Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

On the endless drive to Wales on Saturday, I was watching Richard, observing the way he can screen out the kids when he needs to, when there is a destination he has in mind. Life is a road for a man; for women it’s a map — we’re always thinking about side roads and slip roads and doubling back, while they simply plow on in the fast lane. Their only diversion is an occasional brilliant idea for a shortcut, most of which turn out to be longer and more treacherous than the original route.

Is that why men can live in the moment so much better than we can? Posterity is full of men who seized the day while the women were planning for a fortnight on Tuesday.

So many of the rows Rich and I have nowadays are about remembering or forgetting. Like the one we had when we got to the beach in Pembrokeshire that first afternoon of the half-term holiday, and it turned out that Rich hadn’t packed the children’s Wellingtons. I don’t know what made me go so berserk. Yes, the kids’ feet were soaking, but they were having a lovely time.

Swaddled in three layers of clothing, Ben and Emily play contentedly by the milk-chocolate channel that emerges from the hillside at the back of Whitesands Bay and foams over stones down to the sea. She has been building a Sleeping Beauty castle with water gardens and a fountain made out of a razor shell, while he picks up a pebble, carries it to the water’s edge, drops it in and then goes back to fetch another. They are as happy and intent as I’ve seen them. But the weather has got worse. Of course the weather has got worse. We are on holiday in Wales, why didn’t I remember? Wet Wales. The sun broke through earlier, just long enough to see the freckles begin to swarm over Emily’s face, but now the sky is pewter with rain. We decide to cut our losses and take the kids back to the cottage I have rented a few miles inland. Getting them away from the water and into the car takes roughly fifty minutes: requests give way to threats, and when they don’t work we fall back on bribes.

I promise Emily that Mummy will finally get around to reading Little Miss Busy to her, so after I’ve stripped off their wet clothes, given them their tea, bathed them in the tiny freezing bathroom with the wall heater that smells of burnt air, and persuaded Ben to lie in his portacot, my daughter and I settle down next to the open fire — two resentfully smoldering logs.

“‘Little Miss Busy loved nothing more than to be hard at work, keeping herself busy. Every day she would get up at three o’clock in the morning. Then, Little Miss Busy would read a chapter from her favorite book. It was called Work Is Good for You. ’”

“Can’t we read something more fun, Em?”

“No. I want that one.”

“Oh, all right. Where were we? ‘Miss Busy wasn’t happy unless she was busy working.’”

“Mummy, you came to Ben’s birthday party.”

“Yes, I did.” I can see her thinking. Five-year-olds’ thoughts are naked; they haven’t learned to cloak them yet. This one ripples across Emily’s brow like a breeze over a dune.

“Did the teacher say you could leave early?” she asks at last.

“No, sweetheart, Mummy doesn’t have a teacher. She has — well, she has a boss, this man who’s in charge. And she has to ask him if she can leave.”

“Could you ask that man if you could come home early other days?”

“No. Well, yes, I could, but I can’t do it too often.”

“Why?”

“Because Mummy has to be in the office or…otherwise people might get cross with her. Let’s finish the story, Em. ‘Little Miss Busy—’”

“Could you come home early and take me to ballet on Thursdays? Please can you, Mama?”

“Paula takes you to ballet, darling, and she says you’re really really good at it. And Mummy promises to try and come to your show at the end of term this time.”

“But it’s not fair. Ella’s mum takes her to ballet.”

“Emily, I really haven’t got time to argue with you now. Let’s finish the story, shall we?

“‘And Miss Busy didn’t rest all day long, not for a minute, not even for a second.’”

WHEN THEY WERE BOTH asleep upstairs, Rich accused me of not being relaxed and I got incredibly upset. I’d done three solid hours of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! in the car on the way down, hadn’t I?

“‘Wh-e-e-e-e-e-ere is love? Does it fall from skies above?’”

Does it, hell. Mark Lester was so desperately beautiful as Oliver, and I read the other day that now he’s an osteopath in Cheltenham or somewhere. I mean, that can’t be right, can it? Like the breaking of a magic spell.

And after Oliver! we sang twenty choruses of “The Wheels on the Bus,” which I did most cheerfully, even though that song drives me absolutely nuts. Then, when Ben threw up in the car outside Swansea, I got him into the service station, washed him in the basin, dried him somehow with the one dry paper towel and changed him before buying all the basics we’d need when we got to the cottage — tea bags, milk, sliced bread for toast. I was doing a pretty good impersonation of a mummy on holiday, wasn’t I?

But Rich was right. Thoughts of the upcoming final that Rod had sprung on me were keeping me awake at night. I’d left Momo to do the research into the ethical pharmaceutical sector while I was away, but she simply didn’t have the experience to hack her way through the material in time. Twice a day, I called her from a phone box in a high-hedged lane or by some rasping pebbled shore — my mobile signal came and went like the tide. And of course I told Momo where to find stuff, but it was like asking a skateboarder to dock a space station. Specifically instructed Guy to help her out too, but while I was away he would be otherwise engaged, having his bony Machiavellian arse measured for my chair. No way was Guy going to do anything that would put me in a good light.

Plus, as the cottage’s phone connection was practically steam-powered, I couldn’t pick up my e-mails. Being out of contact with Abelhammer for four days made me realize how much I relied upon him as a safety valve. Without his soothing attentions I was ready to explode.

THURSDAY, A CAR PARK, ST. DAVIDS CATHEDRAL. 3:47 P.M.Am unloading Ben’s buggy from the boot of the car when the downpour starts: joke rain, crazy rain, Gene Kelly Singing-in-the-sodding-Rain rain. Try to wrestle the baby into the buggy straps, his body stiffening as my impatience grows. I feel like an asylum orderly putting a straitjacket on a madman. Richard has fetched the buggy rain cover and hands it over; it’s a fiendish combination of cling film and climbing frame.

Boldly loop big hoop over Ben’s head and try to fasten the clips, but I cannot get them round buggy handles so attach to the fabric instead. Seems OK, but I’m left with two elastic loops. What the hell are they for? Drape remainder of cover over the baby’s feet, but the rain snatches it and whips it up into my face. Damn. Start again.

“Come on, Kate,” says Richard. “We’re getting soaked here. Surely you know how to put that cover on.”

I surely don’t know. How would I know? Only contact with wretched thing was handing over Visa card in John Lewis thirteen months ago and, when the assistant tried to demonstrate the rain cover, snapping at her, “I’ll just take it, thanks.” (Can hardly call Paula in Morocco and ask how to use own child’s equipment.)

Ben is howling now. Drops of rain join the tributary of snot running over his lips to form a cataract of misery. Have you noticed how all baby equipment comes with the promise of “easi-assembly”? This is industry shorthand for: only those with NASA training need attempt.

“For Chrissake, Kate,” hisses Richard, who will put up with anything except embarrassment in public.