‘Why not a nanny?’ asks Stephen now. He is using his most gentle voice, his most loving hands.
‘No. The only thing I like is being with my children.’
‘Then why are you so miserable?’ he sighs. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
But it is not ridiculous. I have read how animals react hysterically, sometimes even violently, in the event of imperfect offspring. One night, while watching television, I saw the awful spectacle of a wildebeest born with the tendons in its legs too short. The legs would not straighten and the newborn calf buckled under the clumsy disobedience of his faltering limbs. Five minutes was all it took for a cheetah to find its opportunity. The wildebeest cow circled her crippled calf, bucking and snorting and running her great head low at the lurking cheetah, who seemed almost to gloat at this unexpected opportunity of damaged young. She ran at the cheetah, but the cheetah only dodged and realigned itself closer to the struggling calf. The mother then tried distracting the cheetah, enticing it to chase her. Trotting gently before it, inches from its nose, the wildebeest offered in lieu of her offspring the sinewy meat of her own buckskin hock.
‘Turn it off,’ I told Stephen. He was sitting in his favourite chair, his feet resting on Emily’s playtable, his dinner on his lap.
‘What? Right now? Let’s just see what happens to the calf!’
I took the remote control and pressed the button as though it were a bullet to the cheetah’s heart. ‘I know what happens,’ I said.
Stephen’s surname is Marsh. His Uncle Raymond has a family tree that shows the history of the Marsh family right back to a sprawling black-and-white farmhouse in Kent where I was once brought on a sunny August afternoon in order to observe the origins of this great family to which I am wed. The house was a low-ceilinged maze of musty rooms added on over centuries, charming but archaic, a difficult house that needed constant repairs to its thatched roof and, because of planning restrictions, lacked a garage or a paved road to its entrance, which was through a field of cows. The house was impressive, even if it did require a monstrous amount of attention just to remain habitable, and turned my thoughts immediately to such things as lead poisoning and water-borne diseases. What was I supposed to learn from it? I didn’t understand. ‘Ah, you wouldn’t,’ observed Stephen’s father, Bernard, ‘as you come from a country of immigrants.’
Now the family seat, so to speak, is a post-war brick house in Amersham. It has two bedrooms and a large, anonymous living room with a textured ceiling and lots of ugly brass lamps on the walls; but they can cope with this house, while the other was too much for them now that they are in their later years. Because Bernard is forever spilling tea on the floor, they’ve laid a dark, patterned, low-pile industrial carpet from one end of the house to the other. I am a fan of their new-found practicality, having been subjected to endless numbers of competitively designed terraced houses and roomy flats throughout London. They are owned by Stephen’s colleagues, all of whom have recently had to sell their two-seat sports cars in favour of five-seat Volvos, now that they’ve become parents. As beautiful as I find the fireplaces and polished floors, the thick plaster undulating gently up to vaulted ceilings with all their fine moulded glory, I cannot help being preoccupied with thoughts of inadequacy, as I am indeed a daughter of immigrants. My father, now dead, was the illegitimate son of a Jewish violin maker.
‘Interesting carpet,’ I whisper to my sister-in-law, Catherine. ‘It reminds me of something. Airport lounge? Pub?’
‘I can’t help but think Mother has been the victim of some sort of textile crime,’ says Cath, studying the gold-and-maroon pattern on the floor. ‘And they’ve got the garage stuffed with remnants in case Dad spills.’
Cath is unmarried at thirty-four, which gives both her parents great cause for concern. She’s a doctor, a GP, tall and magnificently built, with thick hips and a powerful tennis arm. Having been made to play cricket with her brothers on beaches, to kick footballs into nets on school holidays, and play tennis on unkempt lawns at the old house for most of her childhood, she has an athlete’s presence. She is my one ally in this family and I adore her.
‘Would you like somewhere to deposit that lad of yours?’ she asks now, nodding at Daniel, who sleeps in my arms. Like his mother, he has odd sleeping patterns that seem to defy the ordinary government of day and night. He will have about five hours from midnight and then a few hours in the afternoon, but only if someone holds him during the nap. Otherwise, he wakes and cries, arching his back and screwing his eyes shut as he howls. No amount of rocking or lullabies or cooing in his ear will make any difference at all. The only place he will sleep other than in my arms, is in the car. I should be a taxi driver, for all the senseless miles I clock in the early hours.
Cath says, ‘I’ll take him. Or perhaps we should give David something to do.’ Stephen’s brother, David, has been parked in front of the cricket the whole of the day, leaving his seat only to visit the buffet lunch, the majority of which was supplied by his wife, who remains mostly in the spare bedroom with a migraine. Their three boys, outside on the small frozen lawn, have been kicking a football for hours against the side of the house. Once in a while Tricia comes out of the spare bedroom, screams at them to stop, then goes back into the bedroom. Meanwhile, David wrings his hands at the Test match, which appears to be taking place somewhere hot. The players are all in wide-brimmed white hats, their noses covered in zinc oxide.
‘I’ll hold on to him,’ I say. If I hand him over surely Cath will notice how much heavier he has gotten, how much bigger. It isn’t that I don’t want Daniel to grow – nothing of the sort – only that I don’t wish to draw attention to how immature Daniel can seem, such a big boy and yet still sleeping in his mother’s arms.
The lunch consists of several Marks & Spencer’s quiches, a plate of sausages for the children, a green salad and several bowls of variously dressed cold dishes. I brought Cornish game hens in a complicated sauce, which was a mistake. As usual I tried too hard and my effort makes me look as though I’ve turned up to a child’s birthday party in a Chanel suit. I don’t know why the game hens, arranged on a platter of roast potatoes and watercress, are just so wrong for this family lunch, but they are. I understand why Emily doesn’t like them, however. She thinks they look like the corpses of Easter chicks.
‘No soggy vol-au-vents from you, then,’ says Cath, eyeing up the platter. ‘Very impressive.’
‘I would think they are overpriced, being mostly bone,’ says Stephen’s mother, Daphne. She looks hard at the game hens, pursing her lips with a mixture of triumph and disdain as though to say she is not fooled by appearances, nor impressed by oddities such as these half-sized birds.
‘I was told to bring quiche,’ shrugs Tricia, dropping two dissolvable aspirins into a glass of water, then stirring the bubbles with her finger.
‘These are quiche,’ I say cheerfully, pointing at the game hens.
But the game hens grow cold, remaining for the most part on their nest of watercress. And my profiteroles are also a disgrace, being passed over for the blackberry crumble with Bird’s Custard and a summer pudding, still slightly frozen from the box. Why do people with so much money fill themselves with such garbage? Is it some English eccentricity I will never understand?
Stephen leans toward me, whispering, ‘You know, if you ate more, you might grow breasts again.’
‘Stephen, don’t be vulgar,’ says Daphne. Like a schoolboy standing at a closed door with an inverted cup, she misses nothing.
‘I’m