Babyface

by Fiona Gibson

  “I know,” I lie. Jonathan and I bypassed the cute present stage. His sole non-special-occasion gift to me was a crafty sperm that dive-bombed my egg. At least it was spontaneous.

  “Do you ever feel they don’t care?” asks Beth.

  “Who’s they?”

  “Our menfolk. Our other halves.”

  “It’s different now,” I say, like I know about relationships. “There’s less time to—”

  “Tell me about it,” she sniffs.

  “Is your gas supposed to be on?” asks Felt Lady. I turn off the rings. Phoebe’s kid, who’s yanked out a bottle from Jonathan’s wine rack, receives a rap on the skull from his mother.

  “You could damage his head doing that,” reprimands Beth. “You’re sending the message that it’s okay to hit. You’re normalizing physical violence.”

  Before Phoebe resorts to more serious violent tactics, I trap Beth by the nappy disposal machine. “I thought you and Matthew were fine,” I say. “You’re always out, aren’t you? And you’ve just been away. Me and Jonathan never do that.”

  “What, Somerset?” she scoffs. “Some weekend that was. The cottage he’s booked is disgusting. So we book into a hotel—baby friendly, all the facilities—and we arrive and everything’s lovely.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We settle Maud in the cot—a beautiful cot with a Shaker-style quilt—and go down to dinner but the baby listener can’t pick up a signal. I’m back up in the bedroom, going, ‘Hello? Hello?’ into the listener and of course Matthew can’t hear me.”

  “Did you have dinner in bed?” I ask.

  “No, in a nasty little conference room with a shiny board you could write on and wipe off—just me and him with the baby listener crackling. And you know what?” Her voice trembles. “We didn’t speak a single word during that entire meal.”

  “That’s good,” remarks Felt Lady. “I’m always suspicious of those couples you see, talking ten to the dozen, trying to prove they still get along. Sitting quietly, just being together, sounds perfect.”

  “We weren’t being together,” snaps Beth. “We’ve nothing left to say. We’ve run out of words. There aren’t any left, except, ‘Did I tell you the extractor hood’s not working?’ and, ‘Remember to put the bin out.’”

  She’s shouting now. I was wrong to dismiss coffee mornings as tedious get-togethers for the lonesome. All kinds of stuff goes on, if you look for it.

  “How was the rest of the weekend?” I ask.

  “We end up in a country pub. Horse brasses, sort of peasanty. Farm workers with big hands.”

  “Was that better?”

  “Yes, until the TV comes on. Matthew never used to like TV. We didn’t have one until this not-talking thing started. Now every night he’s holding his hand up, silencing me, because he’s glued to some dimwit quiz show. So finally, because he is not interested in any kind of adult discussion, I walk out and he’s running after me and of course,” she finishes, her voice thunderous, “you’ve got to face some stupid baby-sitter in your hotel room and her pile of teenage magazines.”

  “That’s terrible,” says Felt Lady.

  “Maybe you need a break,” I suggest.

  “What, like Somerset?”

  “Well, it sounds like it’s getting too much for you. Perhaps you need extra help.”

  “I do. It’s not like a job, this baby thing, is it? You’re on call twenty-four hours a day. It’s seamless. Even when they’re asleep you’re preparing the next meal and sterilizing toys and washing terry nappies.”

  “Oh, do you use terries?” asks Felt Lady. “I tried. Thought they’d be no bother at all—easier, in fact, than disposables—and you’re not lying awake at night, worrying about landfill sites.”

  “I know,” says Beth. “If all the dirty disposable nappies were laid end to end they’d stretch, er, right round the world, probably.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that,” says Felt Lady, “but do I have time to be boiling and hanging the damn things out on the line?”

  “Like your felt,” I suggest.

  She blinks at me. “Felt isn’t boiled. I binned the terries and I’m less hassled and a better mother for it. So really, in using disposables, I’m making the planet a friendlier place.”

  “At least you’re recycling in your work,” says Beth. “No one’s perfect. You can’t do it all. That’s why we’re getting an au pair.”

  Beth and Matthew’s three-story town house gleams even more sweetly than our flat. In fact, I have noticed a deterioration in standards at our place. Worktops are smattered with crumbs. Jonathan has stopped loading the dishwasher immediately after each meal. “Do you need an au pair?” I ask Beth.

  “I’m not talking about need. It’s about having support. I can’t do this single-handedly.”

  “What does Matthew say?”

  “He doesn’t say anything. I’ve had an agency send seven girls round—sweet foreign girls who are glad of the chance to live in a civilized country—and I just need to pick one.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Some godforsaken eastern European country where it’s freezing and they don’t have any money.”

  “So you haven’t told Matthew?”

  “He wouldn’t be interested. Anyway, it’ll be done and dusted before he can put his oar in.”

  “You shouldn’t keep secrets from your partner,” scolds Felt Lady. “You’ll lose your intimacy, your coupleness.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “It’s okay for you,” says Beth crossly. “You wouldn’t keep anything from Jonathan. Look at you. So neatly turned out in your lovely pink cardigan—has it lost a button by the way?—with this beautiful flat and you make all your own baby food.”

  “That’s amazing,” says Phoebe, restraining her kid from running his palm along our cheese grater. “Do you mash or use a mouli?”

  I refill her mug, pleased that I have taken the trouble to grind Jonathan’s good coffee beans. Above the hubbub the veiny-eyelidded woman shouts, “Nina, your phone, shall I pick it up?”

  “Please.”

  “Someone called… I didn’t quite catch it. Says it’s lovely here. I said it’s lovely here, too.”

  I snatch the phone and escape to the hall. “Gosh, it sounds busy at your place,” says Lovely. “Are you having a party?”

  “Just a few friends round.”

  “You mums. All that socializing.” There’s a soft rattle, like pearls. I imagine she’s wearing peach. “Anyway, there’s an audition for a commercial. Ben would be perfect. But it’s short notice. Three-thirty this afternoon. Can you make it?”

  Felt Lady looms anxiously before me, discomfort fuzzing her eye region. “I’m sorry, Nina,” she interrupts, “but I really need to use your bathroom. Something’s been in there for ages, making terrible growling noises. Do you have a pet?”

  10

  Crying and Comforting

  When the last of the coffee morning mob have departed for various workshops I catch sight of myself in the bedroom mirror and remember Lovely’s warning: the mother must be impeccably turned out. My underarms are wet beneath the pink cardi. Flecks of oat cookie are wedged between my teeth.

  Jonathan is coagulating in the bath, lips hanging apart limply. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “How do I look?”

  It’s been a long time since I saw him naked. He has delicate, faintly feminine shoulders and a light dusting of fair hair on his chest. Though he doesn’t exercise, he is in reasonable shape. For one thing, he doesn’t have an apron stomach.

  “You don’t look too bad,” I say, feeling sorry for him. It’s only through lack of drinking opportunities that I have avoided hangovers for more than a year. I used to rack up hideous morning afters until one ran into the next. It was pretty normal for me to feel empty-stomached and poisoned, craving eggs, my duvet and darkness.

  I wonder whether to run out and buy Jonathan some milk thistle tincture,
which Beth tells me is good for the liver. Hers doesn’t need cleansing; she drinks only at Christmas, and then it’s watered down wine. I suspect she just likes the wholesome sound of it.

  Eliza’s better on hangover remedies. On doddery mornings she scours the Internet and tries recommendations such as beef consommé soup with a splash of vodka and is hoping to track down a rare (and apparently highly effective) remedy made from dried bull’s penis. I decide not to mention that one to Jonathan. “Are you well enough to watch Ben while I have a shower and get changed?” I ask.

  “Put him in the car seat. He’ll be fine.”

  “Then I’ll take him out and you can have the rest of the day to yourself, recovering.”

  I expect him to thank me. All he says is, “Right.”

  By the time I meet Eliza I’m cutting it fine to make the casting by three-thirty. But I want this haircut. Eliza has arranged her crucial fashion PR appointments to fit in a spot of baby-minding while my head is sorted out. Her idea. “You owe it to yourself,” she said. “A haircut tells the world what’s going on inside you. You want it to say, ‘I feel positive. I’m in control. Life is great.’” Clearly, my hair is capable only of bleating, “Brush me.”

  Eliza is waiting outside the hairdressers. She wears a knee-length cream dress and fine silver hoop earrings. I fear for those earrings. Ben has taken to grabbing at dangling objects, forcing me to abandon wearing anything decorative. “What are you going to do with him?” I ask.

  Her smile stiffens. “What do you mean, do with him?”

  “You know. How you’re going to spend the hour.”

  “An hour?” she splutters. “Is that how long it’s going to take?”

  “I’d say at least that. How long does your hair take?”

  She regains her composure and says, “I could take him to the office, but I hoped he’d be asleep.”

  “He’s already had two hours. He’ll be awake for ages.”

  “Oh. I thought babies slept a lot. How about I take him to a gallery? He might find it relaxing.”

  “That sounds good.” I glance inside the hairdressers. A woman is having her head massaged. Caramel aromas sneak out each time the door opens. “At least there’ll be changing facilities,” I add. “Here, you’ll need this.”

  Eliza observes the changing bag, clearly wishing she was back at work, conversing with model agents. It is pillow-size with a repeat pattern of purple rocking horses. “Is he likely to…soil himself at this time of day?” she asks in a high voice.

  “Probably not. But you never know your luck.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” she says firmly.

  The hairdresser is around nineteen years old and sports a retro sixties haircut that curls around his ears and neck. He is obviously appalled at having to attend to my head instead that of the tender, fair-maned creature sitting neatly beside me, and has therefore decided not to talk.

  This is good. Since having a baby I have lost the ability to communicate with young people. Maybe it’s a side effect of living with Jonathan. One evening he switched on Top of the Pops by mistake. A boy band perched on high stools, voices wobbling with hammed-up emotion. “Is this what they like?” he asked.

  “Who’s they?”

  “Young people.” I looked sideways at him. He was thirty-five and acted like he’d never been any younger. The boys who hung around our street made him edgy. One night, a vast adolescent rested his backside on the bonnet of our car. Jonathan spotted him, bouncing lightly, and asked the boy to remove himself from our vehicle. The boy laughed and spat in the road. The following morning we discovered cider bottles planted in the lavender pots.

  Is this how Ben will turn out? Despising me, probably. You fritter away your thirties and forties worrying about what your offspring might be putting into their body, and at the end of it you are rewarded with a hormonal beast who regards you with the same blend of fascination/disgust they reserve for watching a fish being gutted.

  “Been out lately?” asks the hairdresser.

  “Oh, just the usual. I have a baby so it’s difficult.”

  “I couldn’t be doing with that. I don’t want a baby until I’m at least thirty.”

  “Quite right,” I tell the mirror. “I wouldn’t have been ready at your age.”

  He smiles fakely, snipping with such speed that I suspect he wants me out of this chair as quickly as possible so he can do beautiful things to the tender girl. “What are you up to this afternoon?” he asks in a bored way.

  “Taking my baby to a casting. For a commercial. He does a bit of modeling, you’ve probably seen him.”

  “Really?” The hairdresser brightens. “What’s he been in?”

  “Masses. Never stops working. It’s hectic for me but at least I’m out of the house.”

  “You need that,” says the hairdresser. “I model a bit. Just the odd job if I feel like it. I’m really an actor.” He tweaks the ends of my hair and douses me with spray. “You like?” he asks. His first proper smile.

  “I like,” I say, blushing.

  Ben, my dashing new haircut and I arrive at the four-story terrace at 3:37 p.m., seven minutes behind schedule. My mobile rings as I attempt to collapse the buggy while holding Ben. Our home number. I can’t tell Jonathan where we are; not while his liver’s creaking.

  The audition suite is on the top floor. A squall of adults biff against each other. Babies busy themselves on a floor mat heaped with Duplo. I am handed a form by a tired-looking woman and fill in details of Ben’s name, age, dimensions and agency. I leave the “special talents” space blank.

  “Typical,” says a woman in a heavy velvet shift dress and matching deflated beret (it reminds me never to attempt a soufflé). She dabs her daughter’s fringe with a wet wipe. “Can you believe it?” she goes on. “She’s perfect all week and today she falls over and smacks her forehead on the pavement.”

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” I reassure her.

  “Yes it does. It’s weeping. I’d pick the gravel out but I might make it look worse.”

  “You don’t want it getting infected,” says another mother. “It might fester and poison the blood.”

  The child with gravel in her forehead is wearing a high-necked dress in the same fabric as her mother’s. I place Ben among the babies and open Eliza’s magazine at the page with my son, Fern in the limp salmon dress, and the male model who isn’t one really.

  “Oh dear,” says the woman, adjusting her soufflé. “That’s bleak, isn’t it? Raven does much more commercial work.”

  Raven fiddles with the ribbon at the neck of her dress. She doesn’t look excited at the prospect of starring in a commercial. The ends of her hair are wet. She plucks a strand and sucks it.

  “Don’t do that, Raven,” says her mother.

  “Been waiting long?” I ask.

  “Twenty minutes. Should be seen pretty soon. They’re doing the older ones first, then toddlers, then babies. You might be here for hours.”

  I wonder if Jonathan is still stewing in the bath, and at what point he might start to worry.

  “Would you like to see Raven’s book?” the woman asks.

  I don’t like to say no. “Here,” says the woman, handing me a fat portfolio stuffed with magazine cuttings. Each has been carefully mounted on white A4 paper with penciled dates and captions such as, “Required to tap” and “Raven performs somersault.”

  “Gosh,” I say. “Raven gets lots of work.”

  “She’s so in demand. It’s a full-time job for me, of course, the chaperoning.”

  “Don’t you mind?”

  She shakes her head, causing the beret to wobble dangerously. “It’s building up a trust fund for Raven. Are you saving your baby’s earnings in an account until he’s older?”

  “Of course,” I say quickly.

  “Raven?” The tired-looking woman beckons the velvet duo. Raven is marched stiffly through the throng of parents and offspring to a door marked Auditions In Progress. Please
Do Not Enter Until Called. One Chaperone Only Per Child.

  By the end of the afternoon Ben has fallen out with the Duplo and I assume we’ve been forgotten. Should we hang about until the caretaker shows up and switches off the lights? I carry him to the baby changing room and remove the nappy that Eliza fitted too tightly. Red patches have sprung up at each hip. The nappy thuds into the disposal unit. Ben has grown heartily sick of the whole modeling deal and I consider slipping into the lift, heading home and telling Jonathan we’ve been shopping. Such a tiny lie won’t count.

  “Ben?” says the tired woman. “We’ve been calling for you, Mum. Could you take him in please?”

  Ben responds to the darker room by burying his head in my cardi. “Hi, Ben,” says a boy only slightly older than my hairdresser. “How are we doing today?”

  Ben huddles deeper into my chest.

  “Shy, is he?” asks the boy, glancing at his watch.

  “It’s his first audition,” I explain, “but he’s done a little job for a friend.” I open Eliza’s magazine.

  “This is much more upbeat,” says the boy. “We’re casting for a gang of kids, all ages. They’ll be messing about in a paddling pool, playing with the products.”

  “What products?”

  “Little Squirts. Shampoos, body washes, conditioners.”

  “Conditioners? For babies?”

  “A new niche. All the celebrities’ kids use them. Makes the hair shiny, easier to comb. Could you pop Ben on the rug, sitting up?”

  “He can’t sit. He’s only four months. All he can do is lie on his tummy and push up a bit.”

  “He’s maybe a bit young for this job. All that water. But try him like that. He’d be splashing around, having a great time with the other babies.”

  I lower Ben to the floor. His face collapses onto the rug.

  “Could you cheer him up a bit?” asks the boy. “We want a real sense of fun. It’s what the Little Squirts range is all about.”

  Ben’s forehead rises shakily. His red face appears briefly on a monitor before his arms crumple, sending him nosediving into the rug. “Maybe he’d be happier if you were near him,” suggests the boy.