Mad About the Boy

by Helen Fielding

  7.30 a.m. Just woke up from delicious, sensual dream all mixed up with Daniel and Leatherjacketman. Suddenly feel different – sensual, womanly – and yet that makes me feel so guilty, as if I’m being unfaithful to Mark and yet . . . is so sensual feeling like a sensual woman, with a sensual side which is sensually . . . oh. Children are awake.

  11.30 a.m. Entire morning has been totally sensual and peaceful. Started day with all three of us in my bed, cuddling and watching telly. Then had breakfast. Then played hide-and-seek. Then coloured in Moshi Monsters, then did obstacle course, all in pyjamas, while roast chicken emitted delicious fragrance from the Aga.

  11.32 a.m. Am perfect mother and sensual woman with sensual possibilities. I mean, maybe someone like Leatherjacketman could join in with this scenario and . . .

  11.33 a.m. Billy: ‘Can we do computer, now it’s Saturday?’

  11.34 a.m. Mabel: ‘Want to watch SpongeBob.’

  11.35 a.m. Suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion and desire to read papers in echoing silence. Just for ten minutes.

  ‘Mummeee! De TV is broken.’

  Realized, horrified, Mabel had got hold of the remotes. I started jabbing at buttons, at which white flecks appeared, accompanied by loud crackling.

  ‘Snow!’ said Mabel excitedly, just as the dishwasher started beeping.

  ‘Mummy!’ said Billy. ‘The computer’s run out of charge.’

  ‘Well, plug it in again!’ I said, shoving my head into the cupboard full of wires under the telly.

  ‘Night!’ said Mabel as the TV screen went black, and the tumble dryer joined in the beeping.

  ‘This charger doesn’t work.’

  ‘Well, go on the Xbox!’

  ‘It’s not working.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the Internet connection.’

  ‘Mummy! I’ve unplugged the Airport, I can’t get it in again.’

  Realizing my thermostat was veering dangerously towards red, I scampered off up the stairs saying, ‘Time to get dressed, special treat! I’ll get your clothes.’ Then ran into their bedroom and burst out, ‘I hate fucking technology. Why can’t everyone just FUCKING SHUT UP AND LET ME READ THE PAPERS?’

  Suddenly, horrified, saw that the baby monitor was on! Oh God, oh God. Should have got rid of it ages ago but paranoid as single parent, fear of death, etc., etc. Ran downstairs to find Billy racked by sobs.

  ‘Oh, Billy, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it. Was it the baby monitor?’

  ‘Nooooooooo!’ he yelled. ‘The Xbox is frozen.’

  ‘Mabel, did you hear Mummy in the baby monitor?’

  ‘No,’ she said, staring delightedly at the television. ‘De TV is mended.’

  It was showing a page asking for the Virgin TV password.

  ‘Billy, what’s the Virgin password?’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it the same as your bank card, 1066?’

  ‘OK, I’ll do the Xbox, you put in the password,’ I said just as the doorbell rang.

  ‘That password won’t work.’

  ‘Mummeee!’ said Mabel.

  ‘Shh, both of you!’ I rasped. ‘There’s SOMEONE AT THE DOOR!’

  Ran up the stairs, head a mass of guilty thoughts – ‘I’m a terrible mother, there is a hole inside them left by the loss of their father which they are trying to fill with technology’ – and opened the door.

  It was Jude looking glamorous, but hung-over and tearful.

  ‘Oh, Bridge,’ she said, falling into my arms. ‘I just can’t stand another Saturday morning on my own.’

  ‘What happened . . . tell Mummy . . .’ I said, then remembered Jude was a grown-up financial giant.

  ‘The guy I met on Match and went out with the day before the Stronghold? The one I made out with?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, trying to vaguely remember which one.

  ‘He didn’t call. And then last night, he copied me in on a global text saying his wife has just had a baby girl, six pounds twelve ounces.’

  ‘OhMyGod. That’s disgusting. That’s inhuman.’

  ‘All these years I didn’t want children and people kept saying I’d change my mind. They were right. I’m going to get my eggs unfrozen.’

  ‘Jude,’ I said. ‘You made a choice. Just because some guy is a fuckwit it doesn’t mean it was the wrong choice. It’s a good choice for you. Children are . . . are . . .’ I glanced murderously back down the stairs.

  She held out her phone, showing an Instagram picture of the fuckwit holding his baby. ‘. . . Cuddly and sweet and pink and six pounds twelve ounces and all I do is work and hook up and I’m all on my own on a Saturday morning. And—’

  ‘Come downstairs,’ I said lugubriously. ‘I’ll show you cuddly and sweet.’

  We clomped back down. Billy and Mabel were now standing cherub-like, holding out a drawing saying, ‘We Love You, Mummy.’

  ‘We’re going to empty the dishwasher, Mummy,’ said Billy. ‘To help you.’

  Shit! What was wrong with them?

  ‘Thank you, children,’ I purred, bustling Jude back upstairs and outside the front door, before they did something worse, like emptying the recycling bin.

  ‘I’m going to defrost my eggs,’ sobbed Jude as we sat down on the steps. ‘The technology was primitive then. Crude even. But it might work if . . . I mean, I could get a sperm donor and—’

  Suddenly the upstairs window in the house opposite shot open and a pair of Xbox remotes hurtled out, landing with a smash next to the dustbins.

  Seconds later, the front door was flung open and the bohemian neighbour appeared, dressed in fluffy pink mules, a Victorian nightdress and a small bowler hat, carrying an armful of laptops, iPads and iPods. She teetered down the front steps and shoved the electronics in the dustbin, with her son and two of his friends following her, wailing, ‘Noooooo! I haven’t finished my leveeeeeeel!’

  ‘Good!’ she yelled. ‘When I signed up for having children, I did NOT sign up to be ruled by a collection of inanimate thin black objects and a gaggle of TECHNO-CRACKHEADS refusing to do anything but stare with jabbing thumbs, while demanding that I SERVICE them like a computer tech crossed with a five-star hotel concierge. When I didn’t have you, everyone spent their whole time saying I’d change my mind. And guess what? I’ve had you. I’ve brought you up. And I’ve CHANGED MY MIND!’

  I stared at her, thinking, ‘I have to be friends with that woman.’

  ‘Children of your age in India live entirely successfully as street urchins,’ she continued. ‘So you can just sit on this doorstep and instead of putting your ENTIRE BRAINS into getting to the next level on MINECRAFT, you can apply them to CHANGING MY MIND about letting you back in. And don’t you dare touch that dustbin or I shall enter you in the HUNGER GAMES.’

  Then, with a toss of her bowler-hatted head, she flounced back into the house and slammed the door.

  ‘Mummeee!’ Shouting and crying erupted from my own basement. ‘Mummeee!’

  ‘Want to come back in?’ I said to Jude.

  ‘No, no it’s fine,’ Jude said, happy now, getting to her feet. ‘You’re completely right. I have made the right choice. Just a bit hung-over. I need to have breakfast and a Bloody Mary at Soho House and read the papers and I’ll be fine. Thanks, Bridge. Love you. Byee!’

  Then she teetered off in her Versace knee-high gladiator sandals looking hung-overly fabulous.

  I looked back across the street. The three boys were sitting in a line on the doorstep.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I said.

  The dark-haired son grinned. ‘Yeah, it’s fine. She just gets like this. She’ll be all right in a minute.’

  He glanced behind him to check the door was still closed, and pulled an iPod out of his pocket. Then the boys started giggling and bent over the iPod.

  Huge wave of relief washed over me. I bounded cheerfully back, suddenly remembering that the password for everything was 1890, the year in which Chekhov wrote Hedda Gabbler.

  ‘Mummeeeee!’

  I grab
bed the Xbox remote, grabbed the Virgin remote, and typed ‘1890’ into both of them at which the screens burst miraculously into life.

  ‘There!’ I said. ‘There’s your screens. You don’t need me. You just need screens. I am going. To make myself. A cup. Of coffee.’

  I flung the remotes onto the armchair, and flounced, bohemian-neighbour-like, towards the kettle, at which Billy and Mabel started giggling.

  ‘Mummy!’ laughed Billy. ‘You’ve turned everything off again.’

  8.30 p.m. Ended up all cosy and good and Billy had his Xbox time and Mabel watched SpongeBob and cuddled me on the sofa, then we all went up on Hampstead Heath and I kept thinking about Leatherjacketman, and how gorgeous it was having the kiss, and feeling sexy again and thinking maybe Tom is right that I do need to be a woman and have someone in my life, and maybe it wouldn’t be wrong, and maybe I will call Talitha and get his number.

  CRASHING WAVE

  Sunday 9 September 2012

  135lb, calories 3250, number of times checked for texts from Leatherjacketman 27, texts from Leatherjacketman 0, guilty thoughts 47.

  2 a.m. Everything is terrible. Texted Talitha. Turns out she not only took Leatherjacketman’s number, but GAVE HIM MY NUMBER. Feel stab of insecurity in my stomach. If she gave him my number – then why hasn’t he called?

  5 a.m. Should never, ever have got involved with men again. Had completely forgotten the nightmare of ‘Why hasn’t he called?’

  9.15 p.m. Children are asleep and all ready for Monday morning. But I am in total meltdown. Why hasn’t Leatherjacketman texted? Why? Clearly Leatherjacketman thinks I am crazy and old. Is all my own fault. I should be simply a mother – the children should come home every day to find a casserole bubbling on the Aga and steamed jam roly-poly for pudding. I’d read them Swallows and Amazons, put them to bed and then . . . What, though? Watch Downton Abbey, fantasize about sex with Matthew, and start again in the morning with the Weetabix?

  9.16 p.m. Just called Talitha and explained the whole thing. She is coming round.

  9.45 p.m. ‘Get me a drink, please.’

  I fixed her her usual vodka and soda.

  ‘This has all been set off because one guy you’ve met for five seconds hasn’t texted you. You’ve opened yourself to the possibility of life, and now it seems to have been snatched away from under your nose. Why don’t you text him?’

  ‘Never pursue a man, it will only make you unhappy,’ I said, reciting our mantra from being single in our thirties. ‘Anjelica Huston never, ever called Jack Nicholson.’

  ‘Darling, you have to understand that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Everything has changed since you were single. There was no texting. There were no emails. People spoke on telephones. Plus, young women are more sexually aggressive now, and men are naturally more lazy. You have to, at the very least, encourage.’

  ‘Don’t send anything!’ I said, lunging at the phone.

  ‘I won’t. But it’s all fine. When I swapped your numbers, I had a discreet word with him and told him you’d been widowed . . .’

  ‘You WHAT?’

  ‘It’s better than being divorced. It’s so romantic and original.’

  ‘So, basically, you’re using Mark’s death to procure me a man?’

  There was the thud of feet on the stairs. Billy appeared, in his striped pyjamas.

  ‘Mummy, I haven’t done my maths.’

  Talitha looked up vaguely, then returned to the phone.

  ‘Say, “Hello, nice to see you again,” to Talitha and look at her eyes,’ I said reflexively. Why do parents do this? ‘Say Please.’ ‘Say Hello!’ ‘Say Thank you for having me.’ If you haven’t trained them to do these things before they get into a live situation then there’s really no point in—’

  ‘Hello, Talitha.’

  ‘Hello, darling,’ said Talitha without looking up. ‘He’s adorable.’

  ‘You did do your maths, Billy. Remember – the problems? We did them when you came home from school on Friday.’

  ‘OK, how about this?’ Talitha looked up, then looked back at the phone again.

  ‘But there was another sheet,’ said Billy. ‘Look – here. It’s Craft and Design.’

  Not Craft and Design. Billy has spent the last six weeks constructing a small mouse out of bits of felt, then he gets ‘sheets’, which ask mysterious conceptual questions. I looked at the latest sheet: ‘What do you want to achieve by making the mouse?’

  Billy and I looked at each other desperately. How global do they expect you to go with a question like that, I mean in a philosophical sense? I handed Billy a pencil. He sat down at the kitchen table and wrote, then handed me the sheet.

  To make a mouse.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Very good. Now shall I take you back up to bed?’

  He nodded and put his hand in mine. ‘Goodnight, Talitha.’

  ‘Say goodnight to Talitha.’

  ‘Mummy. I just did.’

  Mabel was asleep on the bottom bunk, head on back to front, clutching Saliva.

  ‘Will you cuddle me?’ said Billy, climbing into the top bunk. I thought about Talitha getting increasingly impatient downstairs then climbed in with him, Puffle One, Mario and Horsio.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, heart wavering, fearing he was going to ask about Daddy or death.

  ‘What is the population of China?’ Oh God, he looks so like Mark when he is worrying about these questions. What was I doing messing about texting some unshaven leather-jacketed stranger who probably—

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Four hundred million,’ I lied smoothly.

  ‘Oh. Why is the earth shrinking by one centimetre a year?’

  ‘Um . . .’ I thought about this. Is the world shrinking by one centimetre a year? Like, the whole planet or just the land bits? Is it to do with global warming? Or the awesome power of waves and . . . Then I felt the slight relaxing sigh of Billy falling asleep.

  Rushed back downstairs, panting. Talitha looked up with a self-satisfied expression: ‘OK. I hope you appreciate this. This was a really tough one.’

  She handed me the phone.

 

  ‘You haven’t sent it?’

  ‘Not yet. But it’s good. You have to take care of their ego. What do you think the poor guy felt like, with you running off like that and not explaining yourself?’

  ‘Doesn’t that sound—’

  ‘It’s a question, and carrying on the thread. Don’t overthink it, just—’

  She took hold of my finger, and pressed ‘Send’.

  ‘Nooo! You said you wouldn’t—’

  ‘I didn’t. You sent it. Could I possibly have another teensy teensy little vodka?’

  Mind reeling I headed for the fridge, but just as I opened the door there was a text ping. Talitha grabbed it. A self-satisfied smirk spread across her immaculately made-up features.

 

  ‘Now, Bridget,’ she said sternly, watching the confusion of feelings on my face, ‘you have to be brave and get back in the saddle, for everyone’s sake, including . . .’ She nodded in the direction of upstairs.

  Ultimately, Talitha was right. But it couldn’t have gone more disastrously wrong with Leatherjacketman. As she herself said, as we sat on my sofa in the bloody aftermath:

  ‘It’s all my fault. I forgot to warn you. When you come out of a long relationship, the first one is always the worst. There’s too much hanging on it. You think you’re going to be rescued. Which you’re not. And you think they’re the barometers of whether you’re still viable. Which you are, but they’re not going to prove that to you.’

  I broke every single one of the Key Dating Rules with Leatherjacketman. But, in my defence, at that point, I didn’t know that the Dati
ng Rules even existed.

  HOW NOT TO DO DATING

  Wednesday 12 September 2012

  133lb (lost 2lb through texting thumb-action), minutes spent fantasizing about Leatherjacketman 347, number of times checked for texts from Leatherjacketman 37, texts from Leatherjacketman 0, number of times checked Unexploded Email Inbox from Leatherjacketman even though Leatherjacketman does not have email address 12 (insane), total cumulative minutes late for school runs 27.

  2.30 p.m. Mmm. Just back from lunch with Leatherjacketman in Primrose Hill. He was looking even more like a car-advert man, in a brown leather jacket this time, and aviator shades. It was an unseasonably warm, bright autumn day, the sky blue, the sun shining, so we could sit outside at a pavement cafe.

  FINE

  I love him. I love him.

  NOT FINE

  He’s about my age and divorced with two kids. And he’s called Andy – such a cool name.

  ANDY??

  As I sat down at the table, he took off his shades. His eyes were like pools. Pools of pale, pale water like a tropical sea . . .

  DO NOT GET CARRIED AWAY

  . . . only brown. I love him. The Dating Gods have smiled down on me.

  TRY TO RETAIN SOME VESTIGE OF OBJECTIVITY

  He REALLY understands the problems of single parenting. He said things like ‘How old are your kids?’

  All through lunch felt like some dangerously aroused puppy who was going to start shagging his leg.

  DO NOT JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS OR FANTASIZE

  It’ll be so great having sex together on Sunday mornings, I was thinking, then breakfast together with all the kids – laughing, moving in together, selling both our places and getting a house they can all walk to school from. Just as I was thinking, ‘. . . then we could just have one car and not have an issue with the parking permits,’ he interrupted: ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  I blinked at him, disorientated, teetering on the brink of saying, ‘Do you think we could manage with just the one car?’

  ON THE FIRST DATE: LET HIM PAY

  When the bill came, I made a terrible fuss about getting my credit card out and saying, ‘No, let me,’ and ‘Shall we split it?’