homesick one with the telephone calls to Ballachulish.’
‘I like those ones. It’s the ones with men in the bed and moans of pleasure who make me feel tired.’
‘What about the one who was addicted to ringing ambulances? Had to go in the end when Viv fractured his skull and they wouldn’t come out here. She’d a thing about the uniform.’
‘How would you feel, looking after someone else’s kids, though? You might fancy a bit of company.’
‘And in the end they usually go and the children love us and forget them. It isn’t such a great job. You can’t get rid of your mum, short of murder. It’s not like it was for nannies.’
‘Nannies aren’t like they were. I wouldn’t want to have a devoted nympho of ninety-two living in the north wing, listening to Hard Crack on the Walkman and thinking dope fudge was interesting.’
‘They go when they’re unhappy, anyway.’
‘There must be something up with Dawn. She seems to’ve been happy with us for eight years.’
‘It’s because you let each other be but you know what goes on, I guess.’
‘I don’t draw the line very low, do you?’
They were all laughing by now, butting in. I didn’t answer Victoria’s question.
They were all fortunate in the girls they had to help them bring up their children. We all were.
‘Stealing. I s’pose. Big stealing, not just wee extras on the side of bills.’
‘Stealing my husband.’
‘Going for people with knives.’
‘Blind drunkenness on the school run, maybe.’
‘Killing one or more of the children.’
‘Alienating the affections.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘It’s never in a proper home,’ I said.
Chapter 13
Late in March, when the game birds of the country concentrate on reproduction and revenge (chuckering asterisks of feather forcing fast cars to brake on bad corners, dying to teach their drivers a lesson), my husband was ready to leave for a fortnight in London. Even before the shooting had ended he was bored, so the sport of the season was oysters, before the town’s blossom came.
The wheat was drilled and the lambs born, the fiscal year’s end a fortnight off. I was too heavy and too tired to join him. These bouts of man’s business and men’s company transfused him. He would come back important and happy, ready again for home. John and Margaret, John and I, would go up to visit him. He missed John terribly but always said London was no place for the child. Besides, there was school, and Easter was late that year, so we could spend it all together.
I was pleased. Solomon would be safe and amused in London. I was restive and uncomfortable at night, sleepy by day, no companion for a man in spring-time. Moreover, I was by now very large. It was as though the baby was growing to enclose me, wrist for wrist, ankle for ankle.
Once you are pregnant, you have an unbreakable appointment to meet a stranger. I spent hours in a state of mental submersion, just lying or sitting; my eyes might as well have been shut. I was happiest literally submerged weightless in a warm bath. Then I felt my mind lift and play its light among the bland rotund considerations of that time. Mostly I was living off a sustaining solipsism, contemplating for hours tiny changes in my body, ribbons of silvery stretched skin on my legs and arms, blue stars of exploded capillaries, little junks and caiques of white beneath my moony nails. I watched the plundering of my own body for minerals by the miner within. I wondered, indulgently, which part of myself I would find missing next. A sense of the self has never been my strongest suit: I deemed it no dishonour that I was being dismantled.
One night, I even dreamed a person of no gender came and took my teeth, with a special tool a bit like a dibber. There was no pain, but I knew I needed my teeth for something.
Unable to sleep after that dream, though as a rule my creamiest sleep was in the early morning, I went to see John. He was not asleep
‘I like those ones. It’s the ones with men in the bed and moans of pleasure who make me feel tired.’
‘What about the one who was addicted to ringing ambulances? Had to go in the end when Viv fractured his skull and they wouldn’t come out here. She’d a thing about the uniform.’
‘How would you feel, looking after someone else’s kids, though? You might fancy a bit of company.’
‘And in the end they usually go and the children love us and forget them. It isn’t such a great job. You can’t get rid of your mum, short of murder. It’s not like it was for nannies.’
‘Nannies aren’t like they were. I wouldn’t want to have a devoted nympho of ninety-two living in the north wing, listening to Hard Crack on the Walkman and thinking dope fudge was interesting.’
‘They go when they’re unhappy, anyway.’
‘There must be something up with Dawn. She seems to’ve been happy with us for eight years.’
‘It’s because you let each other be but you know what goes on, I guess.’
‘I don’t draw the line very low, do you?’
They were all laughing by now, butting in. I didn’t answer Victoria’s question.
They were all fortunate in the girls they had to help them bring up their children. We all were.
‘Stealing. I s’pose. Big stealing, not just wee extras on the side of bills.’
‘Stealing my husband.’
‘Going for people with knives.’
‘Blind drunkenness on the school run, maybe.’
‘Killing one or more of the children.’
‘Alienating the affections.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘It’s never in a proper home,’ I said.
Chapter 13
Late in March, when the game birds of the country concentrate on reproduction and revenge (chuckering asterisks of feather forcing fast cars to brake on bad corners, dying to teach their drivers a lesson), my husband was ready to leave for a fortnight in London. Even before the shooting had ended he was bored, so the sport of the season was oysters, before the town’s blossom came.
The wheat was drilled and the lambs born, the fiscal year’s end a fortnight off. I was too heavy and too tired to join him. These bouts of man’s business and men’s company transfused him. He would come back important and happy, ready again for home. John and Margaret, John and I, would go up to visit him. He missed John terribly but always said London was no place for the child. Besides, there was school, and Easter was late that year, so we could spend it all together.
I was pleased. Solomon would be safe and amused in London. I was restive and uncomfortable at night, sleepy by day, no companion for a man in spring-time. Moreover, I was by now very large. It was as though the baby was growing to enclose me, wrist for wrist, ankle for ankle.
Once you are pregnant, you have an unbreakable appointment to meet a stranger. I spent hours in a state of mental submersion, just lying or sitting; my eyes might as well have been shut. I was happiest literally submerged weightless in a warm bath. Then I felt my mind lift and play its light among the bland rotund considerations of that time. Mostly I was living off a sustaining solipsism, contemplating for hours tiny changes in my body, ribbons of silvery stretched skin on my legs and arms, blue stars of exploded capillaries, little junks and caiques of white beneath my moony nails. I watched the plundering of my own body for minerals by the miner within. I wondered, indulgently, which part of myself I would find missing next. A sense of the self has never been my strongest suit: I deemed it no dishonour that I was being dismantled.
One night, I even dreamed a person of no gender came and took my teeth, with a special tool a bit like a dibber. There was no pain, but I knew I needed my teeth for something.
Unable to sleep after that dream, though as a rule my creamiest sleep was in the early morning, I went to see John. He was not asleep
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