Helen Brown - After Cleo

After the school visit it was on to interviews with a national newspaper and a magazine. I had a fantastic time in Portugal, but it was no holiday. Some interviews were easier than others. I was bemused by the intellectual nature of the questions posed by a bespectacled woman journalist in Lisbon, and had been unnerved while subjected to Freudian probing about my relationship with my mother at the Vienna Book Fair.

By the time I reached the concrete canyons of New York, the sore throat felt like a bushfire at the back of my mouth. I struggled to hide my exhaustion from my enthusiastic New York publishers. They took me to lunch at one of the city’s smartest restaurants and announced they were putting ‘Number One International Bestseller’ on their cover of Cleo . Admiring the sleek fashion sense of my luncheon companions, nothing seemed further away than cancer and the mastectomy. Life had changed radically in less than two years.

Despite the wonderful US welcome, I developed shivers and a persistent cough. I longed to be back home in bed. A doctor visited the hotel room and said my condition was understandable. A book tour would be extremely draining, and cancer lowers the immune system.

Curious about the book, he acknowledged the importance of pets in today’s world. Two of his patients had suffered severe clinical depression after the death of their cats. He scribbled a prescription for antibiotics, and gave me an inhaler for the plane. I signed a copy of Cleo for him and wished I could pack him in my suitcase.

* * *

Back in Australia, Jonah adored being a celebrity cat. Every morning he trotted behind me into my study. Though I still didn’t trust him alone in there, he loved nestling on my lap to inspect the overnight emails. He was pumped the day a French television crew arrived at Shirley to make a documentary for a much-loved animal programme in France called 30 Millions des Amis (Thirty Million Friends).

You’d think getting a few shots of a cat behaving naturally around a house would be easy but Jonah had no intention of making the cameraman’s job a breeze. When I tried to hold him on my lap and stroke his fur as a demonstration of cat/human-slave devotion, Jonah flattened his ears, wriggled slippery as a pumpkin seed out of my grasp and galloped down the hall.

The cameraman wasn’t fazed and said he’d like a shot of me carrying Jonah through the front door and outside. My throat tensed. From Jonah’s perspective any trip out the front door presented an opportunity to run away and give the black cats down the street the insults they deserved.

I nervously picked our pet off the floor as the cameraman positioned himself outside on the front path. Jonah tensed in my arms as I turned the front door handle and stepped on to the verandah, trying to look relaxed. So far so good. Jonah and I were presenting the perfect picture of bonding across the species.

But then the security door slammed behind us and the highly strung animal jumped two feet in the air. Yelping, I stretched my arms out to grab him. Fortunately, as gravity pulled him back toward me, I was able to gather him up.

I was exasperated and a little embarrassed by our unco-operative cat, but the cameraman was unruffled. He had a background in wildlife filming – quite apt given the circumstances – and just shrugged and moved on to film an interview with Rob, who’d escaped from work for an hour.

Not sure what to do next, I laid lunch out on the table for the camera crew. I imagined their work was probably over for the day. But the cameraman was indefatigable. He spent the afternoon creeping around after Jonah, crawling along the floor recording his exhibitionist antics, bouncing down the hall like a kangaroo, flashing up and down stairs like a lightning bolt.

Even after Jonah was exhausted and collapsed on a sofa cushion, the cameraman kept filming, with the cat opening his eye every so often to check he was still centre of attention.

Admittedly, the wildlife filming approach was suitable for Jonah, but I was dubious how the end product would look. I needn’t have worried. When I finally saw the programme, it was exquisitely made. The door-slamming incident had been tactfully edited out. Jonah came across as the outlandish creature he is – even though the dubbing was beyond my schoolgirl French.

New Life

Few joys are greater than the arrival of a new generation

Life had changed since the publication of Cleo . It was taking on different shapes and colours at home, too. On one of their Sunday lunch visits, I noticed Chantelle wasn’t drinking any wine. There was a possibility she was on a diet, though hardly necessary in her case. The alternative scenario was too exciting to contemplate.

Lydia and Katharine were clearing plates from the table when Chantelle broke the joyous news. Their baby was due early June. Philip, the girls and I smothered her with kisses while Rob sat back, trying to contain his pride.

Blushing, Chantelle said they hadn’t intended it to happen so soon. She’d been to a psychic who’d said they wouldn’t have a baby for another three years, so they’d relaxed a bit. It was wonderful news, though I have to confess the concept of Rob, my little boy, becoming a father was mind-bending. Lydia and Katharine were heading into Auntsville. Philip, my toy boy, was morphing into a grandfather. And me – a grandmother ?!

I suddenly understood why Mum had been so prickly about the dismal range of grandmotherly titles available – Nana (too goat-like), Grandma (too Little Red Riding Hood ), Granny (well, honestly). A Maori friend said he called his grandmother Kuia, which looked lovely on paper, but processed through an Australian accent would inevitably be pronounced ‘Queer’. If I had to be called anything, I decided it might as well be vague and non-threatening so I took a leaf out of the Teletubbies’ book and opted for Lala.

During the months that followed, Jonah took a special interest in Chantelle’s changing body shape. Every Sunday lunchtime he deigned to curve himself around her bulge, his head pressed against her stomach as if listening for a heartbeat.

Months whirled past, and before we knew it the baby was a week overdue. There’d been a few false alarms, but every time it looked like something was happening the contractions faded away. By this time Chantelle was fed up. Rob was on edge. I’d run out of knitting wool.

On Wednesday night, five days after baby Brown was due, the family put in bets for when he/she would arrive. Being an optimist, I opted for Friday. Lydia and Katharine chose Saturday. When Philip put in his bid for Sunday, I told him the poor parents couldn’t possibly wait that long.

On Friday morning, Chantelle sent a text saying the contractions were regular and they’d be heading into hospital in a couple of hours. After several hours’ silence I sent a text: ‘?’ A reply came back straight away ‘0. Contractions gone away.’ Saturday was no better.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, I struggled out of bed for my usual nocturnal visit to the bathroom. The bedside clock was glowing 3.15. As I rolled back into bed, my mobile phone bleeped to life. Fingers trembling, I fumbled to get the text message open. It was from Rob. Baby Annie had just been born, weighing nine pounds. Mother and daughter (and father!) all well. Room A24.

Flicking the light on, I shook Philip awake. He’d just become a grandfather. I asked him what he wanted to be called. Not Pop or Grandad, surely? ‘How about Papa?’ I suggested, planting a kiss on his prickly cheek. ‘Papa and Lala had a ring to it.’ Philip smiled and nodded sleepy agreement.

Confident I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep, I got up and put the kettle on. A stardust baby had arrived on planet earth. She wasn’t ours, but with any luck part of her life would be entwined with ours in a dance of parenthood two steps removed. No broken nights or parent–teacher interviews, but plenty of excuses to go to the zoo, see Disney on Ice and act like a kid again.