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

“I’m so glad for you,” I say. “Jill would be really pleased. I know she couldn’t bear the idea of you not managing.”

Robin nods, grateful to get the news out of the way, glad to pull up the drawbridge once more. With the plates cleared away, we turn to the menu again and study it like an exam paper. “How about a treacle tart with two spoons?” says Robin. “Have you heard they’re looking for a new name for Spotted Dick, Kate?”

“Chris Bunce.”

“Sorry?”

“Spotted Dick. Bunce is the venereal disease champion of the office. Ask any of the secretaries.”

Robin dabs his mouth with his napkin. “It makes you very angry, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

For a moment, I consider telling him about the plan. But as my superior he would be obliged to veto it and as my friend and mentor he would probably do the same. Instead, I say, “I don’t think someone should be allowed to go on being a shit because it’s not convenient to stop him.”

Robin semaphores to the waiter for the bill. “Jill always said you can get a man to do anything so long as he doesn’t notice he’s being made to do it.”

“Did she do that to you?”

“I never noticed.”

3:13 P.M. I leave Robin at the corner of Cheapside. Next, I call Guy on the mobile and tell him I won’t be back this afternoon: I have an urgent appointment with conkers.

“Conquers?”

“It’s a leisure group I’m thinking of investing heavily in. Need to check out the consumer angle.”

When I get home, the kids are so startled to see me they don’t react at first. I tell Paula to take the rest of the day off and I get Emily and Ben into their coats and we walk to the park. Or at least Em and I do: Ben refuses to walk anywhere, preferring to run until he falls over. It’s been an Indian summer and the leaves, still green and stippled with apricot, look mildly surprised to find themselves on the ground. We spend — I honestly don’t know how long we spend — kicking around in them.

Ben likes rushing into the leaves just for the rustle, for the pleasure of the noise. Emily loves to tell him off while clearly finding him adorable. The deal between my girl and boy is that he can be naughty so she can enjoy being good. Watching them screech after each other, I wonder if that isn’t a variation on the game that boys and girls have always played.

Farther along the path, under the horse chestnuts, we find the conkers. Some of the spiky cases have split on impact and we prise the glowing nuts from their pithy hollow.

“You can make the conkers harder,” I say to Em.

“How?”

“I don’t know exactly, we’ll have to ask Daddy.” Damn, didn’t mean to mention him.

Emily looks up in bright expectation. “Mummy, when will Daddy come back to live in our house?”

“Daddy,” chirps Ben. “Daddy.”

BACK HOME, I put the boy down for his nap and let Em choose a video while I start to prepare a bolognese sauce for dinner. I can’t find the garlic press and where is the grater? I suggest watching Sleeping Beauty, which was always the great sedative when Em was little, but I am way out of date. My daughter is talking about something with a warrior princess I have never heard of.

“What’s warrior, Mum?”

“A warrior is a brave fighter.”

“Do you know what Harry Potter ’s about?”

“No, I don’t.”

“ Harry Potter ’s about braveness and loveness.”

“That sounds good. Have you decided what we’re watching?”

“ Mary Poppins. ”

“Again?”

“Oh, please, Mu-um.”

When I was Emily’s age, we saw a film or two a year: one at Christmas, one in the long summer holiday. For my children, the moving image will be the main vehicle of their memories.

“She’s a suffer jet.”

“Who?”

“Jane and Michael’s mummy is a suffer jet.”

I’d forgotten that Mrs. Banks was a suffragette. It’s not the bit of the film you remember. I go over and curl up on the sofa with Em. And there she is on-screen — the lovely daffy Glynis Johns, back from a rally and marching up and down the great white house singing:

“Our daughters’ daughters will adore us,

And they’ll sing in grateful chorus,

Well done! Well done! Well done, Sister Suffragette!”

“What’s a suffer jet?” I knew that was coming.

“Suffragettes were special women, Em, who a hundred years ago went out and marched in London and protested and tied themselves to railings so they could persuade people that women should be allowed to vote.”

She nods and sinks back onto me, nestling her head in under my breasts. It’s only when Mary and Bert and the kids have jumped into the chalk picture on the pavement that she says: “Why didn’t women be allowed to vote, Mum?”

Oh, where is the Fairy Godmother of explanations when you need her? “Because back then, in the olden days, women and men were — well, girls stayed at home and it was thought that they were less important than boys.”

My daughter gives me a look of furious astonishment. “That’s silly.”

“Yes, I know, love, but the suffer — the suffragettes had to show people it was silly.”

We lie there together. Em knows every song; she even breathes when the actors breathe. Now that I’m watching as an adult, Mary Poppins looks different. I had forgotten that Mrs. Banks, who wants to make the world a better place for women, is dizzily oblivious to her own children. That Jane and Michael are sad and rebellious until the nanny shows up and brings both consistency and excitement into their lives. Mr. Banks, meanwhile, works too hard — his name alone tells you that this man is his job — and is a stranger to his children and his wife, until he gets sacked and is confronted in his own drawing room by Bert the chimney sweep, who warns him in song:

“You’ve got to grind grind grind at that grindstone

Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve,

And all too soon they’ve up and grown

And then they’ve flown

And it’s too late for you to give…

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

Emily and I join in, our voices twining round each other in a silvery helix. Suddenly, I have the most disturbing feeling that the film is talking to me, which is when Emily announces, “When I have babies, Mummy, I’m going to look after them myself till they’re an adult. No nannies.”

Has she made me watch Mary Poppins so she can say that? Is it her way of telling me? I search her face, but there is no sign of calculation; she doesn’t appear to be watching for a reaction.

“Maaa-aaaa.” The baby monitor crackles into life. Ben must be waking up. Before I go upstairs, I sit Em on my knee.

“I thought you and I could go on a special outing together. Would you like that?”

She wrinkles her nose the way Momo does when she’s excited. “Where?”

“The Egg Pie Snake Building.”

“Where?”

“The Egg Pie Snake Building. Do you remember that’s what you called the Empire State Building?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did, love.”

“Mum-my,” says Emily, dragging out my title with maximum scorn,“that’s a baby way of talking. I’m not a baby anymore.”

“No, darling, you’re not.”

IT GOES SO QUICKLY, doesn’t it? One day they’re saying all those funny little things you promise yourself you’ll write down and never do, and then they’re talking like some streetwise kid or, even worse, they’re talking just like you. I will my children to grow up quicker and I mourn every minute I have missed of their infancy.