Mad Cows (24 page)

‘Sorry?'

‘A terminal episode.' Fin crushed his can of Foster's up against his forehead, then jet-propelled the flattened end product at a passing pedestrian, proving her suspicion that this was a bloke who'd been given his brain for nothing. Just a spinal column would have done.

Barricaded back in the crumbling flat of Edifice Wrecks – on the whole she'd decided against high-rise living. There were just too many things to jump off. Maddy sat epoxy-resined to the radio (she'd despaired of television. It was too full of families who made the Waltons look depressed) . . . until the day she found herself imploding at the sound of Alex's creamy confidences to Sue Lawley on
Desert Island Discs
.

‘The truth is, Sue . . . do you mind if I call you Sue?' Even on radio, his sex appeal was deadly. It really should be registered at Police Headquarters
as
a lethal weapon. ‘I didn't cut the marital mustard. Hell, I wasn't even in the
jar
. . . But I love my kids.' He
loved his kids
? ‘Children need their fathers.'

‘Pig's arse! Jack needs you as much as the bloody Emperor needs a wardrobe for his new bloody clothes!' Maddy fumed. She was buggered if she knew why all the men in her life had been such duds. She would never date again – well, not without a Dudometer surgically attached. That way she might finally fall for a bloke who didn't belong to the Fig Jam fraternity – Fuck I'm Good, Just Ask Me.

She furiously swivelled the dial, only to get an ear-bashing from a Tory politician, flapping his gums about the sponging existence of single mothers. ‘Mad cows', he called them. She looked around her dismal little flat and thought of her imminent pulverization, courtesy of Fin.

‘Yes, this is why I became a single mum,' she sobbed, face like a wet week, to the wilted aspidistra. ‘I just couldn't resist the bloody
glamour
of it all.'

25

Eggs Over Easy

ON THE WHOLE
, certain conversational openings are not as prudent as others. ‘You've put on a little weight, haven't you?' is, for example, not a particularly endearing question. Nor is, ‘May I have the name of your plastic surgeon?' But these were positively winning compared to the dialogue Gillian found herself having with the men she met through the Lonely Hearts columns of England's leading newspapers.

A confession from one latent lothario that he bought his sex toys from a surgical supply shop brought the conversation to a flaccid conclusion.

Gillian's next male selection fared no better after he had suggested she come up and see his press cuttings: a rare collection of every story ever published about homicidal American postal workers.

Her third potential partner did at least manage to exchange a few pleasantries about favourite holiday destinations before commenting that Gillian was the first partner he'd had who was biodegradable.

By the end of October, Gillian had a feeling she would give up on finding a sperm donor through the personal ads; she figured it was foolish to bonk outside her species.

This view was confirmed when her fourth and final feasible Romeo, having confided his preference for eel insertion, asked Gillian what
she
really liked in bed.

‘Breakfast,' Gillian found herself replying, rather dismally.

26

Missing Persons Bureau

BY NOVEMBER, MADDY
was seriously considering going to the Missing Persons Bureau.

‘And who's missing?' they would ask.

‘The person I was B.C. . . . Before Childbirth.'

It was a strange combination – never a nanosecond alone, yet constantly lonely. When pushing a pram, you might as well be swaddled in the Invisible Man's bandages. Society had handed Maddy her eviction notice. She was a runner-up in the Human Race.

Forget her ‘chequered past'. What Maddy desperately wanted was a chequered
present
. She found herself yearning for someone with whom she could be intimate. Someone to tell her that her bum didn't look fat in ski pants and to remind her she was due for a pap smear. Bloody hell. It was just as well she didn't
have
enough money to go out to restaurants. The lovey-dovey couples would be a torture too great to bear. They should be in a segregated section: she would rather breathe in cigarette smoke than poison herself with images of smoochie goochie, kissy wissy.

Even if Maddy
did
have a god-damned social life, which she didn't, she had turned into one of those women who are always seated down-table at dinner parties. And who could blame the hosts? She was now a mother: more worried about teething rash than Tehran; breast engorgement than Belfast. The Government may be involved in yet another scandal, yet what did Maddy lie awake at night worrying about? Whether the light in the fridge was going off properly when she closed the door.

She floated in the bath, surrounded by wind-up turtles, rubber whales and Postman Pat sponges, turning the hot and cold taps on and off with her toes, for what felt like three days at a time, dreaming of when she'd be able to eat her way down through the cereal packet and not break a crown on a grinning plastic Disney character.

Her first sign of impending insanity was finding herself playing with the playdough . . .
with the baby nowhere in sight
.

She thought about taking anti-depressants to shut out her feelings of inadequacy and bereavement, but they'd cross over into the breast milk. And eight-month-old Jack, scooting around on his bottom in a
circular
direction, was
already
resembling a mal-functioning sputnik. Besides, motherhood was a slower and quieter means of self-destruction. Quieter than, say, a suicide bombing of Pet and Lex's apartment and less messy than a small handgun.

Maddy loved her son desperately, but felt duped by the Motherhood Myth – the way you feel duped after a facial when the beautician has talked you into £100-worth of Swiss rehydration cream and pore-pampering gel you can't afford.

And yet the women's magazines she picked up at the laundromat were full of slick articles on how to increase your baby's wordpower whilst simultaneously fellating your lover, filleting fish, and stir-frying a Thai extravaganza; pausing only to swallow. The articles were outnumbered by the books. ‘Fair, Firm and Fun! Bring Out the Perfect Mum in
You
.' ‘Mothering, not Smothering,' invisibly subtitled, ‘Babies, the Bushel You'll Forever More Be Hiding Your Light Under.'

Maddy's problem was that these publications had led her to believe that parenthood would be like getting a goldfish. Now she knew such books could lie. Something she should have realized after reading Sheila Kitzinger's infamous claim that giving birth is the ultimate orgasm.
Hel-lo?

The second sign that she was loose in her top storey was that if someone offered her a night of earth-shattering orgasms or a full night's sleep, she'd take the zeds. It was tragic, but true.

The only thing on offer, however, was Fin. His interest rates for what he called ‘petty cash clients' had suddenly, on a whim, gone up to 140 per cent. He suggested that Maddy work off her payment by acting as a drug courier or by lending a hand, literally, in his brother's massage parlour.

‘So tell me, how long have you known about your third chromosome?' Maddy felt that this was a fairly good retort, seeing as she was in the middle of a nervous bloody breakdown.

Fin's Formica table-top complexion, greyish white, flecked with freckles, turned puce. ‘Enjoy bein' involuntarily undomiciled, do ya?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Let's call it' – he placed his foot on Maddy's doorstep like a conquistador – ‘underhoused.'

‘Come again?' Maddy drew Mamma Joy's voluminous dressing gown more tightly around her.

‘Pay me or I'll torch ya fuckin' flat.'

That kind of brute vocabulary even Maddy could understand.

Like all mothers, Maddy wanted Jack to warm his hands before the fire of life (only she didn't have the pound coin for the meter), but torching Mamma Joy's flat she felt was going just a tad too far.

Maddy was busy incorporating every obscene term for the male reproductive organs into their cosy little chat when Fin thrust a newspaper clipping under her nostrils. Maddy found herself looking at her own
mugshot
, under the headline – ‘Unlawfully At Large'. It was part of a colour-supplement article on the number of escapees currently roaming British streets.

From then on, whenever Maddy ventured on to the estate, she felt as though she was wearing pork chop jeans in a dog pound. She took to not looking back, in case something was gaining on her. In the supermarket, as the groceries belched down the conveyor belt, the cashier surveyed her with mild curiosity – a scientist examining a microbe. She bought a balaclava. Now, there was a fashion statement. Especially indoors. But at least people couldn't read between the worry-lines on her face.

Oh, it was bad enough England being an island . . . but it was now entirely surrounded by hot water. Without passports, she would never get back to Australia with Jack, no matter how much she longed to be shipwrecked on the shore of that uninhibited island.

‘Oh, beam me back to the mother ship,' begged Maddy. ‘Mission on earth aborted.'

27

Scrambled Eggs

WITH THE MONTHS
ticking by, Gillian's quest for an Artificial Inseminator became more urgent. During November's ovulation period, she went freelance. Her first choice was a footballer from the England team . . . but he proved a little uncooperative. This particular species of male has to go to Ibiza to mate.

This convinced her to settle for brains over brawn. But she lost interest in the newspaper proprietor when his foreplay included tethering her to the chair with an Old Etonian tie. ‘But, my dear,' Gillian pointed out to him, scathingly, ‘I've read
Who's Who
. You went to
Leek Boys High
.' She left then and there. After all, pretentious snobberies are hereditary.

Despite reaching the qualifying rounds for the doubles at Wimbledon, the local tennis talent was also
disappointing
. His post-coital comment of ‘That was brilliant! No kidding. I was that desperate I could have shagged a dead dog!' definitely merited a morning-after pill.

In a fit of desperation and déjà vu, Gillian even sneaked into the boudoir of an ex-lover. At first she thought the Mono-Fibre Hair Extension King had been eating toast in bed; that would explain the little crumbs stuck to his backside. Except they wouldn't brush off. Gillian snapped on the light and peeled back the bedclothes to find – boils. His entire bottom was pebble-crated in craters. Now there was an effective contraceptive.

The Popular Novelist seemed a good biological match. But he insisted on neck-to-knee condoms and femidoms big enough to pitch for a garden party. She should have guessed about his anal retention when he arrived carrying a disposable medicated cover to put over her toilet seat.

There was the Aussie sea captain of some press baron's cruise ship. Now
he
was delicious. The sort of guy you could write home about – if your parents were into whisky chasers, flavoured French ticklers and doing it standing up backwards. But Maddy and the Computer Nerd had warned her off Australian men. According to Maddy, when it came to sex they had few criteria beyond a hole and a heartbeat.

The Tory backbencher. For a while she thought him her best bet. He had drive, determination, a Mensa
club
qualification and the cutest buns she'd seen all season . . . but he withdrew just before ejaculation to pleasure himself. ‘Women,' he panted, ‘just don't do this bit right.'

And then she got her period. Now the end of November, it was fair to say that on the breeding front, all systems were phut.

There may be one in every crowd, pondered Gillian morosely, but he never finds me. Who would have thought it would be so hard locating a sperm happy to get egg all over its face?

Gillian felt a change of plan coming on. She couldn't exactly say she was looking forward to it – well, maybe the way a turkey looks forward to Christmas.

28

Stop The World! I Want To Get Back On!

BY DECEMBER, MADDY
never wanted to see a moist towellette again. There should be compounds, she thought, where first babies are stored: the kids we all made our mistakes on. Mind you, Philip Larkin's poor oldies were never given the chance to reply to that famous stanza of his. She reckoned if they
had
, it'd be to say that
Philip
had fucked
them
up something bad. Yes he meant to. And he did.

As if reading Maddy's thoughts, Jack, who at eight and a half months was already pulling himself up on the furniture, gave her one of those ‘hey, I gave you the best
year
of my life' looks.

Maddy was trying to forget the fact that it was her birthday. Looking in the kitchen, all she could find was the torso of a Ninja turtle and a piece of fruit about to
pay
homage to Lister. How can I mother, Maddy moaned inwardly, when I want to be mothered myself? Lightly poached eggs, Vegemite soldiers and a few renditions of ‘Why Was I Born So Beautiful' would have done nicely.

Maddy wheeled Jack out into the raw rain and inhaled what was left of the air. It had been drizzling for weeks now. Londoners would soon be evolving webbed feet. The tower blocks loomed in the dark like massive gravestones; their epitaphs reading ‘unemployed, pissed off and totally friggin' miserable'. There was a tourniqueted atmosphere, as if the buildings themselves were about to choke from the coils of anguish.

Moving out of the poisonous yellow light of the stairwell into the sort of pea-souper incomplete without Sherlock Holmes, two rough hands tentacled toward her throat. Fingers smelling of dog and McDonald's hamburger clamped over her mouth.