Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Thursday, 29 March 2007

  More pants

  ‘When I am king,’ my four-year-old started up again. His brother interrupted: ‘You can’t be king. You have to be born into a king’s family to be king.’ The four-year-old looked momentarily disappointed. He thought for a moment or two. ‘When I am a policeman, everyone will wear pants on their head.’

  Sunday, 1 April 2007

  Running on empty 5

  I think it would be entirely unreasonable to divorce your husband because he let the car run out of petrol. I think you have more of a case the fifth time it happens. That is since we moved here.

  My therapist wanted to look for the meaning behind everything. That is what they do, after all. They are probably the most optimistic people in the whole world, thinking they can find a meaning to life. I was never quite sure where he was from as you were not supposed to ask questions. Well, you could ask a question, but he wouldn’t answer it. I think, perhaps, he was from the Netherlands. Consequently, whenever I find myself veering off into armchair psychology, I do it in a Dutch accent. Why does my husband persist in letting the car run out of petrol? Make that: ‘Vy doss he doo eit?’ Doss (etc.) he want to punish me? Rescue me? Prove how much I need him? Does he want me to stay in one place? Is he clipping my wings because he thinks I might fly away? And what am I doing by trusting him with this particular job when he has consistently failed to complete it to my satisfaction, or, indeed, the satisfaction of the car? Do I welcome the opportunity to be angry with him? Do I want to be stranded and rescued like some saddo fairytale princess? More simply, are we both idiots?

  Is it that complicated to fill a car with petrol? You point the nozzle in the right place and stuff comes out the end. It is a boy’s job. If he is here, I expect him to do it. If he is not here, I fill the car with petrol. I drive it up to the pump, point it, fire it and pay for it. What I do not do is run out of petrol. (Unless, that is, my husband was supposed to fill the car before he cleared off to his London office and just did not bother. Then, I do occasionally run out of petrol. But which is worse: to trust him or to give up on trusting him? Running out of petrol is rapidly becoming one of my hobbies. I wonder how you say that in German?)

  Friday. Again. On the school run, the last day of term. I was on my way to pick up the six-year-old; the Dixie Chicks were on, loud, when the Saab shuddered. I could not believe it was going to happen again. I drew in closer to the hedge, managed to roll back off the narrow country road into the nearest opening and laid my head on my arms on the steering wheel. If someone were to paint me at this juncture in my life, that is how they would ask me to sit: my face hidden, my head resting heavy, seeking sanctuary in the cross of my arms. If the painting had a soundtrack and you could press a red button to listen to it, it would not be the Dixie Chicks; it would be a low, long moan.

  I tried to ring him. Naturally my mobile was flat. I do not know why I carry it really. An old lady looked out of her house to see me stumbling around, kicking clods and with my hands in my hair. She let me use her phone. Girl Friday answered. I said: ‘I have run out of petrol.’ She said: ‘Again?’ While I was waiting for my husband by the side of the road, another mother on the school run drove by; she smiled and gave me a nice friendly wave. I gave her an equally friendly wave back and thought: ‘What do you think I am doing by the side of the road, I wonder?’ I climbed back into the car to wait, ramped up the music and closed my eyes. This is how my fellow mother found me five minutes later when she drove back, having decided as she wended her merry way onwards to school that I probably should not have been by the side of the road looking like I wanted to kill someone. It was very kind of her to return. Not everybody would have done. I think to myself that even if running out of petrol is not in itself a good thing, it does restore your faith in human nature the way people go out of their way to help you recover from your idiocy. Northumberland appears to be full of Good Samaritans. I was, however, quite keen for her to leave before my husband turned up in the other car so I could shout at him very loudly.

  But that was Friday. Another day entirely. Today, I woke up and my husband said: ‘Happy anniversary, darling. Nineteen years ago, we kissed for the first time.’ It was 1 April then, too.

  Wednesday, 4 April 2007

  Blonde bombshell

  I was reading the boys a bedtime story and my six-year-old starts combing through my hair with his fingers. It reminds me that I haven’t checked for nits for a while and I really should. Check the children that is, not me. He says: ‘Mummy, you have blonde bits in your hair like I do.’ I think this unlikely. I am the dullest and most resolute of brunettes. He pulls my hair closer to his eyes as if he was thinking of buying it. ‘A sort of grey blonde.’ I know my hair is now threaded with grey. I just pretend not to.

  There is an advantage in having children late in life, aside from an impressive number of City Breaks in your thirties; people presume you are younger than you are. I have a baby. That means I could be anything between a clueless thirteen and an ambitious forty-sevenish. (Older, if I was desperate or deluded.) Of course, I do not have spots and I do have grey hair, apparent even to juveniles. That rules me out as a teenage mother then.

  According to a photo that my LA pal sent me this week, when I smile I also have score marks down from my eyes and stretching diagonally across my cheeks, out to my ears. I was not impressed. Who sends their friend a photo of herself looking like her granny? I had noticed the lines criss-crossing my face when I got up in the morning, but I hoped they shook themselves out after a few hours. They do not shake themselves out. I can no longer fool myself. Nobody in their right minds would think I was in my twenties. I am clinging on to the semblance of thirty-something looks and rapidly losing my grip. I said to my husband: ‘You have had the best years of my life; you have eaten up my prime.’ He said: ‘They were the best? You’re kidding me.’ The last time I went to London, the only men to eye me up were in their sixties. When did that happen? When did I turn into eye-candy for grandads? I am old. My children have started to notice. That is how old I am.

  Thursday, 5 April 2007

  Missing keys 3

  Do you know how I know there is a God? It is not because a dozen earnest young people with backpacks carrying a large wooden cross walked by my window this morning. I wondered if it was a sign I was about to have a bad day. I did.

  The reason I know there is a God is because I have lost the car keys. Usually my husband loses the car keys. And after everything I said about him persistently letting the car run out of petrol. All I spend when that happens is time and an impressive amount of bad language. Replacing the car keys is going to cost more than £1,200. (I should actually say ‘car key’, because obviously we do not have a spare. Why would we have a spare? It is not like we are ever going to lose it.) It is going to cost this huge amount of money because you have to reprogram the car’s ‘brain’ and send away for a new key. Who knew the car had a brain? I find the fact that the car has a brain almost as worrying as the fact mine is missing along with the car key. I would so love to blame the children. But I know it is my fault. I keep putting things down and completely forgetting where they are. I have now searched the house six times to no avail. I lost them yesterday morning and thought I might find them before my husband got back from London late last night. No such luck. What is worse is the fact that he is turning the house inside out and not a word of blame has escaped his lips.

  Saturday, 7 April 2007

  Small mercies

  Have realized this morning that the boot of the still-locked Saab contains the baby’s buggy, my wellington boots and all the CDs, which put me in a good mood. It also contains three sets of white rabbit ears attached to plastic headbands (face paints included), two bags of golden wrapped chocolate chicks, two bags of rainbow-wrapped chocolate eggs and three little furry toy rabbits. That is to say, the car has eaten Easter.

  I suppose it could be worse. If I had realized any later, tomorrow morning
would have been eggless and I would have been forced to tell the children the Easter Bunny had died in the night.

  Monday, 9 April 2007

  ‘Tony, Tony, turn around’

  Do you know how I really know there is a God? My mother found the car keys this evening. Hurray! Six days they were missing. I went through the house, garden and gutter inch by inch. We rang the police and asked in the nearest pub to see if anyone had handed them in. I ransacked my sons’ drawers, wardrobes and under-bed, darksome places as if my boys were teenagers and I was looking for cannabis. We were visited by the Perfect Mother, her Hectic Husband and their three teenagers; I put a £50 bounty on the car keys and set the adolescents loose. Still nothing. I offered my own children a £5 bounty. Zip. Nada. My mother prayed to St Anthony, the Catholic saint you pray to when you lose things. I prayed to St Anthony. My eighty-two-year-old aunt living in Cheshire lit three candles on successive days to St Anthony. My mother gets put in charge of the baby and starts amusing her by going through a toy box, and bingo. The baby had presumably filched them and then staggered over to one of her crates of toys and dropped them in it with all the other good stuff. I wouldn’t mind. but I had been through the boys’ toys in case they had done the same thing. It turned out my boys were innocent of any car-key crime, my husband is a man of infinite patience and I still need my mother. Aside from the fact it was my blind mother who found the keys – which in itself is deeply cool – I rescued the bunny ears and face paints from the boot. That is how we had tea – with whiskers. It crossed my mind, while I was painting rabbit noses over freckles, that I could say a prayer and ask St Anthony where my London life went.

  Friday, 13 April 2007

  A kitchen-sink drama

  My husband is attempting to sew me into the North-East in a number of intricate ways. One of which is the creation of a ‘dream kitchen’. He has a problem. I have never dreamed of a kitchen. In fact, I am so very fed up with the whole process of designing and installing a new kitchen, I am tempted to create a house that does not have one, apparently quite a fashionable thing to do now. My husband had an eccentric colleague who moved into a flat and immediately had the kitchen taken out. He did not need a kitchen because he never cooked; he always ate out. Eventually the owners of the restaurant where he ate every day asked him for a loan. He refused. Then felt he could not go back to eat there again. I suspect they asked him for a loan knowing that would happen. You can have a good customer and you can have a stalker.

  Despite the need to feed three small children, I am tempted to follow this colleague’s lunatic example. Part of the problem in the creation of this fabulous kitchen is that I am mean, mean, mean. I thoroughly object to the amount of money a new kitchen costs. You could buy a house in some towns with the money some people spend on a kitchen. £30,000 is not unusual. £30,000. Since I have no intention of spending that much money, we have not gone to one of those companies with ‘bespoke kitchen designers’ who send you a CD-ROM with whizz-bang drawers that slide in and out of virtual reality. Instead, we had two nice men out from the local trading estates. One of whom had a clipboard.

  Those glossy magazines you buy for ideas do not help. They have women in them who say things like: ‘I’ve never had anywhere to store my trays, but now, not only do I have handmade trays to match the cabinets, but they slot into a special place in the island.’ I do not have a tray. Let alone one which has its own home.

  These women with their double-page-spread kitchens make me feel inadequate. They all have at least one and a half sinks, ideally two, even two and a half. One sink to wash up in and another to wash vegetables in. Is that necessary? Do they get confused when it comes to washing vegetables? If they are at a sink with a vegetable in their hand and a bottle of Fairy Liquid close by, do they forget themselves and bubble up the broccoli? I thought women had shucked off the shackles of the kitchen sink. Not so. In these post-feminist times, our shackles come in the shape of double Belfasts, a granite carved drainer and an over-priced mixer tap.

  I do not want a ‘knobs on’ kitchen. Well, I do, but only so I can open the doors. I do not need anything fancy. I want it to work. I want it to be easy to clean. Not that I want to clean it, you understand. My husband has already bought an Aga – a cooker so expensive, it promises to do your ironing. He has begun to leaf through those fancy kitchen magazines and look unhealthily interested in the big fridges. He says things like: ‘The kitchen is the heart of the home.’ I say things like: ‘I’m the heart of the home.’ And I cost less.

  Monday, 16 April 2007

  Coffee and a slice of day

  This is my day:

  3.30 a.m. Six-year-old wakes up screaming with nightmares.

  3.31 a.m. Go to him.

  3.52 a.m. Return to own bed after getting him back to sleep.

  6.15 a.m. Husband kisses me tenderly to the sound of birdsong. ‘Bye then,’ he whispers. I hear the door close behind him.

  6.20 a.m. Boys wake up.

  6.22 a.m. Baby wakes up.

  6.23 a.m. Lie there wondering how much harm could come to the baby if I leave her to the tender mercies of her brothers for the next twenty mins.

  6.25 a.m. Hear loud baby-wail.

  6.26 a.m. Get up. Extremely reluctantly.

  6.28 a.m. Go to bathroom. Remember that toilet in rented house is broken and has been broken for three days. Only flushable with large bucket of cold water. Husband away for next four days. My job to sort out.

  6.31 a.m. to 6.52 a.m. Change baby. Get dressed. Look in mirror. Think: ‘Bloody hell.’ Go downstairs. Find Rice Krispies all over the kitchen floor after boys went exploring in new packet to find non-existent toy. Curse Kellogg’s. Explain adventuring in the cereal packet is a dangerous thing to do.

  6.53 a.m. Breakfast. Remember that gas cylinders for cooker ran out last night. Abandon plans for bacon. Recommend toy-free cereal and toast.

  7.45 a.m. Upstairs to change baby and supervise dressing for boys.

  8.05 a.m. Discover four-year-old flooding the bathroom having given his toy rhinoceros a swim. Explain flooding the bathroom is not a good idea. Indeed, dangerous.

  8.35 a.m. Get into car and set off for school. Realize husband has filled it with petrol. Cheer.

  8.50 a.m. First day of summer term. Arrive at school to tell them we will be late because of doctor’s appointment. Find school has introduced a friendship bench. Cheer.

  9.15 a.m. Leave school to take six-year-old to doctor’s appointment for check-up and jab.

  9.35 a.m. Chase grumpy baby round the waiting room, attempt to read book to boys, persuade four-year-old off the slide meant for babies, attempt again to read book, abandon book, bribe all three with white chocolate to keep quiet.

  9.50 a.m. See doctor.

  10.25 a.m. Return six-year-old to school. Ignore his plaintive pleas that he does not want to play outside at break time.

  10.30 a.m. Head for the house of the Oyster Farmer’s Wife with baby and four-year-old. Congratulate self for remembering to put gift for new baby and siblings in car.

  10.55 a.m. Arrive for coffee and the adoration of her new baby daughter with other mums. The health visitor is there. She asks: ‘How are you?’ I slap an enormous grin on my face, say: ‘Great, thank you.’ Feel like saying: ‘Still here.’ Think that might worry her. Hand over gifts, wrapping paper (in a nice roll, why waste it?) and card with the ink still wet. Drink coffee. Draw in deep breath in preparation for the rest of the day.

  Lost the will to live and any inclination to keep checking the time.

  Wednesday, 18 April 2007

  Seasoning

  A clock has struck somewhere, unwinding spring. A buttered knife smears thick yellow rape across green fields. A silent shout and, in a beat, puritan twigged hedges break out white in blackthorn blossom. Daffodils dry and fall away to paper brown. You think; ‘Shame, glory gone.’ Then tulips arrive: ‘Ta-da’ and trees applaud with branches of budding leaves. Spring moves on. In the city, you could think s
easons stood stock-still. There, I was lucky to notice one slip into the next. The time it took to walk through dirty rain between tube and office. A glance from a window at grey sky scraps. A summer lunch on a slatted wooden bench, watching lorries ride by. One year rattling on to the next. Desk diaries spelling out the passing time.

  Friday, 20 April 2007

  Baby love

  A moment in the dark: my bed-ready baby placed small hands against my cheeks, moved back slightly in my arms and gazed at me. Content enough with what she found, she moved again, forward this time, to rest her lips on mine.