’t have to do nothing,’says Henry.

  ‘Didn’t have to do anything,’I correct.

  ‘Hi Dad,’says Sebastian casually, as he spots Peter.

  ‘Your mum is right, you were great villagers. Lots of realism when you were pretending to be asleep,’says Peter with a wink. ‘Good costumes,’he adds.

  ‘Mum made them,’says Sebastian. ‘Even the sandals. They’re way past cool, aren’t they?’

  ‘Way past,’confirms Peter.

  I feel uncomfortable with all this sudden and vocal appreciation. The boys really must be pinning their Christmas gift hopes on me and ditching the possibility of Santa bringing the latest Hot Wheels contraption. I shoo them away and tell them to go back to their classroom to get changed. I turn to Peter.

  ‘Can I have a word, Peter? It won’t take long.’I don’t meet Lucy’s eye.

  We wander along the corridor, away from the noise of the hall. Many of the parents are tucking into their second round of mince pies and mulled wine; others are dashing for the door, keen to get back to the office before their bosses notice their absence.

  As I walk along the corridor, decorated with handmade paper chains and snowflakes, I consider how best I should phrase what I have to say.

  People think it’s hard when you are left with a couple of screaming babies that have barely settled into a night-time routine, let alone started potty training. That wasn’t the hard bit – Peter hadn’t been around much from the moment they were born anyway. He’d huffed and puffed if he had to do the least little thing. If he bathed them twice a week, he’d expect a medal. The hard bit wasn’t the fact that he didn’t want me – even that I learnt to live with. The hard bit was explaining to the boys why Peter left. They first started asking that tricky question when they were four. Auriol’s age. They came home from school, gobsmacked to discover that most mothers and fathers lived in the same home. They asked, over and over again, why did Daddy leave?

  I look at Peter, who is carefully examining a painting of a robin redbreast. I wonder how he would answer that one. What is the correct answer? Because he couldn’t keep it in his trousers? A little explicit for four-year-olds, I fear.

  I told them it was because he fell in love with Lucy and Lucy had fallen in love with their daddy. I even went so far as to list Lucy’s many attributes so that it seemed like a natural thing, and they wouldn’t think of their father as abhorrent. But even though I tried to be careful I couldn’t stop the hurt and fear.

  ‘He must not like me,’said Henry, in alarm. His little face twisted with pain and confusion.

  ‘No, darling, he just didn’t like Mummy enough.’This was the most sanitized response I could come up with.

  Sebastian started to laugh. ‘Now, you’re joking me, Mummy.’

  Henry turned to me, face awash with incredulity and astonishment, ‘But that’s impossible.’

  That’s love.

  There was weekend after weekend when they begged me not to have to go to Peter’s. It’s boring, they complained. I’d pack up their favourite toys and insist they went. I’d call Peter and tell him to take them to the circus or the fair because I knew they desperately wanted to do these things. And I’d sit alone while Peter and Lucy played happy families, using my sons as a supporting cast. I kept reminding myself of the importance of the boys building a relationship with their daddy.

  That’s love.

  There are lots of things that nobody ever tells you about having kids. Many new mothers resent the lack of warnings and wander around their homes with a mewing infant in arms, dressed in a spew-spattered dressing-gown and resentfully bewailing that they weren’t forewarned.

  Some new mums make up conspiracy theories about existing parents begrudging the freedom childless couples enjoy and assume parents deliberately withhold information, so as to trick others into joining their frazzled ranks. I don’t buy that.

  My theory is that the people with kids simply don’t have the time to tell the people without them everything. On days when their child has slept, eaten and cooed appropriately they wear a glazed expression akin to a Stepford wife and murmur, ‘It’s wonderful.’But they fail to offer any real insight into the wonderfulness.

  On days when babies have refused to sleep, toddlers have peed on carpets and broken neighbours’china, when schoolchildren have sworn, spat or simply refused to acknowledge any rules or guidelines, parents shake their weary heads and mutter, ‘It changes everything, you’ll see.’

  But as most days mums really don’t have time to run a comb through their hair, they cannot be expected to carve out the hours required to fully brief expectant parents about the exact nature and extent of that life change.

  Indeed, no one warns you that for about five years after giving birth, finding time to go to the bathroom alone will rank among life’s greatest luxuries. No one tells you that reliable babysitters are like gold dust. Or that you will dutifully run up and down stairs thirty times a night to nurse a child with a fever, although you are the sort of woman who would struggle to drag themselves to a step class, even one run by George Clooney.

  Being a mother means a life of contradictions. No one tells you that children have tiny foibles. A little bop or way of handling a watering can that will reduce you to tears of happiness.

  No one tells you that you will vanish. That you’ve never been more important. That you will feel sticky, scruffy and be used as a human trampoline, but that your arms will feel empty if you ever do escape to the shops or an office. You would die for them. You live for them. They take up every moment of your conscious and unconscious mind and more than that.

  What is Peter saying now? ‘The boys’costumes are great. Maybe next year you could help out with Auriol’s. Lucy isn’t a seamstress.’

  The nerve of him. I stare at this man who was once my be-all and end-all and I almost laugh. He’s looking relaxed and affable. He really doesn’t think there’s anything inappropriate in asking me to help out with making a costume for Auriol, and perhaps there isn’t. She did struggle with those enormou
s prickly branches today, I felt sorry for her; it can’t have been comfortable. I would have sewn material leaves on to her rollneck jumper.

  ‘OK,’I nod. And it doesn’t hurt. Helping Auriol – therefore Lucy – doesn’t hurt. In fact, it feels OK. I hand him back his designer handkerchief.

  ‘Keep it,’he says.

  At least until I wash it, is what he means. I smile to myself. Peter could always be a bit overly fussy. This doesn’t hurt me; it amuses me. And I think it’s a bit of a relief that I’m no longer caught up in a world where BHS handkerchiefs were considered below par. Frankly, there were times when Peter’s snobbery was a little irritating.

  He brushes his hair out of his eyes. It’s a familiar gesture. I’m fond of him. I’m mildly irritated by him and fond of him in the same breath. I am not furious with him and I don’t love him. I feel the chains of resentment that I’ve hampered myself with fall from my ankles and arms. I feel weightless.

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’he asks.

  ‘I was just wondering if it was OK with you for me to take the boys up to north London for Christmas day. Daisy wants to be hostess this year.’

  ‘Wow, quite a break with tradition for you guys. I know you love Christmas day at your house.’

  ‘Yes, but Daisy really wants this. I think she’s sick of feeling like the baby and wants to show Mum and Dad that she can cook a great lunch too. Change can be a good thing.’

  ‘Well, I’ve no problem with the boys going there. They’ll have a great day.’

  ‘You could stop by in the afternoon if you like, to see them.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. Daisy won’t like Lucy in her house.’

  ‘I’d make sure Daisy is polite.’He looks unconvinced.

  ‘I’d make sure Lucy got a warm welcome, as opposed to the one she deserves,’I add with a giggle.

  Peter smiles and appreciates my joke. ‘We’ll think about it. Thanks.’

  ‘I think it’s time we all moved on,’I say. This time there’s not a hint of a giggle in my voice. I’m deadly serious.

  ‘That’s great to hear, Rose.’

  ‘The past is a foreign country; the future seems more like home.’

  ‘Have you been on the mulled wine?’

  Peter is very English and always struggled with my amateur philosophizing. That’s why I didn’t do too much thinking for a long time. But he smiles at me and I see enough respect and warmth for me not to feel silly.

  ‘Well, you’d better be getting back to Lucy, she’ll be wondering where you are.’

  At that second Lucy appears in the corridor.

  ‘Hello, darling, we’re just making plans for Christmas day,’says Peter, casually putting his arm around her shoulder. He kisses her cheek. I check. Do I feel anything? No resentment. No pain. No, nothing at all. ‘Rose invited us to join them at Daisy’s for an hour in the afternoon.’

  Lucy eyes me nervously. ‘That’s nice,’she mutters.

  ‘We’re just talking about some things being in the past and all the better for that,’I say to her.

  We share a moment. We exchange the glance of conspirators and I think she understands that she has my silence, which is why it’s somewhat peculiar that she turns to Peter and says, ‘Sweetheart, have you got time to come home for lunch, rather than go back to the office, there’s something important I need to tell you. We need to talk.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’I mutter and I walk back to the hall, anticipating a mince pie and a well-earned glass of mulled wine.

  I have no idea whether Lucy and Peter will go home and have a heart to heart or whether she will bottle and go home for frantic, diverting sex instead. The important thing is, I don’t mind. It’s none of my business. I imagine they’ll be OK. And not just because I think they are the type to always be OK, but because I think they are meant for one another and I think they know that too. And love is quite extraordinary in its capacity to forgive. As Sebastian and Henry would say, whatever.

  I have more important things to do. First I have to call Daisy and tell her that we’re all coming to hers for Christmas lunch and then I have to hunt out my future.

  Epilogue

  Tuesday 12 December

  Craig

  Rose is holding out my handkerchief. She looks apprehensive but excited. She’s shiny. I don’t mean her cheeks and forehead, although they are shiny (for once it is hot in the school hall and the place is heaving with frantic parents), I mean her eyes are shiny. I think Rose has many attributes, both physical and mental. I love her kindness, her laugh and her red hair but her eyes are possibly my favourite. Her eyes are so beautiful. They are clever, glittering and mischievous. It’s easy to miss the mischievousness because Rose wants everyone to believe she’s so eminently sensible. But I’m not fooled. I know she once enjoyed karaoke.

  I take the handkerchief off her and push it into my jacket pocket.

  She’s apologetic. ‘Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. Lipstick and snot, pretty hideous combination, but if you wash it on a hot wash, then –’

  ‘I might never wash it, Rose. I might keep it under my pillow.’She looks startled. ‘I’m just joking,’I add hastily.

  She smiles back, relieved. Rose and I have not spoken since Tom’s wedding. The last thing I said to her was that in six months’time we’d probably be picking out wallpaper together. My God, how I’ve agonized over that comment. I hadn’t meant to scare her off and sound stalker-ish. I just thought she needed to be reassured that I wasn’t a flighty, fly-by-night type. I wanted her to know that I thought we had a future or at least the possibility of one. For the last month I’ve spent my time reconsidering the entire date – at length – and in particular that remark. I reasoned that Rose must have thought I was mad and over-keen or, at the very least, a shallow, silly and glib man. But I wasn’t lying or even exaggerating. At the wedding I felt so close to Rose. I thought that there was genuine respect between us and the chat was amusing and interesting. I thought we were doing well. But then she vanished.

  For the last month I have wondered how best to sort out this mess. It’s terrible that she is so horribly embarrassed that she no longer dares show her face at school. It’s clear that she’s avoiding me, which is one better than reporting me to the Board of Governors for inappropriate behaviour I suppose, but I can barely take consolation from that. At least if she did report me I’d get the chance to put my side to her. I’d get the chance to tell her just how great I think she is and how much I’ve missed her in this last month. I hadn’t realized how far she’d crept under my skin.

  I noticed Rose long before John started his campaign to find me a woman. Since the boys started school I’ve been struck by her cheerful nature and her can-do attitude. I liked the way she mothered. She’s quite old-fashioned in her approach but not out of touch. Her boys clearly adore her. She’s popular with the other mums and the teachers too, because while she’s involved in every committee the school has set up, she manages to be discreet and helpful and not pushy or overbearing.

  It was at last summer’s sports day that I began to realize that my interest in Rose was not purely platonic. I found myself craning my neck, searching her out at every opportunity. I felt a genuine pinch of disappointment in my gut when she didn’t win the mothers’race and a genuine stir somewhere a little bit lower when she lay on the grass panting and laughing trying to recover from the exertion of the race.

  I found myself lingering at the school gate in the hope of exchanging a word or two with her. I was always thrilled to see her at the Parents’Association meetings, which I looked forward to much more than the nights trawling around pubs and bars with John.

  I am mortified that I’ve stepped over the mark at the wedding and ruined our friendship. I’ve spent the last month wishing I’d just let things be as they were. Being her friend forever would have been better than losing her altogether. But then she sat next to me at the nativity play and I began to wonder. To hope.r />
  Mrs Baker came to see me the moment the play was over. I accepted her beams and congratulations on the production along with those from all the other mothers.

  ‘Are you taking Rose to the Christmas dance on Friday?’she asked me.

  ‘Erm, well, no. I wasn’t planning on asking her,’I mumbled, totally mortified that Mrs Baker would address this subject so publicly.

  ‘Why not?’she demanded.

  ‘I don’t think Rose would like it,’I admitted.

  ‘Rose sometimes doesn’t know what’s good for her,’said Mrs Baker with a hint of impatience. ‘Our mutual friend, John, told me that she ditched you at the wedding. Is that right?’

  I felt the heat of my blush but managed to nod.

  ‘He said you were gutted. Is that right?’she demanded.

  Cheers, John, what a mate. Again I nodded.

  ‘Well, I can’t begin to explain why,’said Mrs Baker. ‘But I do know that you’re the only man she’s shown any interest in for six years. Faint heart never wins fair maid, and all that. I’d suggest you ask her out again.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, and not just because John and I are determined matchmakers.’She grinned at me.

  ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Baker, for bothering to talk to me about this. I’ll think about what you said.’

  ‘You do that.’And then she added, ‘Call me Connie.’

  Connie Baker might have it wrong. After all, how can I trust the judgement of a woman who was once crazy about John Harding? But she seemed genuine and there’s always the possibility that she might have it right.

  Might is a word and concept that is largely undervalued but I think might is a powerful word.

  Rose is staring at the ceiling. She’s probably trying to avoid my eye.