Young Wives' Tales (3 page)

Although admittedly things have changed. Since I had my daughter, Auriol, my bonuses have regularly been ten to fifteen per cent lower than my
lowest
bonus pre-Auriol. It appears I was able to hide my gender until I actually gave birth, then it became impossible, which is not surprising. However, I clearly remember the days when our bonuses were announced and I was the acknowledged hot-shot. Best days of my life. Up there with meeting Peter, graduating with a first, getting married and rather more special than the day I gave birth.

Sorry, but I simply don’t buy into all that crap about the day you drop the sprog being the best in your life. It’s a messy, bloody, terrifying and painful day. Even though I had an elective Caesarean with a mobile epidural it was still an uncomfortable and undignified affair. People feed themselves such bullshit. I accept that the day your kid walks or smiles for the first time is pretty special, but the day you give birth?
Pleeease
.

I’m not a mother-earth type. I did not enjoy my enormous belly, giving up alcohol or the wardrobe
restrictions of pregnancy. Of course, I did the whole gestating thing beautifully. I ate very little so as to keep my weight down, which infuriated my obstetrician, but I was paying him terrifically so I bought the privilege of ignoring his advice. Besides, Auriol was a healthy 7lb at birth so what harm? Getting my figure back was very easy. I have no patience with these women who grumble that they have no time to drag their lardy asses down to the gym – I have two words to say to them: ‘Maternity Nurse’. OK, so they cost, but what better excuse for returning to work than pleading that all your money is spent on your child? Am I ranting? How unbecoming. I sheepishly look around the office and am relieved to see that my rant has been internal.

I take a few calls, respond to the most urgent e-mails, those from senior bods and those who are in different time zones, and then I turn back to the markets. Shares of chemical makers BASF AG and Bayer AG rose yesterday, as crude oil fell for the first day in three. Good, as I’d hoped. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index added 0.4 per cent to 297.44, with all the benchmark’s eighteen industry groups gaining, except the Oil & Gas Index. Just as predicted. I pat myself on the back. I’m so good at what I do it’s almost possible to forget how phenomenally risky my work is. Still, if the City is full of gamblers, I’m the addict who can count cards and has a photographic memory. I always leave the casino with pockets full of chips.

At 9.15 a.m. a reminder pops on to my screen drawing me away from my figures. I send Peter an e-mail.

Auriol will be walking through the school gates right now. I wish I was there with her. Love you.

In fact I’m not absolutely certain if she started at quarter to or quarter past nine but Pete will be none the wiser either. It’s not that I actually needed to be reminded that my daughter is starting school today; I just didn’t want to get caught up in something else and not pause in order to send Pete the e-mail. This show of thoughtfulness is a good move. I sometimes get the impression that he thinks I’m not quite up to scratch with the whole mothering thing. Which is dreadful. I hate not being up to scratch.

Of course, I love my daughter as much as the next woman. I worship her. She’s bright, pretty, and largely well-behaved, except when she is being unimaginably horrid. I just don’t go in for overly sentimental displays of affection. Because really that’s all they are,
displays
. And I’m not big on self-sacrifice either. Or crusty noses. Or endlessly retelling the same story. Or answering non-sequential ‘why’questions. Or sitting in a circle with other mums singing songs and clapping. Or a number of things that society seems to insist come with motherhood.

Not that Pete’s ever actually said that he thinks I’m lacking maternal instinct. He wouldn’t dare. He knows he wouldn’t live to regret such a comment. Even if it’s true, I don’t take criticism well. He did get a little tetchy last night when he was filling out various administrative forms for Auriol’s new school – forms about allergies
and permission to take the children on trips, that sort of thing. I didn’t know the name of her doctor and so he threw a mini hissy fit. He flung the pen down on to the table and said impatiently, ‘For God’s sake, Lucy.’

I responded by slowly looking up from
Newsweek
and turning to him, pointing out, ‘You don’t know the name of her doctor either.’

‘But you’re her mother.’

‘And you’re her father. I work the same hours you do, often longer. It’s Eva’s job to know these things, not mine.’

Wisely, Pete recognized that the conversation was closed. I’m not a bad mother, I simply have a unique style.

I look up from my desk and say loudly, ‘I have to go to Starbucks. Can I get anyone a coffee? I can’t settle, my little girl starts school today.’

‘Really? I didn’t know you had any kids,’says my boss, Ralph.

He just happened to be passing when I made the offer of coffee. He’s quite new, sent here from the NY office six weeks ago. I’m still trying to get the measure of him. Normally it would be utterly crazy to make a big issue of being a mum in this office (asking for time off because of kids’ill-health, or similar, is suicidal), but Ralph has been a little bit too friendly on the last couple of occasions that the team has gone for a social and I think it’s time to remind him that I’m married and have a family. This is one of the few times when being a mummy comes in useful. Marriage or even
motherhood isn’t usually much of an obstacle to an affair for most City types, but as my new boss is American he’s a little more traditional and hopefully will stop touching my arm and waist when he talks to me now. Of course, there is the risk he’ll stop talking to me altogether. Most men think women have lobotomies at the Portland Hospital, not Caesareans.

‘Education is the most important heritage we can offer. Which school is she going to?’asks Mick, another trader on my floor. He’s childless, so I can’t imagine he’s really interested, just programmed to have the last word.

‘Holland House in Holland Park.’

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘You wouldn’t. It’s state.’

I must be the only trader in history who has opted to send my kid to a state school. Publicly, I pass this off as a socially responsible decision. I argue, where would the state system be if all the middle-class parents, who care about education, pulled their kids out of the state schools? Of course those schools would sink down the league tables. There’s plenty of evidence to back up this viewpoint, and it has a certain ‘lefty’cachet that’s very of the moment and that I rather enjoy. As it happens, I was educated at one of the best independent schools for girls in the country and I had hoped Auriol would be following in my footsteps. The boaters were adorable and Latin comes in useful when you want to slap down jumped-up ‘lads’. But Rose put paid to any designs I had.

Besides paying for Auriol’s schooling, Pete and I would happily have funded the twins through independent schools but would Rose have it? No, she would not. It’s my belief that she rather likes to play the single mum card. She goes out of her way to make it look as though Pete’s not quite doing his duty, not quite coughing up enough cash, or time, or thought. That’s why she sold up their family home, even though he’d paid off the mortgage for her. She searched high and low to find the smallest residence in Holland Park (although notably, she didn’t give up Holland Park altogether, did she?). All that nonsense she spouts about her planning for a time when she’ll have no income at all, once the boys are grown, and needing the capital from the house as a nest-egg, blah blah. My question is why can’t she just get a job, like everyone else? I’m a mother and I work. I don’t wait for someone else to dole it out to me. Oh blast, just thinking about the woman is enough to bring on a headache.

It was so silly and emotive of her to insist that Pete and I offering to pay school fees was ‘guilt money’. Nonsense. He just wants the best for them. I think at that point in the discussion she said something offensive about not wanting them to grow up to be pompous, social-climbing twits as most public schoolboys are. It doesn’t take a genius to guess who she was having a pop at when she said that. She said she believed the children would be just as well educated at the local state school and added that private education is a waste of money and only for parents who splash out cash as a
substitute for time or emotion. Easy for her to say as she lives in Holland Park; of course the state schools are terrific there. Pete and I lived in Soho at the time, where education is considered an inconvenient interruption to a life of crime and vandalism. But somehow Rose got the upper hand. The way she told it made it appear virtuous to send your kids to state school and positively evil to educate independently. I feel so terribly out of sync. Spending on education used to be considered wise, a privilege yes, but not a source of shame. Certainly better than spending on handbags or curtains. Now the opposite is true.

Of course I couldn’t send Auriol to a private school while Henry and Sebastian were attending the ‘lovely little state school, just around the corner’. If I’d done that I would have played directly into Rose’s hands. We’d never have heard the last of the disparity between the children. God, Rose is irritating.

So, we had to move. Somehow Pete persuaded me that it would be a good idea to move nearer to Rose and the boys. ‘Much friendlier.’Again I’m not
à la mode
. I don’t want to be so very twenty-first-century about our irregular family. I’m actually happier with the role of wicked stepmother; at least one isn’t fettered with annoying expectations. We aren’t one great big happy family. He divorced her; that shows a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the relationship, wouldn’t you agree? I’m quite keen for us to settle into a state of active dislike bordering on loathsome anger. I don’t want to be one step away from polygamy,
which is what staying pally with the ex amounts to.

I’m not exactly sure how it happened; I was dealing with a big project in Hong Kong and by the time I got home Pete had made an offer on a house just round the corner from Rose’s, instructed a conveyancer and solicitor and all but booked the removal van. Good God, had the man lost his mind? No, I admit I hadn’t read his e-mails especially carefully; it was a very busy time. And yes, when I did check his messages I did find a series of increasingly frantic notes forwarding details of the house he’d found us and asking if I was happy for him to progress with buying it. OK, I confess, I might have vaguely mumbled that I agreed it would be sensible for Pete to live near the boys but I hadn’t meant it.

I take comfort in the fact that the house he chose for us is enormous. Not quite as enormous as the one he and Rose used to own, but people forget, we do have two families to support now. So, once ensconced in Holland Park, there seemed no reasonable alternative – the children are all now at the same school. Mr Walker, the headmaster, was a poppet. He was eating out of my hand after just one meeting. Auriol leapfrogged the waiting list, even though strictly speaking we are a tiny bit outside the catchment area. Nothing untoward, we just evoked the sibling priority rule.

In fact, Holland Park
is
quite fun. Not so desperately of the moment as Soho, where I lived as a bachelor girl, but I’ve done the late bars, twenty-four-hour shops and the minimalist home thing – it’s very over. Holland
Park is unquestionably appropriate for this stage of my life. You can’t flick your hair without hitting an organic pâtisserie or a children’s yoga centre. And it is a total joy that Connie and Luke are just around the corner in Notting Hill. Despite my reputation as Ice Queen, even I admit that there’s nothing sweeter on this earth than watching Connie’s daughter, Fran, play with Auriol. Besides, Auriol does adore her big brothers; especially Sebastian, who looks most like his father – he grew out of his red-haired stage. Henry still has Rose’s colouring – summers are a curse for him.

I just hope the school does the job. If not, I’ll have her out of there before the end of the academic year, but I can’t imagine I’ll have much to worry about; after all, Auriol’s genes are phenomenal – she’ll be straight As all the way. I wonder if she’ll be Mary or the Angel Gabriel in the school nativity? Mary doesn’t get to say much but she is on stage all the time. But the Angel Gabriel normally has a darling costume. I must give that some thought and then put my recommendation to Mr Walker.

Right now I’d better go and buy those double espressos.

Bloody hell – is the Queen in town or something? What’s with the traffic round here? I understood from Craig that his school was a sleepy, leafy bit of snooty Holland Park. I finally find a space to park about half a mile from the school and ditch my Z4 series BMW. As I get out of the car, I can’t help but caress her wing. She’s a beauty. I’d marry her if she had tits. What a ride. I soon ascertain that the gridlock is caused by frantic mothers who drive four-by-fours; I’ve heard about these women. You know, on the radio some DJ is always taking a pop at this weird breed that drive a four-by-four but loathe the sight of mud and break out in a rash if they leave a London postcode. I’d thought they were an urban myth, not unlike everyone believing they are four snogs away from their fantasy celebrity snog. Turns out they are not just an urban myth, crap to chatter about to fill the airwaves, they do exist. For the record, crap filling the airwaves is fine by me. I’m a simple guy. I accept that crap fillers are a big part of what life’s about.

I watch these demon mothers aggressively out-stare one another. They mouth ‘fuck you’through the window at drivers who nick their parking space and when they get out of their tanks they smile and wave at each other and start to chat about daytime TV. Unbelievable. What a laugh.

I immediately scan the crowd of women clustering at the school gate. Disappointingly, there is a dearth of scrummy mummies. I watch
Desperate Housewives
; I was expecting a plethora of women needing a decent and immediate seeing to. Women who were going to throw their knickers at me as though I was Tom Jones, just as soon as I threw a smile at them. I look round; nothing doing. All these women look like mothers. Unsurprising really, as they all
are
mothers and we are stood at the school gate waiting for their bratty offspring to appear to prove the point. I just thought, hoped maybe, for something a bit more…well, Kate Moss is a mum, isn’t she? And Liz Hurley and that Kate whatsherface, the actress. I’d do any of them. You can’t blame a man for hoping.