The Bad Mother's Handbook (16 page)

‘What do you honestly expect his reaction to be?’

I wasn’t ready to answer this question, even from
myself. We tried again.

‘In an ideal world,’ Daniel pushed his imaginary
glasses further up the bridge of his imaginary nose, ‘what
would you expect his reaction to be?’

That was better. ‘Well, he’d be totally supportive, for
a start. He’d say, “Whatever you want to do, Charlie, I’ll
stand by you.” ’

‘And what
do
you want to do?’

‘I want . . . I want not to be pregnant in the first place.’
I heard my voice rise to a wail.

Daniel sighed heavily. ‘Come on, Charlotte, grow up
now. Are you saying you want an abortion?’

‘I—’ Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw
the door handle turn and my heart jumped in horror. The
door swung open and Nan shuffled in. ‘Ivy’s doin’ some
toasted teacakes, d’ you want one?’

‘Oh, Nan, thank God it’s only you. I thought it was
Mum.’

Nan smiled blankly. ‘Toasted teacakes,’ she said.

‘Oh, no, you’re OK. I’ll wait till later. I’m not hungry.’

‘Eeh, I don’t know. Not hungry. I could eyt a buttered
frog.’ She chuckled at her own joke and retreated, pulling
the door to after her. I waited till I heard it click, then
turned my attention to Daniel again.

‘Well, are you going to . . . ?’

‘It depends what
he
wants. If he came with me while
they did it, if he was really nice and we got back together
and he let me talk about it afterwards, and he never mentioned
Jeanette Piper or Chrissy . . .’

‘If pigs went flying past the window.’

‘Oh, ha-fucking-ha.’ I vanished him, then sat in a
temper drawing cartoon bombs and lightning bolts.

Julia and Anya materialized on the bed, unbidden.

‘Isn’t it the absolute worst thing you can think of,
though,’ Anya was saying.

‘Oh, yeah. Well, cancer would be pretty bad, and
losing both your parents in a car crash.’

‘Or being permanently disfigured, with, like, acid or
something. You know, having a glass eye or whatever.’

‘Or being a quadriplegic.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But being pregnant’s pretty horrendous. I mean, your
whole life messed up. Can you imagine what your mum
would say?’

They both pulled manic faces and Julia put her hands
round her throat and made strangling noises. ‘I’d just die.
Wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh, God, yeah. Awful. Completely fucking awful.’

‘What I don’t understand, though,’ Julia wound a
strand of glossy hair round and round her finger, ‘what I
don’t get is, how she let it happen. I mean, she’s supposed
to be so clever. She got an A in that last History module,
the one she was supposed to have ballsed up.’

‘Yeah, I know. And I tell you what, I didn’t even
really know she had a boyfriend. Actually, she can be a
right miserable cow, she never tells you anything. To be
honest, I still had her down as a virgin.’

‘They say it’s the quiet ones,’ sniggered Julia. Anya
began to giggle, then Julia started too. ‘Oh, shit, we are
awful. ’S not funny. Poor Charlotte.’

‘Yeah, poor old Charlotte.’

Three identical
culs-de-sac run off Barrow Road; Paul’s
house is down the second. Not much had changed since
I last went, except the bus shelter now had no roof at all,
and the form was completely slatless, just two thick concrete
stands five feet apart rising out of the tyre-marked
grass. I remembered when I was a little girl, three old
men in caps and mufflers used to always be sitting there,
smoking away, gossiping. They were sort of like custodians
of the highway, Neighbourhood Watch. Nan knew
who they all were, used to say howdo and get a nod. Then after a few years there were two, then only one old man,
sitting on his own, clouded in blue smoke. One day there
was no one at all, and after that the bench started to get
taken apart. I think maybe Bank Top didn’t used to be so
crap, something went wrong with the people.

The Alsatian had gone too. The yard was bare except
for a chewed rubber ball and a length of chain.

Mr Bentham let me in; I could tell he was surprised.

‘Paul! Paul!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘You’ve gorra
visitor!’

Paul’s face peered over the banister and he mouthed
’kin ’ell
when he saw me. But when he didn’t move I
climbed up after him.

By the time we got inside his room I was out of breath
and sweating.

‘What d’you want?’ he asked gracelessly.

I saw with a pang that he was still as handsome, that
the Man U duvet looked sex-rumpled, that someone had
bought him a white teddy with heart-shaped paws which
he’d stuck on top of his computer.

‘Can I sit down?’

He just shrugged, so I stayed where I was, shoulder
to shoulder with David Beckham. The moment twisted
slowly on its long thread. I couldn’t make my mouth
work, though my brain was racing, until:

‘Nice bear,’ I said, like a pillock.

‘Oh. Yeah.’ He snickered awkwardly, looking all
round the room, everywhere except at me. ‘Shit, y’ know,
seems really weird—’ He allowed himself a glance in
my direction.
All those times I was here,
I was thinking,
and the last few weeks, we never knew, I had cells dividing inside me. 2, 4, 8, 16, an exponential time bomb. Cells all
drifting to their allotted place like synchronized swimmers.
Shape-shifting: amoeba to blackberry, to shrimp,
alien, baby. There’s a baby under this fleece. Hallo, Dad.

‘Hey, are you all right? You look a bit – funny.’

I took heart from what might have been concern in his
voice and stepped forward. ‘Paul, I – no, I’m not all right.
I, I’m—’ My hand dipped automatically to my stomach
and his eyes followed it, then widened. Then his brows
came down and his whole face went hard.

‘Paul?’

‘Oh, no. Oh, no, not that one. I do
not
want to hear
this! I do not fucking want to hear this!’ He turned right
away and put his hands on the back of his neck, blocking
me out. Any minute now, I thought, he’s going to put his
fingers in his ears and start humming.

‘Paul, you’ve got to know—’

‘Fuck OFF!’ he shouted over me. ‘Don’t try and put
this one on me. This is your fault. Christ! You stupid,
stupid bitch!’ He thumped the wall, then leant on it,
shoulders hunched, still with his back to me. He looked
like a three-year-old whose mum has refused to let him go
on the Tigger ride outside Tesco’s.

There was silence while I fought the urge to run down
the stairs, through the door and across the Continent; run
for ever, run the pregnancy away.

‘I’m sorry, Paul, it’s true.’

‘Aw, Jesus.’ He groaned and finally turned back round
to face me. ‘You’ve gotta be wrong. It weren’t like we
didn’t use owt. Loads of girls have scares, it dun’t mean a
thing. You’ve just got yourself in a state.’

‘I did a test.’

He put his hand over his mouth and swore behind it.

‘It is yours.’

He took his hand away from his chin and stared at
me. ‘No, Charlotte. That’s where you’re wrong. It’s yours.
It’s all yours. I don’t want fuck all to do wi’ it.’

At least you know
where you stand. At least you know
where you stand.

I don’t remember walking back home but here I was
under the duvet in my bedroom, so I suppose I must have
done. Maybe I’d been asleep, because I was very hot and
my mouth was dry. Maybe it had been a dream. – Maybe
it had
all
been a dream! – But no, my hand strayed down
over my bump, and Paul’s parting shot still rang in my
ears. I’d put my Walkman on but it’d made no difference,
Paul was louder. That exact intonation would be etched
into my brain all my life, long after his features had
become vague. I’d probably die with that last sentence
replaying itself.

I snuggled down further into the bed. When I was very
little and Mum and I still got on, she used to let me make
a Nest at bedtime out of the duvet. Then she’d peer in
and pretend she couldn’t see me and that she was going.
I’d shoot out from underneath, all flushed and ruffled,
and shriek, ‘Story!’ and she’d pretend to be incredibly
surprised. She used to read to me every night, long after
I could read myself. If only I could be little again. You
don’t appreciate it at the time.

I must have drifted off again because the tape was on
side two and Nan was shaking me gently.

‘A shut mouth keeps flies out,’ she was saying when I
lifted up the earphones.

‘You what?’

Nan settled on the bed and leant over to stroke my
hair. Normally I’d have had to fight the urge to squirm
away; not that I don’t love her, I just get really touchy
about my personal space sometimes. But this time I lay
there quietly, glad of the sympathy. After a while she said;
‘You’re havin’ a baby, then.’

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

‘
Nan!
’

‘Don’t you worry, it’ll be awreet. We’ll see you
through.’ She fished under the duvet for my hand and
took it in her gnarled fingers. The flesh moved loosely
over the bones, as if it was ready to come away. I
shuddered and closed my eyes, tears brimming out from
between the lashes.

‘Oh, Nan.’

‘Charlotte, love.’ She gripped my hand tighter.

‘
Please
don’t tell Mum. Not yet. I can’t face her.’

She half-smiled. ‘I know all sorts as I’ve never towd.’
(Of course you do, I thought.) ‘Tha maun fret, I’ll not say
owt till you’re ready.’

Beside my ear the Walkman played:

You walk out of trouble
Into trouble
Out of trouble
Into trouble
And this is your life
This is your life

‘Oh, Nan, why is everything such a mess? Why me?’

‘Eeh, lamb,’ she said. ‘You’ll be awreet, you’ll see.
God’s good.’

‘How
can
I be?’

But she just shook her head and carried on stroking
my hair. I closed my eyes, let the earphones fall back.

*

MY MOTHER was eighteen when she had me, Jimmy was
born two years later. But she couldn’t hold my father. Harold
Fenton was a restless soul, his own mother couldn’t make moss
nor sand of him. I think he loved us, though. He wouldn’t marry
my mother, but he gave us his surname for a middle name, so’s
everyone would know who we were. Nancy Fenton Marsh. I
hated it, still hate it today. Fillin’ in forms and such; whose business
is it anyway? Because in them days, the sin fell on the
childer as well as the mother. But there was a lot of it about.

She were allus short of money, that’s why she had to tek in
washin’, an’ it were a right palaver in them days; two dolly tubs,
a coal boiler, scrubbing board, mangle, it took for ever. She
never had a home of her own either. The summer before I was
born she’d sit out every evenin’ in her parents’ back yard
wearing her nightie and her dad’s overcoat, there were nowt
else as’d fit. She said it was a terrible labour: when they held
me up and said, ‘Polly, it’s a girl,’ she told them she didn’t care
if it was a brass monkey so long as it was out.

Once, when I was about six and Jimmy four, we were
waitin’ at a bus stop to go to Wigan an’ a smartish woman
came and stood alongside us. There was a bus comin’ and my
mother just bundled us on. I said, ‘Mam, this in’t our bus, where
are we goin’?’ ‘Never you mind,’ she said. It turned out this woman was my father’s latest fancy piece. We went all the way
to Worsley before my mother came to herself. He had a lot of
women, she told me before she died, but she said he was her
man and that was that. ‘At least he never drank,’ she used to say.

She’d be thinkin’ of her father, Peter Marsh. Her mother,
Florrie, had a grim time of it even though she had a husband.
They’d married because she was expectin’ and then after, she
had three children die in their first year. The doctor told her not
to risk any more or she’d damage her own health – all she could
think about was that at last she could sleep in the front bedroom
with Polly, away from him. He were mean, you see; she allus
struggled to get money out of him because he spent it all on
drink. She used send Polly to the colliery gates to try to get
some of his wages off him before he went in t’ pub (he never
came straight home when there was brass to spend) but then
that would get him in a rage. I think she were relieved when he
went to join the Loyal North Lancashires in 1917, except when
he got there, there were so few on ’em left he had to join up with
the East Surreys. He sent some beautiful silk postcards though,
‘Greetings from France’, all embroidered with flags and flowers,
and his slow big pencil writing on the back. Then he was hit by
a shell, or at least he jumped into a hole to avoid one, and got
buried by a wave of mud. They’d just been wondering how to
break it to him about the baby, me, when they got the telegram.
He was only forty-two.

My father tried to join up as well at seventeen, but it’d
finished by the time he got there, typically. I don’t suppose
he were too bothered. My mother’s big fear was that she’d be
made a widow too, but never being married she wouldn’t have
qualified anyway. She lost him young, though; two days after his
thirty-first birthday he was knocked down in Manchester, outside the Corn Exchange. And I did miss him, even though he’d
been in and out of our house like a cat. We both cried over him.
He was my dad. And you need your dad when you’re growing
up. Well, I think you do, anyroad. Family’s everythin’ when it
comes down to it.

*

I woke with
a jolt. The tape had finished and my earphones
were hissing. I unhooked myself and struggled out
of the duvet.

‘I can’t have this baby, Nan. I’ve decided.’

From the end of the bed Nan snored gently. I folded
the covers over her and tiptoed out of the room.

I
WENT ON
a blind date with Pauline’s brother’s friend
from tai kwon-do class. ‘He’s got a smashin’ personality,’
Pauline had said. Ugly as sin, then, I thought. But it was
worse than that. When I walked into the Working Men’s
and saw him propped against the bar it was like that
old music hall joke, Don’t stand up, oh I see you already
have. He came about level with my nose. That wouldn’t
necessarily have been a problem, only he looked like
Ken Dodd and talked like Roy Chubby Brown. I sat
through fifty minutes of filth, then he said, ‘I’ve got good
manners, me. Tits before fanny,’ and laughed uproariously.
‘Wanker,’ I hissed, picking up my bag. ‘Ah, get away,
you love it really, you ladies,’ he grinned. ‘Have you ever
actually
had
sex with anyone?’ I asked nastily. That shut
him up.