The real head-offices of Natural Stuff are in a warehouse in Clerkenwell, fresh and clean and modern, with juicers and bean-bags, unisex toilets, high-speed internet and pinball machines; immense, Warholesque canvases of cows, chickens and crayfish hang on the walls. Part workplace, part teenager’s bedroom, the architects had labelled it not an office, but a ‘dreamspace’ in Helvetica, lower case. But before Dexter is allowed into the dreamspace, he has to learn the ropes. Cal is very keen that all his executives get their hands dirty, so Dexter is on a month-long trainee placement, working as the shadow manager of the latest outpost of the empire. In the last three weeks he has cleaned out the juicers, worn a hairnet to make the sandwiches, ground the coffee, served the customers and, to his surprise, it has been okay. This, after all, is what it’s all about; business is people, as Callum likes to say.
The worst thing about it is the recognition, that flickering look of pity that passes over the customer’s face when they see an ex-TV presenter serving up soup. The ones in their mid-thirties, his contemporaries, they’re the worst. To have had fame, even very minor fame, and to have lost it, got older and maybe put on a little weight is a kind of living death, and they stare at Dexter behind the cash register as one might stare at a prisoner on a chain-gang. ‘You seem smaller in real life,’ they sometimes say, and it’s true, he does feel smaller now. ‘But it’s okay,’ he wants to say, ladling out the Goan-style lentil soup. ‘It’s fine. I’m at peace. I like it here, and it’s only temporary. I’m learning a new business, I’m providing for my family. Would you like some bread to go with that? Wholemeal or multigrain?’
The morning shift at Natural Stuff lasts from 6.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., and after cashing up, he joins the Saturday shoppers on the train to Richmond. Then there’s a boring twenty-minute walk back to the terrace of Victorian houses that are all much, much bigger on the inside than they appear on the outside, until he is home at The House of Colic. As he walks up the garden path (he has a garden path – how did that happen?), he sees Jerzy and Lech closing the front door, and he assumes the matey tone and mild cockney accent that is mandatory when talking to builders, even Polish ones.
‘Cze??! Jak si? masz?’
‘Good evening, Dexter,’ says Lech, indulgently.
‘Mrs Mayhew, she is home?’ You have to change the words round like this; it’s the law.
‘Yes, she’s home.’
He lowers his voice. ‘Today, how are they?’
‘A little . . . tired, I think.’
Dexter frowns and sucks in his breath jokily. ‘So – should I worry?’
‘A little, perhaps.’
‘Here.’ Dexter reaches into his inside pocket, and hands them two contraband Natural Stuff Honey-Date-Oat Bars. ‘Stolen property. Do not tell anyone, yes?’
‘Okay, Dexter.’
‘Do widzenia.’ He steps up to the front door and takes out his key, knowing there’s a good chance that somewhere in the house someone will be crying. Sometimes it seems as if they have a rota.
Jasmine Alison Viola Mayhew is waiting in the hallway, sitting up unsteadily on the plastic dust-sheets that protect the newly stripped floorboards. Small neat, perfect features set in the centre of an oval face, she is her mother in miniature, and once more he has that feeling of intense love tempered with abject terror.
‘Hello, Jas. Sorry I’m late,’ he says, scooping her up, his hands circling her belly, holding her above his head. ‘What kind of day have you had, Jas?’
A voice from the living room. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her that. She’s Jasmine, not Jazz.’ Sylvie lies on the dust-sheet-covered sofa, reading a magazine. ‘Jazz Mayhew is awful. Makes her sound like a saxophonist in some lesbian funk band. Jazz.’
He drapes his daughter over his shoulder and stands in the doorway. ‘Well if you’re going to name her Jasmine, she’s going to get called Jas.’
‘I didn’t name her, we named her. And I know it’s going to happen, I’m just saying I don’t like it.’
‘Fine, I’ll completely change the way I talk to my daughter.’
‘Good, I’d like that.’
He stands at the end of the sofa, glances at his watch showily, and thinks A new world record! I’ve been home, what, forty-five seconds, and already I’ve done something wrong! The remark has just the right mix of self-pity and hostility; he likes it, and is about to say it out loud, when Sylvie sits and frowns, her eyes wet, hugging her knees.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’ve had an awful day.’
‘What’s up?’
‘She doesn’t want to sleep at all. She’s been awake all day, every single minute since five this morning.’
Dexter puts one fist on his hip. ‘Well sweetheart, if you gave her the decaff, like I told you . . .’ But this kind of banter doesn’t come naturally to Dexter, and Sylvie does not smile.
‘She’s been crying, and whimpering all day, it’s so hot outside, and so boring inside, with Jerzy and Lech banging away and, I don’t know, I’m just frustrated, that’s all.’ He sits, puts his arm around her and kisses her forehead. ‘I swear, if I have to walk around that bloody park again I’ll scream.’
‘Not long now.’
‘I walk round the lake and round the lake and over to the swings and round the lake again. You know the highlight of my day? I thought I’d run out of nappies. I thought I’m going to have to go to Waitrose and get some nappies, and then I found some nappies. I found four nappies and I was so excited.’
‘Still, back to work next month.’
‘Thank God!’ She keels over, her head against his shoulder and sighs. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t go tonight.’
‘No, you’ve got to! You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks!’
‘I’m not really in the mood for it – a hen night. I’m too old for hen nights.’
‘Rubbish—’
‘And I worry—’
‘Worry about what, about me?’
‘Leaving you on your own.’
‘Well I’m thirty-five years old, Sylvie, I’ve been in a house by myself before. And anyway, I won’t be alone, I’ve got Jas to look after me. We’ll both be fine, won’t we, Jas? Min. Jasmine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’ She doesn’t trust me, he thinks. She thinks I’ll drink. But I won’t. No I won’t.
The hen night is for Rachel, the thinnest and most mean-spirited of his wife’s friends, and a hotel suite has been hired for the sleepover, complete with a handsome cocktail waiter to use as they see fit. A limo, a restaurant, a table at a night-club, brunch the next day, it has all been planned through a series of bossy emails to ensure no possibility of spontaneity or joy. Sylvie won’t be back until the following afternoon, and for the first time Dexter is to be left in charge overnight. She stands in the bathroom, putting on make-up and watching over him as he kneels to give Jasmine her bath.
‘So put her down around eight, okay? That’s in forty minutes.’
‘Fine.’
‘There’s plenty of formula, and I’ve pureed the veggies.’ Veggies – that’s annoying, the way she says veggies. ‘They’re in the fridge.’
‘Veggies in the fridge, I know that.’
‘If she doesn’t like it, there’s some ready-made jars in the cupboard, but they’re only for emergencies.’
‘And what about crisps? I can give her crisps, can’t I? If I brush the salt off—’
Sylvie clicks her tongue, shakes her head, applies lipstick. ‘Support her head.’
‘—and salted nuts? She’s old enough, isn’t she? Little bowl of peanuts?’ He turns to look at her over his shoulder on the off-chance that she might be smiling, and is startled, as he often is, by how beautiful she looks, dressed simply but elegantly in a short black dress and high heels, her hair still damp from the shower. He takes one hand from Jasmine’s bath, and cups his wife’s brown calf. ‘You look amazing, by the way.’
‘Your hands are wet.’ She twists her leg away. They haven’t made love for six weeks now. He had anticipated a certain coldness and irritability after the birth, but it’s been a while, and sometimes there’s a look she gives him, a look of – no, not contempt, but—
‘Wish you were coming back tonight,’ he says.
– disappointment. That’s it. Disappointment.
‘Watch out for Jasmine – support her head!’
‘I know what I’m doing!’ he snaps back. ‘For Christ’s sake!’
And there it is again, the look. There’s no doubt about it, if Sylvie had a receipt, she would have taken him back by now; this one’s gone wrong. It’s not what I wanted.
The doorbell rings.
‘That’s my taxi. If there’s an emergency, call my mobile, not the hotel, okay?’ and she bends and taps her lips on the top of Dexter’s head, then leans into the bath, and gives a second more persuasive kiss to her daughter. ‘Goodnight, my precious. Look after daddy for me . . .’ Jasmine frowns and pouts and as her mother leaves the bathroom, there is panic in her eyes. Dexter sees this and laughs. ‘Where are you going, Mum?’ he whispers. ‘Don’t leave me with this idiot!’ Downstairs the front door is finally closed. Sylvie has gone, he is on his own and finally free to perform a whole series of idiotic actions.
It all begins with the television in the kitchen. Jasmine is already screaming as Dexter struggles to fasten her into the highchair. She will do this for Sylvie, but now she’s twisting and screaming, a compact parcel of muscle and noise, writhing with surprising strength and for no discernible reason, and Dexter finds himself thinking just learn to talk, will you? Just learn some bloody language and tell me what I’m doing wrong. How much longer until she can speak? A year? Eighteen months? It’s insane, an absurd design error, this refusal to master speech just when it’s needed most. They should come out talking. Not conversation, not repartee, just basic practical information. Father, I have wind. This activity centre leaves me jaded. I am colicky.
Finally she’s in, but is alternating screaming and whining now, and he spoons the food into her mouth when he can, pausing every now and then to remove the smeared puree with the edge of the spoon as if it were a wet shave. In the hope that it might calm her down he turns on the small portable television on the counter, the one that Sylvie disapproves of. Because it’s Saturday peak-viewing time, he inevitably sees Suki Meadows’ face beaming out at him, live from TV Centre where she is bellowing the lottery results at a waiting nation. He feels his stomach contract in a little spasm of envy, then tuts and shakes his head, and is about to change channel when he notices that Jasmine is silent and still, entranced by his ex-girlfriend hollering ‘wahey’.
‘Look, Jasmine, it’s Daddy’s ex-girlfriend! Isn’t she loud? Isn’t she a loud, loud girl?’
Suki is wealthy now and ever more bubbly and famous and loved by the public, and even though they never got on and had nothing in common, he feels nostalgia for his old girlfriend, and for the wild years of his late twenties when his photo was in the papers. What is Suki doing tonight? he wonders. ‘Maybe Daddy should have stuck with her,’ he says aloud, treacherously, thinking back to the nights in black cabs and cocktail lounges, hotel bars and railway arches, the years before Saturdays were spent in a hairnet filling Mediterranean wraps.
Now Jasmine is crying again because somehow she has sweet potato in her eye, and as he wipes it away he feels the necessity of a cigarette. Why shouldn’t he, after the day he’s had, why shouldn’t he treat himself? His back aches, a blue plaster is unpeeling from his thumb, his fingers smell of crayfish and old coffee, and he decides he needs a treat. He needs the gift of nicotine.
Two minutes later he is pulling on the baby harness, getting that little macho can-do thrill from the straps and buckles, as if hauling on a jet pack. He crams the crying Jasmine into the front, then sets out with real purpose down the long dull tree-lined street to that boring little arcade of shops. How did he get here, he wonders, a shopping arcade in Surrey on a Saturday night? It’s not even Richmond proper, just a suburb of a suburb, and he thinks once again of Suki, out on the town somewhere with her attractive girlfriends. Maybe he could phone her once Jasmine is asleep, just to say hello. Have a drink, phone an old girlfriend; why not?
At the off-licence there’s a tingle of anticipation as he pushes open the door and is immediately confronted by a high sheer wall of booze. Since the pregnancy there has been a policy of not keeping alcohol in the house in order to deter casual, everyday drinking. ‘I’m just bored of sitting on a sofa on a Tuesday night,’ said Sylvie, ‘while you get drunk alone,’ and taking this as a challenge he has stopped, more or less. But now he finds himself in an off-licence, and there seems to be so much great stuff here and it all looks so nice that it seems silly not to take advantage. Spirits and beers, wines white and red, he takes it all in and buys two bottles of good Bordeaux, just to be on the safe side, and twenty cigarettes. Then, because why not, he goes to the Thai take-away.
Soon the sun is setting and Jasmine is falling asleep on his chest as he walks briskly home down the pleasant streets to the neat little house that will be lovely when it’s finished. He goes to the kitchen and without removing the sleeping baby from his sling, opens the bottle and pours a glass, his arms curled awkwardly around the bundle like a ballet dancer. He looks at the glass, almost ritualistically, then drains it, and thinks: not drinking would be so much easier if it wasn’t so delicious. He closes his eyes, leans against the counter top as the tension goes out of his shoulders. There was a time when he used alcohol as a stimulant, something to lift his spirits and give him energy, but now he drinks like all parents drink, as a kind of early evening sedative. Feeling calmer, he props up the sleeping baby in a little nest of cushions on the sofa and enters the small, suburban garden: a rotary clothes line surrounded by timber and bags of cement. He keeps the baby harness on, letting it hang loose like a shoulder holster so that he might almost be an off-duty cop, homicide division, a jaded romantic, moody but dangerous, moonlighting with a little bit of childcare in Surrey. All he needs to complete the impression is a cigarette. It is his first for two weeks, and he lights it reverently, savouring that delicious first taste, sucking so hard that he can hear the tobacco crackle. Burning leaves and petrol, it tastes of 1995.
His brain gradually empties of work, of falafel wraps and oaty squares, and he starts to feel hopeful for the evening; perhaps he’ll acquire that state of peaceful inactivity that is the nirvana of the exhausted parent. He pushes the butt deep into a pile of sand, retrieves Jasmine, tip-toes quietly up the stairs to her room and pulls down the blackout blinds. Like a master safe-cracker, he is going to change her nappy without waking her up.
As soon as he lays her on the changing mat she wakes and starts to cry again, that awful rasping cry. Breathing through his mouth, he changes her as quickly and efficiently as he can. Part of the positive press about having a baby was how inoffensive baby poo was, how poo and wee lost their taint and became, if not fun, at least innocuous. His sister had even claimed that you could ‘eat it on toast’, so benign and fragrant was this ‘poo’.