Confessions of a Bad Mother (23 page)

Then I find our copy of Roald Dahl’s
Boy
. The dead mouse in
the sweetie jar is possibly the most famous bit, but they like even better the
section in which Roald’s nose is torn off while being driven by his
sister, in the days when you bought a car and then taught yourself to drive.
Being squeamish, I have to delegate this bit to Peter, or read while looking
away. The same goes for the removal of Roald’s adenoids – with no
anaesthetic – and the chapter where poor Ellis is stabbed by the doctor
lancing his boil. In fact, the whole book is full of people being hurt in
various appalling ways. It is ideal for children.

Peter and I discuss this factor over a bottle one night, and feel that
they’re bound to enjoy the sequel,
Going
Solo
, which takes
the writer from England to East Africa. But what we’ve forgotten, having
last read it pre-parenthood, is that halfway through, there’s a murder.
We’re all right with the servant’s wife being grabbed by a lion,
because she jumps out of its mouth, dusts down her dress and walks away. But as
I read on, I get a bit of a feeling that something fairly unpleasant is about
to happen with a sword. It’s funny; you’d think you’d
remember someone being decapitated. Hearing that war has been declared,
Dahl’s brave and loyal servant Mdisho is desperate to help. When Dahl
returns to the house and finds his sword missing, he rightly suspects the
worst. Mdisho has gone to the house of a much-hated local German and
‘
cut
through his neck so deeply that his whole head fell
forward and
dangled onto his chest.
’ I skim ahead, and doing
some pretty swift editorial swerving, manage to cut straight to the jaunty
dialogue:

‘“
To me you are a great hero
,”
I
said.
’

‘Why? Why is he, Mummy?’

‘Er, he’s killed a German. A German baddie.’

‘Is he a Nazi?’

They’ve seen Nazis in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, another
dubious choice on my part, as the phone rang when the baddies’ faces
melted and I failed to fast-forward in time.

‘He’s a
German Nazi
,’ explains Lawrence wearily
to his sister.

‘I know how to kill Nazis!’ says Lydia helpfully. ‘You
buy a bagel, and cut it in half and put foxglove seeds all round the circle,
then they die.’

And they go to sleep, comforted by thoughts of Nazis eating Jewish
snacks laced with digitalis.

When I put the book back, I notice Catherine Storr’s
Marianne
Dreams
, the dark, post-Freudian novella about a girl stuck in bed with flu
on her tenth birthday who draws a house which in her sleep becomes real. There
are stones all around it which in the dreams grow tall and menacing. She meets
a boy in the house and when they both become trapped by the stones
–
which now have eyes
– they have to try and escape.
‘
Phallic symbols, of
course
,’ said my mother, which
luckily didn’t spoil it for me. When I first read it over thirty years
ago, it scared the living shit out of me. Suitable for ages four and five?
Well, they can always sleep with the light on. Someone else will have to read
it to them, though.

In the middle of the night, Peter says: ‘Keep still! What are you
doing?’

In vain I am changing position, thinking of the head dangling on the
chest.

At Lawrence’s school, the standard of reading is scarily high. But
as he’s got nothing to compare it with, he seems not to notice. He has to
do ten minutes at home every night, which makes a welcome alternative to
fighting with Lydia. He’s moved up to Year 1, where instead of the
cuddly-cosy Nursery, he’s in a labyrinthine jumble of buildings, and a
regime of lining up in the playground behind his teacher at the start of the
day. Parents may not come into the classrooms. If I wait to watch him line up,
I get a lump in my throat so I leave before. But if he’s not actually
playing with anyone I get a lump in my throat as well, so I have to wait until
he is – or try and put him together with another boy so I can leave
without breaking into tears.

At home time we queue outside. One day I get there to be greeted by his
new teacher, with a face like doom, saying that Lawrence has left his toy in
the Wrong Place. They are allowed to bring a small toy – not a Game Boy,
not a guided missile – and named. They recommend a tennis ball, the one
thing we mothers don’t give them because of its tendency to bounce over
the wall onto the railway line, causing Eurostar drivers to think they’re
being attacked by miniature versions of Barnes Wallis. Lawrence has brought a
Bionicle, the wrong size and unnamed, with a removable – losable –
brain. We’ve played brain transplants with it going up the road.

‘I’ve lost the brain!’ he wails. I know how he
feels.

‘Could Lawrence just look for his brain?’ I can’t
resist asking. She is not amused. Of course, she could be asking herself why
she chose a job dealing with six year olds. Personally, I’d rather dig
coal.

‘It was not in the Toy Tray,’ she says, sounding like a
Colditz guard who’s just found your tunnel. I half expect the next line
to be, ‘
So he’s been shot. You may collect
the body from
the Main Hall. Please ensure it is named.
’ We retrieve the brain from
its refuge under the radiator, and flee.

Then someone, a parent, complains about Lawrence to the school. He has
slapped their child, and they haven’t had a quiet word –
they’ve written a
letter
. That’s one stop short of legal.
The teacher tells me quite kindly. She probably feels a bit sorry for me,
lumbered with a psychopath. I am mortified. I tell him off all the way down the
road, round the corner and up to the news-agent’s. Then it occurs to me
to ask him for
his
version.

‘Lawrence, did you slap someone?’

‘Yes!’

‘Who?’

‘Pxxx. But he kicked me first!’ One down, two to go.

‘OK, and did you slap or hit anyone else?’

‘Txxx. But he punched me! Just leave me alone, will you?!’
But he didn’t do it first. OK, well … um. I suddenly realize I
don’t know what my strategy is. Has he been wrongly accused? Should he
stand there and take it?

‘If anyone’s playing too rough, don’t hit them back,
just – move away from them, OK?’

‘OK, Mummy.’

‘And if it goes on, tell a teacher.’

‘O-
kaaay!
’

‘I’ve got to the bottom of it,’ I tell the teacher
confidently. ‘It was Pxxx and Txxx, and clearly there was silliness on
both sides.’

‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid the letter
wasn’t about either of them.’

‘You’re kidding.’ She isn’t.

‘Look, it was a new boy, one not used to going to school. He
probably isn’t used to the rough and tumble of the playground.’

‘So you’re saying the mother over-reacted?’

‘A bit, possibly, yes.’

‘And you won’t tell me who?’

‘Sorry.’

How
dare
some over-protective –
twat
– write
letters about my child! Right! I bet it’s the one who’s just moved
back here from America – infected, no doubt, by their ludicrous culture
of blaming. These are the sort of people who sue God because they think they
should be entitled to avoid death. Yes, yes, it must be her! Recently
I’ve noticed that the mother’s been a bit stand-offish. She always
used to come up and talk to me; now she seems not to see me. Adopting my
softly-softly, FBI-on-Valium approach, I ask Lawrence if he’s had a fight
with her son.

‘Oh, yes – we’ve had about twenty fights.’

‘But are you still friends?’

‘Nope.’

Right, that’s it. He’s quite breezy about the whole thing.
But I – I, on the other hand – am affronted. How
dare
this
woman attack my child – and in print?! In my head I go up to her in the
playground, poke her in the chest and ask her just what the bloody hell she
thinks she’s playing at. We’ve never had complaints from
anyone
. My son’s never been in trouble in his life. If her son
can’t cope with school, maybe he should stay at home. And she can piss
off as well. In a gathering of middle-class mummies in hairbands, I have turned
into a hard-faced cow with no tights and a tattoo, smoking and shoving sweets
at the baby while threatening an innocent person with actual bodily harm. Well,
in my head.

Peter thinks I’m over-reacting.

‘Of course I don’t like it when someone – I
don’t even know who it is – complains about me and … well,
how would you like it?’

‘Lawrence.’

‘What.’

‘They complained about Lawrence, not you.’

‘Yeah?! So?’

‘It’s not happening to you. And anyway, he’s fine.
Look at him.’

True, he is contentedly running a toy car down a cardboard poster tube.
But I am not satisfied. When we next visit Peter’s sister, I demand an
explanation. She runs a centre for ‘impossible’ children, for
God’s sake; she must have the answer!

‘I mean, three different boys. What’s going on?’

‘Boys fight,’ she says.

‘That’s it? That’s the entire sum of your thirty
years’ experience?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘I thought you knew stuff.’

‘Not really. I have made sticky chicken, though.’

‘And you think that solves everything, do you?’

Peter has his Objective voice on.

‘It’s good you’ve married into a family which
doesn’t panic.’

‘Who isn’t any
use
.’

‘It neutralizes the Calman anxiety quotient.’

He thinks we run about with our arms flailing, emotionally over-reacting
to everything all the time, like characters in a bad Italian film, and that his
Mission on Earth is to balance us out. I only have to come home with any kind
of complaint or problem I’ve heard in the playground for him to say:
‘You haven’t heard the Other Side.’

‘If I said they were rounding up Jews in Dulwich Village, but that
they hadn’t rounded me up
personally
, would you say
that?’

He gives me his Rising Above It look. You can almost see his feet leave
the floor.

‘If it wasn’t for me you’d be—’

‘Crazy or dead, I know. And if it wasn’t for
me
,
you’d be going on wine-tasting holidays and polishing the car at
weekends.’

However, there is an unexpected upside to this shoulder shrugging. In
fact, I’m about to appreciate that Balance can be a Good Thing. Having
the children at a scarily high-powered school gives us licence to let go at
other times. No: we have to, to achieve Balance. Now that Lawrence is being
drilled in spelling and times tables all day, I no longer worry about the fact
that he lies around all weekend eating Quavers and watching Jackie Chan. In
fact, I insist upon it. Peter thinks long and hard before giving me his
analysis.

‘Our children need to watch more television,’ he says.

Not everyone shares this view. In fact, if there’s one thing that
unites the middle classes – far more firmly than food or politics –
it’s the attitude to television. Even mothers who use formula milk agree
that TV is Bad. Whenever I take mine to someone else’s house, the first
thing they do – if they’re a woman, obviously – is apologize
for the mess. (Men don’t do this. Left alone with children for any length
of time, they don’t tidy; they’re triumphant if the house
doesn’t burn down.) Then, if the television is on, they leap up, look at
it as if they’ve never seen it before, and rush to switch it off, saying,
‘
I just put it on for a few minutes while I was boiling
the
kettle/answering the phone/having 4.5 seconds to myself.
’ Then, they
have to add: ‘
They hardly ever watch it.
’

Why? Because they have to prove what good mothers they are. Letting our
children watch television is like masturbation used to be. We all do it.
We’re pretty sure – no, we
know
– everyone else does,
yet we feel guilty about it. Nonetheless, we can’t stop doing it. And as
with household mess, the more we hide it, the worse other women feel when
they
do it, and so on. Why?

Aha, you see. Television’s bad because (a) it gives mothers a
break, and (b) it’s
passive
. You sit down, and … you
don’t have to make notes, or draw or build anything out of Lego while you
watch, so … Hang on, isn’t that just like going to the cinema?
Only – er, cheaper? Is
that
bad? If you go to your local UGC or
Vue, or whatever it’s called now, and you suddenly see your friends going
past, do you have to rush and hide behind a cut-out of Tom Hanks? And if they
spot you, do you have to say, ‘
Honestly, we hardly ever go. Actually,
we were
looking for the library and came in here by
mistake?
’

And while we’re at it, what about other passive activities? If you
go to the opera and sit still in your seat, just listening – assuming
you’re not one of those people who follow the score which you carry
around in a black velvet pouch – is
that
passive? If you stand in
front of a painting in a gallery and just look at it don’t write a thesis
or ski at the same time – is
that
passive? If you go underneath
during sex, is
that
? Sex is the original interactive entertainment you
could say, but one of the things that’s always drawn me to it is that
it’s one of the few exercises you – generally – do lying
down. But is it less passive, and therefore better, if you go on top? (In the
seventies there were books for wimmin that said it was.) And if you read a book
at the same time, is that best of all? More educational? More middle class?
There’s a character in Martin Scorsese’s
Alice Doesn’t
Live Here
Anymore
, a waitress, who’s always sparring with her
boss the chef. Alice, the polite new girl, thinks she hates him. Then the
waitress suddenly yells right across the kitchen: ‘Mel, I could lie under
you, eat fried chicken and do a crossword puzzle – all at the same
time!’