A Special Relationship (24 page)

‘Two nights – without sleep?’ Jane Sanjay said the next afternoon. ‘This is worrying – especially as your son seems to be conking out for around four hours a night … which, I know, isn’t exactly a lot of sleep time for you, but is certainly better than
no
sleep. What do you think’s going on?’

‘I haven’t a damn clue – except that my brain is more than a little hyperactive right now.’

‘Well, this motherhood thing is never easy to absorb. Has your husband been helping with some of the all-night duties?’

‘He’s been a little busy on the work front,’ I said, not wanting to start complaining to a stranger about Tony’s disinterest in most baby matters.

‘Could you maybe consider a night nurse for a couple of days, just to allow you to crash for a bit? Lack of sleep is seriously bad news.’

‘Tell me about it. But I’m sure I’ll collapse tonight – without fail.’

But I didn’t fall asleep. And it wasn’t Jack’s fault. On the contrary, the little gent went down around ten and didn’t stir until four the next morning. This miraculous six-hour window should have been filled with deep comatose sleep. Instead I spent it drinking endless mugs of herbal tea, and stewing for an hour in a steaming bath (laced with assorted chill-out aromatherapy oils), and watching one of those endlessly talkative Eric Rohmer movies on Film Four (only the French can mix flirtation with liberal quotations from Pascal), and starting to read Dreiser’s
Sister Carrie
(all right, I’m a glutton for punishment), and doing my best not to disturb my sleeping husband who was spending a rare night in our bed (I sensed he was in the mood for sex, but passed out from ‘night after hangover exhaustion’ before anything could happen).

Ten-ten. Eleven-eleven. Twelve-twelve. One-one. Two-two. Three-three …

It became a game with me, trying to glance at my watch right at the specific moment when the time was denoted by the same two numbers. A thoroughly dumb game, only worth playing if you’re in the sort of advanced exhausted state which comes with two straight nights without sleep.

And then, before I could glimpse four-four, Jack was awake, and the new day had begun.

‘How’d you sleep?’ Tony asked me when he finally emerged from bed that morning at nine.

‘Five hours,’ I lied.

‘That’s something, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Yeah – I feel a lot better.’

Jane Sanjay told me she wouldn’t be coming in today – but gave me her mobile number, just in case I needed to talk. But I didn’t need to talk. I needed to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep, because Jack was awake all day. And our shared routine was repeated over-and-over again.

Into the nursery. Remove his dirty diaper. Clean his dirty bottom. Dress him in a clean diaper. Pick him up. Sit down in the wicker chair. Lift up teeshirt. Offer nipple. And then …

By the time he finished sucking me dry at three that afternoon, my vision was starting to blur. Forty-eight hours of non-stop consciousness did that. It also played games with my depth perception, and made me feel as if I was Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag – where even a dining chair suddenly looked as tall as a church steeple.

However, I could put up with the strange re-calibration of domestic furniture. Just as I could also handle a woolly feeling behind the eyes, and the fact that everything was slightly distended and fuzzy.

What I couldn’t cope with was the feeling of calamity that was seizing me – a deep dark trough of despondency which I was finding hard to resist. Especially since – as I peered straight down into this trench – the hopelessness of my situation took hold. I wasn’t just a useless mother and wife, but someone who was also in a no-exit situation from which there was no escape. A life sentence of domestic and maternal drudgery, with a man who clearly didn’t love me.

Then, as I mused even further on my total despair, Jack began to cry again. I rocked him, I walked him up and down the hallway, I offered him a pacifier, my withered nipple, a clean diaper, more rocking, a walk down the street in his buggy, a return to his crib, thirty straight minutes of more bloody rocking in his bloody rocking chair …

When we had reached hour three of this uninterrupted crying jag, I sensed that I was heading for a rapid crash landing – where the idea of tossing myself out of a second floor window suddenly seemed infinitely preferable to another single minute of my son’s bloody yelping.

Then I remember reaching for the phone and punching in Tony’s office number and getting his secretary on the line. She said he was in a meeting. I said it was an emergency. She said he was in with the editor. I said, I don’t give a shit, it’s an emergency. Well, she said, can I tell him what it’s about?

‘Yes,’ I said, sounding most calm. ‘Tell him if he’s not home in the next sixty minutes, I’m going to kill our son.’

Seven

I
DIDN’T WAIT
for Tony to return the call. Because – after five straight hours of non-stop bellowing – Jack had suddenly exhausted himself into sleep. So, once I settled him down in the nursery, I unplugged the phone next to my bed. Then I threw off my clothes, crawled under the duvet, and finally surrendered to exhaustion.

Suddenly it was one in the morning and Jack was crying again. It took a moment or two to snap back into consciousness, and work out that I had been asleep for over nine hours. But that realization was superseded by another more urgent consideration – how in the hell could my son have slept so long without a diaper change, let alone food?

Guilt is the most motivating force in life – and one that can get you instantly to ignore the most impossible of hangovers, or lurch out of hours of sleep in a nanosecond. Dashing into the nursery, I quickly discovered that, yes, Jack did need a diaper change – but that, courtesy of the empty bottle I saw left on top of a chest of drawers, he had been fed sometime earlier. The sight of the bottle threw me, because the only time I had ever offered Jack this breast substitute, he’d utterly rejected it. But now …

‘So you didn’t kill him after all.’

Tony was standing in the door frame, looking at me with an exhausted middle-of-the-night wariness. I didn’t meet his stare. I simply picked Jack up and brought him over to the changing mat, and started to unfasten his diaper.

‘I’m sorry,’ I finally said, around the same time I was wiping Jack’s bum free of milky shit.

‘You had my secretary rather upset,’ Tony said. ‘She actually hauled me out of the meeting with the editor, saying it was a family emergency. Thankfully she had the nous to say nothing more in front of His Lordship – but once I was outside his office, she informed me what you told her and then asked me if I wanted to call the police.’

I shut my eyes, and hung my head, and felt something approaching acute shame.

‘Tony, I didn’t know what I was saying …’

‘Yes, I did sense that. Still, I thought it best to make certain that you hadn’t taken the infanticide option, so I called home. When you didn’t answer … well, I must admit that, for a moment or two, I actually did wonder if you had gone totally ballistic and done something irretrievably insane. So I thought it worth coming home. And when I walked in the door, there you both were, conked out. So I unplugged the baby alarm in his room, to let you sleep on.’

‘You should have woken me.’

‘You haven’t been sleeping …’

‘I told you I slept five hours last night,’ I said.

‘And I knew you were lying straight away.’

Silence.

‘You know, I’d never dream of hurting Jack …’

‘I certainly hope not.’

‘Oh Jesus, Tony … don’t make me feel worse than I do.’

He just shrugged, then said, ‘Jack will take a bottle, you know. Or, at least, he took it from me.’

‘Well done,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘And you changed him as well?’

‘So it seems. Sorry to have plugged the baby alarm back in. But once he was settled down, I thought I’d get back upstairs to the book …’

‘No need to apologize. I should be up anyway.’

‘You sure you’re all right?’

Except for an appalling case of guilt, I was just fine.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Tony just shrugged. ‘You’ve said that already.’

I finished changing the diaper. I closed up Jack’s baby-gro. I picked him up, settled us both down in the wicker chair, lifted up my teeshirt, and felt him clamp down hard on my nipple. I let out a small sigh of relief when the milk started flowing immediately.

‘Oh, one other thing,’ Tony said. ‘I took the liberty of making an appointment for you with the GP, tomorrow afternoon at two.’

‘Why?’ I said, though I already knew the answer to that question.

‘Well, if you’re not sleeping …’

‘I’m sure it’s just a passing phase.’

‘Best to get it seen to, don’t you think? And I’ve also phoned a company called Annie’s Nannies – someone in the office recommended them – about getting you some help.’

‘I don’t need help. I’m fine. Anyway, a nanny’s going to cost us lots.’

‘Let me worry about that.’

I said nothing. Tony pointed his thumb in the direction of his office.

‘Mind if I … ?’

‘Work away’ I said.

As soon as he was gone, I pressed my head down against Jack, and started to cry. But this teary episode was shortlived – as Jack reacted unfavourably to my shuddering body and showed his displeasure by biting down even harder on my breast: a corrective measure which let it be known that I should stay on task.

So I applied the emotional brakes, and sat there in silent shame, wondering how I could have said such a thing – and feeling, for the first time since his birth, this overwhelming need to protect Jack, and ensure that he came to no harm.

But as soon as I thought that, another unsettling rumination hit me: do I need to protect him against myself?

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Nor did I find time for a nap in the morning, as Jack was wide awake. So by the time Jack and I reached the doctor’s surgery that afternoon, exhaustion was beginning to settle in on me again – something which my GP diagnosed immediately.

Fortunately, my doctor of choice – McCoy – was on duty, as I don’t think I could have managed that dry little prig who saw me the last time. Immediately, Dr McCoy was pleasantly solicitous – and spent several minutes looking Jack over. She already knew everything about his difficult arrival. This made me instantly wonder if word had filtered back from the hospital that I had been such a drama queen while I’d been at the Mattingly. Then she turned her attention to me – and sensed that something was wrong.

‘Is he keeping you up at night?’ she asked.

‘It’s me who’s keeping me up at night,’ I said, then explained my irregular sleep patterns over the past few days.

‘You
must
sleep,’ she said. ‘It’s crucial for your well-being, and for your baby. So what I’d like to propose is a mild sedative that should help knock you out, should the sleeplessness return. One important question: have you also been feeling a bit depressed or down?’

I shook my head.

‘You sure about that?’ she asked. ‘Because it’s not at all unusual to suffer from such things when you’re unable to sleep. In fact, I’d call it rather commonplace.’

‘Honestly, all I need is a couple of nights of decent sleep …’

‘Well, these pills should help you. One small, but important thing to remember – after you’ve taken one of the sedatives, you mustn’t breast-feed for at least eight hours, as the drug will be in your system.’

‘No worries about that,’ I said.

‘And if the sleeplessness continues – or if you are starting to feel a little low – you really must come back to see me immediately. This is nothing to play around with.’

Heading home, I knew that she knew. Just as I knew that Tony had undoubtedly told her about my threat against Jack. No doubt, Dr McCoy had now filed me away under ‘At Risk’ as Hughes had obviously spoken with her about my assorted contretemps in the hospital. So she could tell I was lying. Just as Tony knew that I was lying about my ability to sleep the previous night. Just as everyone was now convinced that I was a diabolically inappropriate mother who couldn’t handle even the simplest of maternal tasks. Because ….

Oh God, it’s starting again …

I slowly depressed the brake. I gripped the steering wheel. I felt myself beginning to seize up – that sense of diminution which made me feel as if everything had the potential to overwhelm me. Including the jerk in the Merc behind me. He leaned on his car horn in an attempt to get me moving.

He succeeded, as I released the brake and inched forward. But his blasts of the horn also managed to waken Jack – who continued to cry while I was getting my prescription filled at the chemists. He was still crying when we arrived home, and he continued to do so for the balance of the afternoon. I checked him thoroughly making certain that he wasn’t suffering from diaper rash, gum infections, malnutrition, lockjaw, the bubonic plague, or any other horrors I could conjure up in my mind. I also offered him my ever-ready nipples – and two hours after he sucked me dry, switched him to bottled formula with no complaints.

Until, that is, he came off the bottle and started to roar again. In desperation, I picked up the phone and called Sandy. She immediately heard his sizeable wail.

‘Now that’s what I call a set of lungs,’ she said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Beyond bad’ – and I told her everything, with the exception of the threat I made against Jack. I couldn’t admit such a desperate error of judgment to anyone … even to the sister to whom I always confided everything.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘sounds like completely standard operating baby bullshit to me. And the non-stop crying could be colic – which certainly drove my guys ga-ga when they were infants, and also sent me bonkers. So I hear where you’re coming from. But it will pass.’

‘You mean, like a gallstone?’

That night, Jack managed to cease his tragic aria just around the time that Tony walked in – smelling of six gin-and-tonics too many, and suddenly interested in having sex with me for the first time in …

Well, it had been so long since we’d had sex that I had actually forgotten just how badly Tony performed when drunk.

By which I mean, foreplay involved slobbering on my neck, popping the buttons on my jeans, shoving his hand into my pants, and fingering me as if he was stubbing out a cigarette in an ashtray (which, as it turned out, just happened to contain my clitoris). Then, after this impressive display of anti-erotic crotch grab, he pulled down his suit pants and briefs, and shoved himself into me, coming in less than a minute … after which he rolled off me and mumbled some vaguely incoherent apology about having a ‘hair trigger’ when drunk (so that’s what they call it). Then he disappeared into the bathroom … at which point the thought struck me: this was not the romantic sexual reunion I had been hoping for.

I was well out of the bedroom by the time Tony emerged from the toilet, phoning up our local home delivery pizza joint, as our cupboards were particularly bare right now. When he staggered downstairs, he uncorked a bottle of red wine, poured out two glasses and downed his in two long draughts. Then he burped and said, ‘So how was your day?’

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘I’ve ordered you a pepperoni with extra cheese. Does that work?’

‘What more could a man ask for?’

‘Any reason why you’re so drunk?’

‘Sometimes you just have to …’

‘Get drunk?’

‘You read my mind.’

‘That’s because I know you so well, dear.’

‘Oh, do you now?’ he said, suddenly a little too loud.

‘I was being ironic.’

‘No, you weren’t. You were being critical.’

‘Let’s stop this right now.’

‘But it’s fun. And long overdue.’

‘You mean, like the shitty sex we’ve – sorry,
you’ve
– just had?’

And I left the room.

No, I didn’t throw myself on the bed, crying irrationally. Nor did I lock myself in the loo. Nor did I pick up the phone and moan down the line to Sandy. Instead, I retreated to the nursery and positioned myself in the wicker chair, and stared ahead, and found myself very quickly returning to the despondency zone I had entered two nights earlier. Only this time my brain wasn’t flooded with forlorn thoughts about the hopelessness of everything. This time, there was simply a large silent void – a sense of free-floating vacuity, in which nothing mattered, nothing counted. The world had been rendered flat. I was about to totter off the edge. And I didn’t give a fuck.

Nor did I move when I heard the front doorbell ring. Nor did I respond when, around five minutes later, I heard a knock on the door, followed by Tony’s slurred voice, informing me that my pizza was downstairs.

Time suddenly had no meaning for me. I was simply cognizant of sitting in a chair, staring ahead. Yes, I knew that there was a child asleep on the other side of the room.Yes, I knew that said child happened to be my son. But beyond that …

Nothing.

Some time later, I stood up and walked into the bathroom. After peeing, I went downstairs. I sat on the sofa. I turned on the television. The screen flickered into life. I stared at it, noting that it was BBC News 24.1 also noted that the time was 0108 and that there was a pizza box on the coffee table by the sofa. But beyond that …

I curled up on the sofa. I looked ahead. I was aware of the moving images. I could also smell the pizza. I needed to eat. Because I hadn’t eaten anything since …

Yesterday? The day before?

Didn’t matter.

Then Jack started crying. Suddenly I was all action. Manic action. Cursing myself for my listlessness, my little catatonic escapade.
Go, go, go – I
told myself. Get on with it. You now know the drill by heart: