them.
When Ruth was three I took her to a mothers and toddlers group. Vi was asleep in her pram. It was raining, and the church annexe we were in echoed with the pattering of rain on roof and windows;
was full of the smells of floor polish and damp hair and old wood. For the first ten minutes Ruth clung to my knees, then gradually she became interested in the toys in the hall. There were small
bikes and dolls’ prams, a wooden climbing frame and slide. I watched her investigate the climbing frame; standing staring at the children on it, then plucking up courage to test it with an
arm and a foot. I was bursting with pride – she looked so compact and perfect, held her back so beautifully straight, and gazed with such absorbed interest at the world around her – I
couldn’t help thinking she must be a magnet for all attention in the room. As I watched her wander from toy to toy – always slightly wary of the other children, slightly reserved,
exploring – the pride and pleasure I took in her swelled to bursting point and I could hardly stop myself from crying. She was on her own there. Following her own interests, having her
attention caught by varying objects and incidents, undirected by me. That sense of her as separate – and yet as connected to me as my own limbs – was unbearably poignant. Like being in
love, yes, piercing like being in love, and seeing the other person so magical so beautiful so perfectly close to your heart’s desire – and so separate. So able to walk away, at any
time.
Because I was in love with Gareth and had that heart-rending sense of his separateness from me, I married him. It’s why grandparents have their dressers clogged with photographs of babies
and weddings. Real children grow up, real marriages crumble.
A story.
What Sort of a Mother
He’s sleeping. His quick shallow breaths fill the air like fluttering insects above the bed. She always leaves the lamp on till she comes to bed, because he’s scared
of the dark. Standing by the bed she looks down at him. His face is tilted up on the pillow, his lips parted to suck in the air. His big face is like a baby’s.
The fat woman undresses methodically, padding quietly about the room. She pulls on a long flannel nightdress. She likes getting in bed with him. He’s hot. Not sweaty: hot and dry as an
oven-baked potato, with smooth skin. He sleeps deep; doesn’t even stir when she crawls in beside him. His quick breaths just raise his ribs beneath her arm. As she settles and quietens, she
falls into the old pattern, one breath to two of his, one breath to two of his. To the rhythmic pull of their joint breaths she launches out into his sea of sleep.
She’s never slept so well as with him. The others came in bed when they were little, but they tossed and turned, or pulled her hair. When they were babies she’d fall asleep slumped
over Donna or Wayne or Tracey on her tit and force herself awake in a panic, scared to death she’d smothered them: find them curled like fat little leeches further down the bed, and her
half-full tit still dripping for them.
And men – none of them was so good, for sleeping. Men were noisy and smelt bad; snoring and farting, turning their bulks in stiff heavy movements that jarred her sleep, knocking against
her – foreign bodies. Their breath stank. Gary turned and flowed with her like he was still part of her own body – abandoned and floppy in his sleep as a little child. The sun-heat of
him pervaded her aching, work-horse body.
The woman in the dock was short and puffy with ill-health. She also smelt badly – mixed body and vegetable odours – sweat, stale urine, cooking fat, and a sourish tang familiar to
the escorting warders: fear.
Leonie Doyle. Forty-one. Mother of six. From flat 213, Christie’s Tower, Blackhill Estate. Charged with the murder of her youngest son. She watched the court with a stupid, vacant
expression, and had to be asked several questions twice. The
When Ruth was three I took her to a mothers and toddlers group. Vi was asleep in her pram. It was raining, and the church annexe we were in echoed with the pattering of rain on roof and windows;
was full of the smells of floor polish and damp hair and old wood. For the first ten minutes Ruth clung to my knees, then gradually she became interested in the toys in the hall. There were small
bikes and dolls’ prams, a wooden climbing frame and slide. I watched her investigate the climbing frame; standing staring at the children on it, then plucking up courage to test it with an
arm and a foot. I was bursting with pride – she looked so compact and perfect, held her back so beautifully straight, and gazed with such absorbed interest at the world around her – I
couldn’t help thinking she must be a magnet for all attention in the room. As I watched her wander from toy to toy – always slightly wary of the other children, slightly reserved,
exploring – the pride and pleasure I took in her swelled to bursting point and I could hardly stop myself from crying. She was on her own there. Following her own interests, having her
attention caught by varying objects and incidents, undirected by me. That sense of her as separate – and yet as connected to me as my own limbs – was unbearably poignant. Like being in
love, yes, piercing like being in love, and seeing the other person so magical so beautiful so perfectly close to your heart’s desire – and so separate. So able to walk away, at any
time.
Because I was in love with Gareth and had that heart-rending sense of his separateness from me, I married him. It’s why grandparents have their dressers clogged with photographs of babies
and weddings. Real children grow up, real marriages crumble.
A story.
What Sort of a Mother
He’s sleeping. His quick shallow breaths fill the air like fluttering insects above the bed. She always leaves the lamp on till she comes to bed, because he’s scared
of the dark. Standing by the bed she looks down at him. His face is tilted up on the pillow, his lips parted to suck in the air. His big face is like a baby’s.
The fat woman undresses methodically, padding quietly about the room. She pulls on a long flannel nightdress. She likes getting in bed with him. He’s hot. Not sweaty: hot and dry as an
oven-baked potato, with smooth skin. He sleeps deep; doesn’t even stir when she crawls in beside him. His quick breaths just raise his ribs beneath her arm. As she settles and quietens, she
falls into the old pattern, one breath to two of his, one breath to two of his. To the rhythmic pull of their joint breaths she launches out into his sea of sleep.
She’s never slept so well as with him. The others came in bed when they were little, but they tossed and turned, or pulled her hair. When they were babies she’d fall asleep slumped
over Donna or Wayne or Tracey on her tit and force herself awake in a panic, scared to death she’d smothered them: find them curled like fat little leeches further down the bed, and her
half-full tit still dripping for them.
And men – none of them was so good, for sleeping. Men were noisy and smelt bad; snoring and farting, turning their bulks in stiff heavy movements that jarred her sleep, knocking against
her – foreign bodies. Their breath stank. Gary turned and flowed with her like he was still part of her own body – abandoned and floppy in his sleep as a little child. The sun-heat of
him pervaded her aching, work-horse body.
The woman in the dock was short and puffy with ill-health. She also smelt badly – mixed body and vegetable odours – sweat, stale urine, cooking fat, and a sourish tang familiar to
the escorting warders: fear.
Leonie Doyle. Forty-one. Mother of six. From flat 213, Christie’s Tower, Blackhill Estate. Charged with the murder of her youngest son. She watched the court with a stupid, vacant
expression, and had to be asked several questions twice. The
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