Confessions of a Bad Mother (26 page)

‘Do you like
The Belstone Fox
, Mummy?’

‘Yes, it’s very good.’

‘I’m going to have it on my cake!’

‘Ah. Right …’

I ring my friend Judith, who rashly once mentioned that she is a serious
cake decorator.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Er – fine. You know Lydia’s birthday?’

‘How’s the underwater scene going?’

‘We-ell … I give her the outline of
The Belstone
Fox
, leaving out the bit where Eric Porter dies in the cave.

‘What’s this got to do with it?’

‘She wants the whole thing on top of her cake.’

‘What?!’

‘You haven’t got any tips, have you?’ If she lived
nearer, I’d pop round and get a quick masterclass, but she’s on the
other side of London, so all I can do is moan.

‘Actually,’ she says after some thought, ‘I’m
not doing anything tonight. I’ll make you one.’

‘What?!’

‘A fox in sugar paste. How big d’you want it?
Roughly.’

The next day I get two trains and a bus to meet her outside
Hamley’s, where she is waiting with a plastic box. I open it and, sure
enough, inside is an amazingly accurate representation of a fox. I carry it
home carefully, like Mike Hammer with the plutonium in
Kiss Me Deadly
,
and in the remaining hour before school ends, make a cub.

The image in my head is surprisingly hard to translate into marzipan.
The head and body don’t want to stick together, and to get the
orangey-brown right I have to use a lot of black, red and yellow colouring
which end up all over the kitchen counter and my hands. Also, it won’t
stand up. So I lie it down on the white icing. It looks like a turd with a
tail, but I figure if I position it near the other one it’ll get the
benefit of the doubt. Anyhow, Lydia will definitely appreciate that I’ve
opened every single shoebox in the attic to find my old dolls’ house
garden spade to lean against the Matchmaker fence.

‘Look! That’s the spade the farmers use to beat the foxes to
death!’

‘Oh, thank you so much, Mummy!’

The Matchmaker fence is the
pièce de résistance.
It
takes me about an hour the night before, snapping off lengths that aren’t
quite the same, eating them and snapping off some more, followed by dabbing
very, very small amounts of chocolate icing on the ends and holding them
together, and then when that doesn’t work, getting involved with golden
syrup. In the end I manage only one section of two-bar fence, which is grabbed
off the cake and eaten by another child before anyone sees it properly. But
Lydia loves her cake, so I can die happy.

We just have to do a few games first. My mother did wonderful games. She
even always had a spare prize tucked behind the record player for the little
brother or sister who’d burst into tears because they hadn’t won,
usually because they hadn’t actually played. So I’m buoyed along by
a warm current of nostalgia. I’ll do Pass the Parcel because it means the
children sitting down for a while, I can remember how to play it, and I like
wrapping things. I dig out the set of pencils someone gave Lydia last year and
surround myself with the Arts section of the Sunday paper. As I go along I read
the odd paragraph, then, with time ticking on a bit too briskly, I just slap
the pages on and stuff the pleasingly fat, finished item behind the kettle.
Several hours later, I discover the downside of using the Books section, when
the game stops abruptly, despite the strains of
Beat It
continuing to
throb through the walls. Now I think of it, I do vaguely remember the name
Pol Pot
flashing past, but didn’t think much of it. I gather up
the discarded pages more efficiently than usual.

‘Why are there skulls on the wrapping paper?’ asks one of
the girls.

‘Er, just shove it in the bag would you?’

The brother of one of them, who’s seeing an educational
psychologist, thinks it’s ‘cool’.

We send the kids away with their cardboard palaces, and their parents
are all nice enough to look grateful for going-home presents which are
basically decorated litter.

Something rather serious has happened, something that won’t
surprise anyone with children older than ours; it’s just shocked me,
that’s all. Lydia has recently turned six. Lawrence is still seven. And
their father has announced that he is taking Lawrence to see the
Great
Escape
exhibition at the Imperial War Museum,
and not Lydia
. What
are she and I doing instead? Going to John Lewis to buy
Velcro
.

I know what this means. It’s the beginning of Lydia’s
becoming a
girl
. In his eyes, she has joined the ranks of people who
wear pink and mince about in tutus and – evidently from his decision re
this weekend’s outing – are not interested in the Second World War.
So let me just say that as a female who has sat through more documentaries on
Colditz, the SOE and Churchill than the entire male population of NATO, I feel
a little shortchanged. I mean, surely one of the rewards for long service in
front of flickering Lancaster bombers and chaps giving Jerry a blasting should
be the chance to climb through Tom, Dick and Harry and buy a medal in the
museum shop afterwards. And if Lydia wants to come too, who is he to stop her?
But she doesn’t. And I feel a bit sad.

Up until now we’ve been comrades, a gang of four, sharing the same
interests. Well, more or less. Peter can’t watch a subtitled film without
moaning about it, and doesn’t know the difference between Katherine
Mansfield and Jayne Mansfield. (He was impressed that a busty film star had
managed to write short stories and knew H. G. Wells.) And I’ve forgotten
the names of the five father and son Formula One racing drivers I memorized for
the wedding. But on the whole, we all paddle the same canoe. We all built
towers together and helicopter landing pads when they were little; they both
still make dens behind the sofa – which is
unisex
– to use a
word from my youth, but there is an overall bias towards the masculine. Lydia
has grown up with boys’ toys – not because we despise all things
feminine, but because Peter, Lawrence and I all like them and we were here
first. When she came along we already had the toy garage from Peter’s
nephews, hundreds of cars, Scalextric (my wedding present to him) and, thanks
to various neighbours, a plastic castle and Sherwood Forest set, plus double
our combined weight in Lego. And with most of the junior videos –
Bob
the Builder, Fireman Sam, Thomas
, etc. – being so blokeish, the
household bias was male. But this is mitigated by Lawrence’s nurturing
side; dressing-up clothes are much used by both, and the dolls’ beds two
Christmases ago were more popular with Lawrence. He went through a phase of
parenting a teddy called John Calman, followed by a tortoise and an elephant,
‘
both eight years old, Mummy: they’re twins.
’

But Lawrence has, I reckon, more room for manoeuvre. Ever since I had
Lydia, I’ve been amazed by how society’s ancient attitude to
females periodically breaks through: ‘
A girl? Ooh, no thank you. I
prefer boys. Boys
are simpler. Girls are spiteful. You know where you
are with
boys.
’ And so on, from people you can’t somehow
imagine saying, ‘
Oh, your husband’s black: they’re stupid
and lazy.
’

At the park, Peter and I watch Lydia climb trees in a tiara, and give
ourselves credit for producing a truly modern daughter.

Still, I watch for the signs of coyness and excess pink that everyone
tells me are coming, even though she is by no means as ‘girly’ as
most of her friends. My own dolls’ house, made out of hardboard forty
years ago and in need of extensive refurbishment, provokes not so much as a
peep of curiosity. It sits on a shelf in the spare room, with its
long-untouched beds, cooker, piano, clock and six-keyed typewriter made by
ten-year-old me out of clay. Remembering my own longing for a Sindy when I was
given a chemistry set, I come home intermittently with a doll, fairy, or
glittery bracelet. The jewellery is fallen upon hungrily, but the dolls are
generally found at the bottom of toy pile-ups, limbs twisted and faces horribly
tattooed with pen, like a Friday night in A&E.

So I think that my daughter isn’t interested in dolls, but I am
wrong.

Around her fifth birthday, the blizzard of pink starts falling upon us.
We watch helplessly, like extras in a CGI blockbuster, as it drifts through the
windows and transforms the landscape. We know we’re powerless to resist.
But that’s fine, because I know she can be both: gorgeous and dynamic;
model
and
detective. I get her a Barbie stamper set – ‘it
encourages drawing’ – and an air stewardess Sindy, though I call
her ‘Travel Sindy’, to make her sound like an explorer. We have our
first shopping day together, buy her a dress and pink glittery tights and have
lunch and feel like best friends. Then we come home and all watch
Die
Another Day
together, and Lydia wants to be Jinx, the sexy and fearless CIA
operative played by Halle Berry. So
that’s
OK. I am so relaxed
about the whole thing I even let her have the fluffy unicorn she wants from the
pointless shop at the end of the road. Then I begin to notice
signs
.

She fidgets through
Master and Commander
– our favourite
film of 2003. Sailors, cannons, cellos – what’s not to like? She
wants, and gets, a
My Little Pony
, then another – from someone at
school who doesn’t know we’ve told her the ‘different’
ones are pictures of the same one in different colours, and that
‘
Collect the entire
range
’ is in fact Korean for
‘
There is only one
’. She adores
The Lion King
more
than ever, and still refers frequently to
Kiara
, which was briefly
amusing because at first her father and I thought she was a new girl at school.
They say you should watch what your children watch, and they’re right.
Prolonged viewing of films in which Life’s Great Themes are explored by
animated wildlife is inspiring her to blab snippets of platitudinous sentiment
suited to a low-grade sales course.

After a battle to get her to do her teeth one night she skips away,
gushing: ‘Thanks, Mum! I’ll always believe in you!’

And at bedtime she adds: ‘I love you more than Life Itself.’
And when I look a touch sceptical, admits: ‘I got that from
Robin
Hood
.’

And I defend my scepticism, as I suspect that what looks on the outside
like concern for the Diversity of Life and our fellow creatures – though
mainly those called
Kiara
– is actually part of a wider trend
towards cutesiness. When she gets something in her eye a bit of vinegary chip
if you must know – I say: ‘Try and cry it out.’

Lawrence advises: ‘Think of something sad.’

And Lydia says: ‘I’m thinking of a pencil that hasn’t
been sharpened.’

‘No!’ he says: ‘DYING!’

I think that illustrates the difference between the sexes as well as
anything.

And while I am discussing with Peter a Woman’s Right Not to Spend
Her Saturday Buying Velcro While the Menfolk Crawl Through Tunnels and Buy
Medals at the Imperial War Museum, Lydia is packing her ballet kit for classes
she doesn’t have.

I have, as usual, brought this on myself.

Strike one! I have got her an
Angelina Ballerina
book, even
though it contains one of my least favourite literary phenomena, clothed mice.
Strike two! A boy at school – I know
your
game, sonny –
gives her an Angelina backpack. Strike three! I allow Katarina to get her a
ballet outfit for her sixth birthday.

And yet – with my head up my arse in the time-honoured parental
manner – I am hoping the Ballet Thing might go away. It’s not so
much ballet I object to as the culture that surrounds it. I’m sure that
the other mothers sign their girls up because they Look Sweet – not a
crime in itself, admittedly, but then they don’t take their sons to
football because they like the strip. I don’t want her to aspire to be
decorative
. I want my daughter to stand apart, to plough her own furrow,
rev her own – speedboat. So I talk her into doing karate. I’ve told
her it’s
like
ballet, but with more jumping. And after six weeks
of it, she seems content.

But when we return from our Velcro expedition, she leans the Angelina
backpack against the wall by the door and says meekly: ‘I’ll keep
it here in case you decide to let me do ballet.’

And so I go into the kitchen and stab myself with a fork. Naturally,
I’m a hypocrite. Of course I did ballet when I was that age. I was
forever gazing through the window of
Annello & Davide
at the pointe
shoes, and was never without my copy of
Ballet Shoes
, which I regarded
as a sort of life manual, the way people these days look upon
Atkins
or
The Purpose-Driven Life
.

But what about Lydia? What about
her
wishes? She wants to do
ballet, so shouldn’t I just give in? Ah, but! She also wants to be a lion
cub, a baby eagle, and intermittently – a Dalmatian. And while I’ve
given her milk in a saucer on several occasions, I object to dragging her up
the road on a string.

And while all this has been swirling round in my head, the fog clears a
little, and a brief exchange with her makes me realize what I
really
want out of all this.

However she evolves, I just want to be part of it. And learning that
I’ve already missed one key stage of her development as a woman has made
me not want to miss out – on anything. Shortly after not going to
The
Great
Escape
, I get them Smarties as a treat.

‘Hey, Lydia,’ I say. ‘If you lick the red one and put
it on your lips, it makes lipstick!’ And she says: ‘I
know
.’