Foetal Attraction (29 page)

The baby is swept off to be swaddled. I’m propped on pillows, legs splayed. I feel like a car on the blocks, bonnet up, work-men toiling in my intimate mechanisms. Instead of the euphoria I’ve read about in books, a paralysing indifference is setting in. After all the operatic drama, this is anti-climactic. Boredom washes over me; a ‘well, what do we do
now
?’ sensation. Alex is perched beside me on the bed. I survey the man of my dreams with a chilling composure. At this porous proximity, his eyes seem to have grown closer together. His nose is more bulbous than I remember it. His skin more wrinkled, his chin doubled. We face each other like two strangers in an airline queue.

‘I made a mistake,’ says the stranger.

I look at him, amazed. ‘Mistake’ is on a par with the other ‘M’ word. Neither are in his vocabulary.

‘I know I’ve behaved badly,’ he adds funereally.

I’d pinch myself to see if I’m awake, but there’s no need. The pain of having stitches put into my perineum tells me that I definitely am.

‘You just have no idea what a tough year I’ve had.’

‘
You’ve
had?’ If the bedpan was in reach, I’d hurl it at his head.

‘We’re talking total nervous breakdown.’

Even in this exhaustion I feel a flicker of sympathy. ‘Is that why you took compassionate leave? You threw a wobbly?’

‘Not
me
. Mori
arty
. It got so bad he was just spinning on the kitchen floor, trying to bite his tail. He had to have a complete break. Fresh sea air. Quality time. He’s still not recuperated. Apparently he’s a dominant/aggressive with paradoxical insecurities.’

‘Wait … you left me to rot, while holidaying your
dog
by the sea?’ I’m feeling a mite dominant/aggressive myself. ‘Are you sure you didn’t just run off with the nanny?’ I conjecture wildly.

Alex’s eyebrows shoot up reflectively. ‘How did …? Who told …?’ he bleats. ‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘Oh, come on, Alex. Felicity caught you kissing.’

‘I wasn’t kissing her—’

‘What? I suppose you were just dental-flossing her teeth with your tongue?’

He runs a hand through his ratty halo of hair. ‘OK. We had a brief fling, yes. But she dumped me. Last night. For …’ he glances around the delivery ward and lowers his voice, ‘Felicity.’

I lean up towards him and sniff. ‘Can’t smell whisky.’ I push up his sleeve. ‘No needle tracks … You’ve inhaled something, haven’t you?’

Alex smiles weakly. ‘They’re taking the kids and decamping to Tuscany for the spring.’

I narrow my eyes suspiciously. Wise to him now, I know that Alex’s greatest moral dilemma is which fib to tell at any given moment. But this time I don’t think he’s lying like the pig in mud he is.

‘Look at today’s column.’ He shoves a crumpled newspaper under my nose. ‘
Attraction Between the Same Sex – Living without a Man
.’ I want to laugh, but my stomach muscles are too sore. ‘What’s worse, I lost custody of Moriarty. Now he’ll be suffering from Separation Anxiety, so the dog shrink tells me, at forty pounds an hour, plus VAT.’

‘Woah …’ I lean up on my elbows. ‘You’re paying the
dog
maintenance money, but not
me
?’ Too bone tired and bush-whacked to fight, I flop back on to the pillows. Alex is making me rethink Darwin. If he is anything to go by, the male of the species is busy evolving into apes. ‘Alex, I think your mid-life crisis has started without you.’

‘So what if it has?’ He sulks, defensively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being viropausal.’

‘Viro
what
?’

‘Men suffer the same problems as women in mid-life, you know … night sweats, depression, irrational behaviour, hot flushes, low sex drive …’

‘So
that’s
why they ditched you. I thought it was just because you’re a lousy, lowdown misery guts.’

‘I’m not …’ his voice drops a few decibels again,
‘
impotent
, if that’s what you’re worried about. But, even if I were, there’s no stigma attached. I’m getting treatment for Male Menopause. A male HRT. At the Hormone Healthcare Clinic in Harley Street. For men it’s the best invention since, I don’t know … the Harley-Davidson.’

‘Oh, I see. So now that everyone else has rejected you, you’re willing to make do with second – sorry – third best.’

‘Good God, no.’ His affable expression is forced, his fine features blurring indistinctly. ‘I’m used to rejection. Once as a child, my parents moved house and forgot to inform me … did I ever tell you that?’

I can’t believe how long it’s taking them to stitch me up. What are they doing down there? Needlepoint? ‘Listen, I’ve had a long day. Can’t you think of anything more original than the “Blame it on my Terrible Childhood” routine?’

‘Well, the truth is, I’ve been suffering from paternal depression No, truly,’ he assures my scornful expression. ‘Think about it. “Mother and Baby”. That phrase. Doesn’t that prove how deeply entrenched this cultural discrimination is? I mean, Dads-to-be are supposed to be troublefree … But men’s needs should be assessed too … I mean, emotional pain is as bad as physical pain in many respects. Take the birth. In some ways it’s actually worse for the man. You could at least control the agony with gas and breathing … I just had to stand there, helpless, and watch you
suffer
.’ He mops his brow. ‘God, it was gruelling.’

I look at the love of my life. The feeling of asteroids in the groin and exploding galaxies in the head – it’s gone. I feel a sediment of affection for him. And that is it.
That is all
.

‘Take me back, Maddy.’ Alex seizes my hand. His voice is raw, supplicating.

I remember the day when I similarly beseeched him. ‘I’ll have to let you go,’ he’d said, sadly, as though I were a cicada in a shoe-box. I extract my hand. ‘I have to let you go, Alex.’

His face collapses, a melted marshmallow. ‘You’re tired, naturally. Post-partum depression is estimated to affect ten per cent of mothers. Common in the animal kingdom. It’s nothing to feel guilty about.’ He reassembles his expression. His smile is one of forced jollity. ‘We’ll work it out. We’re all grown-ups here, after all.’

But we’re not. That’s the trouble. English men are stuck somewhere between puberty and adultery. The baby is back, warm as toast and tightly swaddled. One child, I suddenly decide, is enough.

Alex takes the bundle from the nurse and starts reciting poetry. He starts singing. ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, ‘Baby Love’, ‘My Boy Bill’ … But it’s too late. He’s forfeited his claim. I look at him. I’m drained, dispassionate. A gutted fish. ‘I want you to go now,’ I say staunchly. Stage three, expulsion of the afterbirth, is complete. Stage four, expulsion from
my
life of the man I once loved, has just begun.

The crease in his forehead deepens. ‘But, Maddy, I love you.’ He says the phrase as though he’s invented it.

The doctor seems to have completed his cross-herringbone-double-two-hitches-and-a-half-stitch-groin-embroidery. I use a leg which has just been freed from the stirrups to nudge Alex to the floor. ‘Just go.’

A panicked look flares into his eyes. ‘Why?’ He is an alien, orbiting, looking for a place to land.

By now, after all these months in England, I’m speaking the native tongue. This is a question I can answer. I look him in the eye. ‘Some rather tricky whatnots to negotiate. You know … few loose ends to tie up.’

Alex blinks in amazement, as if he’s just stumbled out of some remote jungle and is perplexed by the world he discovers around him. On cue, Yolanda pounces and grabs the baby. A pantihosed Alsatian, she won’t let him anywhere near the bed. She yaps at his ankles till he flees the room. Somehow this isn’t matching up to my picture of rapturous motherhood. No flowers, no phone calls, no photographic record of happy families, no maternal glow … I’m just sitting on a mountain range of haemorrhoids – Sir Edmund Hillary couldn’t scale these bastards – in a bowl of salty water, my tits like two hot rocks, crook in the guts and bawling my bloody eyes out.

Throwing out the Bathwater but Keeping the Baby

A GOOD STRONG
cuppa, a hot shower and a plate of scrambled eggs on warm buttered toast later, and the predicted ‘I Love Everyone’ hormone has kicked in. ‘Endorphins’, the textbook calls them. The nurses, the orderly who wheeled me up to my room, the woman who changed the vase water, the man in green overalls who vacuumed, the lady who brought me a drink of lime cordial – I want to marry them all. Even the woman in the bed next to me who has her radio on full blast. Hours of Muzaked versions of ‘Annie’s Song’ and ‘New York, New York’ are worse than anything else that’s happened to me in this hospital – which is really saying something – and I’m still smiling.

‘Well, it couldn’t have been
that
bad,’ Gillian says, prising herself free of my euphoric embrace.

‘Bad? Apart from the surprise package you get at the end,’ I tap the plastic aquarium on wheels by my bedside, ‘it’s the worst sexist joke ever perpetrated.’

‘I thought childbirth was the most beautiful and moving experience in a woman’s life?’

‘Sure, if her brain frequency is the same as that of a house-plant. It’s all bullshit. The classes, the breathing, the bean-bag drill … You know on planes, those air hostesses telling you not to smoke when the oxygen mask is over your face? Well, birth classes are about as helpful as that. Next time I’m just going to tattoo “epidural” on my stomach with an arrow.’

‘Next time? So, it’s true. Childbirth is like a Chinese meal … You forget it straight afterwards.’

‘Stop it. Don’t make me laugh. They’ve just sewn me up from arsehole to breakfast.’ The aerated cushion my throbbing posterior is currently perched upon squeaks reproachfully.

‘And a boy!’ Gillian peers over the edge of the crib at my little blue bundle. ‘Have you considered suing them for arousing false expectations?’

‘I don’t know. I find it quite comforting that machines can’t predict everything.’

‘Must enquire as to when I’m eligible for maternity leave. I have quite a high pain threshold, you know.’

‘Oh yeah. Says who?’

‘My beautician. Believe me. Childbirth is nothing compared to moustache electrolysis … But then again. Perhaps I’m not really cut out for motherhood.’ I lean back on the pillows, awaiting some philosophical prognosis on Gillian’s psychological make-up, her emotionally deprived past, the intellectual pros and
cons
… ‘I’m told that stretch marks don’t tan.’ Repositioning one stretch-Lycra’d cheek on the bed, she files at a chipped crimson nail.

‘Maternity leave!’ I finally twig. ‘You’ve got a job?’

‘Well, someone had to support the three of us. I’ve given up on marrying for money. Going to make my own and then advertise for two toy boys. “Must adore us, don’t bore us and do all our chores for us”. What do you think?’

‘I think whoever employed you must be insane.’

‘I answered an ad in
Caterer and Hotel Keeper
. You’re looking at a future chef for Highgrove House, no less.’

‘You’re going to
cook
?’

‘Three years study at the Prue Leith School of Cookery and Wine seems to have impressed them.’

‘Gillian! You burn water! You thought “aspic” was some posh ski resort in the Rockies!’

‘It’s all under the watchful eye of Prince Charles, allegedly. Though so far I haven’t seen him. Mind you, he hasn’t seen me either, so I suppose we’re even.’

A chubby woman in perky leisurewear bounces into the ward in white, rubber-soled shoes. ‘Hi. My name’s Pam. I’m your birth control advisor. Basically, there are three methods I would advise at this stage. The pill, the cap, the—’

‘Wait!’ I put my hand up in the air, like a traffic warden. ‘I’ve just given birth. Do you really think I intend having sex
ever again
?’

Insulted, she moves on to the next bed, where I’m
suddenly
grateful to John Denver who’s drowning out her spiel.

‘Speaking of which,’ Gillian enquires, examining her small galaxy of cerise half-moons. ‘This love leukaemia, this romantic rabies … You’re really cured, or merely in remission?’

‘Put it this way, even if I
did
still love him, I hope I’ve now got the intelligence not to admit it.’

‘Hooray!’ She replaces my tepid tea with a glass of bubbly. ‘You are drinking, aren’t you?’

‘Drinking? Hey I intend doing the opposite of “drying out”.’

‘Goodee. Then let’s get pissed …’ She clinks our glasses together. ‘Purely for existential purposes, you understand.’

The whoosh of nylon thighs heralds Yolanda. ‘What a difficult labour,’ she enthuses, lip-smackingly. ‘That was the most difficult labour I’ve been to in a long time. Just think – if you’d lived in any other century, you’d have
died
,’ she thrills gleefully. ‘Oh, champers!’ She helps herself to a glass.

‘Thank you for sharing that with me, Yolanda.’

Yolanda’s hand on my waist is familiar. It’s my waist that’s not familiar. She pats the stomach I’ve been admiring for the last few hours. How wonderful it was in the shower to glimpse my pubic hair again. I’ve already done my first bout of pelvic floor and tummy-flattening exercises. She pulls my nightie tight to emphasize the deflating balloon of flesh. ‘Gosh, you
look
as though you haven’t had it! Ooh, chockies!’ As my new-found self-esteem collapses, she burrows with irksome relish into the box of chocolates Gillian has brought. ‘We’re here for a good time, not for a lifetime.’ She winks. ‘Do you know that women are thirty times more likely to suffer psychiatric illness in the month after birth than at any other time in their lives?’ she blurts as the chocolate coats her Stonehenge of teeth. ‘Half of Britain’s mental hospitals accommodate psychotic new Mums. Did you know that?’

Despite the happy hormones, I do
not
get the urge to marry Yolanda Grimes. ‘Your classes are a fraud, you know,’ I inform her coldly. ‘Why didn’t you tell us how bad it would be? Then I could have booked a drug-induced coma. Cyanide tablets. A hit over the head with a hammer …’

‘Well, dear,’ she mumbles through a jaw full of toffee. ‘How can I know?’