The Marriage Diaries

by Rebecca Campbell

  I was on live. It was a new departure. I was now apparently seen as a safe pair of hands; I wouldn't run amok or drink more than my usual two pints of loosener and start talking about the lights, the beautiful lights, or belch loudly into the microphone. Naturally, they chose the feature before mine specially to try to discommode me. As so often seemed to be the case, it was about women and their troublesome sphincters.

  “Can you give us a run-through,” Jemima had said, smiling her smile of bottomless cruelty, “of some of the anal seepage scenarios?”

  The expert, a sympathetic-looking woman with glasses so thick they could be used to glaze the windows of deep-sea exploration craft and hair dense and coarse enough to support a tennis racket thrust vertically into its midst, listed them. Dismayingly, it seemed that, for the vulnerable, anal seepage could strike almost anytime, although it was particularly important to be on your guard after flatulence or intercourse. Exercise classes were another danger time. Or coughing. Or laughing.

  And what could be done about it? Could the errant sphincter be trained, humbled into obedience like a broken circus lion? I don't know—I had a final read-through of my piece and missed the thrilling dénouement.

  There have been sociobiological explanations for the strange aversions of children. [I like to chuck in a bit of science when I can: raises the tone of things and annoys Jemima.] Cabbage and other brassicas contain, it seems, substances potentially toxic to some children. So the gene that just says no to broccoli helps out with survival. But, like Harry with his greens, I don't swallow it. My friend Anna Blundy manages to get fistfuls of vegetative matter, in hues from yellow through green to orange, into her two kids, and they thrive.

  Vegetables are good for children, so why won't Harry eat them? And it's not just vegetables. Short of chicken nuggets, he eats no meat. Aside from his very occasional fish stick, he consumes no fish. Why? It is madness, nutritional suicide.

  And so I try to force him. I know I shouldn't. Every book ever written on the subject says don't do it, you'll just make matters worse. And I know that I'm repeating history. I remember my mom trying to make me eat rice pudding. Each time she spooned it in, I spat it out. Each time I spat it out, she slapped my face. Her hand gave in before my face, and to this day, I haven't eaten the muck. Vegetables are still an ordeal for me. If I were left entirely to my own whims I'd eat the same meal every day: a cheese sandwich on white bread with a Branston pickle and a side order of cheese-flavored potato chips.

  Yes, I try to make him eat, even knowing, from my own experience, that I will not prevail. Without the right kind of equipment—tubing, pumps, etcetera—force-feeding is futile. On the subject of forced feeding, by the way, it's usually glossed over these days, but the suffragettes didn't actually want the vote for all women. They wanted the vote for wealthy women—those who met the existing property qualification—which is why the Liberals, the radical party at the time, were against— [Stop, man, for God's sake, stop. Jemima's doing her hanging-man mime; the producer, a very pretty twenty-four-year-old, slightly out of her depth but trying like all get-out, is holding her head in her hands. This is a nice little earner; don't ruin everything now; back on track, quick, quick.] Ha-ha-ha, so … um, but what I don't understand is why he's the fattest little kid in his playgroup, despite consuming …

  And so on for another four minutes. I knew how close I'd come to blowing it. The tragedy was that it wasn't even an ad-lib: I'd scripted the fucking thing. I hate the truth. I think all that saved me was that the rest of the piece hammered home how crap I was, dwelling on long-term damage, emotional inadequacy, probable sexual dysfunctionality, etc, etc. I'd milked that strain after Jemima told me that the previous week's broadcast, an account of taking Harry to the zoo, where he'd contracted ringworm from a reticulated python forced on him by some enthusiasts manning the exhibits desk at the entrance to the reptile house, had attracted complaints that it was “self-congratulatory.”

  Except that self-abnegation didn't save me.

  “And thanks again to Sean Lovell for the last in his series of talks on being a stay-at-home dad.”

  Then a woman came on to talk about how to make jam from mushrooms. As I squeezed past, Jemima spun around in her swivel chair. (Her contract, by the way, insists that her chair, in addition to both tilting and swiveling, should be 22 percent bigger than any other chair in the studio and, finally, should swivel more than any other chair.)

  “So long, big boy.” She smirked menacingly and slid her cruelly taloned fingers inside my waistband. Once there, she maneuvered until she had a handful of my manhood.

  “No one disses the suffragettes on my show,” she said, and squeezed.

  My eyes were still watering when I reached the pub. I ordered a pint of beer and sat down, gingerly, in a quiet corner. Uma came in ten minutes later. I'd arranged to meet her, as she had business in Broadcasting House herself.

  She was wearing a white linen jacket, quite smart by her standards, and a narrow black skirt. I think she was trying to look businesslike, but it was all undermined by that untamable head of red hair. She smiled when she saw me and came and sat down next to me on the worn leatherette of the bench. She sat closer than I'd expected. And then she slipped off her jacket. Underneath, she was wearing a small garment—camisole? vest? (don't know exactly what the word is, and I can hardly ask Celeste, can I?)—with little straps and some lacy goings-on at the front. The whole thing was most unnerving.

  “Listened to you in the car,” she said, when I'd brought a glass of wine back from the bar. “Thought you were quite good.”

  From Uma, that counted as lavish praise, and I felt a glow of contentment, like a schoolboy getting his head patted by a notoriously hard-to-please teacher. Whom he fancies.

  “Thanks.”

  “I especially enjoyed the bit about the suffragettes. Why did you stop?”

  “Jemima. She didn't like it. But I didn't mean to tar them all with the same feather—”

  “Brush.”

  “Yeah, brush. I always say feather. Er, brush, because Sylvia Pankhurst wanted the vote for everyone. Doled out soup and condoms in the East End, that sort of thing. It's the others I can't stand.”

  “Yeah, I get it. But that's enough of the suffragettes.”

  “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Sex or God. Everything else bores me at the moment. I was sooo bored at your dinner party. ‘Oh, that's what you think about the Israelis? Really. No, really? So you think they should be nicer to one another? Well, I hadn't thought of that. How stimulating. They really should make you the special envoy. And what, the Russians are being beastly in Chechnya? I hadn't heard. And there's a north-south divide on house prices? So houses cost more in London than Wigan? Scandal. I blame the government.’ I mean, have you ever heard a single interesting or original statement from anyone at a dinner party? No, you haven't. All you get are the same boring ideas rolled around, and everyone agreeing how terrible things are. Well fuck off, fuck right off.”

  “Don't blame me, I never said a word all night.”

  “Might have been more interesting if you had.”

  Okay. Now that was the second nice thing she'd said in the space of one lunchtime. I thought back through the months of our relationship, trying to find other examples of pleasantness from Uma. She may have once said that she quite liked my sideburns, but that was after I'd shaved them off, so it could equally well be put down as a put-down. Beyond that, I was struggling.

  Time to strike with a piece of irresistible flirtation.

  “I've been thinking,” I said meditatively, “about Leibniz and the Problem of Evil.” Why, the smooth bastard.

  “The Problem of Evil being how God could have made a world where so much shit happens?” Uma moved an inch or two closer on the bench. We were as close to touching as you can get without actually, er, touching.

  “That's exactly the problem of evil I had in mind.”

  That as opposed to the
Problem of Evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the Problem of Evil in my underpants.

  The odd thing is that I actually had been much preoccupied with how it was possible to get through a day without despairing. It began when a handicapped kid came into the playground in Kil-burn. I was pushing Harry on the swings …

  “I was pushing Harry on the swings,” I said to Uma, aware that she was really listening, not the half paying attention, half thinking of something cutting to say that I usually got from her, “when this little boy came into the park. He was maybe six or seven years old, and he was obviously handicapped, but not too badly. He could walk, but he was very wobbly. I suppose it must have been cerebral palsy, but I also got the feeling that there might have been some mental problem there as well. I don't know. He was with a big, ugly, stupid-looking woman. I remember her buttocks—they looked like the war hammer of some savage god of the Polynesians—but the biggest impression she gave off was of overwhelming boredom. She got him out of his stroller and into the swing—you know, one of those baby swings, with the bar across and stuff. Then she pushed him once and went and sat down and had a fag. The kid liked the swinging bit, or I think he did. He made a noise that could have been laughing. I hope it was. Then his feet began to scrape on the floor, and the swing stopped. I looked at the carer. She was gazing into nowhere. She noticed me looking, and she began to do some girl sort of stuff, messing with her skirt, touching her hair. She thought I was checking her out. I pointed at the child and said, ‘Is it okay if I push him?’ She looked really pissed off and nodded, then went back to being gormless.

  “So I pushed him and Harry at the same time. Harry loved it, swinging together. I tried talking to the boy. He gurgled, but it was still impossible to work out if he was speaking or laughing or crying. Perhaps his mother would have been able to make out what he was saying—you know, faster, higher, or please, for Christ's sake, stop this, I just want to sit here and scrape my feet, you big, fat useless fuck. And I did feel like a big useless fuck. This wasn't Rwanda or the Holocaust or even a really serious handicap, in the great scheme of things: it was one mildly handicapped kid and a lazy lump of a carer. And by the way, I don't really blame her. After all, she was looking after him, and what the fuck had I ever done that was as useful as that? And I also know that it's pointless and offensive and irrelevant to mention her buttocks, but I'm trying to tell you what was going through my mind.

  “Anyway, I lost it. The tears started to roll down my face, and it was all I could do not to wail, you know, so I wouldn't scare them. And I thought about Leibniz—the philosopher, late-seventeenth-century—how he tried to make this kind of thing bearable. He said that when God was thinking up the world, he wanted to make it as good as it could possibly be. He could have made a world without evil, without suffering, but you could only do that if you took away our freedom, our ability to choose evil. He could have made us the kind of beings who could never decide to torture people or machete kids in the head, but then we'd have been robots and not moral agents at all, and there'd be no such thing as good.”

  “But that doesn't mean there had to be handicapped kids. He could have made us free but with better genes.”

  At some point, the almost touching had turned into touching, in the leg region, at least. It felt oddly companionable. But also sexy as hell. But I had to concentrate. Leibniz Leibniz Leibniz.

  “He could, yes, but this is where Leibniz's thing about this being the best of all possible worlds comes in. Without the handicapped kids, you don't have people caring for them, loving them, creating goodness out of evil. The victims in the world are the opportunity the rest of us have to be kind.”

  “But that's horrible. He made some people suffer just so that other people could be nice to them?”

  “Yeah, I know, it is a bit crap. But the trouble is, I think it's the only explanation going. If this isn't the best of all worlds, then either God's a monster or he doesn't exist. You have to clutch to the Leibniz or despair. But there was another bit to it that really got me. I was back thinking about the little boy. He had a shitty carer and a life of, I don't know, possibly constant torment, but maybe, just maybe, when he died, when the little chap gave up, well, then God would take care of him properly, push his swing, give him good legs, a clear mind. Maybe that's where it balances out, heaven. Because it isn't here, is it?”

  And I found that I was doing it again. My eyes were stung with tears, and I had to blow my nose. Uma, so close to me now, put her hand on my hand. Her fingers were short and neat and competent. They looked like the type of hands you'd find on an arts-and-crafty kind of person, a potter or someone who weaves shawls. Not quite what you'd expect from a flame-haired temptress.

  “Holy mother of God, this isn't pub culture at all,” I said. I had to move my hand from under hers to take out my handkerchief. I blew my nose and laughed. “I can't believe I came out with all that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it's hopeless sentimental bullshit. Because God's not really there, and so he won't be looking after the handicapped kid when he dies, and what we need is a better health service and decent pay for carers and a peaceful socialist revolution and more cycle lanes.”

  “What happened to the boy?”

  “Oh, the woman took him out after a while, and they sat at one of the picnic tables and had something to eat. She wasn't so bad; she really wasn't so bad. I was just feeling a bit … you know.”

  “I know. I've got to go now. I've an appointment.”

  “Jesus, I'm sorry I've bored you. I blame Jemima for getting me all wound up. You know, she put her hand—”

  No she didn't.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I've got a babysitter for Friday night, if you're free,” she said.

  “Yeah, I think I am. I mean, I can be. Yeah. What do you want to do?”

  “Whatever. How about dinner somewhere?”

  “There's a new place in West Hampstead. It's meant to be okay.”

  She smiled. “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  We stood up together, and I kissed her cheek and smelled the shampoo in her heavy hair. As she moved away through the pub, she half turned and looked at me, her face serious. Then she waved and was gone.

  Good old Leibniz. Good old God.

  PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADAGUCCI 20

  I miss him. I didn't think I would. I never did when I was away on business in Paris or Milan or Turin or New York. I missed Harry, of course, but not Sean. I'm not a missing-people person. It's always been the kind of futile emotion that I've done quite well without, thank you very much. I must be going soft in my dotage.

  Anyway, I took Harry into my bed last night and fell asleep with my face in his hair. He doesn't smell like a baby anymore. Now his hair smells of hair hair and not baby hair. But it's still the softest stuff there is, and I felt it move with my breath. He woke once in the night. He sat up and said clearly, “What am I here for?” and then huffed down again and went straight back to sleep. In the morning, he touched my face and then looked wonderingly around the room. Then he said, “Let's find Daddy,” and led me through the house, checking each room, ignoring my words about where Daddy was. In the end, I phoned Sean and got him to speak to Harry.

  Then I took the phone back. “We're missing you.”

  “What? But you never … Well, I'm missing you both, too.”

  “Why not come back?”

  “It won't be for long. I'm making fantastic progress.”

  “Okay. But you're coming on Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the whole day?”

  “Yes, I promised. I'll talk to you before then.”

  “I should think so. What are you eating?”

  “Pizza, mainly. I've started getting the one with all the foliage on top, rocket and stuff. Rocket: sounds so exciting doesn't it? Apollo 11, Saturn V, Scud. And then it turns out to be lettuce. Still, thought it might be healthier. Against the ba
sic law of pizza, though. I mean, a salad pizza. What have I come to?”

  “You're one of us now.”

  “Daresay you're right. I'll see you Saturday.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  It seemed that we were doing a lot of “I love yous” lately, though I had the feeling mine counted for more than his.

  It was just me and Harry all day, today. Bella and Magnus were out, and Mad Mary wasn't booked. It was raining, and so we did some jigsaw puzzles in the morning on the kitchen table with him sitting on my knee. Then we watched The Little Mermaid, with which and with whom Harry is entirely obsessed. He doesn't appear to understand the plot but has fixated on certain characters. He says he wants to be Prince Eric, particularly coveting his high boots, and he is appropriately amused by and scared of the evil sea witch, Ursula. I asked him if he wants to kiss Ariel, the little mermaid, and he goes shy but still says yes.

  I put him down for a sleep in our unmade bed at two. I lay with him for a while, but my mind was too busy to sleep.

  Ludo telephoned later in the afternoon.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yes, there's no one here. But I don't think this is a good idea.”

  “You don't know what I want yet.”

  “No, I don't know what you want.”

  “First—and I'm sorry, but I have to ask this—is there really no hope for me?”

  “There's really no hope.”

  “Then I'm sorry for what I did, for dragging you into this, and I promise not to bother you again. I'm not a bad man, Celeste. I try to do the right thing, but sometimes forces move you, move through you. I'm sorry, I'm not good at talking about feelings.”

  “Ludo, I know you're not a bad man, but what we did was a bad thing. It was a bad thing because I still loved Sean. If I hadn't loved him, or if I'd loved you, then it would all have been different. But, although it was a bad thing, in some ways I don't regret it.”