Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  I am missing not just the dirty magnificence of city streets, I am missing ‘me’. The ‘me’ who used to be, before children came and ate up her trim figure and all her time. What a foolish thing to miss. A memory of seventy-hour weeks and lie-abed Sundays. There are days motherhood, in all its worn, ill-tempered glory, grinds my bones to dust. Rage, repetition, losing the will to live as you try to herd your cats out of the house. Then there is that sweeping, yearning love that floods you as you kiss and kiss and kiss again your baby’s cheek, and her too young as yet to run from you. And talking to the Islington Beauty and London Diva made me realize that maybe I should open up and let some people up here in. Get them one of those red enamelled badges prefects used to wear when I was young. Instead of House Captain, it could read in gilt lettering ‘New Mate’. Maybe I will call some people.

  Tuesday, 26 December 2006

  Merry Christmas. Everybody’s having fun.

  Well, that’s that then. Am I the only one who thinks ‘Thank God, it’s over’?

  I was quite keen at the start, but frankly I am just relieved that is it for another year. I try my best. I really do. But by God, it’s an effort. I think I hide my occasional desperation quite well, but as we left the eleven o’clock Christmas morning mass with the five-year-old, three-year-old, babe in arms, elderly father and blind mother, even the priest whispered in my ear: ‘May God give you the strength to get through this day.’ Amen to that. I go into it with the best intentions. This year, I say to myself, this year I will make my own cranberry sauce, remember what it was exactly the children asked Santa for in their letters (mental note: don’t forget the camera next year), and establish those traditions which my children will remember when they too are adults with children of their own. Those very special moments that in forty years time my daughter will remember and ask herself: ‘Why did my mother do that?’

  It all started to go wrong on Christmas Eve when I spent twenty minutes storming round the house looking for the literary classic The Night Before Christmas. I eventually found it under my five-year-old son’s bed, but I do wonder whether my fury outweighed the cosy few minutes of festive domesticity under the duvet reading the damn thing. I can just imagine: ‘Yeah, my brother and I had this bet each Christmas. We would hide this old book she was desperate to read to us and we’d see how long would it take her to say the ‘F’ word when she couldn’t find it. Dear old Mum. Of course she is in a home now for the criminally insane. She did love her Christmas, though.’

  Monday, 1 January 2007

  A Happy and a Gay New Year to all

  I have had social exchanges with more than thirty people today. Neighbours, up for a couple of days’ festivities in their holiday cottages, pop in and out of the kitchen like we are all in an episode of The Archers without the tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti-tum tum-ti-tum-ti-tumty. I am always pleased to see them, particularly the Consultant, whom I find to be so steadfast in her kindness, but neighbours can come as a bit of a shock when it is usually just us chickens.

  My Gay Best Boyfriend is visiting with his partner. They have taught the boys that if they pull their mattresses off their beds and slide them down the narrow staircase, it is possible to sit on a sleeping bag at the top of it and hurl yourself down it repeatedly until blood is spilled. In between the mattress mayhem, I hosted a children’s birthday party complete with chocolate fountain and Happy Feet cake for my now four-year-old, who has excellent timing for a birthday.

  Once the children were in bed, there was a dinner party for my two London honeys and the Oyster Farmer and his wife. We ate, drank and scored the year we were leaving behind: four out of ten in my case. My husband looked horrified. He then scored his year six and a half. I said: ‘Six and a half? Six and a half? What the hell does it take for you to give it a ten? You are living where you want to, you have two beautiful sons, a new baby daughter, and you bought yourself a car, you miserable sod. Six and a half?’ ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Seven.’

  The conversation moved on to what we all wanted out of 2007. I wanted some idea of where we should live long term and more patience with the children. But by far the best moment was the audible gasp I thought I caught from the very straight Northumberland farmer as the bongs tolled for midnight, London’s fireworks began, and my beloved boys wished each other a ‘Happy New Year, darling’, plunging into a lip-smacking, luscious smackeroonie. I swear that must have been the first and probably the last time my farmer friend will ever witness a gay kiss. Marvellous. I asked my Gay Best Boyfriend: ‘Will you be here next year?’ He said: ‘If you remember, we are with my in-laws next year.’ ‘But I want you every year,’ I said. He took my hand and held it between both of his. ‘It’s not like that any more. Remember. We’re all grown-up now. Turn and turn about.’ Sometimes I hate being grown-up.

  Friday, January 5, 2007

  Sex and chocolate cake

  Have revised the way the blog looks. That is to say, I have changed the colour of the background from white to pink, changed the font I am writing in and am dropping in pictures, a process which makes my head melt. I figure I will work out the technical stuff as I go. It is done; it is out there. I consider this my launch. Look, Wifey is waving.

  My five-year-old turned six yesterday (unsurprisingly, he will henceforth be known as ‘the six-year-old’). He and his brother (previously known as ‘the three-year-old’, henceforward, etc., etc.) had a hideously noisy party yesterday afternoon. God, I hate children’s parties. Does that make me a bad mother? No, I don’t think so. It’s all the other things I do that make me a bad mother – start drinking at 4.30 p.m. while I make their tea, shout so loudly I scare myself, object on religious principles to sewing their name tapes into their school uniforms.

  Anyway, my six-year-old takes far too much for granted. Enormous wooden play castle meant for the garden, which his father constructed during the early hours in our teeny, tiny sitting room and I then gift-wrapped: he came down, tore off the paper, stooped his head to get through the arched doorway, came out again and said: ‘Thanks. Can I watch 101 Dalmatians now?’ The boys had a party for twenty-eight children later that day in a soft play centre: ‘Yeah, it was good. Are there any more presents to open?’ By rights, he should have drifted off to bed utterly blissed out and dreamt of balloons and ice-cream mountains. He remained studiously phlegmatic throughout and had a nightmare his brother’s head fell off. On the upside, there is a large amount of uneaten chocolate cake which I am steadily ploughing my way through. I figure if my husband is going to continue to make me live in the North-East, I will get fat in silent protest.

  Tuesday, January 9 2007

  Playhouse

  To say we have dithered about what to do with the house is putting it mildly. Let’s spend nearly nine months waiting for planning permission to knock two houses together and go through a very painful tendering process. Yes, let’s do that. Then let’s take some advice from estate agents and our accountant and decide we can’t knock them together after all because we won’t get back a big chunk of the building costs (latest estimate: £120,000) when we come to sell one big house rather than the two little ones. OK, then let’s decide to go house-hunting. (This involves vast and incomprehensible arrays of numbers on bits of paper and calls to a variety of building societies – some of whom laugh at us.)

  I know what! On the same day (today) as having a meeting with another prospective builder, let’s see a house we could buy for the laughable sum of £615,000, which we could just about afford if I sell the children’s kidneys. Luckily for them, I didn’t like it; my husband did. If, however, he thinks I am letting him decide which house we live in up here, he has another think coming. By four o’clock in the afternoon, we are so fed up with not knowing what to do, we decide we will go back to London. That’s straight then. By seven that evening, I decide that is a bad idea because we will feel we have been beaten by the system and if we go back to London I want it to be for positive reasons and not because we can’t make up our mind bet
ween scrambled or fried eggs on a morning.

  There was a time when I used to be quite good at making decisions. Those days are gone. The latest decision is to knock the two houses together (what do estate agents and accountants know anyway?) and stay. I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. Over breakfast when I shall be having cornflakes. Or porridge.

  Friday, 12 January 2007

  Mama? Mama?

  I was thrown out of the house last night – well, maybe not so much thrown as eased out gently with a flashlight and a duvet and told to sleep next door in Number 1. My husband is spending more time with us and has had enough of the baby’s nocturnal breastfeeding. Since we are pushed for space and there is nowhere else for her to go, the baby’s cot is in our room. Unlike my husband, the baby rather likes her nightly routine and, in that halfway state between sleep and wakefulness, I have been unable to resist her plaintive bleatings of ‘Mama? Mama?’ in the cold darkness. She starts up and I stumble out of bed, pluck her from the cot and sink back into the bedding with my little victorious suckling. As she sees it, I’m lying there and it’s not like I’m doing anything else. But my husband was right: it has gone on long enough. She’s nearly fifteen months old and God knows, I could do with a night’s sleep. It might help me regain my reason. I will feed her in the morning and before she goes to sleep, but I am giving up the night-time feeding on demand. Apparently, while I slept, the baby was weeping uncontrollably and went to look for me under my pillow. ‘You’d have caved,’ my husband boasted manfully this morning. ‘She was utterly pathetic.’ He sobs in imitation of her over the breakfast table and she gazes at him from my arms as if she hates him.

  Monday, 15 January 2007

  Babes in Gotham City

  I may be struggling socially but the boys went to yet another birthday party yesterday, this one, a fancy-dress discotheque. I seem to spend an awful lot of time handing round greasy pizza slices to their classmates, but at least I am doing better than my parents, who seem locked into a hectic round of interments and funeral teas.

  The problem with children’s birthday parties is other people’s children. This time was no different. When two four-year-old boys squared up for a fight, I was faced with the eternal dilemma of whether you attempt to parent someone else’s children or shrug, turn away and think: ‘Thank God, you’re not mine.’ Initially I tried to ignore them, but the pushing and shoving went on. I looked round the church hall, desperately trying to spot a mother who might be willing to claim ownership of one of them, but nada. The boys were rapidly taking on that Friday night look of ‘Did you spill my lemonade?’ Reluctantly, baby on hip, I went over. ‘Look, this is a party,’ I reasoned as I knelt beside them. (I have seen those How To Be a Good Parent – At Least When the Camera is On programmes.) ‘No fighting.’ One of them promptly shoved the other.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey’ – my voice grew slightly less liberal. ‘Where is your mummy?’ The half-pint Batman looked at me. ‘I don’t have a mummy.’ I hoped he meant ‘here’ – ‘I don’t have a mummy here.’ On the off-chance I had found the room’s only orphan, I decided to pick on the other one before the orphan started crying loudly. I turned to the cowboy. ‘Where is your mummy then?’ I cannot say his mummy looked as grateful as she might have done when I interrupted her cup of tea to explain why I had brought her little hard man back to her.

  What are you supposed to do? We had already let some ghastly brat hold on to and then unwrap the pass-the-parcel present when he really should have passed it on to the child next to him. I only just stopped myself pulling it out of his jammy fingers and slapping him around the head with it.

  Tuesday, 16 January 2007

  Dollies and disability

  We had to go into school this morning for a daddies’ reading day, which entailed my husband reading a book called Vesuvius Poovius – all about poo and how to get rid of it. Not quite sure if that is what they had in mind when they asked my husband in to read, but the children seemed to like it. I am, however, disowning responsibility if any of the other mothers start telling me little Johnny is stashing his number twos under the front-room rug. They probably would not care: everything my husband does seems to go down well at school. I am merely a mother; my husband has been elected a school governor. They asked whether ‘one of us’ would be interested in standing. They would have settled for me, but I suspect they wanted my husband. While I was there, the baby crawled across the classroom to the doll’s house. As she pulled out the dollies, each was revealed as more unfortunate than the next. Among the inhabitants was an old lady clutching a Zimmer frame – fair enough, grannies do get that way. Granny had a lot going on, living there as she did with her middle-aged son on crutches and a blind daughter who could not move anywhere without her white stick. Talk about the Curse of the House of Usher. If there had been a cat, it would have had three legs. Apparently, local education authorities require schools to buy Afro-Caribbean and Asian dolls at the same time as Caucasian. Quite right too – the children up here never see a black face. But all things in moderation and it was more of a care home than a doll’s house. I picked up a small girl in an overly large wheelchair and a deaf black teenager and held them out enquiringly to Guitar Girl. ‘What are you like?’ she said. I thought: ‘Am I not supposed to notice?’ She giggled, said patiently: ‘It’s all about diversity and inclusion.’ Really? What about escapism and imagination?

  Thursday, 18 January 2007

  Define ‘special’

  I spent the morning being a ‘special person’ at school and was awarded a certificate with red felt-tipped hearts, a daffodil (a whole one – all to myself) and a chocolate Rice Krispie cake by my sons. The boys were very keen for me to come in and pick up my awards. They had a vested interest, which worried me. If I came in to pick up my award (along with a cup of tea), my boys also received a chocolate Rice Krispie cake. Sometimes, though, it is best not to look too closely at the quid pro quo.

  My own recipe for chocolate Rice Krispie cake:

  ∗ Buy Rice Krispies. Tell the boys to put back the cheesy Quavers, blackcurrant Fruit Shoot and seventeen comics complete with seventeen unnecessary toys Sellotaped to the front cover. Ignore wails of ‘But I really wanted one of those.’ Stand in queue at supermarket. Think up fifty-three retorts to the grim-faced shop assistant, who seems to have taken a personal dislike to my children. Pay with a £20 note just to irritate her. Leave the shop. Return.

  ∗ Buy organic and very expensive chocolate. Hope not to get grim-faced assistant. Fail to recall any one of the fifty-three retorts when she looms up behind the till and snarls at the four-year-old for standing on the conveyor belt with a shopping basket on his head.

  ∗ Return home. Realize six-year-old has technically shoplifted the Quavers. Turn on TV for the children. Make cup of tea. Eat large amount of chocolate and bag of cheesy Quavers. Feel slightly sick.

  ∗ Break hypnotic spell of Scooby Doo to drag children into kitchen for mummy time. This, after all, is why I quit the day job. Explain empty Quavers packet away to small and accusatory inch-high private eyes.

  ∗ Melt chocolate.

  ∗ Allow four-year-old to pour in box of Rice Krispies.

  ∗ Realize this was a mistake.

  ∗ Clean up half a box of Rice Krispies from floor, kitchen surface, top of the oven and room upstairs that we never go in.

  ∗ Allow both boys to stir concoction with wooden spoon.

  ∗ Tell boys that hitting each other with a wooden spoon is a bad thing to do.

  ∗ Realize there are no bun cases in the house.

  ∗ Drive to supermarket for bun cases. Hope not to get same woman. Give her £50 note. Smile sweetly.

  ∗ Return home. Scoop gungy spoonfuls of crisping chocolate gore into bun cases.

  ∗ Carry over to fridge with immense pride.

  ∗ Wash baby thoroughly.

  Saturday, 20 January 2007

  Lost boys

  We had not managed to snatch breakfast befor
e we left the house in a bid to catch a 7.30 a.m. train for a brief weekend in London. My husband had driven too fast down a dark and dangerous road and I had been worried throughout that we would miss it. Once we parked the car, we figured that if we ran, there was seven minutes left to buy food before we crossed the bridge over the tracks on to the platform. Standing with the pushchair, I queued for five croissants, coffees and warm milk at the coffee stand on the concourse. The pressure mounted as I glanced at the large wrought-iron clock which hangs over the heads of passengers, warning them not to be tardy. The boys, muffled in their red wool hats and overly long scarves, were dragging at me and it was the sort of cold that makes you pull your shoulders close to your ears and wish you were anywhere else. One of those old men you find only in railway stations shuffled over. He asked me how old the boys and the baby were and stooped down to caress her small silky head. ‘A boy?’ he asked. I did that up-down rapid calculation you do to decide whether the stranger spells danger and decided he was safe, sad and lonely. ‘I had a boy but he died at seven,’ he told me. This is the moment at which the coffee seller decided to ask me what I wanted. I ignored her. ‘That’s terrible,’ I said. ‘You don’t forget, do you? What happened?’ He told me the boy had a hole in the heart.