“Excuse me,” said Josh in a low voice, “while I just reposition my entire life map.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, darling,” insisted Jane. “I was desperately unhappy.” She held his hand across the table. “Your father’s and my marriage was doomed. We’re both far happier without each other. The only good thing about our marriage was you and Toby. And you both still are. Why do you think we’re still in touch at all? We’ve got the most amazing children in common.”
“I need a drink,” whispered Josh, wiping his face.
“Of course you do, my darling,” said his mother, passing him her napkin. “I really am terribly sorry.”
After two vodkas, Josh was able to see things more clearly.
“So,” he said slowly, “Dad did not want to leave me and Tobe, you admit that he was not entirely to blame for your divorce, and I’m a misogynist.”
“Yes,” said Jane thoughtfully. “You know, perhaps you should try some antidepressants.”
“Thank you, Mother,” said Josh. “But not when I’ve only just come off them.”
When Jo arrived home from her walk, she shut her parents’ front door behind her and called out.
“I’m home!”
“We’re in here!” came her father’s voice from the lounge. “There’s a pot just made.”
Jo took off her shoes and left them by the front door.
Her parents were sitting side by side on the sofa, a sight she couldn’t remember seeing since her father’s new armchair had been bought ten years before.
“How was Sheila, pet?” asked Bill.
Jo sat down on his armchair and swiveled it round to face them.
“Not good,” she said. “She’s finished with James.”
“What?” cried Bill. “And her with all that weight to lose? She’ll never find another man. The girl’s mad.”
“She already has, apparently.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t tell.”
“Blimey,” breathed Hilda softly, and they laughed.
“And I finished with Shaun.”
“What?” cried Bill.
“I finished with Shaun.”
Bill knew this had to be handled sensitively. He took a deep breath before continuing.
“Are you stark raving mad?” he cried. “He had everything! Men like him don’t grow on trees you know!”
“Well, you marry him then!” shouted Jo.
There was a stunned silence.
“Mum, Dad,” she said quickly. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Oh my God,” said Bill. “You’re pregnant.”
“I am not!”
“Thank you, God,” said Bill, genuflecting.
“Quiet,” said Hilda.
There was quiet.
“I’m going to go to university,” said Jo.
There was a pause.
“Over my dead body,” whispered her father.
“Bill,” said Hilda.
“Well,” said Bill. “I’m speaking on your behalf, too, I know that.” He turned to Jo.
“You’re a sensible girl, Josephine—”
“Too sensible—”
“No such thing. It’s going to London that’s put stupid ideas in your head.”
“No,” said Jo firmly. “I’ve always wanted to go to university.”
“Well,” he said, “we all have silly dreams. I’ve always wanted to play for England.”
“It’s not a silly dream! How can it be so silly if so many people do it, Dad?”
“Because not everyone’s as sensible as you!”
Jo fought hard to keep her thoughts on track.
“Dad,” she said finally, “I love you, I respect you; but I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”
There was a silence.
She sat forward in her chair. “I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m not asking for permission,” she said. “I’m just letting you know. And please don’t make me feel that knowing my own mind is an act of betrayal. I won’t need any money from you, I haven’t had money from you for years—”
“Just a roof over your head.”
“Well,” said Jo. “I won’t be asking for that because I’ll try and study in London while I’m earning my own keep.”
“Will you!” bellowed Bill, standing up. Hilda started moaning. “Look! You’ve upset your mother now.”
“No, Dad,” said Jo. “I think you getting angry is upsetting her much more than me.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, university girl!” He turned to Hilda. “Look at that, already answering me back, and she hasn’t even gone there yet.”
“Is that what it’s about then, Dad?”
“What?”
“Scared I’ll know more than you?”
“Don’t you dare take that tone with me.”
“I’m not taking any tone, I’m just trying to work out why you want to stop your only child doing what she wants to do with her life.”
“Don’t you see? It’s because you’re my only child that I want to stop you making a mistake.”
“Why?” asked Jo. “Mistakes are part of life. Why can’t I make any?”
Hilda chuckled.
“Don’t you take her side,” Bill told his wife.
“Leave Mum alone, you bully,” said Jo. “She can think whatever she wants to think.”
“She thinks what I think,” said Bill.
“Oh yes?” asked Jo. “Shall we ask her?”
They both looked at her.
“Hill?”
“Mum?”
Hilda closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“Bogdon-over-Bray,” she murmured.
There was a long pause. Then Bill sighed heavily. “That’s a cheap shot, Hill,” he murmured.
“What was that?” asked Jo.
Bill sat down on the sofa again.
“Dad? Tell me.”
“It’s the bus stop where I met your mother. Jesus wept!” he laughed. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“And?” asked Jo.
Bill forced himself to speak. “I was only there because I’d got on the wrong bus and had to get off it and wait for the 24b to take me back the way I’d come.”
“So?” asked Jo.
Bill sighed. “For someone smart enough to go to university, you’re being rather slow on the uptake.” He gave Hilda a long look before turning back to Jo. “I always used to tell your mother that if I hadn’t made that mistake, I’d never have found the best thing in my life.”
There was a long silence. Then Jo went over, hugged her mother, and left the room.
Eventually Hilda looked at her husband and found him staring at her. “Hmm?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I’m not a bully, am I, Hill?”
She laughed and lifted her right arm to stroke his cheek.
Diane, Vanessa’s mother, was playing with her grandchildren in the garden. Jo had been back with her own family for nearly an entire month. And still they hadn’t hired a new nanny. Diane didn’t trust Josh with them—what on earth was a grown man doing spending his time with children, she wondered, as she heard him prepare the tea.
“Can we go in the playhouse, Grandma?” asked Tallulah.
“I don’t think Grandma can fit inside, darling,” said Diane. “I’ll stay out here in case the door gets stuck. You know what it’s like after it’s rained. I tell you what! I’ll watch you from here. Don’t close the door tight.” She sat in the tiny hammock and started flicking through a glossy magazine.
“I’ll ask Cassie,” said Tallulah. Cassandra was doing her homework at the garden table.
“Cassie?” asked Tallulah.
“Mm.”
“Will you come and play with me in the playhouse?”
Cassie tore her eyes away from her math problems.
“What are we playing?”
“Mummies and daddies.”
“Okay.”
As they walked toward the pla
yhouse, Zak zoomed across the lawn, carrying his cyberdog in his arms.
“My cyberdog’s broken!” he cried.
“How come?” asked Cassandra.
“There were sparks coming out of his bottom, then he just stopped working!”
“Did he fart?”
“No he did not fart!” exploded Zak.
“We were just about to play in the playhouse,” said Cassandra. “Do you want to play with us?”
Zak sniffed. “What are you going to play?”
“Mummies and daddies.”
“No!”
“You can be the daddy,” said Tallulah.
“Can I bring my cyberdog?”
They hadn’t been in the house together for years. They’d forgotten how thrilling it was.
“I’m going to bed,” Tallulah told Cassie. “You have to say good night to me.”
“Why do I have to be the mummy?” asked Cassie.
“Because you’re the oldest.”
“I don’t want to be.”
“Zak!” ordered Tallulah. “You be the mummy.”
“Okay.”
“Who’s the daddy then?” asked Cassie.
“You are.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because daddies are boring.”
“We could have two mummies,” said Tallulah.
“That’s gross,” said Zak.
“No it’s not,” said Cassandra. “A girl in my class has two mummies.”
“I bet she’s gross.”
“Zak, if you’re not going to play properly,” said Tallulah, “you’ll have to leave.”
“I know!” exploded Zak. “Lula and I are identical twins, separated at birth, Cassie’s our baby sister, and Mummy and Daddy have gone on holiday without us,” he started to whisper, “and Grandma’s Hannibal the Cannibal prowling outside.”
There was a pause.
“Are you alright in there?” called Diane.
When they all screamed with delicious terror, Diane tutted and returned to her magazine.
Dusk thickened into evening, the air echoed with the sound of setting car alarms, and Dick wandered home alone.
He passed streets full of houses just like his own: Victorian brick dividing him from mothers unable to hear the white noise in their heads over crying babies and demanding toddlers, in their self-imposed luxury prisons. When they needed a community, each one would switch on the radio and be traumatized by dramatic news stories of death and destruction. When they needed company, they’d turn on the television and be confronted with images of perfection and ads created to make them feel overweight, ugly, smelly, and sad. And when it all got too much, they’d pop Prozac and keep it to themselves.
Dick shut the front door behind him and trod over various toys in the hall. Putting his briefcase in the corner of the kitchen, he sifted through the post, sighing over every brown envelope. Without looking up, he made his way to the drinks cabinet, opened the door, and went straight for the whiskey.
“My, my,” said Diane. “Whiskey before dinner?”
Dick swirled round. “Hello, Diane.”
“Hello, Dick.”
Dick smiled weakly.
“Drink?”
“Yes, Dick, I know what it is.”
“I mean, do you want one?”
“No thank you. The children are in the playhouse. For some bizarre reason Josh decided that instead of insisting that they do what he says and eat their tea in the kitchen, he would teach them that if they insist enough, they will be rewarded for it and get their way.”
“Pardon?”
“They had their tea in the playhouse and are now playing bedtime in it.”
“Good.”
“And Josh has gone to bed. He says he’s exhausted. I’m hardly surprised. He had lunch with his mother today. That would be enough to exhaust anyone.” She walked past Dick into the hall to get her things. “I really don’t understand this generation.”
“Thank you, Diane.”
“I’ve missed bridge for this week.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Dick. It doesn’t become a man.”
“Sorry.”
“Good-bye. Give Vanessa my love.”
“I will.”
Dick watched the front door close behind his mother-in-law. It was, he had discovered over the years, his favorite time to watch it. He stood there for a few moments, then found his way back to the drinks cabinet.
By the time Vanessa got home he was sitting watching television in the dark, an empty whiskey bottle on the coffee table.
“Oh hello,” said Vanessa, startled that Dick was still up.
“No need to look so surprised,” said Dick. “I do live here you know.”
Vanessa sighed. “Dick, I was thinking,” she started. “It might be nice to get the children a brand-new computer.”
Dick stared at his wife in bemusement.
“Why?”
“I just think it would be nice. They’ve been very good about Jo leaving, and we’ve got the money—”
“We haven’t got the money, and why should they be treated to an expensive present just because they aren’t being brats?”
“We have got the money and they’re not—”
“We haven’t!” shouted Dick.
“Well I have!” shouted Vanessa back.
Dick took a moment.
“That’s right,” he croaked. “Rub it in my face.”
“Rub what in your face?”
“The fact that you’re a success and I’m a failure.”
Vanessa started. “What are you talking about? We’re a team.”
Dick exploded. “A team? That’s rich! You’re always on about how the shop is crap. Well you’re right. It’s crap. I’m crap. I’m a crap provider. I’m a crap husband.”
To her horror, he started crying. Vanessa came over to him.
“What are you talking about?” she whispered. “You’re not crap.”
“I am crap,” he spat. “I failed at one marriage, and I’m failing again.”
Vanessa felt her heart stop. “What makes you think you’re failing?”
“Oh leave me alone,” he moaned. “Just leave me alone.”
Vanessa sat down next to him on the sofa. “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “I don’t care about any of that.”
“So why do you keep going on about it? Constant jokes about how the shop is crap.”
“Because…”
“Because you’ve got no respect for me.”
“No!” She almost shouted it. “Because I’m jealous. I’m so bloody jealous of you I could scream.”
“Jealous?” Dick was incredulous. “What of?”
“Jealous that you always get the best bits.”
“What are you talking about?”
Vanessa sank back into the sofa. Every word seemed to cost her effort and energy. “I don’t always want to be Mummy. I can’t be a full-time mother, Dick. I’m hopeless at it. It’s bad for me to even try—it damages me. And yet, even though I work in London and you work locally, even though I have a mean boss in a cutthroat business and you’re your own boss, I’m still the one who ends up having to deal with all the legwork of having kids as well as do my job. It feels as though my job will never be as…viable as yours. I’ve got to keep justifying it and defending my right to have it, as if I’m living on borrowed time. It’s not fair.”
Dick managed half a laugh. “If one of the children said that, we’d tell them life wasn’t fair.”
“Yes,” conceded Vanessa quietly, “but unlike the children, I can leave home.”
There was a long pause before she started again. “The more I think about it the more I feel motherhood is…a relative concept.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Vanessa sighed. “If we’d been living 150 years ago and were rich, I wouldn’t have even been expected to breast-feed my babies, but I felt so gui
lty because I couldn’t. If I’d been poor, I’d have popped them out in my tea break and got back to work.” She started to talk fast. “If I’d lived in a biblical tribe, I’d have had all the women of the tribe supporting me, helping me, feeding me, and looking after me. Only one generation ago, I’d have probably had my family living down the street, would have known all my neighbors and would have spent the first fortnight of motherhood being looked after in hospital and sleeping off the trauma of giving birth. I don’t have any family support apart from the occasional visit from my mum—your mum sees the kids once a year—I don’t know my neighbors so I can’t ask them for help, I was home from hospital making my family dinner the day after I’d given birth, and my workplace seems to think that my miraculous ability to have children is proof that I’m flawed, rather than proof that I’m helping the human race survive as a species. I mean, can you imagine any other animal in the animal kingdom treating their mothers like this?”
She stood up and was pacing the conservatory. “And yet I’m expected to feel guilty because I can afford one woman to help me. Well I refuse to feel guilty, Dick. Or evil. Or selfish. I admit it.” She lifted her hand. “I need help being a mother. Everyone does. And if they say different, they’re lying.”
Dick gave a slight nod. Vanessa calmed herself down before continuing.
“I love my job. Love it. I need it. Just as there are some women who feel utterly complete being mothers, I feel utterly complete having a job. I don’t mind the fact that you have the shop, what I mind is that you don’t respect my job and how bloody good I am at it, and that you imply I’ve got something lacking in me as a woman because I prefer the company of adults to children. For all we know, I’ll come into my own as a mother when the children are teenagers—or adults. Who knows? And what I mind is that you resent the fact that I bring home the bacon! I mind that I have to fight you to feel fulfilled. I mind that I thought you were going to be my biggest support but you’ve turned into my biggest block to happiness. I mind that I’m so angry with you that I can’t remember how to love you.” She was crying.
Dick was now rigid, as Vanessa took a deep breath before continuing.
“If you wanted to give up the shop and become a…a…carpenter, I’d happily support you. I’d support you in anything you wanted to do. I’m a born career woman. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my children, I’m not a freak of nature. I just love my job. Why can’t I be allowed to be a woman with children who loves her job?”
The Nanny Page 28
