‘Happy St David’s Day,’ Tom announces. ‘We’re doing it in school today.’
‘Good Lord,’ Pip declares, ‘it’s the mad March hair.’
Zac looks up from his paper. ‘Or the mad March heir,’ he quips though neither Pip nor Tom cotton on to the pun. It’s too early to hear silent ‘h’s. It’s too early to have to explain, thinks Zac, returning to the pink pages.
Pip attempts to smooth down Tom’s hair with her hand. He shirks away and ruffles up Pip’s meddling. ‘Toast?’ she asks.
‘Yep,’ Tom says. Zac glances over his paper. ‘Please,’ Tom adds with a sigh.
‘Do you want to go through your piece?’ Pip asks.
Tom looks alarmed. ‘My piece?’
‘For assembly this morning? On the patron saints of the British Isles. Aren’t you St George?’
‘Oh. That. I thought you meant my piece of toast,’ says Tom. ‘Digby says that the dragon is a metaphor. But he doesn’t even know what a metaphor is.’
‘And do you?’
‘No,’ says Tom, ‘but it sounds boring, like something Miss Balcombe would go on about. And on and on. Yawns-ville.’
‘Well, would you like to go through your piece about St George?’ Pip asks.
‘I know it off by heart,’ Tom says proudly, and launches into a fast, monotone delivery. Pip can see the Financial Times quivering. She surreptitiously kicks Zac under the table. Tom finishes his recitation to applause from the table and the 8 a.m. GMT pips from the radio.
‘If babies are such a great thing, if they’re such a miracle and stuff – why do they make their mums so poorly and so mega grumpy?’
Pip wasn’t prepared for this. Usually when she walked Tom to school she was entertained with a diatribe of the personal hygiene habits and physiognomic misfortunes of his teachers, which merely required tuts of her disapproval whilst she bit back laughter.
‘Seems a bit stupid to me,’ Tom continued darkly. Pip wasn’t sure what to say. Was Tom about to probe for the facts of life? She felt uneasy, having not yet discussed with Zac the information and terminology he was prepared to give his son. ‘Did I do that to her, to my mum, do you think? When she was having me, did I make her puke like mad and be a grumpy old moo?’
Tom was asking Pip about something on which she had actually no authority to answer. ‘Perhaps,’ she answered cautiously, having never actually discussed the vagaries of June’s first pregnancy, ‘but excuse me, young man, your mum is not an old moo.’
‘But she is grumpy,’ Tom muttered. ‘I thought she would be chuffed about having a baby but all she does is grumble and puke.’ He allowed Pip to take his wrist as they made to cross the road. ‘There’s going to be buckets of blood too, of course, when the baby comes. And do you think Mum’ll scream her head off – like that woman on Holby City last week?’
Pip couldn’t really answer that one, not knowing June’s take on epidurals.
‘I can see why you don’t want all that madness,’ Tom said darkly, with much sage nodding.
‘Pardon?’
‘You and Dad,’ Tom shrugged. ‘Don’t tell my mum I said stuff like that about her and stuff.’
Pip and Tom were about to step off the kerb when they saw the squirrel. Tom was still young enough to point and declare ‘Hey! Squirrel!’ as it bolted into the road. And then came the car at the same time and they both foresaw the death of the squirrel by a second or so.
‘Oh God,’ Pip gasped, helpless not to be transfixed by the spatter of guts, the barb of torn limbs, the stark stare of sudden death.
‘Gross!’ Tom said, not quite sure if he was thrilled or distraught.
‘We’ll cross the road further down,’ Pip said.
‘Do you think it’s really dead?’ asked Tom.
‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘I do.’
‘Oh.’
‘Poor little thing.’
‘Poor little thing. Do you think it was a boy or a girl?’
They crossed the road and Pip began to gamely tell Tom that babies didn’t cause their mums to feel poorly and be grumpy, all that was down to chemicals causing a lady’s body to be able to grow and carry a baby. And anyway, mums and dads so want to have babies that a bit of yukkiness now and then didn’t matter at all in the long run.
‘Tom?’
Tom was quietly sobbing though the school gates were in sight.
‘Your mum is fine – please don’t you worry about her. She doesn’t mean to be grumpy and she can’t help feeling a bit yuk.’ Pip gave Tom a hug. ‘Do you want your dad to talk to her? I promise you she can’t wait to give you a little baby brother or sister.’
‘Not the baby,’ Tom sniffed, ‘the squirrel.’
happy st david’s day!!! Pxxx
Fen stared at the text message Pip had sent her and wondered for a moment whether St David’s Day was something she’d forgotten that they celebrated despite having no Welsh blood in the family. Funny old Pip, Fen smiled, texting back.
and to you. F + C xx
Fen knew Pip would start to text her at length but soon tire of the thumb effort and phone her instead. The call came a couple of minutes later.
‘Happy St David’s Day.’
‘Same to you, with bells on.’
‘What are you up to today?’
‘Oh, the usual – puréeing things, changing nappies, singing daft songs, spending the afternoon with women I have nothing in common with other than postcode and the fact that our babies were born in the same month.’
‘Shall we meet up, then? I’m not clowning today – and I’d love to see Cosima. And you.’
Fen looked around her home. It was a tip. She ought to prioritize the chores and say no. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘that’ll be lovely.’
‘Kenwood?’ Pip suggested. ‘It’s equidistant. Let’s have coffee and cake. See you in an hour or so?’
Fen looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock and though Cosima was dressed beautifully in Catimini, Fen was still in her dressing gown. She opened her wardrobe and perused her pre-pregnancy Agnès B skirts and John Smedley cardigans. It was a perverse, masochistic ritual she taunted herself with almost daily. She didn’t dare hold them against herself, let alone try them on; scrambling instead into yesterday’s cargo pants. Packing Cosima in a snowsuit that made the baby resemble the
