ONE DAY(102)
His brain gradually empties of work, of falafel wraps and oaty squares, and he starts to feel hopeful for the evening; perhaps he’ll acquire that state of peaceful inactivity that is the nirvana of the exhausted parent. He pushes the butt deep into a pile of sand, retrieves Jasmine, tip-toes quietly up the stairs to her room and pulls down the blackout blinds. Like a master safe-cracker, he is going to change her nappy without waking her up.
As soon as he lays her on the changing mat she wakes and starts to cry again, that awful rasping cry. Breathing through his mouth, he changes her as quickly and efficiently as he can. Part of the positive press about having a baby was how inoffensive baby poo was, how poo and wee lost their taint and became, if not fun, at least innocuous. His sister had even claimed that you could ‘eat it on toast’, so benign and fragrant was this ‘poo’.
Even so, you wouldn’t want it underneath your fingernails and with the arrival of formula and solids it has taken on a decidedly more adult quality. Little Jasmine has produced what looks like a half-pound of peanut butter, which she has somehow contrived to smear up her back. With his head a little fuzzy from the wine on an empty stomach, he scoops and scrapes it up as best he can with half a pack of baby wipes and, when these run out, the edge of his one-day travelcard. He crams the still warm bundle into a chemical-smelling nappy bag, which he drops into a pedal bin, noting queasily that there is condensation on the lid. Jasmine cries throughout. When she is finally fresh and clean he scoops her up and holds her against his shoulder, bouncing on his toes until his calves ache and miraculously she is quiet again.
He crosses to the cot and lays her down, and she starts to scream. He picks her up and she is silent. Lays her down, she screams. He is aware of a pattern but it seems so unreasonable, so plain wrong, for her to demand so much when his spring rolls are getting cold, the wine is standing open and this small room smells so richly of hot poo. The phrase ‘unconditional love’ has been thrown around a lot, but right now he feels like imposing some conditions. ‘Come on, Jas, play fair, be nice. Daddy’s been up since five, remember?’ She is quiet once again, her breath warm and steady against his neck, and so he tries once more to lay her down, taking it slowly, an absurd limbo dance, shifting imperceptibly from the vertical to the horizontal. He still wears the macho baby harness, and now imagines himself a bomb disposal expert; gently, gently, gently.
She starts to cry again.
He closes the door regardless and trots downstairs. Got to be tough. Got to be ruthless, that’s what the books say. If she had some language, he’d be able to explain: Jasmine, it is necessary for both of us to have some private time. He eats in front of the television, but is once again struck by how hard it is to ignore a baby screaming. Controlled crying they call it, but he has lost control and wants to cry and starts to feel a Victorian indignation towards his wife – what kind of irresponsible harlot leaves a baby with his father? How dare she? He turns up the television and goes to pour another glass of wine, but is surprised to find the bottle empty.
Never mind. There is no parenting problem in the world that can’t be solved by throwing milk at it. He makes some more formula, then climbs upstairs, his head a little fuzzy, blood ringing in his ears. The fierce little face softens as he places the milk bottle into her hands, but then she is screaming again, a ferocious wail as he sees that he has forgotten to screw the lid on the bottle and now warm formula has flooded out and soaked the bedclothes, the mattress, is in her eyes and up her nose, and she’s screaming now, really screaming, and why shouldn’t she scream, given that daddy has snuck into her room and flung half a pint of warm milk in her face. Panicked, he grabs a muslin square, finding instead her best cashmere cardigan on a pile of clean washing, and wipes off the excess clots of formula from her hair and out of her eyes, kissing her all the time, cursing himself – ‘idiot idiot idiot sorry sorry sorry’ – and with the other arm beginning the process of changing her formula-sodden bedding, her clothes, her nappy, flinging it all in a pile on the floor. Now he’s relieved she isn’t able to talk. ‘Look at you, you idiot,’ she would say, ‘can’t even look after a baby.’ Back downstairs he makes more formula with one hand then carries her upstairs, feeding her in the darkened room until once again her head is on his shoulder, she is calm, is sleeping.
He closes the door silently then tip-toes down the bare wooden stairs, a burglar in his own home. In the kitchen the second bottle of wine sits open. He pours another glass.
It’s nearly ten now. He tries to watch the television, this thing called Big Brother, but he can’t understand what he’s meant to be looking at and feels a curmudgeonly, old-timer’s disapproval for the state of the TV industry. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says aloud. He puts on some music, a compilation designed to make your home feel like the lobby of a European boutique hotel, and tries to read Sylvie’s discarded magazine, but even that’s beyond him now. He puts the games console on, but neither Metal Gear Solid, nor Quake nor Doom, not even Tomb Raider at its highest level brings him any peace. He needs some adult human company, conversation from someone who doesn’t just scream and whimper and sleep. He picks up his phone. He is frankly drunk now, and with drunkenness has come the old compulsion: to say something stupid to an attractive woman.
Stephanie Shaw has a new breast pump. Top of the range, Finnish, it whirrs and chugs under her t-shirt like a small outboard motor as they sit on the sofa and try and watch Big Brother.