The Mummyfesto (2 page)

‘I know. That’s why we’re doing a petition.’

‘We need more than a petition. We need a meeting, letters to MPs, a protest march. Let’s throw whole bloody works at them.’

‘You’ll be suggesting the children go on strike too, I suppose?’ said Anna. She was trying to be funny, but the fact was however long the Islington brigade lived here, they never quite stopped being taken aback by the no-nonsense Yorkshire way of doing things.

‘I don’t think we should rule anything out,’ said Jackie,
her feet back in her shoes now as if preparing herself for battle. ‘Not if they’re putting kids’ lives at risk.’

I looked at Jackie’s face, her jaw set, her forehead tensing. There was no way I could warn Anna to tread extremely carefully without making an awkward situation even worse.

‘Yes, but we’ve got to be careful we don’t sound over the top,’ warned Anna.

‘I am not waiting until a child gets killed trying to cross this road to get angry,’ said Jackie, her finger jabbing the air in front of Anna’s face. ‘Because that will be too bloody late.’ She took the clipboard and walked off across the playground to accost a group of Year One parents. I remembered once reading an article which said the most dangerous creature on earth was an angry hippopotamus mother who had been separated from its young. Right now, I thought the hippo would come a poor second.

‘Did I say something wrong?’ asked Anna.

‘Er, yeah. Bit of a delicate one. It’s all right, she’s not mad at you. She’s just mad.’

‘Should I go and apologise?’

‘No, just go and get some signatures on your petition. She’ll appreciate that far more.’ Anna nodded and set to work. I didn’t feel it was my place to tell her. Jackie had taken a long time to confide in me. When she was ready, maybe she’d do the same with Anna.

I’d managed to collect a page full of signatures by the time the school doors opened and the children exploded into the playground like an uncorked bottle of champagne.
I spotted Zach straight away amongst the melee – it was one of the benefits of having a son with a mop of auburn curls. Fortunately he hadn’t yet reached the age where he was bothered about standing out from the crowd. If I remembered rightly from my own childhood, he still had a couple of years to go before that kicked in. At least when the time came I would be able to regale him with stories about all the names I’d been called over mine. The weird thing was I liked them now. Maybe, at thirty-eight, I’d finally grown into them.

‘Hi, love,’ I said, letting Zach nuzzle his face into my tummy. ‘Had a good day?’

‘Yeah. What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to the clipboard.

‘The petition. The one to say we don’t think the council should get rid of Shirley.’

‘Can I sign it?’

‘Yes, of course you can.’ I handed him the pen and watched as he carefully wrote his name and then attempted a spidery scrawl of a signature. It always made me smile, how difficult children found it to write messily when they set their minds to it.

‘Can I get some more people to put their names on?’

‘Yeah, that would be great. Just be polite when you ask them. Explain that it’s to save Shirley’s job.’

Zach looked around and headed straight up to the mum of one of his classmates, clipboard in hand, a determined look on his face. I smiled to myself, imagining what Rob would say if he could see him. As if he needed any more evidence that I had produced a mini-me. Still, he’d got
his own back when Oscar had arrived. In a certain light there was an auburn tinge to his blonde hair but in every other respect he was straight out of the tin marked ‘pintsized version of his father’.

I glanced around the playground for Oscar. Not that there was any doubt about where he’d be. Somewhere in the middle of a cluster of children, most of them girls, who seemed to follow him wherever he went. Any worries we’d had about him not fitting in at mainstream school, about him not being accepted, had evaporated pretty much on his first day when he’d emerged Pied Piper-like from the classroom and informed me that he had a girlfriend and his teacher had told him off for being cheeky. I’d been worried that he would get special treatment because he was in a wheelchair. I don’t think a parent has ever been so relieved to hear their child had been told off.

Esme ran up to me. ‘Oscar’s been telling rude jokes again,’ she reported, bouncing up and down as she spoke.

‘Rude like about bogeys and bottoms, or ruder than that?’ I asked.

‘Just bogeys and bottoms.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘You just let me know if he gets too rude, OK?’

Esme nodded. ‘They were very funny jokes.’ she said.

‘Well, I suppose that makes it OK then.’ I smiled. Esme skipped off in Anna’s direction, shrieking a greeting in a voice seemingly several decibels higher than the rest of the children in the playground put together. I watched
Anna recoil as she heard it. Esme was definitely not a mini-Anna.

Gradually, the cluster of children around Oscar dispersed to reveal him hand-in-hand with Alice, who was giving him a wide, gap-toothed grin.

‘Hello,’ I said, walking over to them. ‘I hope you’ve been behaving yourself.’

The last comment was directed exclusively at Oscar. Alice wouldn’t be capable of misbehaving if she tried.

‘Can I go and see Alice’s rabbit?’ Oscar asked.

‘Not tonight, love. You’ve got to go and see Katie for your exercises, remember? Maybe another day this week. Would that be OK, Alice?’

Alice nodded. That was generally as much as you could get out of her, unless you were Oscar, of course, in which case she would whisper sweet nothings in your ear all day long.

‘Look, I’ve got loads of signatures,’ Zach said, running back over to me brandishing his clipboard.

‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘Well done you.’

‘I think Zach’s going to be my shop steward,’ said Jackie, coming over to join us and patting him on the back.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Zach.

‘That you’re very good at getting people to do what you want them to do.’

‘Oh,’ said Zach. ‘That’s good then.’

‘Has Anna gone?’ asked Jackie scanning the playground.

‘No. Over there,’ I said, pointing to the pavement outside where Anna was grabbing parents as they left.

‘I really snapped at her, didn’t I? I feel terrible. I just …’

‘I know. Look, she’s getting signatures, isn’t she? She can’t have been that put out.’

‘No,’ said Jackie, visibly brightening. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘Mrs Carter said I didn’t smell of dog poo at all,’ chipped in Oscar.

Jackie looked at me quizzically.

‘It was one of those mornings,’ I explained.

‘Fill me in later,’ she said. It was my turn to look at her with a frown. ‘First Monday of the month,’ she went on. ‘Don’t tell me you’d forgotten.’

I mouthed a four-letter word at her to signify that I had. It had been a combined New Year’s resolution, this night-out-once-a-month thing. January’s had been good fun, but now it seemed I was in danger of failing spectacularly to make it to February.

‘I’ll ask Rob,’ I said. ‘It might still be OK.’

‘Well, if it’s not, let us know. We could always make it another night instead.’ I nodded, although I could tell by her voice that she’d been looking forward to this. And I also knew that the logistics involved in getting three mums of six children out of their respective houses by eight o’clock on a particular night were immense.

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Shall I check that Anna’s remembered?’

Jackie gave me a suitable look. In a competition between an electronic organiser and Anna, it would be foolish in the extreme to back the electronic organiser.

‘Come on, Mummy,’ said Zach, tugging at my hand. ‘We’re going to be late.’

‘I’ll see you there,’ said Jackie. ‘And don’t worry about any wine, it’s my turn.’

I nodded, hoping that were true and she wasn’t just saying it because she knew how skint we were.

Mondays was physio. Other children had an action-packed after-school programme of football, street dance and Beavers. Oscar had physio, occupational therapy and swimming in a special hydrotherapy pool. Not that he complained about it. And Zach never complained about being dragged along to watch either. We did at least manage to leave an afternoon a week free for going to the Woodcraft Folk meetings (which Rob described as Boy Scouts for
Guardian
readers), but I felt bad about it all the same. It wasn’t what you planned for your children.

I helped Katie lift Oscar into the standing support sling. I hadn’t planned this either, of course. That the only way I would see my youngest son stand was with the help of what looked like an outsize baby bouncer. And the worst of it was that every time I saw him in it, his legs dangling to the floor, I was reminded of when he was little and I’d put him in a real baby bouncer, encouraging him to try to use his legs to help him bounce, blissfully unaware that my efforts would be in vain because Oscar’s leg muscles would never be strong enough to support him. Because those were the days before he was diagnosed. Before our world was blown apart.

‘That’s great, Oscar,’ said Katie. ‘Fantastic movement there.’

She was lovely, Katie. Full of enthusiasm and praise. It must be hard for her because unlike some of the other children she saw, there was no chance of Oscar making any real improvement. This was simply about holding off the deterioration as long as possible. She never let on about that to Oscar though. Always made him come away feeling he had done something new.

‘I want to be the birdman of Bognor,’ said Oscar. Katie laughed and turned to me.

‘I showed it to them on YouTube,’ I explained. ‘Zach was doing something at school about how things fly.’

‘Humans can’t fly really,’ said Zach, ‘it’s just a silly game they play.’

‘I’m going to fly,’ said Oscar. ‘I’m going to be the first person to fly to the moon.’

Katie smiled at him. We all did. Because that was the effect he had on you.

As we turned off the towpath into Fountain Street, a familiar tall figure wearing painting overalls and sporting sticky-up hair with tell-tale flecks of green paint, turned in from the other direction.

‘Look!’ Oscar laughed, pointing at him. ‘It’s Spencer.’

Most fine art graduates would probably baulk at being compared to a painter and decorator from
Balamory
. Rob, fortunately, was not one of them.

‘Thank you, cheeky,’ he said with a grin. ‘So, what’s the
story in Hebden Bridge today, or wouldn’t I like to know?’

‘I’ve been practising flapping my arms and taking my feet off the ground,’ said Oscar.

‘Have you now?’ Rob said, stooping to give both him and Zach a hug. ‘Well, at this rate I’ll have to build a nest for you.’

Oscar started giggling. He had a brilliant giggle. Entirely infectious.

‘Orang-utans build nests in trees,’ said Zach. ‘And they’re one of our closest relatives.’

‘So they are,’ said Rob. ‘In fact, I do believe that’s where Mummy got her red hair from.’

Oscar and Zach collapsed in a fit of giggles. I raised my eyebrows at Rob but couldn’t stop myself smiling.

‘And welcome home to you too,’ I said. Oscar started singing ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ from
Jungle Book
. Rob joined in, doing some kind of ape dance. If any of our neighbours had not already come to the conclusion that our whole family was nuts (and that was probably unlikely), then they certainly would now.

‘Come on, mancubs,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Time to get you some tea.’

I turned to go inside. The usual assortment of ponddipping nets, Zach’s scooter and various bats and balls was strewn across the front yard. To be fair to the boys, most of the bats and balls weren’t even ours. While it was lovely that the children in our little street were permanently in and out of each others’ front yards, it had
somehow resulted in ours becoming the communal toy-dumping ground.

I opened the front door, Fleabag, our cat (that is what happens when you let your children name a pet, although I’ve always suspected that Rob put them up to it) offered a plaintive miaow and ran out. I shrugged and shook my head; you could lead a cat to the cat flap a hundred times, but getting it to use it when you were out was clearly another matter.