Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  I miss the cat not at all. My baby is perfect. I look at her and think: ‘You are perfect.’ When you have two children already and another is born, there is always a slight ‘So whatish?’ about it all. I believe that to be as true in London as here. But in London, a few friends, at least, would have dropped by. Here, there are no old and good friends to murmur their marvel. Strangers admire her in passing as I drop off my four-year-old at school, and again when I pick him up. I will accept that currency, the admiration of a stranger. I will bite down on it and find it sound enough to trade a smile. But I would rather trade in more familiar coin.

  A bigger problem is that my nipples may be about to drop off, and good riddance. Breastfeeding is agony. I knew it would be. I count on a biblical forty days of suffering before passing through to the Promised Land. A nice midwife came. She said: ‘Mmm, that looks like it hurts,’ as I struggled to attach the baby. That made me feel much better.

  Together, we kept taking the baby off and then running her at the breast. I think the theory is that a rapidly approaching engorged breast makes the baby want to open her mouth for a Hammer horror scream. Then you clamp her on to muffle it. I was once told by a breastfeeding counsellor in London that my nipples were too big. This is not the most helpful thing that has ever been said to a woman attempting to breastfeed a new baby. If my nipples had been spider-legged, they would have clambered off my breasts, scuttled across the floor and kicked her in the shins, at least eight times. I do not think it can be true. I think her judgement may have been warped by her own freakishly small nipples. In any event, there is not a lot you can do about Super Size Me nipples. My attitude since then has been to accept that this is going to hurt. The pain does not last for ever, it just seems that way – but the convenience goes on for months. Either the baby’s mouth grows or your nipples shrink. You hang on, and occasionally you scream. Occasionally, as she sleeps, the baby screams. I presume a giant breast with a psychotic-looking nipple is chasing her through the woods. I am living among hazy days of toe-twirling and hazier nights of whirling, broken sleep. Somewhere I have other children. Hope they remember me. Hope I remember me too. Who am I again?

  Saturday, 3 December 2005

  Brothers in arms

  We drove south and my parents drove north and we met at a garden centre. I had the baby in the sling and was talking to my mother when I heard the two-year-old let out a wail. It looked as though a bigger boy had pushed past him, knocking him to the ground just as he was about to climb a ladder on his way to a slide. My husband put a hand on my arm. The two-year-old did not require my services. My four-year-old was already there helping his brother to his feet. He said: ‘You go up the ladder – I’m right behind you.’ The wailing stopped and first one, then the other, climbed the ladder and came down the slide. Later, over tea and cake, my four-year-old said: ‘I didn’t say anything to that horrid boy, Mummy, but I gave him a proper look.’ ‘Good for you,’ I said, ‘sometimes that’s all it takes.’

  Monday, 5 December 2005

  Welcome to the deserted village

  Northumberland is the northernmost county in England – the sort of place you go to get away from it all. But what if you do not want to get away from it? What if you like ‘it’ just fine? I never would, never could, say that it is not beautiful: the air cut with lemon, the skies thick with light and cloud, the rise and fall of green fields, hills and moorland, the sweep of empty sands with a history of Romans and Vikings and bloody battles with the Scots. I like its grandeur and its story – I just do not think I want to live in it.

  My husband loves it. More particularly, he loves it right here, nudging against the North Sea, in the far north-east corner of this north-east county. He likes to look at the lighthouse and that particular field from this very spot. Just where he stands. He is in love with this steading. No other house in no elsewhere place would do for him. This is a man where he is meant to be; at the very moment, in clock time. Here. He stands. Right here. The idea of here and now is everything to him. Apart from us, of course, his family. We are his all in all. He tells me so. He says: ‘You are my world.’ He means it, too. I am his world. Right here. It is convenient I am his world and I am where he wants me to be. It must be a man thing, this identification with one piece of land. I tell him: ‘This is how wars start.’ He laughs at me. I mean it.

  We have finally taken possession of Number 1, the cottage next to ours. Number 1 was home to the Little Old Lady for forty-seven years as wife and, more lately, widow. Before she lived in that house, she lived in another house along the row for seven years. A creature of happy habit is my friend. My hope: I grow like her. Not discontented and perverse, which, I suspect, is my more natural path. I admire her and admired the husband she lost, a straight and gentle man who made the earth grow round about these houses, who sprinkled favours and saw them as no more than your right. We made a special journey up to say goodbye to her husband as he lay on his sickbed. She said: ‘Go up. I’ll make some tea.’ I sat on a chair by his bed and held his warm and papery hand in mine while his mind slipped in and out of where we were. I smiled into and around my friend, whom I would not see again. I stroked his hand as the roses climbed the wallpaper around us, tightly gripped back a grimace of tears to smile again at him, reeling him into me from his fantastic troubles. I said: ‘It’s been an honour.’ Now I walk into the bedroom which was theirs and think: ‘I hope he doesn’t mind that she has gone, that he welcomes my children’s laughter and noise where once there was his.’ Any which way, I do not think he haunts his house. I think, if anywhere, he haunts the garden. At least, I like to think he does.

  Their cottage was tied to the farm. When he retired they stayed on, as happens hereabouts. When he died, she stayed a few more years but did not want to live out her days here. Widowhood is woman’s shadow and her fate. I think on mine, how it will be to sit as a silent widow in the same chair, the same room, as you have done night after night, but without him. You must look up expecting to see him, you must think you hear him moving about upstairs, but it is just you and your library book. My Little Old Lady laid a coal fire every day, fed a blackbird and a modest blackbird wife with raisins, let in the meter men to the empty cottages roundabout and made tea and coffee twice a day, 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., for old friends who called by for bourbon biscuits and occasional cherry cake with occasional cherries.

  But she does not drive. It is lonely here. In the same way as my own mother, she ‘didn’t want to be a burden’. She wanted her independence, to catch a bus, to shop, to run an errand, and moved into a new-build house in the village. She assures me that she does not miss the cottage that was hers so long. I drive down to the new estate where she lives in a warm and cosy bungalow and I drink her tea and eat her cherry cake, her puzzle books resting by my plate on the tiled coffee table.

  You see stone-built, flat-faced rows like ours scattered across the county. They look out on to sheep-pocked fields, hills or across to the sea. Farm workers used to live where they worked. Farm workers do not live in rows like this any more. Machines have taken their jobs; second-home owners, their homes. Hundreds of acres are now worked by one or two men; livestock, the same. Farmers sell off their cottages in the same way they sell off their crops. Of course, cottages do not grow back. Instead of agricultural labourers keeping pigs and growing vegetables, living where they worked, second-home owners ‘up for half-term’ from northern cities enjoy barbecues and cycle rides.

  Not me. I live here 24/7. But further back even than the farm workers, this was a settlement. There is reported to be a burial mound behind the woods where they buried lepers, and it had its own gallows in the thirteenth century. (I do not think I would have liked it then either.) I suppose I could take comfort in the fact I am repopulating what historians call a ‘deserted medieval village’ – the site believed to be covered by farm buildings and plantations. Records show that once there was a hamlet where tenants farmed strips of land scattered through common fields, and i
t was significant enough to be marked on a map as early as 1610. Its high point was 1831, when the census indicates there were 149 people living hereabouts, many of them agricultural labourers. All that is left, aside from the holiday cottages, are a retired couple who once farmed here and live in a Sixties bungalow behind the barn, the Accountant and his elderly mother, and my own little family.

  Number 1 has electrics that date from just after the war, damp, asbestos ceilings and an avocado bath suite. I am supposed to cheer. It is a good thing, is it not, for my husband’s dream to move ever closer? Who would not cheer at that thought? Hurrah! Hurrah! Hear my shout. On the other hand, it would have been simpler not to buy it. We could have sold our own cottage and bought a ready-made family home: a vicarage, a farmhouse, a new-build ‘Georgian’ pile. We could have had next-door neighbours, maybe even a conservatory. But why would we want to do that? That would have been far too straightforward. Let’s go the whole hog. Let’s take two handfuls of houses and crash them together, mould the melted stone and make one house in a nowhere place. Damn the mess. Damn the cost. Damn the wife.

  Tuesday, 6 December 2005

  King of the Castle

  Northumberland’s history is everywhere: the stones of an old barn, limekilns in the harbour, hedged fields around. It also has more castles than any other county in England. The closest is built on an immense rocky crag, high above a stretch of golden sands, and was once a fortress and the home of Northumbria’s kings. Its grim and massive beauty dominates the coastline.

  There was a knock on the front door. A giant stood there in a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves and mud-splattered work boots. He was smiling broadly as he held out a bottle of champagne. He introduced himself. I thought: ‘Ah. The King of the Castle.’ Then I thought: ‘My God, do they still have some sort of droit de seigneur round here? Has he come to collect his due? I was awake with the baby most of the night – I don’t think I’m up to it.’ He said: ‘To celebrate the baby and your purchase of the cottage.’ My husband reached past me for the bottle and shook the huge, outstretched hand, saying: ‘Thank you, how very kind of you.’ I fought off the urge to bob a curtsey. ‘Nice castle,’ I said. ‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘We like it.’

  Monday, 19 December 2005

  Weapons of mass destruction

  Had to go to the doctor with mastitis. Feeling appalling. My breasts look like armed and dangerous weapons. Worst thing is you have to feed through it. The baby’s mouth opens and you think: ‘Here it comes. Here it comes.’ Agony and only slowly relief. Then it all starts again.

  Saturday, 24 December 2005

  ‘Here it is, Merry Christmas’

  At the school Christmas play, my four-year-old gleamed in his tinsel halo and gold netted wings with white cotton surplice. His angel marvel shocked me, truth be told. He watched his teacher and pressed his hands together with all the other smallest angels for the night. The piano struck up; I blinked the tears away. Sweet warbles sounded as he lifted his right hand and grabbed a handful of air to catch a most particular and falling star, slid the shiny handful into a non-existent pocket to save it, and rainy-day-danced his fingers down from the sky. He kept his star from fading; I melted all at once, singing ‘Gloria’.

  Apart from the school play and the fact breastfeeding is finally getting easier, I am bloody hating bloody Christmas. This is ghastly. What am I doing? In London, I love Christmas time. We see a show. I go to a schmaltzy Christmas movie on my own. We have supper with London Diva and the Godfather, spend an evening with the Perfect Mother and her Hectic Husband. Have drinks with my Islington Beauty. We do the stuff you do. Talk about people we know. Bitch about work. Laugh at our children’s latest outrages. Hang out. I miss them. On Christmas Eve, I make one last dash to the shops on New Bond Street and Oxford Street and snatch bargains from rails for sales that officially begin on Boxing Day. I like my last trawl through the streets of London on Christmas Eve. Usually it is quiet. Everyone is happy at the prospect of going home. My husband and I go to midnight mass at one of London’s most beautiful Catholic churches. There are glittering candles watched over by wooden martyrs, pictures stain the glass and a wise man in brocade vestments walks behind a cross with a nailed-on saviour, then speaks of peace and goodwill to all men. I miss that too. Tomorrow, the children would open their presents till I think we have tipped from festive into obscene; I would clap my hands and say: ‘Enough.’ We would walk in St James’s Park and wonder if the passing tourists are happy to be in London on this day. You cannot tell as they walk by you. If you say ‘Merry Christmas’ and smile, sometimes they look at you blankly; sometimes they lob an accented greeting back. Now I know how they feel inside. They are not feeling any Christmas cheer; they are as displaced and lost as I am. I have never felt so lacking in goodwill. Someone should buy me some for Christmas and wrap it in stars.

  Here, my parents are with us again: aside from them we have not seen anyone close to our hearts or wished peace to all men or, indeed, to anyone. Shopping in the local market town is not the same as Selfridges and Fenwick. We have not even been to church. I am without my rituals. I hate it all. I am in mourning for my life.

  Monday, 26 December 2005

  Fire, fire

  My parents bought the boys a fire engine for Christmas. It has an electric motor and is big enough for them both to sit on and drive. Because we could not be sure of the weather we had to leave it for them in the sitting room. The room is small at the best of times, even smaller when it has four grown-ups, three children, a Christmas tree and a fire engine in it. Even though I told them not to start it up indoors, every now and then one of them would lean down surreptitiously, turn the plastic key in the ignition, press the accelerator and drive it two feet forwards, or slam it into reverse and drive it two feet backwards, narrowly avoiding Grandad’s gammy feet. As if I was not stressed enough. At least they waited until they got it outside before filling the pump-action tank with water.

  Saturday, 31 December 2005

  ‘Celebration time, come on!’

  My parents have gone home. All wrapped in coats and scarves, they squeezed into their small car. My father in a flat cap, my mother with dark glasses and a white stick – a Mafioso Cossack in a towering fake-fur hat. Their car is so small and their outfits so large that sometimes I wonder they fit at all. As she hugged me and then pulled reluctantly away, my mother said: ‘That was the best Christmas ever.’ She always says that. Then she cries. She was so weak this Christmas time, she could not even hold the baby in her arms unless I stuffed cushions underneath her elbows and laid the baby on a pillow across her knees. That or leaned her at an angle into the sofa and pinned the baby to her breast like an oversized brooch. The baby sleeps and my mother sits happy and useful – more happy that she is again useful – till the baby wakes. She adores the baby; I see her remind herself not to hate me when I lift off the child to bring her a cup of tea.

  I know my daughter is stirring up memories for her. My father is technically my stepfather; he married my mother when I was nearly six. My mother’s first husband, my natural father, died when I was not yet nine months old. She had been married for a year and a half. At thirty-six, left with a new baby and her own elderly mother to care for in a small box of a home, she could never cry in the house. If she cried, a chorus of rocking, keening widow sounds would break out in the front room – her own mother, my dead father’s mother and then her elder sister would begin to cry, together loud enough to strip the walls of papered blooms. Instead, she would tuck me up tight and woollen in a silver-trimmed and large-wheeled rocking pram, and push me across to church and up the marbled aisle to cry among the plastered saints. When I had a therapist in my glory London days, he would listen to me earnestly whinge about my life and lot and say that he thought my mother must have been depressed when I was a baby. I would think: ‘No kidding, mate.’

  My parents are not keen on New Year’s Eve. They stayed long enough to wish my youngest boy a happy birthday
, then went. Today marks my two-year-old’s hop and bounce into a madly passionate three. This term he will start three mornings a week in the Early Years unit in school. I am hoping it will help him settle – he pines for what he knew in London almost as much as I do, and loves me as utterly and profoundly as I love him. My older boy is more settled here than his brother or his mother, more cautious in his display of loving. I scoop and hug and hold tight my older boy. I lock him in my arms and convince him of my mother love, my pride in all his boy perfection. I drink in his smell and he says: ‘Your hair tickles.’ Caress his cheek and he says: ‘Your breath is stinky.’ Sometimes he lets me. Sometimes he wriggles from my grasping clasp to ask: ‘Can I watch TV now?’ It does not deter me, I wait and pounce another day.

  Sunday, 1 January 2006

  Friends reunited

  When I announced we were moving, my Islington Beauty said to me over dinner: ‘Tell people you are coming back to London in a year or two. Otherwise’ – she shook her blonde head in regret – ‘no one will bother with you while you are up there.’ I thought: ‘Will you bother with me while I’m up there?’ She has; friends are bothering. The Godfather loves it here: cold winds, beaches, beer. London Diva arrived and immediately muffled herself up in thermals and fleeces – to sit inside. It is like looking in the mirror. Blank misery stares back at me. ‘Look how much I love you,’ she said with every ounce of her being. ‘I hate it here; I’m here because you are.’ This must be what it is like for my husband to live with me. I drone and moan and groan – the weather, too cold to bear; distant strangers you have no inclination to be closer to; isolation, geographical and any other which way; endless muddy driving to get anywhere you want to be. She said: ‘Remind me. Why do you live here?’ I no longer have any credibility as a twenty-first-century woman; I have ratcheted back to the 1940s and deserve to live there. She has a career, a Georgian house in North London and air miles. I have no job, a cottage nowhere I want to be and a family railcard.