we take in it.’
‘It isn’t an equitable society,’ says Hattie. ‘That’s it.’
‘You are so argumentative,’ he complains. But he is pleased at the return of her spirit.
Soon she may be back to normal, and their diet will improve. But he’s not finished yet.
‘We both agree that raising a child is the most important thing anyone can do, and it should be paid concomitantly.
And a nursery is probably the best option if you don’t want to look after your own child.’
But Hattie has won, and his voice fades away and she gives him a half kiss, half nibble on his ear to show there are no hard feelings. If there is to be better food in the fridge Hattie must go out to work, and when it comes to it Martyn would rather that his child was looked after in the home than be sent to a nursery. He has not liked to ask what age Agnieszka is, nor whether she will be a pleasure to look at or otherwise. He is above such enquiry. He has a stereotyped Polish girl in his head: she is pale, thin, high-cheekboned, small-breasted, attractive but out of bounds.
Hattie has it all arranged. Agnieszka is to live in. This unknown and untested person is to have the spare room, look after the baby as a priority and do such domestic work, cooking and laundry that she can find time to do: she is to have Saturday and Sunday off and three evenings a week to go to evening class. She will be paid a generous £200 a week, with of course full board and lodging. Babs, who is accustomed to employing staff, has been consulted on these matters and this is what she recommends.
Martyn points out that Hattie will have to earn at least £300 a week to break even on the deal – perhaps more if the girl is a big eater. Hattie says she will be paid £36,000 a year and Martyn complains that that is ridiculously low: Hattie explains that instead of taking statutory maternity leave she actually handed in her notice, so certain was she that she would never want to return to work, and though she expects rapid promotion, she will formally have to start work fairly low down the end of the pay scale.
‘With any luck,’ says Martyn, ‘this Agnieszka will be anorexic. That will save money on food. But hey, if she’s what you want, go ahead. Let’s share our evenings and our lives with a stranger. So be it. Only do be sure to ask for written references.’
Martyn loves Hattie. Dissension is just part of their life. He loves brushing up against her in the kitchen; he loves the warm roundness of her body, so different from his own angularity. He loves the ease of her conversation, her ready laugh, her lack of doubt, the way she didn’t hesitate when she found she was pregnant and just sighed and said it was fate, why fight it?
Martyn comes from an awkward, belligerent family who look for slights and insults and find them, and would root out an unwanted baby without a second thought. He had no idea, when he met Hattie at a peace demo, that people could be like this, that sheer affluence of good feeling, not a superfluity of rage, could drive them on the streets in protest. It was a destined encounter. Surging crowds pushed them into each other’s arms in an alley behind Centre Point. He had an erection, and deeply embarrassed, blushed and apologised when it would have been more fitting to overlook the matter, pretend it had never happened. She said, ‘Not at all, I take it as a compliment.’
In three weeks he had moved in with her, and now they have a house and a baby. He would like to marry her but she won’t do it. She says she has no respect for the institution, as indeed neither does he, at least in principle. Both look at marriages within their immediate families and decide it is not for them. The complexity of divorce, and also its likelihood, alarms them both. But he has less objection to being owned by her, than she does by him. That worries him. He loves her more than she loves him.
‘What’s for supper?’ asks Martyn, having abandoned any hope of finding something edible in the fridge, kissing the back of her neck, melting her wrath at once.
‘I must finish the ironing first,’ says Hattie. Her mother Lallie has hardly used an iron all her life long. It can hardly be in the genes. But then Lallie’s a creative artist and Hattie is avowedly not, and so the daughter must take the normal route to a satisfactory environment, not by filling the air with music, but by providing an easy background for others.
All the same Hattie stops ironing. She needs little incentive. She bought pure cotton, wool and linen fabrics, natural fibres dyed with organic dyes, to cover the baby’s back. Now she regrets it. Unnatural fibres dry faster than natural, don’t matt, shrink or discolour with washing. They were developed for very good reason. The cot is always damp because ecologically-sound terry nappies are less effective than disposable ones. It doesn’t make much difference to the baby what fabrics it regurgitates over. But Hattie is stuck with what she committed to, if only by virtue of the cost of replacement, and she does like things to look nice. There are still some few items left to iron but when were there ever not? Martyn may feel less stressed if he eats. She is not hungry herself. She opens a can of tuna and a jar of mayonnaise and heats up some frozen peas. Martyn once, rashly, said how much he liked frozen peas.
‘Babs and I will be in adjacent offices,’ she says, as the peas come to the boil and bob about at the top of the pan. ‘And we’ll be able to share a taxi home.’
‘A taxi!’ says Martyn. ‘If we’re to afford an au pair there won’t be much taking of taxis anywhere.’
He knows tuna is nutritious and with bread and peas makes a balanced meal, but that doesn’t mean the tinned fish doesn’t clog up the mouth. The peas are not even bright green petits pois (too expensive) but large, tough and pale green. The bread is sliced brown Hovis. In his mother’s household, meals were frequent, generous and on time, no matter how paranoiac and backbiting those who sat around the table were. The bread was fresh, crusty and white. But now in his own home the very concept of ‘meals’ has been abandoned. Since Kitty’s birth he and Hattie eat to assuage hunger, and the desire seldom strikes them simultaneously. Yes, it is time she went back to work.
‘Hattie,’ I say, ‘what I think about you going back to work or not going back to work is irrelevant. You will do what you will do, as ever.’
‘But I do like to have your permission, Great-Nan,’ she says. I know she does. It touches me but I have asked her not to call me Great-Nan. ‘Grandmother’ is best, ‘Gran’ will do, ‘Nan’ is vulgar and ‘Great-Nan’ ludicrous, but Hattie will do what she will do.
Since Kitty came along, she claims her right to set me yet more firmly in the past and advance me a generation in public disesteem. She called me Grandmother in a perfectly proper way until she met Martyn, after which she took to calling me Nan, presumably out of loyalty to her partner’s demotic origins. To possess a father who died in an electricians’ strike is a rare qualification
