Getting a Life

by Helen Simpson

  She groaned with boredom and frustration. Really she could not afford to let them out of her sight yet; not for another six months, anyway; not in another room, even with television.

  “Let’s all look at pictures of Mummy and Daddy getting married,” she shouted above the din, skillfully deflecting the furies. Sniffing and shuddering, they eventually allowed themselves to be gathered round the album she had dug out while she wiped their eyes and noses and clucked mild reproaches. The thing was, it did not do simply to turn off. She was not a part of the action, but her involved presence was required as it was necessary for her to be ready at any point to step in as adjudicator. What did not work was when she carried on round them, uninvolved, doing the chores, thinking her own thoughts and making placatory noises when the din grew earsplitting. Then the jaws of anarchy opened wide.

  Soon they were laughing at the unfamiliar images of their parents in the trappings of romance, the bright spirited faces and trim figures.

  “Was it the best day in your life?” asked Maxine.

  There was me, she thought, looking at the photographs; there used to be me. She was the one who’d put on two stone; he still looked pretty fit. The whole process would have been easier, she might have been able to retain some self-respect, if at some point there had been a formal handing over like Hong Kong.

  At the end of some days, by the time each child was breathing regularly, asleep, she would stand and wait for herself to grow still, and the image was of an ancient vase, crackle-glazed, still in one piece but finely crazed all over its surface. I’m shattered, she would groan to Max on his return, hale and whole, from the outside world.

  Now, at the end of just such a day, Dorrie was putting the children down while Max had a bath after his day at work. It was getting late. She had booked a table at L’Horizon and arranged for Jade to come round and baby-sit at eight. They had not been out together for several months, but Dorrie had not forgotten how awful it always was.

  It was twenty to eight, and Robin clung to her.

  “Don’t go, Mummy, don’t go,” he sobbed, jets of water spouting from his eyes, his mouth a square buckle of anguish.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Dorrie, with her arms round him. “I’ve got to go and change, darling. I’ll come straight back.”

  “No you won’t,” he bellowed. Martin watched with interest, nibbling his nails.

  “He’s making me feel sad, Mum,” commented Maxine. “I feel like crying now too.”

  “So do I,” said Dorrie grimly.

  “What’s all the noise?” demanded Max, striding into the room drubbing his hair with a towel. “Why aren’t you children asleep yet?”

  Robin took a wild look at his father and, howling with fresh strength, tightened his grip on Dorrie with arms, legs and fingers.

  “Let go of your mother this minute,” snarled Max in a rage, starting to prize away the desperate fingers one by one. Robin’s sobs became screams, and Maxine started to cry.

  “Please, Max,” said Dorrie. “Please don’t.”

  “This is ridiculous,” hissed Max, wrenching him from her body. Dorrie watched the child move across the line into hysteria, and groaned.

  “Stop it, Daddy!” screamed Martin, joining in, and downstairs the doorbell rang.

  “Go and answer it then!” said Max, pinning his frantic three-year-old son to the bed.

  “Oh God,” said Dorrie as she stumbled downstairs to open the door to the baby-sitter.

  “Hello, Jade!” she said with a wild fake smile. “Come in!”

  “Sounds like I’m a bit early,” said Jade, stepping into the hall, tall and slender and dressed in snowy white shirt and jeans.

  “No, no, let me show you how to work the video, that’s just the noise they make on their way to sleep,” said Dorrie, feeling herself bustle around like a fat dwarf. It seemed pathetic that she should be going out and this lovely girl staying in. The same thought had crossed Jade’s mind, but she had her whole life ahead of her, as everyone kept saying.

  “Any problems, anything at all, if one of them wakes and asks for me, please ring and I’ll come back, it’s only a few minutes away.”

  “Everything’ll be fine,” said Jade, as if to a fussy infant. “You shouldn’t worry so much.”

  “I’ll swing for that child,” they heard Max growl from the landing, then a thundering patter of feet and febrile shrieks.

  “Eight years, eh,” said Max across the candlelit damask. “My Old Dutch. No need to look so tragic.”

  Dorrie was still trying to quiet her body’s alarm system, the waves of miserable heat, the Klaxons of distress blaring in her bloodstream from Robin’s screams.

  “You’ve got to go out sometimes,” said Max. “It’s getting ridiculous.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t manage to make myself look nice,” said Dorrie. “You look nice. Anyway, it’s six pounds an hour. It’s like sitting in a taxi.”

  Max was big and warm, sitting relaxed like a sportsman after the game, but his eyes were flinty.

  “It’s just arrogant, thinking that nobody else can look after them as well as you,” he said.

  “They can’t,” mumbled Dorrie under her breath.

  “You’re a dreadful worrier,” said Max. “You’re always worrying.”

  “Well,” said Dorrie. “Somebody’s got to.”

  “Everything would carry on all right, you know, if you stopped worrying.”

  “No it wouldn’t. I wish it would. But it wouldn’t.”

  Lean and sexually luminous young waiting staff glided gracefully around them.

  “Have you chosen,” he said, and while she studied the menu he appraised her worn face, free of makeup except for an unaccustomed and unflattering application of lipstick, and the flat frizz of her untended hair. She was starting to get a double chin, he reflected wrathfully; she had allowed herself to put on more weight. Here he was on his wedding anniversary sitting opposite a fat woman. And if he ever said anything, she said, The children. It showed a total lack of respect; for herself; for him.

  “I just never seem to get any time to myself,” muttered Dorrie, nudged by the shade of her former self which had that morning appeared to rise up like a living ghost in the garden crossing the lawn to meet her, and to whom she had as good as promised a reunion. She felt uneasy complaining. Once she’d stopped bringing in money she knew she’d lost the right to object. So did he.

  “It’s a matter of discipline,” said Max sternly.

  He felt a terrible restlessness at this time of year, particularly since his fortieth. The birthday cards had all been about being past it. Mine’s a pint of Horlicks, jokes about bad backs, expanding waistlines, better in candlelight. There it stretched, all mapped out for him: a long or not-so-long march to the grave, and he was forbidden from looking to left or right. He had to hold himself woodenly impervious, it would seem, since every waking moment was supposed to be a married one. All right for her, she could stun herself with children. But he needed a romantic motive or life wasn’t worth living.

  He could see the food and drink and television waiting for him at each day’s end, and the thickening of middle age, but he was buggered if he was going to let himself go down that route. He watched Dorrie unwisely helping herself to sautéed potatoes. Her body had become like a car to her, he thought, it got her around, it accommodated people at various intervals, but she herself seemed to have nothing to do with it anymore. She just couldn’t be bothered.

  What had originally drawn him to her was the balance between them, a certain tranquil buoyancy she had which had gone well with his own more explosive style. These days she was not so much tranquil as stagnant, while all the buoyancy had been bounced off. He wished he could put a bomb under her. She seemed so apathetic except when she was loving the children. It made him want to boot her broad bottom whenever she meandered past him in the house, just to speed her up.

  The children had taken it out of her, he had to admit. She’d had pn
eumonia after Maxine, her hair had fallen out in handfuls after Robin, there had been two cesareans, plus that operation to remove an ovarian cyst. The saga of her health since babies was like a seaside postcard joke, along with the mothers-in-law and the fat-wife harridans. After that childminder incident involving Martin breaking his leg at the age of two, she’d done bits of part-time but even that had fizzled out soon after Robin, so now she wasn’t bringing in any money at all. When he married her, she’d had an interesting job, she’d earned a bit, she was lively and sparky; back in the mists of time. Now he had the whole pack of them on his back and he was supposed to be as philosophical about this as some old leech-gatherer.

  He didn’t want to hurt her, that was the trouble. He did not want the house to fly apart in weeping and wailing and children who would plead with him not to go Daddy. He did not want to seem disloyal, either. But, he thought wildly, neither could he bear being sentenced to living death. Things were going to have to be different. She couldn’t carry on malingering round the house like this. It wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t expect. He felt a shocking contraction of pity twist his guts. Why couldn’t she bloody well look after herself better. He took a deep breath.

  “Did I mention about Naomi,” he said casually, spearing a floret of broccoli.

  Naomi was Max’s right-hand woman at the builder’s yard. She oversaw the stock, manned the till when necessary, sorted the receipts and paperwork for Dorrie to deal with at home, and doled out advice about undercoats to the customers. She had been working for them for almost two years.

  “Is she well?” asked Dorrie. “I thought she was looking very white when I saw her last Wednesday.”

  “Not only is she not well, she’s throwing up all over the place,” said Max heavily. “She’s pregnant,” he added in a muffled voice, stuffing more vegetables into his mouth.

  “Pregnant?” said Dorrie. “Oh!” Tears came to her eyes and she turned to scrabble under the table as if for a dropped napkin. So far she had managed to hide from him her insane lusting after yet another.

  “That’s what I thought,” sighed Max, misinterpreting her reaction.

  “I’m so pleased for her, they’ve been wanting a baby for ages,” said Dorrie, and this time it was her voice that was muffled.

  “So of course I’ve had to let her go,” said Max, looking at his watch.

  “You’ve what?” said Dorrie.

  “It’s a great shame, of course, I’ll have to go through all that with someone else now, showing them the ropes and so on.”

  “How could you, Max?”

  “Look, I knew you’d be like this. I know. It’s a shame, isn’t it, yes; but there it is. That’s life. It’s lucky it happened when it did. Another few weeks and she’d have been able to nail me to the wall, unfair dismissal, the works.”

  “But they need the money,” said Dorrie, horrified. “How are they going to manage the mortgage now?”

  “He should pull his finger out then, shouldn’t he,” shrugged Max. “He’s public sector anyway, they’ll be all right. Look, Dorrie, I’ve got a wife and children to support.”

  “Get her back,” said Dorrie. “Naomi will be fine. She’s not like me, she’ll have the baby easily, she won’t get ill afterwards, nor will the baby. We were unlucky. She’s very capable, she’s not soft about things like childminders. You’d be mad to lose her.”

  “Actually,” said Max, “I’ve offered her a part-time job when she is ready to come back, and I rather think that might suit us better too. If I keep her below a certain number of hours.”

  “What did Naomi say to that?”

  “She was still a bit peeved about being let go,” said Max. “But she said she’d think about it. If she could combine it with another part-time job. Beggars can’t be choosers. I mean, if she chooses to have a baby, that’s her choice.”

  “I see,” said Dorrie carefully. “So who will take over her work at the yard meanwhile?”

  “Well, you, of course,” said Max, swallowing a big forkful of chop, his eyes bulging. He hurried on. “Robin starts at nursery after Easter, Maxine’s nearly finished there, and Martin’s doing fine at school full-time now. So you can work the mornings, then you can collect Robin and Maxine and bring them along for a sandwich and work round them from then till it’s time to pick up Martin. We can leave the paperwork till the evening. We’ll save all ways like that. He’s a big boy now, he can potter around.”

  “He’s only three and a half,” she said breathlessly. “And when would I do the meals and the ironing and the cleaning and the shopping in all this?”

  “Fit it in round the edges,” said Max. “Other women do. It’ll be good for you, get you out of the house. Come on, Dorrie, I can’t carry passengers forever. You’ll have to start pulling your weight again.”

  It was towards the end of the main course and they had both drunk enough house white to be up near the surface.

  “They’re hard work, young children, you know,” she said.

  “You said yourself they’re getting easier every day. You said so yourself. It’s not like when they were all at home all day screaming their heads off.”

  “It is when they’re on holiday,” she said. “That’s nearly twenty weeks a year, you know. What happens then?”

  “You’re off at a tangent again,” he said, sighing, then demanded, “What do you want out of life?”

  “It’s not some sort of anaconda you’ve got to wrestle with,” said Dorrie. She realized that this latest sequestration of her hours would send her beside herself. Loss of inner life, that’s what it was; lack of any purchase in the outside world, and loss of all respect; continuous unavoidable Lilliputian demands; numbness, apathy and biscuits. She was at the end of her rope.

  “We can’t just wait for things to fall into our laps, though,” said Max, thinking about his own life.

  “We’re doing all right,” said Dorrie.

  “That doesn’t mean to say we couldn’t do better. We need to expand.”

  “We’re managing the mortgage,” said Dorrie. “I think we should be grateful.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Max. “That’s the spirit that made this island great. Stand and stare, eh. Stand and stare.”

  “What would you prefer?” said Dorrie. “Life’s a route march, then you die?”

  “But then you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you—the children.”

  “You are horrible,” said Dorrie. She took a great gulp of wine and drained her glass. “It’s about how well you’ve loved and how well you’ve been loved.” She didn’t sound very convincing, she realized, in fact she sounded like Thought for the Day. She sounded like some big sheep bleating.

  “I don’t know what it is, Dorrie,” he said sadly, “but you’re all damped down. You’ve lost your spirit. You’re not there anymore.”

  “I know. I know. But that’s what I’m trying to say. You think I’ve just turned into a boring saint. But I’m still there. If you could just take them for a few hours now and then and be nice to them, if I just had a bit of quiet time . . .”

  “I’m not exactly flourishing either, you know. You’re getting to me.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I seem to be so dreary these days. But . . .”

  “That’s what I mean. Such a victim. Makes me want to kick you.”

  “Don’t Max. Please don’t. We’ve got to go back to that girl and pay her first.”

  “Just being miserable and long-suffering, you think that’ll make me sorry for you.”

  “Max . . .”

  “But it makes me hate you, if you must know.”

  Back at the house, Max handed Dorrie his wallet and went off upstairs. He was tired as he brushed his teeth, and angry at the way the evening had gone; nor did he like his bad-tempered reflection in the bathroom mirror. Soon he was asleep, frowning in release like a captive hero.

  Dorrie meanwhile was fumbling with five-pound notes, inquiring brightly as to whether Jade had had a quiet evening.<
br />
  “Oh yes, there wasn’t a sound out of them once you’d gone,” said Jade, not strictly truthfully, still mesmerized by the beautiful eyes of the sex murderer with the razor on the screen. There had actually been a noise from the boys’ bedroom, and when she had put her head around the door, sure enough the younger one was lying in a pool of sick. But he was breathing fine so she left him to it, it wasn’t bothering him and no way was she going to volunteer for that sort of thing. She was getting paid to baby-sit, not to do stuff like that. That would have been right out of order.

  “Would you like to stay and finish your video?” asked Dorrie politely, flinching as she watched the razor slit through film-star flesh.

  “No, that’s all right,” said Jade reluctantly. She flicked the remote control and the bloody image disappeared. She sighed.

  “Well, thank you again,” said Dorrie. “It’s lovely to know I can leave them with someone I can trust.”

  “That’s OK,” said Jade. “No problem.” And with a royal yawn she made her exit.

  It took Dorrie half an hour or so to bathe the dazed Robin, to wash the acrid curds holding kernels of sweet corn and disks of peas from his feathery hair and wrap him in clean pajamas and lay him down in the big bed beside his noble-looking father, where he fell instantly asleep, slumbering on a cloud of beauty.

  She kissed his warm face and turned back, her body creaking in protest, to the job in hand. Downstairs in the midnight kitchen she scraped the duvet cover and pillowcase with the knife kept specifically for this purpose, dumping the half-digested chyme into the sink, running water to clear it away, then scraping again, gazing out the window into the blackness of the wild garden, yearning at the spatter of rain on the glass and the big free trees out there with their branches in the sky.

  Their needs were what was set. Surely that was the logic of it. It was for her to adapt, accommodate, modify in order to allow the familial organism to flourish. Here she was weeping over her own egotism like a novice nun, for goodness’ sake, except it was the family instead of God. But still it was necessary, selflessness, for a while, even if it made you spat on by the world. By your husband. By your children. By yourself.