The Only Boy For Me (8 page)

The lift is not working and by the time I make it up to the top floor I’m in need of oxygen and a lie-down. It’s pouring with rain and the ramp has gone all slippery. Nearly fall over twice. I finally make it back to the car, and collapse exhausted. I could do with a nice little sleep, but make do
with taking my bra off to get more comfortable, without taking my jumper off, which involves various contortionist-type movements. Just as I’m pulling my bra out of my sleeve, I realise the car opposite is no longer unoccupied. The man in the driving seat stares blankly at me, and I don’t think he’s actually seen anything as he’s trying to work out how to drive back down the ramp without aquaplaning into the wall at the bottom. But the woman in the passenger seat is most amused.

The drive home is much more relaxed than the journey in. A Merc flashes past at well over a hundred, and about five minutes later I spot it on the hard shoulder, accompanied by a police car. Hurrah. Finally the motorway police have done something useful. The police car is lit up like a Christmas tree so I can’t imagine how the Merc driver didn’t spot it, but presume driving at over a hundred in the outside lane used up his entire brain. When I get home, Edna is dozing by the fire. She’s remembered to put the outside lights on, so I don’t fall into the flowerbed when I get out of the car, like I usually do. It’s the perfect end to a long day, and she says Charlie was an angel, which I know is a downright lie but nevertheless very nice to hear. The video has worked and she’s thrilled. I decide not to tell her that she’s taped the wrong channel.

The sausage rolls are a huge hit next morning, and inevitably Charlie is desperate to eat one for breakfast.

‘Mummy, don’t you think sausage rolls are brilliant?’

‘Marvellous.’

‘Yes, and whoever thought of them deserves a medal, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. Now hurry up and put your socks on or we’ll be late.’

‘Can you get a medal for things like sausage rolls?’

‘Charlie, I don’t know, put your socks on.’

‘Alright, alright, there’s no need to shout. I was just asking. Honestly, you need to relax more, you know, Mummy.’

He gives me an angelic smile, and I’m strongly tempted to put a sausage roll up his nose.

‘I love you, Mummy. Can there be sausage rolls for tea as well?’

‘Yes, Charlie, I expect there can.’

I’ve booked a hair appointment for Charlie in honour of Leila’s visit, and have promised him lunch at Pizza Express in an attempt to convince him it is actually possible to leave the house on Saturday morning without watching the entire range of children’s cartoon programmes. He’s unconvinced, but relents when I say he can also have ice-cream for pudding. The hairdresser, Tracy, is very sweet and asks Charlie what kind of haircut he would like.

‘I want deadlocks – they’re very trendy, you know.’

Tracy is not quite sure what deadlocks are, but if he means dreadlocks his hair is not quite long enough.

‘OK, but not too short because my ears get very cold, you know.’

She busies herself snipping away, and I begin reading a chapter from
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Last time we came I forgot to bring a book, and we ended up playing I Spy for what seemed like hours. Charlie won with a word beginning with F, which worried me a lot so I insisted we went into whispering mode, and the answer turned out to be Fat Lady. So a book is a much safer option. I’ve nearly finished the chapter when Tracy announces his haircut is done, but would I mind reading to the end of the chapter because it’s such a lovely story, and isn’t the Snow
Queen a cow. I finish off the chapter while Tracy very slowly brushes imaginary hair off his neck.

Leila arrives early the next morning, and says Charlie’s haircut is the most stylish thing she’s ever seen, and we drive into Whitstable. As soon as we get out of the car, Charlie hurtles off towards the sea, and manages to get thoroughly soaked within five minutes. I’ve got a spare set of clothes for him in the car but timing is crucial: if I change him too early he’ll soak the new clothes before we get into the restaurant for lunch, and if we hang about too long he’ll get hypothermia. His legs are already pale mauve. Leila and I sit gossiping on the pebbles, which are incredibly uncomfortable after about two minutes, though undeniably picturesque. Leila is wearing various shades of cream, with marvellous pink sandals that look very delicate. She can’t actually walk in the sandals, but she doesn’t care because they’re so pretty. I quite agree, and want a pair myself.

Leila’s new man is shaping up very nicely. He’s single, with no obvious psychological disorders, not married, no extra-curricular children, and he earns a fortune. He is also fantastic in bed, and does a very clever trick with his tongue. He works in the City but is not boring, according to Leila. I can well believe it if the trick with his tongue is not something he saves for special occasions only. He’s called James, which Charlie says is a very good name, just like his best friend. Leila thinks this is an omen, and is clearly very smitten. She admits to thinking about how good he would look at the altar, which is a very bad sign since she usually doesn’t get to wedding fantasies quite so soon. She asks Charlie if he would agree to wear a kilt and be a pageboy,
and he says yes, and then we explain what a kilt is and he looks at us like we are both mad.

‘Mummy, you should get married, and then I could have a dad. I’d get extra toys then, wouldn’t I?’

‘Not really, Charlie, you’d get the same but they’d be from both of us.’

‘Oh. Well, anyway I think it’d be nice.’

Oh God. Does this mean the poor little thing is traumatised and longing for a father figure, and I haven’t noticed? Feeling crushed at my selfishness I give him a cuddle. Leila gives me an anxious glance.

‘Do you really want a dad then, darling?’

‘Well, a bit. A nice man might come along, you know, not too fat and not with red hair.’

Damn, that’s my ideal man out of the picture.

‘Not like Homer Simpson, and with lots of money and a dog. A big dog. And then you could take it in turns to go to work, and we could have a swimming pool. If I get married I’m not doing it in a church, I’m going to do it in a box office.’

‘I think you might mean registry office, Charlie.’

‘Yes, and if you were too tired to go swimming he could take me.’

‘Yes, darling, but you’d have to share more, you know, and if we all went out in the car then you’d have to sit in the back.’

Charlie pauses to consider this giant flaw in his picture.

‘OK, what about just getting a dog then?’

Leila chokes with laughter, and I’m hugely relieved that he doesn’t appear to be harbouring a terrible yearning for a patriarch in his life. Charlie charges off to play an imaginary pirate game which involves running into the sea up to his knees and then running out again, screaming very loudly.

It suddenly starts to rain, and we take refuge in the Whitstable Oyster Bar. I practically have to carry Leila off the pebbles in her new sandals, and Charlie thinks this is brilliant. I’ve booked a table so we manage to get in, but the place is heaving and the waitress looks on the point of hysteria. Charlie announces he is starving, and starts looking longingly at the food on other people’s tables. If I don’t act quickly he’ll start sidling up to people and asking them if they need their chips. I manage to get the waitress to take our order, and at the last minute Charlie pipes up that he thinks he’ll have a lobster. I tell him to shut up and have fish and chips, but Leila overrules me and says she will pay, because children must be encouraged to have adventurous palates. The lobster arrives with a small dagger to crack the shell: Charlie is thrilled and sets about smashing away, and even uses the dagger to eat his chips.

Leila and I are soon covered in bits of flying lobster, and the people on the next table stop smiling indulgently at the small boy being so grown up, and start ducking. I wrestle the dagger off him and he returns to his knife and fork, but he’s sulking with all his might until Leila asks him if he would like to try an oyster. He would, so she orders half a dozen. He slurps away, and says it’s just like drinking sea water but more chewy, and can he have another one, please? I’m half thrilled he’s being so adventurous, and half terrified he will be sick at any moment. Leila says he must always remember he had his first oysters with her. Then we all have fantastic ice-cream for pudding, and Charlie rushes back outside to the sea and his pirate game. We sit drinking coffee and watch him. I try to work out if he’ll have time to drown himself before we can belt out of the restaurant and retrieve him from the sea. I decide that we will, but only if Leila takes her new sandals off.

The restaurant is full of families with children and babies. Some sit very happily: content to chew on a piece of bread and occasionally wave it about a bit. But others are passed around like parcels, wriggle, try to get down, throw bread, and generally act up. I tell Leila that I think it’s terribly unfair that some people get happy little plodders who will sit for hours, and the rest of us get stroppy little buggers who will not sit still for a minute. I used to think it was simply faulty parenting, but shortly after Charlie’s birth I realised it wasn’t. If you’ve got a stroppy one, you just have to get on with it. They should write baby books with this in mind. A Plodder at twelve months will be walking a little, his first word will be yes, and his favourite toy will be a teddy. A Stropper will be running, his first word will be no, and his favourite toys will include your hair, the contents of your handbag and the telephone – but only when you’re talking on it. As we pay the bill I give a smile of solidarity to a woman with a toddler who will only eat other people’s chips.

We finally get Charlie back into the car, with a combination of bribery and threats. Leila makes up a fabulous story on the way home about a magical pair of pink sandals that can fly you anywhere in the world, and we end up with Charlie wearing her sandals and wishing to go to Never Never Land. Leila is very pleased with her storytelling skills, so I don’t tell her that she’ll be asked for another chapter of this story every time she sees Charlie for the next five years. I got stuck with a similar situation last year when I bribed him to throw a crab back into the sea. After about six weeks of nightly requests for another chapter of The Adventures of Charlie the Crab I was desperate, and invented a disaster on an oil rig. All the crabs had to migrate to avoid all the pollution, and left no forwarding address, and I had to buy
a huge number of new story tapes to make up for the sad loss.

Leila stays for tea, and is just about to head back to London when Charlie insists he needs another chapter of Pink Sandals before he will be able to cope with her departure. Leila looks desperate and suggests Mummy might tell him the next adventure, but Mummy says she knows nothing about pink sandals and is going to do the washing-up. Leila makes a very rude hand gesture, but settles down on the sofa for Chapter Two. She’s eventually allowed to leave, and practically sprints to her car.

After sorting out his school uniform for tomorrow, making his packed lunch, doing school reading, having a dispute about watching a
Star Trek
video, and countless other diversionary tactics including a mammoth Random-Chatting Routine, Charlie is finally settled into bed, hair washed, teeth brushed, and pyjamas on. And I am totally knackered.

‘Mummy, we had a lovely day, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, darling, but now it’s sleep time, it’s a school day tomorrow.’

‘Yes. I love oysters, Mummy, and lobsters. And Leila. Don’t you, Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling,’ I say, backing out of the doorway.

‘When I grow up I’ll marry Leila in a box office, and she can bring her pink sandals and we’ll have oysters for tea. And you can come and do the cooking.’

‘Oh, thanks very much, Charlie. Now go to sleep.’

‘Yes. But we won’t have crab, because that’s cruel. Mummy, can I have one of my special Charlie the Crab stories, where he goes on an adventure with a whale and meets a mermaid with pink sandals?’

‘No.’

‘Tomorrow night, maybe?’

‘No.’

A heated argument develops, involving lots of hurling the duvet about. Finally I get him to agree that the crab stories will not be resurrected, and Pink Sandals will remain Leila’s special territory, but an extra-special video from Blockbuster’s might be possible tomorrow night if the silly behaviour stops and his duvet returns to his bed. I wish I could find a way of winning arguments without using bribery, but without resorting to the use of an electric cattle prod my chances seem slim. I can foresee a bitter dispute tomorrow, while I hold out for Disney family entertainment and he insists that
The Spy Who Shagged Me
is perfectly all right. Go back downstairs, wondering just how ‘bad’
The Spy Who Shagged Me
really is, and who can I ring to find out without appearing a total fool.

I leave home very early to drive down to Cornwall for the porridge shoot. Edna’s looking after Charlie until this evening, when Mum and Dad will arrive. The journey is pretty but exhausting. The signposts are all particularly unhelpful, and I manage to get on to a succession of small roads going in entirely the wrong direction. Sunlight streams through the trees lining the road, so shafts of light almost blind me every few seconds, like a sort of ecological strobe-lighting effect. Wonder if there’ll be time for me to pull over before I find myself in the midst of a tricky neurological episode due to the unaccustomed effects of flashing lights on my brain.

I finally find my sunglasses at the bottom of my handbag, but they have only one arm, as the other one has mysteriously disappeared. I balance them on my nose very carefully, and achieve a kind of Rayban meets Retard look. I’m singing along to Aretha Franklin, and every time Aretha and I reach a really belting bit my glasses fall off.

Eventually I manage to locate Cornwall and the hotel, which turns out to be one of those hideous modern types with lots of grey concrete and an enormous car park, which is full. I finally find a space but have to walk miles back to
the hotel entrance carrying my bags, because I just know that this is the kind of place which takes six hours to get your bag from your car. And then delivers it to your room just as you step into the bath.