by Fiona Gibson
Praise for
“Babyface is enthralling. Gibson’s original voice,
which is at once comic and accurate,
exactly captures the lofty and
lowly moments of being a new mum.”
—Adele Parks, author of Larger Than Life
“A bittersweet take on bringing up baby
in modern times and a great first book.”
—Heat
“A winsome debut about first-time motherhood.”
—Observer
“Gibson provides a running commentary
of observations on the curve-balls life throws you
when you’re dealing with a fresh first-born.”
—Sunday Herald
Fiona Gibson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For support and tireless egging on, huge thanks
to Jenny Tucker, Kath Brown, Sue Wheeler,
Marie O’Riordan, Michelle Dickson, Jane Parbury,
Fliss Terrill, Nick and Helen Fisher, Cathy Gilligan,
Ellie Stott, Gavin Convery, Wendy Rigg.
The brilliant Dolphinton writers—Pam Taylor,
Vicki Feaver, Amanda McLean, Elizabeth Dobie and
Tania Cheston—for suggestions and enduring rants.
Jane Wright at the Sunday Herald for morale
boosting. Cheryl and Stephen for long-ago Burgundy
frolics. My brilliant agents, Annette Green, for
putting the book thing in my head in the first place,
and Laura Langlie. All at Red Dress Ink, especially
Farrin Jacobs. Margery Taylor and Keith Gibson for
unfailing encouragement. Sam, Dex and Erin for
sweet inspiration. Jimmy for keeping sanity mostly
intact. My writing lifesaver, Wendy Varley, for
constant support, ideas and hawk-eyed glitch
spotting, beamed from the Isle of Wight to my Inbox
from the start to the finish of this book.
For Jimmy
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
1
Birth
Something has broken into our bedroom. It zaps past my ear and lands on Jonathan’s cheek.
Pain sneaks in, swelling, clenching my middle. “It’s started,” I tell him.
He twitches, and the bluebottle buzzes away. “Are you sure?”
“Think so. It goes away and then—” I grope for something to cling on to and find his hand.
“I’ll phone the hospital. Keep breathing.”
Jonathan has assembled the flat-pack crib at the foot of our bed. A Winnie the Pooh mobile arches over the space where a baby will sleep. Soft toys—a penguin, a bear and an otter—nestle at the head end. My hospital bag contains Bach Rescue Remedy to aid relaxation, plus button-front nighties for easy access to breasts.
It’s not a big thing, having a baby. People do it all the time. In the moment it takes you to squeeze out a tea bag so it doesn’t drip on your way to the pedal bin, five miniature people will have emerged into the world.
Jonathan reappears in the bedroom. He extracts balled-up socks from the top drawer and his favorite baby blue sweater—the one he handwashes himself in case I make it go felty—from the one beneath it. “Put on something warm,” he instructs, easing me into a fleece that has been so stretched by my stomach it appears to be forty-one weeks pregnant, even when no one is wearing it.
He guides me out of the front door, a hand resting gently against my back. His cheeks are flecked with red blotches. He has that kind of skin; the sort that mottles easily, especially when he’s stressed. The postman hovers on the path. “She’s having a baby,” says Jonathan, as if he needs to explain things. The postman has a round potato face and a waterproof jacket which rustles. In an attempt to remove himself from our property, he teeters backward, bouncing gently against the hedge. Perhaps he fears that the head will emerge and he’ll be obliged to assist, seeing as delivering stuff is his job.
Jonathan lowers me onto the car’s back seat. I have looked forward to this journey, imagined it over and over: swerving past slow-moving vehicles and juddering to a halt beside a rectangle of battered grass where, with some vigorous panting, I will plop out the infant onto Jonathan’s tartan travel rug. Men will run out of the barbers, haircuts half finished, clapping and cheering like there’s a fight going on, and I’ll think: “All this attention. It’s not so bad, being a mother.” Jonathan will wrap the three of us in the rug and a photographer will arrive from the Hackney Gazette. “I didn’t do anything much,” Jonathan will say. “Nina managed it all by herself. A natural mother.”
Jonathan will, of course, know what to do. One lunchtime he bought Babycare: Your Essential Guide to the First 12 Months by the softly permed Dr. Hilary Dent. I read a chapter each night while marinating in sweet almond oil in the bath. “We need to bone up,” Jonathan said, pleased to see me taking the whole business seriously. I studied pastel drawings of baby at breast, baby having its hair washed (“important to remove city dust and dried food, though unlikely to be your infant’s favorite activity”). But still I know nothing. I have never held anyone younger than myself. One time, when my magazine’s Art Editor came into the office to show off her new baby, I made sure I was busy with phone calls and an urgent feature shimmering on my screen. Wendy appeared at my desk with knackered eyelids and a hopeful smile. “Would you like a hold?” she asked.
I forced myself round to face her, feigning surprise. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I’m bunged up with a cold. Don’t want to breathe my germs all over him.” I even shut down the back of my throat so I’d sound really ill.
“It’s a her,” she said. Wendy’s smile congealed and she backed away to find people who were good at admiring babies. She knew I was lying. That wobbly newborn neck: I didn’t want any part of it. Not when the child appeared so fragile that holding it wrongly might cause its head to snap off.
And now, as we park in a space meant for hospital staff only, I can’t get over the neck bit: a person, independent of me, with a wobbling head of its own. The cot is assembled but I’m not ready, not really. Another month—extra time, like in football—and maybe I’ll get there. At least, when the baby takes a breather from booting my innards, I can pretend it’s not really happening at all.
“Good girl, good girl,” he says, passing me a clear plastic mask for a breath of gas-and-air. Do-the-right-thing Jonathan. Apologize-when-the-condom-splits Jonathan. His fine sandy hair clings to a wet forehead. The lambs-wool sweater is discarded. His gray T-shirt has dark splodges under each arm and a mysterious brown splatter on the front. And I am no longer bracing myself for contractions but sensing an enormous shifting downward that no one can stop, no matter how hard I scream that I have changed my mind and want to go home to my flat where I live alone, fry all my food and wake up in tepid bathwater.
Finally I feel it, wedged for a second, then out and squealing. “It’s here,” says Jonathan, “the baby’s here. It’s a boy.”
Jonathan’s upper body is over mine, heavy and damp. He is replaced by the infant, who is deposited on my stomach, skinny-limbed, wrinkled as bacon.
“Look at him, Nina,” Jonathan says. I
can only stare upward at beige ceiling tiles with black speckles, like ants. When I do look, the child is regarding me with moist, swimmy eyes. A woman with coarse yellow hair delves between my legs.
And the voice comes, sharp and metallic above hospital clatter: “So, Nina, see what you’ve got yourself into this time?”
2
Early Days
I didn’t intend to have a baby. I didn’t even intend to live with someone. All I wanted was: fun-loving man for companionship.
I started again: female, thirty, likes classical music.
It wasn’t true, that last bit. I owned one classical CD—Duets from Famous Operas—purchased with a notion of throwing open my living-room window and filling the street with big men shouting. I planned to play it so loudly you’d hear it over the buses that revved and belched exhaust outside my flat. The man from the Asian grocers would run out of his shop and stare up, wondering what kind of dramatic and passionate creature might live on the second floor. Then I remembered I couldn’t stand opera and never bothered to remove the cellophane wrapper. I certainly did not wish to date a man who would force me to endure three hours of whining violins and discuss them afterward over dinner.
I wrote, “Attractive, lively female”—aware that I was marketing myself as an appealing spaniel puppy—“seeks loving, adventurous man for meals and maybe more.” I copied it neatly onto the form, reminding myself that I didn’t need to do this. A bit of fun, that’s all it was. I phoned Eliza to report that I had sent the ad and hadn’t been able to get the damn thing out of the postbox, no matter how hard I’d tried to jam in my arm.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “The junior in my department advertised herself, and she was really attractive.” Eliza was chomping her lunch. She was the wrong person to call. Our friendship resembles one of those cocktails incorporating five different spirits plus peach juice: you love it and want loads, even though it makes you feel bad. Sick, sometimes.
“So I’m not attractive?” I said.
“No, loads of men fancy you. I bet.” She swallowed loudly.
“Then why am I doing this?”
“It’s getting harder,” she struggled, “to meet men in normal ways.”
I wondered where I might hire heavy-duty metal-cutting equipment to slice through the postbox.
I expected a heap of replies to skid onto the cracked brown lino of my hall, from wise and dazzlingly attractive men who would find my savage nose interesting. It was the prospect of receiving letters to sort into three piles (yes, no, maybe) that had made small ads more appealing than the Internet. If notepaper was involved it wouldn’t feel sleazy, more like an avalanche of male penpals.
The letters came together in one flimsy brown envelope. There were four:
Laszlo, musician, with many body piercings.
Leo, whose startled, side-parted face peeped meekly into the bottom half of the photo booth.
Jerry, white-blond hair sprouting vertically from his head, naked on a brown velour sofa.
And Jonathan. A nondescript man, smiling hopefully as if waiting for you to open his present. Unthreatening eyes (possibly blue, more likely milky-gray). Someone who would hold a door open rather than let it bang in your face. He wrote: “You are probably looking for someone more outgoing and adventurous. But let me tell you a little about myself.” In careful, forward-sloping writing, he detailed his interests: cooking, gardening, interior décor. I examined the handwriting, scanning for hints of a murky secret life: a penchant for highly flammable camiknickers or at least a criminal record. No one was this ordinary once you’d peeled off a layer or two. But no matter how hard I stared, he smiled reassuringly like the presenter of a gardening program where they burst onto your property, dig up your flower beds and wear soft, ambivalent expressions to convince you that they’re doing the right thing.
“He works with computers,” I told Eliza, in a coffee shop done out to resemble a shabby living room. She pulled off her sandals and tucked her feet under her bottom on the cracked leather sofa. One knee was grazed, and looked sticky. Eliza is always damaging herself, probably because she forgets how long she is. Her size nine feet are perfectly formed for clanging into inanimate objects.
Smooth-faced waifs lolled on battered armchairs. A boy and a girl barely out of primary school leaned across a low Formica table, kissing wetly over a mound of shattered biscuits. Eliza held Jonathan between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m nervous,” I said, “about meeting a stranger. He could be anyone.”
She dabbed her graze with a paper serviette. “He’s just a regular bloke. Mr. Normal.”
“It might be a cover-up, the looking normal thing. Ordinary people do horrible stuff. Weirdos always look normal.”
She laughed, and crunched a brown sugar cube. “Meet him in a public place. A pub stuffed with millions of people, so there’s witnesses.” She jabbed his photo, leaving a sticky fingerprint. “He’s reliable,” she added, “I’d give him a go,” as if he were a Ford Fiesta.
There was scarier stuff I hadn’t told her. “He reads those poncy interiors magazines where no one has any CDs or a telly. Just a plain white vase on a mantelpiece.”
“Meet him. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“You don’t think he’s too ordinary?”
She squinted, trying to bring him into focus. “No,” she said. “Ordinary is good.”
I rehearse the call:
Hello, Jonathan? I’m the woman you wrote to. The one who can’t find a man in any normal kind of way. I don’t do this sort of thing, not usually. It’s not a habit of mine. But I travel a lot and don’t have time to meet new people. You know those dogeared magazines you find scattered on doctors’ waiting room tables, full of shocking real-life experiences? Well, I write those. I interview people with trusting eyes who feed me tongue sandwiches and stories. This involves jetting off all over the place: to Sheffield, Woking, Walton on the Naze. So you see, I’m busy and successful and very, very happy. Perhaps you’d like to meet?
He answered by saying his number as if at a desk with a work hat on.
“Hello, Jonathan? It’s Nina.” Nina the lonely heart. Nina the desperate. “From the ad,” I explained, my tongue flapping extravagantly. There was too much saliva. It was seeping into my mouth like my body was wringing itself out.
“How nice to hear from you,” he said calmly. “Imagine you got lots of replies. Didn’t think you’d—”
“I’ve never done this before,” I blurted out.
“Neither have I. So what made you…”
I told him that I was away a lot and worked mostly with women. That was true(ish). I added that I wanted to expand my social circle, which wasn’t.
He said, “Your ad sounded friendly.”
There: I knew I’d come out like a puppy. I toyed with boasting that I was house-trained and rarely sniffed strangers’ crotches but reminded myself that I didn’t know him, that it wasn’t the time for jokes. Instead I said, “It’s difficult, selling yourself in less than twenty words.
You wonder if you should stick in the physical stuff—height, hair color, whether you’re all right looking.” I regretted saying this. Now he would ask what I looked like (key phrases formed instantly: five foot one, probably due to my mother chuffing filterless cigarettes throughout her pregnancy; puddly eyes with vaguely interesting rogue flecks of amber; would that be enough? Or were measurements—bust, waist, hips—required at this early stage?).
He laughed kindly. “I wouldn’t think of it as selling yourself. It’s brave, I’d say. I’d like to meet you, Nina. Perhaps you’d come over for dinner.”
I saw myself gagged with shiny gaffer tape, bundled into the cupboard under the sink among the Brillo pads and Toilet Duck. “I’d rather meet in a public place, if that’s okay.”
“You choose. I don’t go out much.”
I pictured a too-normal man who stayed in with the curtains shut. “Do you know Gino’s in Old Compton Street?” I asked. Gino’s
was the latest reincarnation of a bland Italian café that had changed hands several times in a year, yet retained its wipeable moon-and-star-printed tablecloths and concrete fountain, dribbling water. No one went there. At least no one who mattered.
He said he knew it, but I could tell he was bluffing.
“How will we recognize each other?” I asked.
“Well, you know what I look like.”
“So I’ll spot you, and you’ll know it’s me, when I come over.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” he said.
He was easy to find. Apart from a waiter feeding salmon-colored carnations into a crystal vase, Jonathan was the only life form in the restaurant. I had planned my entrance: confident strides, non-desperate smile (no kiss; too much potential for the awkward bobbing of heads and the cracking of skulls).
When he saw me, he stood up and smiled mildly like a man greeting a cousin. The smile from the photo: It’s okay. There is nothing remotely peculiar or unnerving about me. I have no unexplained wounds and won’t feel you up under the plastic tablecloth.
Unasked for grilled vegetables arrived on skewers before I’d taken off my jacket. The waiter mooched away to busy himself with unnecessary tasks: repositioning salt and pepperpots on vacant tables and flicking the backs of red metal chairs with a wet cloth. He seemed nervous, as if expecting bailiffs to burst in at any moment and carry out the greasy cappuccino machine. Occasionally he looked up hopefully when passersby stopped to read the laminated menu in the window. They would peer through the glass, between the spindly green letters that read “Gino’s Trattoria,” and see just one couple—no, not a couple. Cousins who were close as children, and still liked each other enough to meet up occasionally at this soon-to-be-boarded-up restaurant (but only on a Monday; never a valuable weekend night).
I ordered trout because it sounded light and unobtrusive. There wasn’t a hungry cell in my body. Jonathan dithered over the trout but politely ordered a chicken breast lolling in a muddy sauce so we wouldn’t be too matching.
