“I’m here,” I said.
The door opened a few seconds later. Mark was in sexy work mode: suit trousers, shirt a little undone, sleeves rolled up and the familiar watch on his wrist.
“Come in,” he said. I followed him into the kitchen. It was exactly the same: spotless, streamlined cabinets where you couldn’t tell which was the dishwasher, which was the cereal cupboard and which was the pig bin.
“So!” said Mark, stiffly. “How’s life treating you? Work good?”
“Yes. How’s yours? Work, I mean.”
“Oh good, well, shit actually.” He gave that conspiratorial half smile I so loved.
“Trying and failing to extract Hanza Farzad from the clutches of the king of Kutar.”
“Ah.”
I gazed out at the garden and trees, the leaves beginning to turn, mind racing. I mean my mind, not the trees’ minds. Trees do not have minds: unless you’re the mind of Prince Charles, or perhaps in Daniel Cleaver’s novel. Our whole future rested on these next few babies, I mean moments. I started to rerehearse what I was going to say. It had to be subtle, slowly built up to.
“All caught up with international trade, of course,” Mark was going on. “Always the problem with the Middle East: endless layers of subterfuge, deceit, conflicted interest…”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
There was a pause. “The garden looks lovely,” I eventually said.
“Thank you. Of course, it’s a devil to keep up with the leaves.”
“Yes it must be.”
“Yes.”
“Yup.”
“Mark?”
“Yes, Bridget?”
Oh God, oh God. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to savour these last few moments when everything seemed like it used to be.
“Is that a conker tree?”
“Yes. It is a conker tree and that one’s a magnolia and…”
“Oh, and what is that one?”
“Bridget!”
“I’m pregnant.”
Mark’s face was a mess of emotions.
“How much, how long, pregnant?”
“Sixteen weeks.”
“The christening?”
“Do you want to feel my bump?”
“Yes.” He put his hand on it briefly, then said, “Excuse me.”
He left the room. I could hear him going upstairs. What was he going to do? Come down with lawsuit papers?
The door burst open.
“This is the single most wonderful piece of information I have ever been given in my entire life.”
He came over and took me in his arms, and the familiar scent of him, the reassuring feel of him, washed over me.
“It’s…I feel almost as if clouds are dispersing.”
He held me away from him, looking at me with tenderness in his brown eyes.
“When one’s own childhood has been…when one has somehow…I never found it possible to believe that love could translate into a home life. That one could create a home we could bring a child into, that was somehow different”—he looked like a small boy—“different from one’s own.”
I hugged him, this time, and stroked his hair.
“And now,” he said, coming out of the embrace, with that rare smile he has, “in a moment of…unadulterated passion, the decision has been made for us. And I’m the happiest man alive.”
There was a knock on the door and Fatima, Mark’s longtime housekeeper, appeared: “Oh!” she beamed. “Mees Jones! You back? Mr. Darcy, your car is here.”
“Oh my goodness. I completely forgot. I have a Law Society dinner…”
“No, Mark, it’s fine, you already said you had a dinner.”
“But my car can…we can drop you off.”
“I’ve got my new car, that’s fine.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll meet tomorrow night?”
“Yes.”
—
7 p.m. My flat. This is unbearable. I’m pregnant, and Mark wants the baby and if I hadn’t slept with Daniel as well this would be a complete fairy tale and we would all be so happy but…Oh God. Mark and I did occasionally take chances, so maybe sleeping with Daniel is why I’m pregnant.
Bloody dolphin condoms. But then I wouldn’t have been having the baby, if I hadn’t tried to save the dolphins from swallowing undissolved condoms. So actually I should be grateful to the condoms, if only the already-dolphin-friendly baby could tell me who’s dolphin-friendly baby she is.
It’s all my fault. But Daniel is so funny and charming. It’s like they’re two halves of the perfect man, who’ll spend the rest of their lives each wanting to outdo the other one. And now it’s all enacting itself in my stomach.
7.15 p.m. Toilet really is wonderful invention. Is just amazing to have such an item in one’s home, which can so calmly, cleanly and efficiently take all the sick away. Love the lovely toilet. Is cool and solid, calm and dependable. Is fine just to lie here and keep it handy. Maybe it is not Mark I really love but the toilet. Oh, goody, telephone! Maybe Mark asking how I am! Maybe I will just tell him the whole story and he’ll forgive me.
8 p.m. Was Tom: “Bridget, am I a horrible person?”
“Tom! No! You’re a lovely person!”
Source of Horrible Person neurosis was that Tom had seen an “acquaintance” (i.e., guy he shagged once), Jesus, at the front of the gym snack bar queue, gone up to say hi, and then asked Jesus to order him a wheatgrass smoothie.
“The thing is,” Tom obsessed, “the thought of queue-jumping had—I think—crossed my mind before I decided to say hello to Jesus. So I’m one of those people who coldly, cynically, tries to make things better for themselves at the expense of others: like avoiding buying a round in the pub by going to the toilet.”
“But the key issue you’re missing, Tom,” I said—happy to escape from my own fucked-up situation for a moment, whilst simultaneously feeling a nagging certainty that sooner or later Tom was going to remember about my fucked-up situation then decide he was a horrible person anyway for forgetting to ask about it—“is that, actually, saying hello to a friend is a nice thing, and joining Jesus for a gym-time beverage is much more friendly than just abandoning him and going to the back of the queue.”
“But then I did abandon Jesus and went and drank the wheatgrass smoothie with Eduardo because he’s hotter. You see, I am a horrible person, aren’t I?”
Mind was busily trying to turn the minuscule social gay gaffe into a random act of kindness, but then Tom crashed in with: “OK. I get it. I am a horrible person. Goodbye.”
The phone rang again.
“Oh, hello, darling, I was just ringing to see what you wanted for Christmas?”—my mother. Flirted briefly with throwing the cat amongst the pigeons by asking for a Bugaboo stroller, but knew she had really called to talk about something else. “Bridget, will you come to the Queen’s visit rehearsal on the twenty-eighth? Mavis is making a huge thing about family values and, as well as making constant little digs about me not having grandchildren, she’s trying to make out that I haven’t done as much for the village as her over the years, but I have, darling, haven’t I?”
“Of course you have, Mum. Think of all the food! The gherkins!” I encouraged, starting to gag. “The scotch eggs! The raspberry pavlovas!”
“Yes! The Salmon à la King! All those salmons!”
Gaah! “You’ve been a bastion of village life, Mum,” I said. “You go sock it to that Mavis!”
(“Sock it to”? Where did that come from?)
“Thank you, darling. Ooh, must whizz! I’ve left gammon and pineapple in.”
Was just recovering from the latest vomit, embracing the beloved toilet, when the phone rang again.
Was Tom: “I forgot to ask you how it went with Mark. You see? Horrible person. Don’t deserve to talk to you. Goodbye.”
Looked confusedly at the phone for a minute, then, thinking about the baby, decided to microwave a cheesy potato.
—
&nb
sp; 9 p.m. There you go, little sweetheart: cheesy potato.
We have to tell the truth, don’t we? That’s one of the things we’re always going to do. Even if it means being very, very brave. Even if we really don’t want to.
MONDAY 16 OCTOBER
Mark’s whole house was turned into a baby-welcoming committee, with flowers, baby supplies and a banner across the kitchen saying CONGRATULATIONS BRIDGET.
Fatima was bustling about, beaming. She hugged me and then left the room with her usual discretion.
“You mustn’t carry anything,” said Mark, taking my handbag. “Sit here and put your feet up.”
He sat me on a bar stool at the kitchen counter and tried to lift my feet up onto another bar stool. We both laughed.
“Look what I brought down from the attic for him. I used to love this. Look!”
An old Scalextric car set was laid out in the—I supposed you could now call it—family room, where the comfy sofas and chairs were.
I was laughing and fighting back tears: “She might not be ready for that STRAIGHTaway, but…”
Mark bounded over to the fridge. “Look what I’ve got in here!”
There were two packs of Huggies diapers.
“I thought that was where you were supposed to keep them: so they’re nice and cool on the little bottom. No? I’m practicing. You’ll move in here, of course? The three of us? It’s as if we’ve been given a second chance! A second chance at life!”
My dad’s words were repeating themselves in my ear. “You never go too far wrong by just telling the truth.”
“Mark.”
He stopped in his tracks at my tone.
“What? Bridget, what’s wrong? The baby? Is there something wrong?”
“No, no. The baby’s fine.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“It’s just…there is one tiny complication.”
“Right, right. We can deal with anything. What is it?”
“It’s just, I was so upset after the christening when you said you didn’t want to get back together and use up any more of my fertile years…”
“I’m so very sorry. Believe me, I’ve been wretched about it, and torn as to whether I should contact you. I allowed myself to be swayed by Jeremy. He caught me in the hallway of the hotel, when I went out for breakfast, and said it was very wrong of me to be messing around with you at this point in your life unless I was absolutely certain that I could be constant and be a husband to you. At that point, so raw from the divorce, I didn’t feel that, morally, responsibly, I should…”
I closed my eyes. Why couldn’t I learn not to be so insecure, not to flee at the first hint of rejection? To understand that there might be more to it than me being too old or too fat or silly?
“I felt inadequate,” he said, “unequal to the task, but now…”
“It’s just I was so hurt.”
“I am so very sorry, Bridget.”
“I just felt so old, you see, that I…”
“But no, I felt so old. What did you do?”
“Is that an elm tree?”
“Bridget.”
“I slept with Daniel Cleaver.”
“The same DAY?”
“No, no: a few days later. I felt as if my sexual days were over, and he was saying I looked so young he didn’t know whether to marry me or adopt me, and the friends were saying ‘Get back on that horse’ and…”
“You used protection with, with…both parties?”
Mark was opening and closing the stainless-steel cabinets.
“Yes, but they were…eco-condoms. It turned out they were past their sell-by date and they dissolve because of the dolphins.”
He opened another immaculate stainless-steel door and a huge pile of mess fell out—papers, photographs, old shirts, pencils, leaflets. He tried to stuff it all back in. He shut the door on it firmly. I saw his shoulders stiffen and he turned back to me.
“Yes, no, I can quite see how all that would happen. There’s no necessity to explain.”
He opened another cupboard, found a bottle of Scotch and started pouring himself a glass.
“Can you find out? I mean technically the paternity, who the…the…father is?” he said, gulping down the Scotch.
“Not without risking the baby.”
“But surely…”
“I know. But I’m not going to risk it. Giant needle thing. Horrible.”
He started pacing, in his agitated way: “Right, right, of course. I see now. That would explain why, when we did take the occasional chance…”
Then he turned to me: composed, steely.
“I expect you’ll be wanting to get an early night.”
“Mark. Don’t. She could be our baby. There’s a fifty per cent chance, at least.”
“It’s kind of you to say.”
“It just takes a moment, an impulse, one bad decision.”
“Yes, I know. I see it every day of my professional life: tragic. Life turns on a sixpence. But I don’t want that in my personal life, I’m afraid.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s life. One must play with the cards one is dealt. Jolly good.”
There was nothing to be done with him in this state. He walked me in silence back to the car and I cried all the way home.
SEVEN
FUCKWITTAGE
WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER
8 p.m. My flat. “That’s it, I’m an idiot. It’s all my fault. He’ll never forgive me.”
“Er, excuse me. He did have something to do with this,” said Miranda.
“He fucking slept with you then brutally fucking dumped you,” yelled Shaz.
“He didn’t have to be so mean.”
“Darling, you know Mark’s psychopathology,” mused Tom. “He’s avoidant. He emotionally flees at the first hint of pain. He’ll come round.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Look at the engagement party. I just can’t believe I was such an…”
A text pinged up on my phone.
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
(I had recently made some changes in my address book.)
Everyone jumped in startlement and peered at the phone as if it contained a message from an Egyptian god released by the morning sun shining through a tiny hole in a pyramid onto an amulet.
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
Jones, sorry about the phone cutting out the other day. Could I possibly come over?
Then another.
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
I shall, of course, be wearing Wellington boots and a full-body plastic cagoule.
“DON’T SEE HIM,” ordered Miranda bossily. “ ’Ere have we run out of wine?”
“I can’t just not see him; he might be the father of my…”
“You should see him,” said Tom thoughtfully.
“Bus DON’TS sleeps wi’ him.”
“She’s goner get pregnant again.”
“Wis triplets,” slurred Shaz.
“SPECKLED triplets,” growled Miranda.
THURSDAY 19 OCTOBER
7 p.m. My flat. Daniel appeared at the top of the stairs holding a stylish bunch of flowers wrapped in edgy brown paper and tied with straw.
“Now, Jones, you are not to worry. I’m going to take care of everything.”
“You are?” I said suspiciously, letting him in.
“Of course, Jones. May not have been perfect in the past, but when the chips are down: perfect gentleman.”
“OK,” I said, brightening, as he flung himself down on the sofa in his immaculate suit.
“Christ, Jones, is this chocolate?” he said, pulling out something he’d just sat on.
“Sorry about that.”
“So, as I say, just tell me where to meet you and I’ll come along and support and pay for the whole thing.”
“WHAT?”
“You’re not going to keep it, are you? Christ, Jones, sorry. I just assumed in this situation…”
“OK, that’s
it! Out!” I said, pushing him towards the door. “Oh, actually, there’s one more thing, Daniel. The baby might not be yours.”
“I’m sorry?”
“She might not be yours. She might be Mark Darcy’s.”
Daniel took a moment to digest this, then, with a flicker in his eye, said, “Who was first, him or me?”
“Daniel! This actually is more important than you winning your centuries-old public school row with Mark Darcy.”
“Jones, Jones, Jones. I’m sorry. You’re right.” He came back into the flat, sighed dramatically, then made a show of composing himself.
“I want to do this: be there for you, new man, come to the scan, whatever.”
“You are so never going to turn up to a scan.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I AM.”
“You so aren’t. You’ll have a date with some eighteen-year-old lingerie model and flake on me.”
“I am going to come to the scan.”
“So don’t believe you.”
“I bloody well am. I’m coming to the scan of my child and you can’t stop me. Right, Jones, I have to go. I’ve got a…got a…”
“Date?”
“No, no, no: publishing meeting. Text me when and where and I’ll be there with a gown and rubber gloves.”
—
8.10 p.m. Sat down, staring crazily into space with one eye closed and the other open. Was this just about rivalry with Mark Darcy, or did Daniel actually want to be a father?
Thought back to when I was dating (i.e., being permanently messed around by) Daniel and when my old friend Jude (now a hotshot banker in New York) was being messed around by Vile Richard, and Shazzer started ranting about “Emotional Fuckwittage,” which, she claimed, was spreading like wildfire amongst men in their thirties.
8.20 p.m. Just looked back at my diary of Shazzer’s rant:
As women glide from their twenties to thirties, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half eaten by an Alsatian. And men like Richard play on the chink in the armour to wriggle out of commitment, maturity, honour and the natural progression of things between a man and a woman.
Bridget Jones's Baby Page 5
