Matt Rudd - William’s Progress

We haven’t had sex since Christmas Day when she was forty weeks pregnant, frightened and frightening. I do not intend to have anything approximating sex with Isabel until she is completely and utterly recovered from childbirth. My benchmark for this is a full month after the last time she says ‘Owwwwwch’ and clutches her stomach when trying to pick something up. If it takes six months, that is fine. Or a year. Or ten years, even. (Well, maybe not ten years.) But kissing…we always kiss. Or we always did.

I always assumed that kissing each other good night was the absolute cornerstone of a healthy marriage. Kissing in the morning went out the window soon after the honeymoon, but if you don’t even bother to kiss each other at bedtime, then you may as well accept that your relationship has become entirely platonic. An affair is more or less inevitable.

I assumed wrong. Since having Jacob, kissing, even at bedtime, has become intermittent at best. It is enough to be alive and/or dressed in the daytime. Other things previously considered essential, such as teeth-brushing, tea-drinking, shaving more than once a week, going to the toilet and not falling asleep while standing up, are now very much optional luxuries. Kissing is going this way, too.

Does it matter? When I ask Isabel, she says it hadn’t occurred to her that we hadn’t been kissing although now that I mention it, I’m right. But then again, we have other priorities, like not killing each other. Ha ha. And anyway, we’ll have plenty of time to kiss when we’re in our rocking chairs. Ewww. ‘Darling,’ she says, reassuringly, ‘right now, going to the shops not wearing my pyjamas is a more important target to aim for.’

All the same, we make a point of kissing each other good night. The kiss is awkward, toothy, self-conscious. We bang our noses together. It’s like we’re teenagers again, except with an unmanageable mortgage, a nearly unmanageable baby and a vague memory that we have sworn we’ll spend the rest of our lives together in sickness and in health.

This is my fault. I have ruined kissing. I don’t even need a barn owl to keep me up worrying about it.

Johnson says he still kisses Ali at least twice a day, but (a) they don’t have children and (b) the kissing is now so utterly devoid of emotional meaning that he could be kissing the postman. Like he reckons she does every time he goes to work. Not for the first time, I wonder why on earth Ali puts up with Johnson.

I ask my seventeen Facebook friends how much they kiss. Most of them are people I haven’t seen for years and will probably never see again. They are virtual friends and I can ask them virtually anything I like but I immediately wish I hadn’t. The one I used to play clarinet duets with when I was fourteen, who now has three children, a dog, a goldfish and a husband who is in the army, kisses her husband all the time. Except when he’s on tour (and presumably when she is Face-booking, which also appears to be all the time). I Facebook back asking how long he’s away at a time, which is annoying of me. I am being further assimilated into a system of social networking that will ultimately destroy face-to-face human interaction, leaving us controlled by computers, plugged into a mainframe, devoid of legs and fed through tubes.

‘Nine months,’ she Facebooks and then does some random punctuation :( which I’m given to believe is teenage shorthand for a sad face. This is good news. Not for her but for me. I think Isabel and I would kiss all the time if I had been in Afghanistan for nine months. Maybe I should sign up? The adverts look quite exciting. Building bridges out of oil drums, jumping in and out of helicopters and so forth. Of course there’s the shooting and the bombing, too. That’s a given. But it does have its pluses. No nappies to change, for example. Quite a lot of kissing and so forth when I was back. And no unfeasibly young, over-promoted, man-hating boss who still holds a grudge against me because I once, almost accidentally, threw a cup of tea over her. They wouldn’t allow that sort of nonsense in the army.

‘Shouldn’t you be a bit too busy catching up after yet another week off to have time to muck around on social-networking sites?’ says the unfeasibly young, over-promoted, man-hating boss after a particularly fast pass through the office. ‘Everyone else is striving to make Life & Times a great magazine once again. It would be nice if you could at least pretend to help.’

Right, that’s it. I’m joining the army.

No, I’m not. According to the stupid website, I am too old. Even though the army is desperate for recruits, someone in their very early thirties, someone at the very peak of their physical and mental condition, is too old.

To make matters worse, Andy, my only real friend on Facebook, has posted a picture of him and Saskia tonguing each other in Paris. Underneath, it reads: ‘Paris in the winter: it’s like being in a film, a beautiful film. The romance is illicit. You steal each other’s kisses.’

It has always been important to keep Andy grounded when it comes to women. Johnson and I think of ourselves as his emotional anchor. Every time he starts talking rubbish about romance, we have to take him for a pint and suggest that he calms down, cancels his plans to emigrate to Santiago with the secretary from the Chilean Embassy and maybe first goes for dinner with her a couple of times. After that, things usually sort themselves out. Saskia is a different prospect: emotionally manipulative with very long legs. It may prove harder to keep him on an even keel.

Happily, there is a small text box below the photo inviting comments. I type, ‘ Pass le sac de vomit ,’ and hastily log off before Anastasia can make any more sarcastic comments.

Andy’s e-mail: ‘I found your comment on my Facebook page upsetting.’

My e-mail: ‘Lighten up.’

His e-mail: ‘You need to get over your hang-up with Saskia.’

My e-mail: ‘I have, but do you really expect to post a cheesy picture of you and my ex on the internet and not get the slightest reaction?’

His e-mail: ‘You didn’t go out with her. You had a fling with her and you dumped her. Callously. You should move on, man.’

I decided not to dignify that with a response. For about five minutes. Then I e-mail back saying how disappointed I am in Andy, that he was there when we discovered what Saskia had been up to with Alex, that I can’t believe he is being so easily manipulated. No reply. Loser.

1 Isabel woke up at 5.30 a.m., snuck down to my sofa bed, woke me up and said, ‘Jacob’s asleep,’ before starting naughty kissing. Having been asleep, I was still half asleep when I began naughty kissing back. Then, before I could stop and think what I was doing, Isabel was saying, ‘Gently,’ and we were having post-op sex. Less than two months after the Caesarean. And then Isabel was saying, ‘I think we need to stop. It’s hurting.’ And I suddenly remembered that I wasn’t going to have sex with Isabel until she was a thousand per cent recovered. How had this happened? We stopped and that will be it for a while.

2 Saskia is trying to become my Facebook friend. I can’t say no because she’ll know and Andy will know and that will seem childish. And I can’t say yes because then I’d be Facebook friends with Saskia.

3 When I got home from an entirely miserable train journey during which the ginger woman filed her nails and flossed her teeth right opposite me, I found a large half-egg-shaped package in the midst of our living room.