The Bad Mother's Handbook (29 page)

I collapsed against her while they took the baby and
checked it over. ‘Time of birth, 23.42,’ I heard a woman’s
voice say. The baby squalled when they put it on the cold
scales.

‘Bless it,’ choked Mum. ‘I’ve no hanky.’ She wiped her
eyes on her coat sleeve leaving a smudge of mascara on
the beige cuff.

The midwife brought the baby over and laid it on my
chest where it squirmed and hiccupped.

‘You’ve got a little boy, five pounds ten,’ she beamed.

‘Oh, a boy. I thought it would be a girl.’ I stared down
at it, him, in bewilderment, with his matted black hair
and his screwed-up, puffy eyes. I’d made that. He was
mine.

Everything was quiet for a moment; somehow I’d
expected a fanfare of trumpets or exploding fireworks,
but there was nothing except the sounds of the midwife
clearing away. Dr Battyani leant over me and lifted the
purple baby up in his large brown hands.

‘We need to check him over again,’ he said and took
him over to a table on the other side of the room.

Mum hugged me and kissed my hair while a new midwife
appeared and began fiddling about down below. ‘I’m
just after your placenta,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Then we’re
all done and dusted.’

Together Mum and the first midwife tidied me up and
put my nightie on from out of the case, combed my hair
and sponged me down.

‘Can I have my baby now?’ I asked, still feeling like I
was floating.

‘He needs to pop down to the SCBU to have a spot of
oxygen,’ said Dr Battyani. ‘Just to help his breathing.’

Mum and I looked at each other in horror.

‘Is he going to die?’

Dr Battyani tutted and shook his head. ‘He is a strong
healthy baby for thirty-four weeks. But he will be more
comfortable during the night if we give his lungs a little
assistance. Have you got a name for him so we can write
it on his tag?’

‘No.’ I thought briefly of Fyffes. ‘Oh, God, Mum, I’ve
no name for him . . .’

‘Do not panic. We can put your name on.’ The doctor
came over to my bed and spoke to Mum. ‘She needs to
get a good night’s rest. You can stay with her for a little
while.’

My limbs began to tremble with fatigue. I closed my
eyes and snuggled against her, something I hadn’t done
since I was tiny. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so glad you’re here.’

She leant over me, stroking my arm.

‘My father and I just wanted to say well done,’ said
Daniel emerging from the shadows.

‘Are you a hallucination?’ I asked reasonably. He laughed. Mr Gale stood behind him. I could see Mum eyeing
them up and down. ‘I thought you were going home?’

‘Dad said I could hang around till midnight. And you
got there in the nick of time.’

‘Didn’t we all,’ muttered Mum.

*

H
OW OFTEN DO PARENTS
say sorry? (Well, most of
them don’t listen, for a start, so they never even realize
they’ve done anything wrong.) In the struggle to take on
the mantle of parenthood, and it is like a mantle, a big
padded-shouldered superhero costume, you fall into this
trap of arrogance. It starts early on when you’re outside a
supermarket and your toddler is screaming for something
totally unsuitable they’ve spotted on the shelves and
taken a fancy to, e.g. a box of After Eights. You have to be
firm, obviously. You have to look as though you know
what you’re doing because there’s always this fear that if
you don’t some passing shopper will spot your deficiencies
and report you as a fraud, someone who’s only playing at
being a parent. Then your children will be taken into care
and your life will be in ruins.

Also you have to convince your child that you’re in
charge, because this is what kids are supposed to like,
firm boundaries and what have you. But listen, I don’t
believe they ever do think you’re in charge. They know all
along that what you’re doing is simply steam-rollering
your opinions through because you’re bigger and can
smack harder and shout louder, and that’s not really the
same thing as being in charge. But you’re so caught up in
the role you convince yourself that whatever the situation, you’re right and if your child disagrees they must therefore
be wrong: the After Eights come to symbolize your
superior understanding of the way the world works. And
this is true up to the point where you die, so that there are
even now seventy-year-olds being berated by parents in
their nineties for being wasteful with money, deficient
in visiting duties, slatternly round the house, etc.

Larkin wrote that famous poem about your mum and
dad fucking you up; notice he didn’t go on to say, ‘And
afterwards, when you’re all mature adults, they can appreciate
all their mistakes and apologize wholeheartedly over
drinks on the patio.’

I was going to break the mould. I was going to tell
Charlotte I was sorry, and watch the sky crack and the
earth split apart.

‘I
THINK THEY
’
VE
forgotten about us,’ she murmured,
resting her head on my arm. ‘They were pretty busy
earlier on. I’m not bothered. It’s nice, this, just us two.
Do I look a right state?’

‘You’ve just given birth, it doesn’t matter what you
look like. Was that your new boyfriend, the lad with all the
hair?’

‘No. He’s a friend . . . from school.’

‘Some friend to come with you and hold your hand
like that. He deserves a medal.’ I shifted round on the
bed and gazed at her damp hair and her red eyes. She
seemed so young, as if she’d woken up from a bad dream
and sneaked into my room for a cuddle like she used to
after Steve left. ‘Oh Charlotte . . .’

She let out a huge yawn. ‘What, Mum?’

‘I’m so sorry.’

Her blue eyes flicked onto me and her brow furrowed.
‘What for? You were here, weren’t you, in the end. I was
all right. You know, they reckon that gas and air is only a
temporary effect but I think it stays in your system. I could
rise off this bed and drift round the ceiling.’ She stared up
at the dirty tiles as if they were the most beautiful things
she’d ever seen.

‘No, I didn’t mean going away. I shouldn’t have done
that either—’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Lyme Regis,’ I blurted out.
The French Lieutenant’s
Woman
had been on Granada last week.

‘Mmm. Dig up any skeletons?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Any old fossils. Ammonites, that sort of stuff. I know
I’m talking rubbish, ignore me.’ She closed her eyes again.

‘Oh, I see. No, it was very quiet, really. I had to do some
thinking. But I should never have walked out like that,
without any warning. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes I feel like
I’ve been following some sort of manual,
The Guide to Being
a Bad Mother
; actually there’ve been times when I feel I
could have
written
it.’

‘God, Mum, there are plenty worse than you.’

I pictured for a moment a door slamming in my face
and, further back, a little shabby figure cowering in a
corner, nobody there to protect her. Tears spilled over my
cheeks again.

‘I’ve been rotten to you over this pregnancy,’ I sniffed.
‘I only wanted you to have a happy life.’

‘I know, Mum. But let’s not argue all the time from now on, eh? I hate it when we argue, the air turns all . . . spiky.
Nan hates it too.’ She stretched and tried to roll onto her
side. ‘You know, I used to be jealous of Nan when I was
younger, ’cause of all the time you spent looking after her.
You once said to me, “Love isn’t a cake, you can’t divide it
up into slices.” And I said, “No, but time is. A clock even
looks like a cake.” Do you remember?’

‘No.’ God, I had got it wrong. ‘I’m sorry for that as well,
if you felt neglected.’

‘It was my problem, selfish adolescent; you were just
trying to do your best. I can see that now. I can see a lot of
things. I really love her, you know.’ She sighed and there
was a long pause. I thought she’d dropped off to sleep and
I was wondering about slipping over and dimming the
lights over on the other side of the room. Suddenly she
said, ‘Tell me what it was like when you had me. I’ve never
asked.’

I settled back against the metal bars.

‘Well, some of it’s still very clear. It was the best and
worst day of my life, I think. I remember, I was in labour
for nearly twenty-seven hours and they had to use forceps,
which is why you’ve got that tiny dent over your left
cheekbone. The midwife was absolutely horrible. When I
told her how much agony I was in she said, “You should
have thought of that before you got yourself into this
mess.” Honestly. You’d report them today. Steve wasn’t
with me because he said he couldn’t face seeing me in pain,
lame excuse. And Nan was beside herself with worry; she
was terrified of losing me, or you, because she hadn’t long
been a widow, so by the time you were born she was like a
wet rag. She held you first – I think she may even have cut the cord, I’ll have to ask her – and then she put you in my
arms. All the nurses commented on your blue eyes, and
you fixed me with this fierce gaze, as if to say, You’re
mine
;
don’t even think about giving me away. It made my insides
melt, because it was the first time in all the pregnancy that
I’d realized you were an actual person.’

I glanced down, proud of my speech, but Charlotte was
fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth.

*

I woke with
a shock when the breakfast trolley rattled
past the door. My first thought was, The baby’s died in the
night and they daren’t tell me. I pressed the buzzer and a
young nurse came in carrying some charts.

‘How’s my baby?’

‘Oh, he had a very good night. You’re both going up
to the ward today. You can have a shower first, make you
feel more human; I expect you’ll be feeling a bit bruised
and battered, but that soon passes. I just need to do your
obs while I’m here.’

She took my temperature and blood pressure and all
the time I was trying to get my head round the fact that I
had a baby, I was a mother. Surely it was all a mistake.
I couldn’t really have a baby, not
really
.

Up on the ward there were lots of real mothers all
with their babies next to them in clear plastic cribs. The
space by my bed was empty. I lay there, the biggest fraud
in the world, while the woman opposite picked her child
up, put her hand inside her nightdress and fished out a
breast. Then she clamped the baby to her nipple and
started to flick through a magazine with her free hand. It was pretty impressive. To my right a girl about the same
age as me was changing a nappy, like she knew what she
was doing. I tried to peer over her shoulder but it looked
a bloody complicated arrangement and the baby kept
wriggling. When she’d parcelled up its tiny bottom she
put its sleepsuit back on, bending the minute limbs carefully,
poking inside the sleeve openings with her finger to
extract the curled fists. Finally she picked it up, her hand
behind its floppy head, and called the nurse who brought
a bottle which the baby drank with its eyes closed. I knew
for certain I’d never be able to do any of this. I’d drop
him, sure as eggs is eggs, or break his arm trying to dress
him. I’d better tell them now I wasn’t fit to be a mum.

Just then they wheeled him in.

‘Here we are,’ said the nurse parking him expertly and
flipping on the brake. ‘Here’s your mummy.’ There was
no response from the swaddled heap. ‘He’s still asleep.’
She leant over the side of the crib and touched his head.
‘What a lot of lovely hair.’

‘Is that normal, to sleep so long?’ I could feel myself
panicking again.

‘Oh, yes. Labour’s a very tiring experience and not just
for the mum. He’ll wake up when he’s ready. My goodness,
you’ll be praying for him to go to sleep before he’s
much older!’

I leant over and watched his crumpled face. There
was absolutely no movement. I looked for signs of
breathing but there were too many blankets round him
so I gingerly swung my legs out of bed
ow ow ow ow
and started to unwrap his body. At last his chest was
uncovered and I could see it rising and falling. Thank God. I got back into bed and lay there watching that
small movement, up and down, because if I didn’t it might
stop.

He didn’t wake properly until after dinner and by then
I was convinced he was going to starve to death. ‘Help me
feed him,’ I said to the nurse pathetically.

I’d just got my boobs out when Mum walked in.

‘Oh, Christ, you’ve not brought anyone with you?
Imagine if my dad saw me like this, or Daniel!’

Mum rolled her eyes and drew the curtains round.
‘How are you getting on?’

‘I can’t seem to make him open his mouth wide
enough.’ I looked down at the feeble scrap rooting about
blindly. ‘See, he hasn’t a clue. I thought it was instinct.’

The midwife manoeuvred him around and pushed
another pillow under my arm. ‘Stroke his cheek, that
makes him open his mouth.’ She took hold of my breast
and sort of stuffed it between the baby’s lips. It was a
shock having another woman touch me like that.

I shivered. ‘I don’t like this. It feels funny.’ The baby
tugged at my nipple and broke away. He started to cry at
a pitch that went right through you.

‘I don’t think you’re going to be able to do this,
Charlotte, it’s very difficult you know. You might be
better off bottle-feeding,’ said Mum.

I pulled my head up, annoyed. ‘Give me a chance.
We’ve not been at it two minutes. Anyway, what did you
do with me?’

Mum looked smug. ‘Oh, you were entirely breastfed
for four months.’

I frowned. ‘Well, so’s he going to be. Come on, matey. Put some effort into it.’ I pulled his face against me and
again felt that questing mouth on my skin.

‘Here,’ said the midwife. She pulled my shoulder forward
and turned his head. He shifted in my arms, latched
himself on and relaxed. ‘That’s right.’ She stood back to
admire the composition. ‘Now, can you see him swallowing?
That’s what you need to watch for. It’s a slightly
tricky technique at first, you need to persevere, that’s all.
Give me a shout if you need me again.’ Mum gave her a
wink and I knew I’d been had. I didn’t care.