Alice Hartley‘s Happiness

by Gregory, Philippa

  Tears welled up in the eyes of the shorter woman. She staggered slightly as Alice lifted the backpack off her. ‘I wanted a pram,’ she said sadly. ‘But he said that it should be carried. They all say you’ve got to carry them these days.’

  Alice popped the baby out of the backpack like a tight-fitting pea from a pod.

  ‘Babies need the feeling of closeness,’ said the other woman in a dulled monotone. ‘They need to feel close to Mother, all day, all night, every day, every night.’

  ‘Of course,’ Alice said, matter-of-fact. ‘Of course babies need the feeling of closeness. But you need the feeling of distance.’

  The second woman gasped, it was as if Alice had sworn in a church.

  ‘They need to hear Mother’s heartbeat,’ she said, repeating the lesson. ‘They need to feel Mother’s movement.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Alice agreed readily. ‘They’d like that all the time. But they’re born now, aren’t they? Can’t go on listening to your stomach gurgling all their lives. They’ll have to get used to it sooner or later. You don’t get exactly what you want all the time, do you?’

  The two young women gazed at Alice with red-rimmed eyes. They looked like long-stay prisoners of the Bastille on the morning of July 14th. They looked like they had never got exactly what they wanted – at any time.

  The taller one’s lip quivered as she fought back tears. ‘He won’t ever lie in his cot!’ she said despairingly. ‘He’ll only sleep if I walk him. And if I stop walking he wakes up and cries! Up and down on the landing, all night long. I must have walked to London and back half a dozen times. The only time he sleeps is when he hears David’s key in the door. As soon as he hears the front door open and David shout, “I’m home, I’ve had a bloody awful day, pour me a drink for God’s sake,” he falls at once into deep sleep and makes darling little snores and David tells me I’m too tense! He tells me that it’s me that’s keeping him awake. Of course I’m tense!’ she said, her voice a squeak of suppressed rage. ‘I’ve not slept for months, I walk farther every night than I’ve ever walked before in my life, and when I complain David says, “Really, Suzanne, you wanted the baby, you know.” As if I ever knew what I was getting myself into!’

  Alice clucked comfortingly. ‘Little horror,’ she said with a loving smile. ‘Tuck him in bed beside you, lovey, and drink a stiff gin before you feed him. It’ll settle him down in no time.’

  The shorter woman gulped. ‘If you knew …’ she started, her sobs drowning out her words. Alice, with the baby gurgling wetly over one shoulder, reached out her spare arm and gathered the miserable mother to her capacious breast.

  ‘I know,’ she said sweetly. ‘Let the tears come, my darling. Cry it out.’

  ‘He wakes at two in the morning – on the dot!’ the woman shrieked into Alice’s shoulder. ‘And all Stephen does is kick me awake and say “Baby’s crying”!’

  Alice nodded and swayed on her feet, rocking mother and child at once.

  ‘He hates my milk!’ she sobbed. ‘I know he does! He makes miserable faces when I try to feed him, and his nappies are filled with brown Camembert! And when I take him down to the clinic all the babies there are on the dreadful artificial milk which stresses their kidneys and makes them sugar addicts. But they are all cooing and getting fat, and their mothers stick a bottle in their mouths and go off and have coffee together. And when he’s weighed the health visitor just looks at me and says –’ she gasped. ‘She says … s-s-supplementary bottle! It makes me feel so inferior!’ She gulped herself to a standstill.

  Alice murmured understandingly.

  ‘I know they think I’m not feeding him enough!’ she wailed. ‘But he looks at me as if he thinks the whole idea is disgusting. And I think it’s disgusting. I have to mess about with these ghastly bras and these little bits of tissue! And Stephen keeps going on and on about how I should be loving the experience of getting up every half hour! And Stephen’s read all the books and they all go on and on about African babies being carried all the time, and being breast-fed until they are four, and never getting depressed when they are teenagers because they bonded right. African babies don’t get separation anxiety! African babies wean themselves! And when I say I want a drink or a cigarette, or to go out for the evening, he says to me: African babies don’t get left with a babysitter!’

  ‘Silver Cross prams!’ cried the other mother. ‘They sit in their prams, those fat, bottle-fed, happy little things, and smile at me while I lug him about on my back. I was heaving him around like a sack of coal before I even had the stitches out!’

  Alice hummed softly and let Mother and baby snivel into each side of her neck.

  ‘Baby-bouncers!’ said the first mother, it was like a prayer for release. ‘I want a baby-bouncer so I can stick him in it and leave him. Just for five minutes!’

  ‘Play-pen!’ said the other, like an invocation. ‘Just think of being allowed a play-pen!’

  Alice patted the shorter mother’s shoulder with one hand and jiggled the baby on the other arm. She smiled steadily at the other young mother who was nodding wearily and lowering her baby-pack to the ground like Pilgrim getting rid of the fruits of his sins. As soon as the pack touched ground the baby opened his mouth and let out a great bellow of discontent. Both mothers flinched as if they had been struck.

  ‘Now you run along,’ Alice said clearly above the noise. The second baby had started up now. The two mothers quivered where they stood like wind-lashed weak-stemmed tulips. ‘I’ll look after these two. The crèche is ten pounds an hour and we give them massage and flower extracts. You’ll see. They’ll be new babies when you collect them.’

  She took a squalling infant on each hip, and showed the bedraggled mothers out to the orchard. Stephanie watched them approach with huge black eyes in her white face, jogging lightly from one bony foot to another.

  Alice waited while they turned up the music and did some warm-up exercises, the usual mimes of stamping down a new-laid lawn, hoeing a flower-bed, and pushing a lawn-mower; and then Stephanie directed them to the garden tools and they put their energy into the real thing.

  Alice swayed inside, each baby clinging like a small greedy parasite on a new host.

  ‘Now,’ she said, looking from one to another. ‘What do you two need?’

  She laid them gently on their backs on the kitchen table. At the unknown sensation of being left in a bit of peace both babies contracted their faces and squalled miserably. Alice stepped back a pace and looked at them.

  ‘Floral extracts,’ she said to herself, and turned towards the larder.

  She came back with a magnum-sized wine bottle stoppered with thick cork. She struggled to open it while the wails from the babies grew louder and more pained. She poured the foaming liquid into a wine glass and took a sip herself. Then carefully, and with patience, she spooned the sparkling clear liquid into each of the hot, wide, noisy mouths.

  Both babies were as suddenly silenced as if someone had succumbed to temptation and held a pillow over their heads. The little faces scrunched up while they assessed this new taste which was not dreary old milk nor dull old water, but something dramatically different. Slowly, little toothless beams appeared on their cross faces. Alice spooned in some more, and supported Baby no. I as he coughed.

  Alice went to the big kitchen cupboard where all sorts of household utensils had been stored, and heaved an old washboard and a wringer out of the way. At the back was a big carriage-built perambulator, massive on bouncy leather straps; more like a landau than a pram. Alice heaved it out, wiped it down, threw in a couple of blankets and sat a baby at each end.

  They smiled. They pointed at each other and gurgled. They had seen nothing but their mothers’ backs for months, and the change of scenery was welcome. They lay back and watched the sunlight on the kitchen wall. Then they sneezed and giggled at the noise. They had heard nothing but their own mournful bellowing for weeks and their mothers’ strained voices. Alice pulled up a chair beside the pram and
poured herself another glass from the brown bottle, and gave each baby a sip more.

  A party mood was rapidly developing, as the babies goggled around with blue unfocused eyes and Alice joggled the pram with her bare feet. She gave one a tea strainer to look at, and the other a wooden spoon to chew. Both babies accepted these mundane gifts with idiotic enthusiasm. Always before they had been forced to work on brightly coloured educational toys designed to inspire their curiosity, stimulate small-muscle work and develop dexterity. It had really pissed them off. Now they had a chance to get hold of a simple object and hammer the hell out of it on the side of the pram.

  It was obviously a big relief. Alice smiled fondly at them both.

  Baby no. 2 burped richly and they both creased up as at a dinner-table bon mot. Alice giggled too and gave them another spoonful each.

  Baby no. 1 started chewing on the handle of the wooden spoon. He drooled blissfully sucking in the impregnated taste of long-ago meals and well-washed wood. Everything at home tasted the same: of sterilizing fluid. This was just great. He cooed.

  Outside in the garden the beat of the drum reminded Alice that the aerobo-work group would shortly be needing tea. She put the kettle on, swaying gently and humming to the music.

  She had always liked elderflower champagne. You can’t beat flower extracts for stress.

  The aerobo-work class had a second session after tea, then Alice organized a line of people tossing and catching weights to strengthen the forearms and tighten the chest muscles. The line ran from the wood-shed to the back door of the kitchen. The weights were, of course, logs for the boiler; so that when everyone was hot and sweaty and wanted baths the boiler was stoked and there was plenty of hot water.

  Aunty Sarah came downstairs and started a big saucepan of soup for supper, and Alice and the young mothers went into the dining-room for a consultation on getting into harmony with yourself despite distractions.

  They left the babies dozing either end of the big perambulator, their cheeks flushed rosy, their little pursed lips puffing out boozy breaths. One of them hiccuped sleepily from time to time like a fat old general dozing after lunch in a London gentleman’s club.

  Alice started the session with the young mothers with some simple sentence exercises.

  ‘These are called positive affirmations,’ she said to them gently. ‘You say them every day and very soon they sound right to you – and very soon they become real.’

  The two mothers nodded in unison.

  ‘Now, say after me,’ Alice commanded sweetly. ‘Say “It’s your bloody baby too, you know”.’

  ‘It’s your bloody baby too, you know,’ the two women said. Their faces were as blank as if Alice was teaching them Mandarin Chinese.

  ‘It’s your turn to get up and feed him.’

  ‘It’s your turn to get up and feed him,’ the women said without expression.

  ‘I don’t care if you do have a busy day tomorrow, I have a busy day every day.’

  ‘I don’t care …’ the women repeated.

  ‘Now louder,’ Alice said, ‘and with more feeling! “If you didn’t want to look after a baby, you should have told me that a year ago!”’

  ‘I don’t care if you have got a hangover – it’s still your turn to get up!’

  ‘Just because I’m breast-feeding doesn’t mean I’m not sexy!’

  ‘I think nappies are disgusting too – you change him!’

  Their voices rose higher, the two young mothers finally twigged that these were sentences which they had wanted to say so badly that they had buried them beyond reach of their voices. Under Alice’s smiling permissive coaching they lost their whining tone, they lost their nagging sniping complaints, they stood up straighter … and they yelled.

  Neither they nor Alice heard the knock at the front door, nor did they hear Michael going to open it. But the man on the doorstep flinched a little as Michael opened the door and three women simultaneously screamed at the tops of their voices:

  ‘GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF BED YOU LAZY SOD!’

  ‘Hello,’ Michael said politely.

  The vicar shook his head as if he feared that he had hallucinated the Furies shrieking after him. ‘Hi!’ he said, floundering for his prepared introduction. ‘I was just biking past your doorway so I thought I’d call in, see how you’re settling in. Don’t worry, I’m not checking up on you, or asking you to come to church or anything square or fuddy-duddy like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael said. ‘Come in.’

  Michael led the way into the sitting-room. From the dining-room they could hear an angry monotone: ‘Don’t you tell me that he has to be carried all the time. If you were looking after him you’d bloody well buy a pram – probably a Lamborghini pram! And don’t you tell me that you need the car. I need the car. And I need a carry-cot, and a carry-cot restraint, and I need a high chair, and a play-pen and a baby-bouncer and a buggy. This baby is going to be put down. And don’t tell me that African babies are never put down because this,’ (with heavy sarcasm) ‘this is Sussex where babies are put down, where women need not carry them around all the time. There are no snakes in Sussex. There are no scorpions in Sussex. There are no soldier ants in Sussex. So babies can be put down in Sussex. This is Sussex where – I am telling you for the last time – where babies can be put down from time to time and where fathers damn well pull their weight. And I am talking alternate nights here.’

  The vicar blinked. ‘Have I come at an inconvenient time?’ he asked nervously.

  Michael waved him to one of Professor Hartley’s well-stuffed chesterfield chairs.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said pleasantly.

  The vicar glanced around nervously. ‘I thought I heard someone shouting,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT BONDING!’ came an almighty scream from the dining-room.

  ‘Not especially,’ Michael said, smiling vaguely.

  ‘Great,’ the vicar said. ‘Not especial shouting. Great. Great place. Good to see some young people living in the country.’

  Michael nodded gently, but said nothing. In the dining-room a long eerie scream collapsed into a howl, and then tears. Michael raised his eyebrows interrogatively at the vicar who blinked rapidly.

  ‘I really worry about second home ownership and young people being driven into the Inner Cities,’ he said in a rush. ‘That’s why I’m so glad to see some young people here. I’m really glad that the Church is at last responding in a positive way to that challenge. I’m just here because I couldn’t get an appointment to work in Toxteth, but I keep hoping.’

  ‘WHAT I WANT IS SOME SEX!’ came a deep sibilant whisper from the dining-room.

  The vicar jumped instinctively and then gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘Nothing special?’ he checked with Michael.

  Michael smiled gently and shook his head. Michael felt so cool he could not speak for his sense of deep hipness.

  The vicar ploughed on. ‘I mean, I’m not sure if there is a God or not – I don’t think anyone can ever be really sure. But if there is a God, and if he has some kind of personal plan for people in general that is, then he must have a personal plan for me.’

  He broke off and a worried expression crossed his face. ‘I don’t know if I’m making sense here,’ he said. ‘I’m just speculating aloud, you see. I mean, if you were to tell me that you have no sense of a God as an intervening force in human affairs – I can’t really argue about that.’

  Michael smiled. He did not look likely to raise the issue of an interventionist deity at any time in the next four years.

  ‘I WANT TO BE CRUSHED IN A PASSIONATE EMBRACE!’ the voice from the dining-room said.

  This time, the vicar totally ignored the interruption. ‘Now, I can’t go all the way there,’ he confessed. ‘I can’t see God really worrying personally about every single one of us. I just can’t visualize it. But if there was a personal God like that, then I suppose he wants me to work here for a while – and not go to Toxteth. I
f he’s aware of me as an individual with a career plan, that is,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He could, of course, be aware of me as an individual unit without being aware of my small petty life plans. Or she, of course. I said “he” for God but I really should have said he-she; or she-he.’

  He caught himself up. ‘Hey! I’m sorry! I never usually talk to people about God. I reckon no one wants to hear a clergyman going on and on about God all the time.’

  Michael gazed at him, utterly blank.

  ‘I never wear the clerical collar,’ the vicar offered. ‘Today I had to wear it – because I was doing a funeral for one of the older residents of the village, and they like the old bell, book and candle stuff, you know. But most of the time I just go round in jeans and a sweatshirt. Just like any ordinary person really, because that’s what I am. Just an ordinary sinner, like any ordinary sinner.’ He spread his hands wide in a deprecating gesture and nodded urgently at Michael.

  ‘I WISH HE WOULD TAKE ME TO BED AND DO IT LIKE HE MEANS IT!’ came a penetrating hiss from the dining-room. The vicar was deaf to all interruptions.

  ‘Oh! There I go again!’ he said playfully. He put out one hand and jovially slapped himself. ‘Talking about sin! I didn’t really mean sin, I meant failing to treat others and yourself in a caring sort of way.’

  He paused and smiled at Michael with gap-toothed sincerity. ‘I think that’s what we mean when we say sin. These days we have this humanist approach – no one wants to hear about sin any more. Stupid old-fashioned word, really. I never use it. You know, I just don’t have a concept of commandments and breaking them. In the modern-day Church we are much more interested in the notion of psychology and motive, you know. Not so much what one does, but what one meant to do, or what one would do if one could.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And of course why one stops. What is stopping one, or if one is stopping oneself. If you see what I mean.’

  Michael nodded. His mother was Roman Catholic, attending mass only when she felt especially vindictive towards his father and wanted to go to confession and moan about him. His father meanwhile played golf on Sunday mornings with an evangelical enthusiasm, and so Michael’s previous acquaintance with the Anglican clergy was slight.