Mad Cows (20 page)

Milton Keynes was a new town marooned amongst slip roads, spiralling off the expressway into a mish mash of Toys ‘R' Us, cash n' carrys and a monarchy of Kings – Burger King, Kebab King, Chicken King. Identical streets full of executive dwellings and brick bungalow ‘dream homes' unscrolled mundanely in all directions.

‘Do you remember my accountant? The man whom I used to pay a lot of money to tell me that I didn't have any? It's
his
. I'm decorating it for him. In lieu of rent. Babykins needed a nice place and—'

‘Is he okay?' Maddy felt a wave of longing which buckled her knees.

‘OK? My dear, he's not okay,' Maddy tensed at Gillian's words, a tearing sensation in her throat. ‘He's a
genius
! And so
beautiful
! I'm entering him for the cover competition for
Totler
. . . The baby version of
Tatler
, dah-ling,' Gillian explained, eye-rollingly. ‘How did you by the way?'

‘How did I what?'

‘Find me.'

Maddy couldn't help intuiting that Gillian didn't look all that pleased to be found. ‘The Missing Persons Helpline. I gave them your photo. They found your ad
in
some local rag. An Image Palette Consultant? What the hell is that?'

‘All I do is advise people what their ‘colour' is. You, madam,' her voice took on a fruity, insincere tone, ‘are a Cold Spring – and then' – Gillian shrugged – ‘They give me fifty quid.'

The meagre remains of Maddy's milk supply tingled as though her nipples were being given Chinese burns. ‘I'll have to wake him. I just can't wait any longer.'

‘Impossible. He's still got another half an hour,' Gillian over-ruled. But Maddy was already bounding up the stairs.

‘Hey!' Gillian protested, behind her.

The pristine nursery was a gelato-bar mix of pistachio and pink. A cot leant up against the farm-animal mural on the back wall. Thick-throated with emotion, Maddy peered over the wooden railings.
And there was Jack
. He was on his tummy, his bottom pyramiding off the mattress, his soft limbs skewed in sleep. She felt a surge of love.

‘He always sleeps like that now,' Gillian panted, rapturiously.

Jack opened one eye. He looked straight at his mother. But not with the euphoric beam she'd expected. His delicate brows furrowed in a disgruntled ‘I'd like to see the manager' kind of way.

Maddy felt awkward and overcome. She picked him up with butterfingers. But Jack didn't want to just see
the
manager; he wanted to lodge a complaint, which he did, long and loud. Crestfallen, Maddy darted a look towards Gillian.

‘Nappy?' she suggested.

Maddy laid him on the change table. ‘So
that's
what's upsetting you.' She felt constrained, as though trying to make friends with a stranger in a lift. ‘Nappy rash.'

‘Ammonia dermatitis,' Gillian corrected, handing Maddy a tube of pink cream.

Maddy was all fingers and thumbs. It was like trying to reverse park with someone watching. For God's sake! He's looking at me as though I'm Lorena Bobbit! Now what?' Demoralized, she held his whimpering form with Ming vase reverence.

‘
Feed
him
ob
viously,' Gillian tch-ed.

Maddy fumbled out a breast. But Jack, wearing the prudish expression of a Baptist Minister, kept turning his head away.

‘Solids?' suggested Gillian.

Bolstered by pillows in his high chair, Jack kept up his cold-shoulder treatment, using his fingers to Jackson Pollock the food on his tray.

‘Can you believe how artistic he is!' Gillian enthused. ‘In
cred
ible for a four-month-old!'

Jack, having upended his bowl, then proceeded to hurl his food around the room, trashing it in rockstar style. Maddy darted about with a dishcloth.

‘Peekaboo!' Gillian peek-a-booed. Jack's eyes lit up,
following
her around the room. ‘And so entertaining! More compelling than Carreras at Covent Garden, despite his F.A.T.H.E.R.'

‘Gillian, he's a B.A.B.Y. He doesn't understand English yet.'

‘We've been doing flash cards. Feeder preparatory schools are not taking toddlers who score beneath 125 in IQ tests, you know.'

‘Gill – um, you keep talking like this and someone's going to have you committed . . . probably
me
.'

Maddy was heating milk in a saucepan on the stove. Gillian ostentatiously switched off the front burner whilst igniting the back. She moved the saucepan to the rear of the stove, handle pointing to the wall and administered an admonishing stare.

Maddy gulped, bewildered, at her tea.

‘That's a no no too,' pontificated Gillian, confiscating her cup.

‘What?'

‘Hot liquids near baba.'

Distracted, Maddy was unaware of the milk boiling over. ‘Oh damn!' she searched in vain for some Jiff.

Gillian pursed prim lips and unlocked the cupboard beneath the sink. ‘Bleach, detergents, drain cleaners and caustic soda are locked away.' Maddy recalled the times when the only caustic thing about Gillian was her wit. ‘Medicines.' In Doris Day overdrive, Gillian flung open a high cupboard. ‘All labelled and up out of reach.'

Now Maddy came to think of it, the
whole room
looked up out of reach. It was as though there had been a King tide, stranding possessions high and dry. ‘Gillian, he's not even
crawling
yet.'

‘Jackson's the type to get into everything, aren't you, popsy wopsy.'

‘Jack
son
?'

‘It'll suit him better when he's F.A.M.O.U.S. Don't you think?'

‘What I
think
– is that this is the way serial killers get started.'

‘Quick!' Gillian tapped a tapered nail on her watch face. ‘Must vamoose. It's Tiny Tots time!'

Tiny Tots, Tumbler Tots, Aqua Babies, Crescendo, Baby Gym, swimming lessons, followed by music appreciation, then taped French tutorials till tea; Jack had a social life Maddy could only dream of. For the first week, she traipsed after Gillian and Jack to one event after another. Still, she was slightly relieved to note that Gillian hadn't changed out of
all
recognition. For these suburban excursions, she dressed Jack in broderie anglaise tops, quilted corduroy trousers and packed a Waterford crystal baby's bottle.

‘This is Jackson's
biological
mother,' was Gillian's way of introducing Maddy to the mothers of Milton Keynes – identical, velvet-Alice-banded women in velour tracksuits of every pastel shade; interrupting
their
PC revisions of
Vertically Challenged Red Riding Hood
. (The nineties Mum treads warily through the semantics of modern nursery rhymes.) ‘She's having trouble
bonding
.'

But the only thing preventing Maddy from bonding with Jack was Gillian, the Housewife Hovercraft.

‘Haven't you got anything to
do
?' pleaded Maddy, two weeks into her suburban sojourn.

‘My social life is comp
lete
ly dead, dah-ling,' Gillian announced, cheerily, ritually camcordering another poo deposit for posterity. ‘Jackson got hold of my Filofax and
ate
August!'

‘But this is the 'burbs! Aren't you supposed to be having steamy mid-afternoon sexual encounters in the neighbour's azaleas?'

‘The only thing which shows me any interest these days, dah-ling, is my bank account,' Gillian exhaled, cleaning wax out of Jack's ears and flaking cradle cap off his scalp, ‘monkeying' she called it – Maddy had never felt closer to Darwinism – ‘and that's precious little.'

The few times Gillian did venture out, on an Image Palette Consultancy, she handed Maddy a list of emergency numbers and pressed upon her what she called her first-aid kit. It was actually more like an entire General Hospital. From dandruff to diarrhoea; from constipation to major convulsions; from warts to whooping cough, all was hypochondriacally catered for.

‘That's what I like about you, Gillian,' Maddy marvelled. ‘your low-anxiety threshold.'

By mid-August, Maddy was chewing the furniture. It wasn't just that she never got to be alone with her baby, but Gillian seemed to have acquired the ability to continue discussing Jack's bowel movements long after Maddy's own interest had waned. She had also become the Cecille B. de Mille of Milton Keynes, videoing every nano-second of the child's life for the archives; then
immediately
viewing the footage.

‘Brings back memories, doesn't it?' Maddy would reprimand, facetiously, to no bloody effect whatsoever.

At nights, Jack became a human pancake. Gillian yo-yoed up and down till dawn, constantly flipping him on to his back to avoid cot-death.

‘As I've told you every night for a month,' Maddy said tersely, colliding with Gillian yet again in the nursery, at sparrow-fart. ‘There's no need to get up to him.'

‘I always was a bit of a night owl, dah-ling. Jackson keeps my kind of hours, don't you' – she tweaked his cheek – ‘you little party-mammal, you!'

Maddy, reposing Jack, subsided into the armchair in a pathetic attempt to feed, but her nipples were cracked; the flow glacial. Jack howled with frustration. When Gillian produced her ubiquitous bottle of warm milk, he gave a squawk of sudden joy. Moments later his lips, Mick-Jaggered from sucking, pouted up at Gillian with satisfaction.

She then placed him in his cot on his tummy and patted his bottom rhythmically. ‘I notice you put him in disposables today. He prefers terry towelling. It keeps him snug and comfy and much drier.'

Maddy peered at her friend, disbelieving. ‘You're talking like a brochure, do ya know that?' she chastised in a piercing whisper.

‘Well, then, read my small print.' Gillian boomeranged back an equally judgemental look. ‘Better still,
listen
.' She beckoned.

Maddy crouched on the floor beside her. ‘What?'

‘Can you hear that noise?'

‘What noise?'

‘That ticking sound? It's my biological clock.'

Maddy shrugged. ‘Get a digital.'

Gillian's face caved in. ‘I'm getting old, Maddy.'

‘God, who isn't? Remember when a “bit of rough” used to mean a night of debauchery with a tattoed rock star? Now it's a leaf of bloody lettuce.'

‘My make-up comes with a
trowel
.'

‘Gillian, you're only thirty-six.'

‘Yes, in
human
years. In Single, Childless Female Years, that's about eighty-six! Soon I'm going to be too old to wear jeans. Maybe I already
am
too old to wear jeans. Maybe people are passing me in the street and whispering, “How pathetic . . .”.'

‘Well, don't think giving birth means you'll be able to wear jeans. Every time I zip up
my
jeans, my neck gets thicker.

‘I'll never have a baby,' Gillian confided. Sadness flowed down her face. ‘Loneliness is a growth industry, Madeline. Whilst maintaining an air of optimistic availability, subcutaneously I acknowledge failure. Every single man I know is gay. I'm going to call my memoirs
Dances with Queens
.'

‘Memoirs? Hah! Nothing to put in them now you've joined the blue eyeshadow brigade. Hey. Cheer up. Maybe you could be one of those granny test-tube mums?'

‘Five-year waiting list,' Gillian said earnestly, massaging Jack's abdomen. ‘And, ugh! Dah-ling, I'd be in and out of stirrups more often than
National-fucking-Velvet
.'

‘Surrogacy?' Maddy jested.

‘You're the only fecund friend I possess.'

‘Chinese orphanage?' She refused to take her friend seriously.

‘Too expensive. Besides, I don't want just
any
baby.' Her eyes jumped around the room. ‘
I want Jack
.'

The grin froze on Maddy's face.

‘He's the best company I've ever had,' Gillian continued, sincerely. ‘And you're talking to the woman who once dated Bryan Ferry.'

Jack seconded her sentiments by emitting a loud burst of wind. Gillian gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘I didn't know I could fall in love. And now, suddenly, it's all pouring out of me.'

Maddy's mouth hardened. ‘I'm his
mother
.
You
couldn't possibly love him as much as I do!'

Gillian looked at Maddy evenly. ‘When he had a cold I sucked his nose mucus out with my mouth.'

Maddy's eyes popped. ‘You don't need a baby, Gillian, you need a
shrink
.'

‘Which is why I think you should let me adopt him.'

‘Make that a DIY lobotomy.'

‘I've put him down for all the top schools. Schools like that look beyond the colt to the stable.'

‘So what are you saying? He'll be able to count with his feet?'

‘What I'm
saying
is that primary care-givers are as closely scrutinized as pupils in the selection process.'

‘He's
my
baby!'

‘Yes, but I'm a better mother,' she contended witheringly.

‘Why? 'Cause of those hideous baby groups you take him to full of smug parents whose babies sleep through the bloody night?'

‘Have you bought fire-resistant nightwear? Have you made your own rusks? Quite large chunks break off the commercially produced one . . .'

‘Those groups are legal proof of child abuse.'

‘Are you running the cold water tap last in the bath, so he doesn't get scalded by a random hot drip?'

Random drips, yes, she'd met a lot of
them
lately. Maddy, with nothing to lose but her temper, got to her feet. ‘So what am
I
exactly? Some kind of
pod
?'

‘Are you enhancing co-ordination development?
Body
and space awareness? Improving his gross motor skills?'