Secret Nanny Club

by Mackle, Marisa

  “Hello, I’m Karena.” A small, slight girl with jet-black frizzy hair, carrying a folder, gave me a tight smile. She was dressed in a green parka jacket, jeans and sneakers.

  “Hi,” I held out my hand and gave the girl my best firm handshake. “Did you find us okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, do come on in. I do hope it’s not going to rain. The clouds are a bit gloomy, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “They predicted sun but those weather forecasters always get it wrong, don’t they? No need to get out the sunshine lotion yet, haha.”I knew I was babbling and I should just shut up. “So, have a seat,” I said, showing her into the small sitting room which was so clean you could have eaten off the floor. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Or tea? I have all kinds of herbal teas. Or perhaps you’d just like plain old Barry’s tea with milk?”

  I was greeted by a blank face. I sat down in the chair opposite her and crossed my

  legs. “So, do you love kids?”

  “Yes.” Her facial expression belied any sense of emotion. She had barely glanced at John since she’d entered the room.

  “And do you have any experience with small babies?”

  “No.”

  I was struggling now. I really was baffled. Why was she here? Seriously, what was she doing in my sitting room, staring at me like I was some kind of alien and making me feel uncomfortable in my own home? It didn’t take a genius to work out that this wasn’t the start

  of a beautiful, healthy relationship. I wanted to show her the door immediately but found myself glued to the chair.

  “So,” I tried again with a smile, hoping to get some reaction, “are you enjoying Ireland?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How long have you been here in Ireland?”

  “Just one week.”

  I relaxed a tiny bit. A-ha! If she was only here a week she probably had very little English. It wasn’t fair for me to be so judgemental. It must be scary to come halfway across the world to another country, looking for a job with a strange family. And besides, maybe she was shy as well.

  “That’s not very long,” I said gently. “It takes a while to get used to new cultures and traditions. So, have you any questions for me?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited patiently, expecting her to ask me about what exactly I would need her to do or about her time off. Instead she looked me straight in the eye and said, “How much you pay?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I keep forgetting I’m no longer pregnant. Yes, I know, how sad does that sound? But seriously, when I’m out for lunch and asked by the waiter if I fancy dessert, I still say I’d like to try everything on the menu. Then I suddenly check myself and order just two or three things instead. I’m getting there. A lot done, more to do, as they say. I really am trying but it’s just so hard to come to terms with the fact that I’m not eating for two anymore. I miss eating six doughnuts at a sitting or sinfully smothering my croissants in butter. I hanker after the days I could easily polish off a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, or a sack of coal. Ah, no, I’m joking.

  I always drew the line at coal, although I have heard that some pregnant women love it!

  My point about all of this is, a couple of years ago when I wasn’t pregnant and was a size eight, I attended the magazine’s annual summer party at the Grafton Lounge. I wore a chiffon pink-and-lime-green dress, which sounds hideous, but actually it was lovely. But fast

  forward and the summer party is next week. I’ve told them I can’t attend. I didn’t tell them the reason was because I can’t afford a baby-sitter and that nothing fits me now anyway. I’m probably more like a size fourteen this year which means that absolutely nothing fits. Oh God, why can’t I lose weight? If anyone has a miracle solution, suggestions on a postcard please. And don’t say I should try sit-ups or anything because life’s too short for that. Even Mum wiped me off the tennis court last week and after just one set I nearly collapsed with exhaustion. Blast you, Posh Spice, for making it look easy! You too, Julia Roberts! I hadn’t thought I was too bad really until I recently spotted a photo of mum-of-three, Julia Roberts,

  running on a beach in her bikini in one of the papers. It really put the pressure on. I mean, if she can do it, we should all be able to do it, right? Dammit!

  I interviewed all day without any luck. After Karena left, another girl arrived with her boyfriend. I didn’t think this was a good sign. She didn’t speak any English and her boyfriend was going to be her translator. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t accommodate a couple. The flat was tiny. I explained this to the boyfriend who then turned to his girlfriend to explain what I just said. The two of them looked so disappointed that I felt guilty for turning them away but what could I do? It would never work with a couple.

  Then two girls came at once. One said her name was Inga and the other girl was an Irish girl called Diane. I smiled at them both and thanked them for coming. I asked Inga if she wouldn’t mind waiting outside for about ten minutes while I interviewed Diane. Inga gave a great big sigh and looked at her watch. “I haven’t got all day, you know,” she said sullenly.

  I have to say I was a little shocked. “Right,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I do understand but you’re a little early for the interview. Please wait.”

  Then I took Diane into the kitchen. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. Diane had long thick dark hair which she wore in a plait. She was wearing a long wine-coloured maxi dress and a wraparound cardigan. She wore sandals on her feet and she had a brown satchel hung over her shoulder. She was polite but didn’t smile.

  “What hours would I be expected to work?” she asked outright.

  “Well, I work two and a half days a week so I’d like you to work those days at the very least but ideally I’d like you to work every day with Saturday and Sunday off.”

  “Right. What do you do? I mean, what do you work at?”

  I gulped. Just who was supposed to be interviewing whom?

  “I work as a fashion stylist for a magazine.”

  “Oh, very nice.”

  Funny, that’s mostly the reaction I get from everyone when I say what I do for a living. If only they knew the reality!

  “It’s okay,” I said, “but it’s really not as glamorous as it sounds.”

  “But it’s better than minding babies, right? I mean, cleaning poop and wiping away vomit isn’t glamorous either or well-paid, but hey, we all need to earn a crust somehow!”

  To say I was stunned by her answer was an absolute understatement.

  “Don’t you like child minding?” I asked.

  “Oh, I do,” said Diane. “It could be worse, I suppose, but like, nobody grows up thinking they’d like to be a child minder when they’re older, do they? But with the tough economic times we’re in now, you’ll take whatever you can take, hey?”

  I was appalled. Did she really think I’d entrust with my son with somebody who was minding him because there was nothing else to do? My God!

  “So are you looking around at other jobs?” I asked, although in hindsight I should have wrapped up the interview immediately rather than prolong the pain.

  Diane shrugged. “I guess. The right job hasn’t come up yet so child minding will have to do until it does. Anything to pay the bills, you know? Is there much money in styling? How would I get a job as a stylist? I don’t suppose you could give me a list of contacts, could you?”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “There aren’t many jobs in styling right now,” I said truthfully. “In a recession, styling jobs are usually thin on the ground and the pay is awful.”

  “That’s a bummer. If the pay is bad I wouldn’t be interested.” She paused for a moment as though deep in thought. And then she started up again, “Hey, not meaning to be rude or anything, but if stylists don’t make much money are you sure you can afford me?”

  I heaved a huge sigh of relief
when Diane finally left.

  “Will I call you?” she asked at the door.

  “Eh . . . I’ll call you,” I said. “And if you don’t hear from me, then you’ll know somebody else has filled the post.”

  “Fair enough,” she said as if she didn’t really give a damn either way.

  I looked around to introduce myself to the other girl, Inga, whom I’d asked to wait outside. She was gone. Oh, well, good riddance. Jesus, what a day!

  I was pissed off with myself and with the world in general. To think that I had wasted the whole day and found absolutely nobody! I couldn’t understand it. Why did nobody suitable want to work for me? Wasn’t there supposed to be a recession on? Weren’t people glad to look after a child in return for board, keep and pocket money and lots of free time?

  It wasn’t like I had five brats all running around making lots of noise or I lived in the middle of the country, miles and miles from anywhere. I basically lived five minutes from the train station and the sea, and I had one very good little boy to look after. Unlike in some homes, I didn’t have a sleazy partner who might be coming on to the au pair when he came home from work, nor would I be forcing anybody to be doing heavy-duty chores. But nobody I had seen had fitted the bill and I needed to find somebody fast. Still, there was no point giving up hope just yet. I’d just have to renew my ad again in the morning.

  The following evening I had another fifty or so eager sounding applicants waiting for me in my inbox. It took me ages to sift through them all. Over half of the applicants were Brazilian girls. I’d heard Brazilians were lovely, kind and warm people but they also had a reputation for being party animals. I didn’t know if I needed a total rave-loving party animal minding John. If she was going out all night, how would she be able to stay awake during the day? Somebody else had told me that Filipinas were ideal because, not only were they sweet and good-tempered, but they weren’t afraid of hard work. Yvonne from my weekly book club had told me how her wonderful Filipina woman even used to darn her socks until she stopped her, as well as doing all the ironing, cleaning and child minding.

  “Wow!” I retorted. “She sounds amazing.”

  “I know! She flies around the house, tidying everything away, scrubs the place spotlessly clean, gets the baby up, dressed and fed – and that’s all before she brings me

  breakfast in bed every morning.”

  I admit I was jealous. Dangerously so. It even crossed my mind that I should kidnap this Wonder Woman and keep her in my house. Or failing that, maybe I could bribe her to come and work for me by offering her a higher wage than Yvonne paid her?

  “She sounds too good to be true,” I sighed. “I want to marry her. Has she any shortcomings at all?”

  Yvonne frowned as though she were racking her brains. “Not as far as I’m aware. She’s always smiling unlike the last lady we had from East Berlin who never smiled. She didn’t have much of a sense of humour. But then again I think she may have had a hard life living behind the Iron Curtain so maybe she wasn’t used to smiling. But our new Filipina girl is just wonderful. She even runs me hot bubble baths in the afternoon so I can relax for a while.”

  I found myself fantasising about long leisurely midday baths with scented candles and trashy magazines. To hell with the sense of humour – if I wanted to laugh I could always hire a funny DVD. I didn’t want someone funny but I did want someone kind.

  Yvonne promised she’d ask her au pair whether she had a twin. Or failing that, any relation at all. “I pity you though,” she said after we had all analysed A Thousand Splendid Sunsover a glass or two or three of wine. “Before we got our East Berliner who never smiled we had a lassie from South America who would put odd socks on our children, regularly forget to comb their hair, and leave her own dirty dishes in the sink for us to clean up after her. One day she even forgot to collect the kids from school. Total nightmare!”

  “Our girl was from Scandinavia and used to walk around in her underwear,” another lady from the book club, Heather, said with a disgruntled sniff. “I swear she did it on purpose just to tease Jimmy.”

  I said nothing. I’ve met Jimmy a couple of times and he is no oil painting. I mean, I’m sure he’s very nice and everything but he’s bald, bespectacled and pudgy. Why on earth would a young Scandinavian set her sights on him? I didn’t believe it for a minute. Honestly, some women can be far too paranoid when it comes to their other halves.

  Then some of the other women joined in our discussion on childminders and the stories became more hair-raising as more wine was consumed. I heard about one girl who left her vibrator in the family bath and another girl who regularly shaved her legs with the daddy’s good razors and destroyed them. I heard about the girl who was so hungover she threw up in the kiddies’ paddling pool, and another who set the kitchen cooker on fire while trying to light a cigarette from one of the rings.

  And worse was to come. I was told about a girl who left used sanitary towels on the bathroom floor, the girl who ‘borrowed’ condoms from her employer’s wardrobe before nights out, and another girl who watched X-rated movies on the family DVD player while the parents were out. By the time I finally arrived home to relieve my mother of the evening’s baby-sitting duties, I had convinced myself to be a stay-at-home mum. How could I possibly ever go back to full-time work and leave my pride and joy at home at the mercy of some crazy au pair?

  Being a mum is tough. I don’t care if you’re single or happily married with a wonderfully devoted husband who puts you on a pedestal and helps out with daddy duties, it is not easy for any of us. That’s why I hate mums who are just unbelievably competitive. I mean, come on, it’s not a race!

  “My son is almost walking,” said a smug-looking platinum-blonde mummy in the park the other day. Her little cherub, dressed head to toe in Ralph Lauren, was roughly the same age as mine. “What about yours?”

  I looked down at John in his little pram playing peacefully with his teddy, and I then looked back up at the woman with a sort of half-smile on my face. “Almost walking? My baby’s practically running marathons!”

  She laughed.

  I laughed back, a kind of hysterical high-pitched squeal. “Oh, and he’s already throwing the javelin,” I boasted. “Like, hello?”

  Actually no, I didn’t say anything that obnoxious Instead I just smiled through gritted teeth and merely congratulated the woman on her wonderful child. I also neglected to mention to her that my child wasn’t even crawling. Let her think she was the world’s best mummy if she wanted to. Mind you, I don’t know why John isn’t crawling yet. Maybe he just can’t be bothered. I leave him on the floor and he chooses just to stay in the same position.

  Anyway, it’s not a flipping race, you know. I feel like telling this to all the competitive mums out there. Haven’t they anything else to be doing other than making out their children are more advanced than other peoples’ kids? I wish I’d all the time in the world to get John walking and singing, tying his own shoelaces and shouting ‘Mummy, I love you’ from

  the rooftops. But I’m a busy woman trying to get back to work and trying to find an au-pair to help me, so my baby son will just have to develop in his own good time. Look, we all get old way too fast so why should I be pushing my child to get ahead and grow up before he’s

  good and ready? I’m already dreading the day he doesn’t want a kiss from me because he finds it too embarrassing. Apparently it’s heart-breaking the first time they push you away and say, ‘Mummy, stop!’ I’m really enjoying the fact that now I can place a big smacker on his cheek whenever I feel like it and he has no choice in the matter because he is firmly strapped to his highchair with no chance of escape.

  I’ll let you in on a little guilty secret. At the moment I’m trying like mad to train him to say ‘Mama’ before he says ‘Dada’. If his first word is ‘Dada’ I’ll see it as the ultimate betrayal. At the moment all he can say is ‘Wub’ which isn’t a word I’ve ever heard of and I don’t think it

 
; means anything but he says it a lot for some reason. Maybe it’s a slang word in Babyland. I, on the other hand, only ever say one word back, and that’s ‘Mama’. I say it at least a hundred times a day and point to myself in the hope that somehow I am managing to brainwash him. If he says ‘Mama’ first I’ll be the happiest parent alive and also I really think I deserve that credit after all I do for him.

  You could go mad urging your children to grow up quickly, but it’s best not to panic if there are delays en route. Here’s an interesting fact: Einstein didn’t start to speak until he was four. That gives me hope for John. Maybe he’ll be a genius and people will say, “Is that your son, the famous inventor?”

  Anyway, I’m digressing here, so back to the au pair search. At long last I’m finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, albeit a dim one. After viewing countless more CVs online where the child minding hopefuls could neither spell nor make any sense, I opened up an email attachment containing a very well-written, concise CV from an Irish girl. Her name was Bernadette (very sensible name, don’t you think?), she lived near Limerick and she was twenty-four years of age. According to her resume she’d had a couple of years of experience minding children, had worked in a nursing home as an aide and was now doing a Montessori course at night. When I read her CV I nearly cried with joy. This girl sounded like a real gem!

  And she was one-hundred-per-cent Irish so she would understand perfectly when I asked her to pick up Barry’s Tea or Heinz Baked Beans or Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or Tayto’s Cheese and Onion crisps in the supermarket. She certainly seemed to have a lot going for her. I mean, she was obviously caring (named after a saint and all that!), she had tons of experience, was studying at night (which meant she wouldn’t want to be joining me on the sofa watching TV around the clock) and she was even first aid trained. Was this my dream woman? I wanted her to move in yesterday!