‘Her,’ said Isabel, in duty bound.
‘Or her,’ he said, bored.
He caught Isabel’s hand and kissed it, as she left, pressing it to his cold lips. She felt he was desperate rather than lecherous, and removed her hand gently.
‘You don’t really like me, do you?’ he said. ‘No one I like likes me. They put up with me but they don’t like me.’
‘Alice likes you,’ said Isabel.
Isabel went home in time to receive Jason and his friends. The television was on. The video played an endless stream of Popeye cartoons. Parents came and failed to go. Isabel, after all, was a celebrity. Homer, unusually, was late home. The noise was great: Jason paced up and down in the way he had when impatient or cross, head bent forward, hands clasped behind his back, like some adult in a ridiculous cartoon. It made the grown-ups laugh, and that made Jason crosser.
‘Daddy’s late,’ he said. ‘We’ll miss the film. It’s no laughing matter.’
Which made them laugh the more, to hear the adult phraseology from the child’s lips.
Jason’s friend Bobby, who could never be trusted near anything technological, flicked the switch on the video which sent it back to transmitted television. There, on the screen, pacing up and down, head bent forward, hands clasped behind his back, against a background of the stars and stripes, was Dandy Ivel.
‘For all the world like Jason,’ remarked Bobby’s mother.
‘Isn’t that a coincidence!’
‘Stop walking about like that, Jason,’ said Isabel.
‘Why?’ asked her son, not stopping.
‘It’s sloppy,’ said Isabel.
‘I think it’s rather cute,’ said Bobby’s mother.
Jason’s mother slapped her son on the cheek just as Homer came in.
‘Isabel!’ cried Homer, shocked.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Isabel, to both Jason and Homer. It was hard to say which one of them looked more hurt.
Homer switched off the television and ushered the children into a waiting taxi. Isabel iced the cake, while Bobby’s mother watched, critically. Isabel wished Bobby’s mother would go home, but she didn’t. She stayed to help and cut the bread for the elephant sandwiches; she cut far too thickly and failed to butter the slices to the edges.
‘Do you suffer much from premenstrual tension?’ asked Bobby’s mother.
She wore a lacy peasant blouse and a full cotton flowered skirt.
‘No,’ said Isabel, shortly.
‘I never saw you hit Jason before. And he wasn’t doing anything wrong, was he? I just thought it might be PMT. If men had to suffer from it they’d soon do something about it. I sometimes hit Bobby when I’m suffering. I’m sure most women do.’
‘Happy Birthday Jason,’ wrote Isabel, in green icing, by means of a rolled paper spill fastened with a safety pin.
‘A pity Jason isn’t older. He could enter a Dandy Ivel double competition.’
‘I hardly think so,’ said Isabel. ‘He’s fair and Dandy Ivel looks fairly dark to me.’
‘Jason has the kind of hair that’ll get darker as he grows older,’ said Bobby’s mother, getting the elephant shape wrong. ‘I’m afraid these sandwiches look more like hedgehogs than elephants.’
‘Anyway,’ said Isabel, ‘I think Ivel will fade into insignificance pretty quickly. I hardly think he’ll get the presidential nomination.’
‘I think he will,’ said Bobby’s mother. ‘I did an evening course in political sociology. I think the women of America are longing for a husband figure. They haven’t had one since Kennedy. Dandy Ivel looks like the kind of man who’d take care of you.’
Homer came home with six frazzled children. They loved the sandwiches and ignored the cake. Jason threw jelly at the wall. He was over-excited. The parents came early and stood around drinking sherry. The children quarrelled over going-home presents. Bobby set up a roar, in the cloakroom. ‘I’m afraid Jason must have bitten him,’ Homer came back to apologise. Bobby’s mother took him huffily home, saying she always slapped for biting. Bobby had been a biter, but not for long. She’d seen to that. Scratching was one thing, biting another.
‘It’s not good,’ said Homer, when all had departed, supper had been eaten and night fallen. ‘Jason is aggressive.’
‘Perhaps it’s the lead in the London water,’ said Isabel.
‘No,’ said Homer. ‘No excuses. I think he’s disturbed.’
‘Disturbed!’ cried Isabel. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Isabel,’ said Homer, ‘face it. He watched Superman II from the aisle, and when the usherette tried to make him sit in a seat he bit her ankle. There was a terrible scene.’
Isabel laughed.
‘It isn’t a laughing matter,’ said Homer. ‘I think he should see a child psychologist.’
‘What – Jason?’
‘It can’t do any harm, Isabel.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Isabel, but already she was terrified.
She had seen Jason as an extension of herself: flesh of her flesh, mind of her mind. But of course he was not. Jason, her child, was separated from her; the umbilical cord had been cut long ago but she had scarcely noticed. He no longer slept, ate, smiled, felt at her command. He did these things at his own prompting, not hers. She could no longer tuck him under her arm and run, should the going get bad. He could blame her for her decisions, dislike her for what she did, withdraw his love from her. Week by week he became less her perfect child and more his own imperfect master; yet still must suffer, as all children must suffer, because his mother’s love for him was not perfect either: had fallen away, in the light of his own growing independent will, from its moment of perfection, somewhere at the beginning.
Now here was Homer, who should love Jason, saying their son was imperfect and disturbed, implying the fault was hers. She could not protect Jason, because he was not hers to protect, being six and his own self. And she could not protect herself, because she was guilty.
‘Isabel,’ said Homer, alarmed by the expression on her face, ‘it’s no big deal. I just thought it might help. It does seem to me that Jason isn’t all that happy. We might be doing something wrong, between us. God knows what it is.
Perhaps it’s seeing you on the television screen when you ought to be here in the house.’
‘Ought to be?’
‘From Jason’s point of view, no one else’s. Christ, Isabel, he’s a kid of five.’
‘Six.’
‘Six. And Isabel, you’re under a strain yourself.’
‘Me?’
‘You slapped the poor child. Slapped him! And why? What was he doing wrong?’
‘Homer, I told him not to do something and he just went on doing it. There was a room full of screaming kids and bleating adults. I didn’t slap him hard, just enough so he’d listen.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘I can’t even remember. It wasn’t important. Homer, Jason and I are well within the limits of ordinary normal mother and child behaviour. Most mothers slap their children from time to time.’
‘I don’t think that’s true.’