that must be met. Like right now. Legs must wait. My life is ruled by someone weighing twenty pounds with no teeth.
Seven
11 A.M. TEAZ TIME. WEST HAMPSTEAD. FIVE MOTHER-AND -baby units. Two bald babies. One ginger. One brown. One blond and beautiful (my Evie). Farmyard stink of baby poo. Four breasts on show, nipples dark as tea cakes. One embarrassed waiter.
“My mother was a ten-pound, eight-week-early, premature baby, apparently!”
Sue’s double chin trembles when she laughs. I am turning into the kind of person who notices these things. Is my own life so unsatisfactory that I seek reassurance in the failings of others?
“And of course her mother had a
very
voluminous wedding dress, fitted the week before the wedding, empire line.”
“Ahhhh, how things have changed,” is muttered under collective breaths. I hate that cringy collective
ahhh
. Conversational mayonnaise. You don’t hear it in groups of dynamic interesting people with dynamic interesting lives. There is a reflective pause, teacups are stirred, fingers stab at cake crumbs. A baby grunts into a nipple. The pause goes on a little too long, straddling awkwardness.
“I’ve been so lucky with Alan.” Sue swallows hard and waits for a bubble of gas to subside. “Must be awful not to be married to the father of your child. They never stick around. Statistics bear it out.” Sue puts her hand to her mouth, tries to shove the words back. “Oh gosh. I am
so
sorry, Amy! Nicola! I just wasn’t thinking. How completely insensitive of me.” Everyone registers something that would have slipped out of the conversation had Sue not drawn attention to it.
“Aha, but, unlike you lot, we’re almost fancy free!” I joke.
There is a murmur of “good for you” and “absolutely.” But their sighs of married relief almost mist up the windows. We all know that the halcyon days of being fancy free are over.
“A ring on the finger would not make a jot of difference. The nappies smell the same.” Nicola flashes fiercely blue eyes—a gift from Irish-Portuguese heritage—set off in the palest skin, freckled like an egg. She’s the reason I come to these meetings. “And the baby would still use Guantanamo Bay sleep deprivation techniques.”
Sue drums sausage fingers on her cup. “I’m sure they’ll make honest women of you yet. Hang in there.”
There are more murmurs of agreement, a flurry of unnecessary activity with muslin cloths.
“We won’t lose sleep over it,” says Nicola.
“Waaaaaaaaaaahhh.” Beatrice is off again. She’s a particularly piercing baby, with a round red face like a whoopee cushion. Her mother, Michelle, who is in her early forties and still looks nine months’ pregnant, scoops what can only be described as an udder out of the
neckline
of her burgundy ethnic blouse and starts feeding, looking around proudly, daring you, the repressed, to look away. Michelle wants to breast-feed until Beatrice can
say
“Enough milk, Mummy.” Michelle wants to be an extreme lactivist. She read about them in
The Guardian
. (Not necessarily connected, but I should point out—Michelle would want me to—that she uses reusable terry nappies and only buys Fair Trade toys from sustainable sources. This makes her a Good Parent, unlike me with all my planet-gobbling pacifiers and land-fill Wet Wipes that won’t have decomposed in ten generations’ time.)
“So you’ve stopped breast-feeding, we hear,” Sue says tightly, her fine nose for petty conflict twitching.
“Yeah, this week.” My breasts have been throbbing for days. I fantasize about being screwed into a farmhouse milking machine.
“Oh Amy . . . ,” Sue exhales, as if I’ve just announced Evie has a congenital disease.
“What?”
“Such a shame. Evie was doing so well.”
“Still is,” interrupts Nicola, stroking Evie’s cheek, tacky with milk. “Does it hurt?” Nicola is deadpan as always. Smiles twitch at the corners of her mouth. But she’s restrained,
Seven
11 A.M. TEAZ TIME. WEST HAMPSTEAD. FIVE MOTHER-AND -baby units. Two bald babies. One ginger. One brown. One blond and beautiful (my Evie). Farmyard stink of baby poo. Four breasts on show, nipples dark as tea cakes. One embarrassed waiter.
“My mother was a ten-pound, eight-week-early, premature baby, apparently!”
Sue’s double chin trembles when she laughs. I am turning into the kind of person who notices these things. Is my own life so unsatisfactory that I seek reassurance in the failings of others?
“And of course her mother had a
very
voluminous wedding dress, fitted the week before the wedding, empire line.”
“Ahhhh, how things have changed,” is muttered under collective breaths. I hate that cringy collective
ahhh
. Conversational mayonnaise. You don’t hear it in groups of dynamic interesting people with dynamic interesting lives. There is a reflective pause, teacups are stirred, fingers stab at cake crumbs. A baby grunts into a nipple. The pause goes on a little too long, straddling awkwardness.
“I’ve been so lucky with Alan.” Sue swallows hard and waits for a bubble of gas to subside. “Must be awful not to be married to the father of your child. They never stick around. Statistics bear it out.” Sue puts her hand to her mouth, tries to shove the words back. “Oh gosh. I am
so
sorry, Amy! Nicola! I just wasn’t thinking. How completely insensitive of me.” Everyone registers something that would have slipped out of the conversation had Sue not drawn attention to it.
“Aha, but, unlike you lot, we’re almost fancy free!” I joke.
There is a murmur of “good for you” and “absolutely.” But their sighs of married relief almost mist up the windows. We all know that the halcyon days of being fancy free are over.
“A ring on the finger would not make a jot of difference. The nappies smell the same.” Nicola flashes fiercely blue eyes—a gift from Irish-Portuguese heritage—set off in the palest skin, freckled like an egg. She’s the reason I come to these meetings. “And the baby would still use Guantanamo Bay sleep deprivation techniques.”
Sue drums sausage fingers on her cup. “I’m sure they’ll make honest women of you yet. Hang in there.”
There are more murmurs of agreement, a flurry of unnecessary activity with muslin cloths.
“We won’t lose sleep over it,” says Nicola.
“Waaaaaaaaaaahhh.” Beatrice is off again. She’s a particularly piercing baby, with a round red face like a whoopee cushion. Her mother, Michelle, who is in her early forties and still looks nine months’ pregnant, scoops what can only be described as an udder out of the
neckline
of her burgundy ethnic blouse and starts feeding, looking around proudly, daring you, the repressed, to look away. Michelle wants to breast-feed until Beatrice can
say
“Enough milk, Mummy.” Michelle wants to be an extreme lactivist. She read about them in
The Guardian
. (Not necessarily connected, but I should point out—Michelle would want me to—that she uses reusable terry nappies and only buys Fair Trade toys from sustainable sources. This makes her a Good Parent, unlike me with all my planet-gobbling pacifiers and land-fill Wet Wipes that won’t have decomposed in ten generations’ time.)
“So you’ve stopped breast-feeding, we hear,” Sue says tightly, her fine nose for petty conflict twitching.
“Yeah, this week.” My breasts have been throbbing for days. I fantasize about being screwed into a farmhouse milking machine.
“Oh Amy . . . ,” Sue exhales, as if I’ve just announced Evie has a congenital disease.
“What?”
“Such a shame. Evie was doing so well.”
“Still is,” interrupts Nicola, stroking Evie’s cheek, tacky with milk. “Does it hurt?” Nicola is deadpan as always. Smiles twitch at the corners of her mouth. But she’s restrained,
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