Moving On

Motherhood

Motherhood

ELLEN WAS BESOTTED, SMITTEN, OBSESSED, LOVE-struck. As soon as her daughter – her daughter! – was placed on her chest, red and bawling, a new order was heralded in, with Juliet at its centre. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, creamy-skinned once the crying abated, and utterly adorable. In possession of all her fingers and toes – the tiny nails! The minuscule knuckles! Six pounds and thirteen ounces of perfection.

Three days later Leo took them home, and days and nights blurred as Juliet’s demands to be fed and changed and bathed and fed again took over. When Leo returned to work after a week, Ellen spent nights on a day bed in the nursery so he could get the sleep he needed to function.

She and Juliet travelled through the days together, Ellen woozy with tiredness but still blissfully content. Everything was new, everything was miraculous. Leo came home with takeaway dinners, and sometimes Ellen ate them and sometimes she didn’t. Food became something she snatched while Juliet slept, before tumbling into sleep next to her. In the two months following Juliet’s birth she lost all the pregnancy weight, and the further half stone she’d long wanted to shed.

Leo presented her with a ring. It was a thin white-gold circle studded with tiny rubies, her birthstone.

‘Thank you,’ she said, sliding it on to her finger, smothering the voice that whispered It should have been another .

She sent photos to her mother and Joan and Frances and Danny. We’d be happy if you’d like to come and see her , she wrote to her mother, and you’d be welcome to stay with us .

Congratulations , her mother’s brief response read. I hope you and your daughter are keeping well, and you’re getting enough rest. No reference was made to Ellen’s invitation – and again, Leo might not have existed.

She’s a beautiful child, God bless her , Frances wrote. Bring her home to meet us all as soon as you can. She sent a tiny hat and bootees in soft pale green wool.

Can’t believe you’re a parent , Danny wrote. I’m afraid to show Bobbi in case she gets broody. I’m far too young to settle down. His card was accompanied by a set of Winnie-the-Pooh books, and the sight of them jolted a long-forgotten memory: the same set in Danny’s family home, one of his older sisters reading them to Ellen and Danny.

Joan sent a rag doll with painted red circles for cheeks. Ivan can’t wait to meet his little cousin , she wrote. Come as soon as you can. Ellen wondered how she could bring Juliet to see his cousin and not call to her mother’s house in the same town.

In the weeks that followed Juliet’s arrival Claire dropped around most Sundays, her only day off work, and ordered Ellen to bed for the afternoon while she and Leo attended to Juliet and made a roast chicken dinner according to the instructions Ellen had stuck to the fridge.

‘You need a nanny,’ Claire said.

‘I’ve ordered one’ – and ten days before she was due back to work, Maggie arrived for an interview.

She’s a widow , Laura had told her. She had five of her own kids and now they’re grown and she’s looking for nanny work. She was a nurse before she married, but she gave it up when the kids arrived. She’s Irish too, from Mayo.

Maggie was squat and square and buxom, with a mop of bleached hair that looked like it never saw a comb and a wide gap-toothed smile that narrowed her eyes to slits. She called Juliet a pure dote, and took her from Ellen and placed her against her shoulder, and Juliet settled as if she belonged there.

‘Tell me everything,’ Maggie said, so Ellen brought her around and pointed out all the baby paraphernalia, and told her of the feeding schedule she was trying to stick to, and showed her the list of emergency phone numbers on the fridge door, and all the time Maggie cradled Juliet, her free hand making slow circles on the baby’s back.

Over tea, she told Ellen of her marriage to the Irish builder she’d met in a London dancehall in the fifties, and the children who were scattered now, and the death of the builder when he’d fallen from scaffolding five years ago, a few months before his planned retirement.

‘I went back nursing then,’ she said, ‘just agency work, nothing permanent, but it wasn’t the same. I think I was out of it too long, so I told Laura I wanted to be a nanny. I was bringing up children far longer than I was nursing.’

She was too good to be true. Juliet would be in the safest hands in London.

‘Please come and work for us,’ Ellen said, and Maggie told her she’d be delighted, and the next new regime beckoned.

‘Am I glad to see you back,’ Lucinda said on Ellen’s return. ‘There are three briefs waiting for your magic’ – and Ellen shrugged off her guilt at abandoning Juliet and set to work, and found to her relief that motherhood and its attendant exhaustion hadn’t robbed her of ideas.

In September, Marguerite came to view her new grandchild. She booked into a nearby hotel for two nights, and brought a stack of adorable little cotton dresses and a soft sweater in palest blue for Ellen. She called Juliet ma petite , and crooned softly to her in French, and in three days she managed to avoid being alone with Ellen.

Claire’s Sunday-afternoon visits petered to twice-monthly ones. On rainy days she and Ellen would listen to music in the living room while Leo tended to Juliet; when the sun shone they would put the baby into her pram and wheel her across to the square’s private little park so she could watch the neighbourhood children scampering about.

‘So how’s it going,’ Claire asked one day, ‘with you and Leo?’

They were sitting on their usual bench, Juliet propped in her pram. ‘Fine,’ Ellen said. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered if a baby made any difference, or if you two are still madly in love.’

Ellen laughed. ‘We don’t have time to be madly in love these days, but everything’s OK.’

It was true they didn’t reach for each other in bed as frequently as they used to, but Ellen put that down to the turned-on-its-head world of new parents, both in full-time employment. ‘Wait till you become a mam,’ Ellen said. ‘You’ll understand how sex has to take a back seat for a while.’

‘That’ll never happen.’

‘It’ll never take a back seat? I think you’ll find you won’t have a choice.’

‘No, I mean I’ll never be a mam.’

Ellen looked at her in astonishment. ‘Why would you say that?’ Maybe the abortion had done damage.

‘Because I like my single life too much.’

‘Well, yes, for a while, when you’re young, but eventually you’ll meet someone you want to settle down with. Everyone does – or most people do.’

Claire shifted her gaze to the playing children. ‘I did meet someone,’ she said, ‘but he was taken, so I’ve given up on that idea.’

‘You met someone? Here in London? Was he married?’

A short silence – and then Claire turned to her and laughed. ‘Your face! I’m joking. You’re so easy to fool. But I mean it about never settling down: far too many men out there. I’ll be footloose and fancy-free – and childless – to my grave. No offence, goddaughter,’ reaching forward to stroke Juliet’s cheek, ‘but I’m glad you belong to someone else.’

Was it true? Did she really never want to make a life with anyone, never see children in her future? Ellen had always assumed both of them would marry – but now it seemed that neither of them might ever walk down an aisle on someone’s arm.

She had Leo, though, and Juliet. Sad to think of Claire with nobody, just a series of never-ending one-night stands or short-lived flings. Who would want that kind of life?

When Juliet was five months old, Ellen and Leo took her to Ireland. Joan had organised lunch at her house and invited their mother, to save Ellen having to visit the family home. When she arrived, she greeted Ellen cordially enough, if without any great affection, and she was stiffly polite to Leo – but she reserved the bulk of her attention for her granddaughter.

She took her on her lap and regarded her solemnly, and declared her to have the Sheehan chin. Ellen was grateful that at least she was being acknowledged, even if it was just within the four walls of Joan and Seamus’ house. After lunch, Ellen and Leo moved on to Galway, where they were to spend the night after dining with Frances.

You can stay with me , Frances had said, but Ellen told her they’d already booked into a hotel. Frances’ house wasn’t set up for a baby guest – and although she seemed to have accepted the fact that Leo and Ellen weren’t married, Ellen felt reluctant to spend a night with him under her aunt’s roof, even if he was assigned the tiny boxroom. Better to stay in neutral territory.

When Frances opened the door, she was leaning on a stick. ‘The hip is at me,’ she said. ‘It comes and goes.’ She limped ahead of them into the kitchen and sat heavily at the table. ‘Leo,’ she said, ‘set the table; plates are heating on top of the cooker. Ellen, give me the child and serve up, it’s ready to go.’ She held Juliet, who’d slept in the car and was still drowsy. ‘Beautiful child,’ she said. ‘Some beauty you are.’

Leaving her later, Ellen asked if she’d consider taking a UCG student into the house. ‘You could charge a low rent in return for her doing a bit of housework, and maybe grocery shopping, just to give you a break,’ she said, and the old Frances reared up.

‘What would I want a break for? I told you it’s just the hip – I’m not helpless or senile yet! Next thing you’ll be putting me into a nursing home!’

Ellen told her she wouldn’t dare try, and promised to come back for another visit as soon as she could, and went away reassured. Under the frail exterior, the staunch heart and iron will were alive and well.

In London Maggie continued to be a godsend, and Juliet reached the usual milestones – sitting up, teething, crawling, moving onto solid food. Ellen bought half a dozen tubs of Babygloop yogurt, and a share of every tub found its way onto her daughter’s hair, face and clothes.

‘What was that about no messing in your ad?’ Leo asked.

Ellen laughed. ‘Good job I added the disclaimer at the end.’

A month before Juliet turned one, Joan phoned to tell Ellen she was pregnant again. ‘We thought it was time Ivan had a brother or sister. I’m actually sorry we didn’t start trying a bit earlier – would have been lovely to have them close in age like we were. You should go again soon, Ellen.’

‘Give me a chance,’ Ellen protested, laughing. ‘I’m still learning.’ But it wasn’t that: despite the lack of sleep and extra work that went along with motherhood, she loved the idea of having another baby. It was Leo.

One is all we need , he’d said, soon after Juliet was born, and Ellen had been too full of bliss to argue. But she would argue. She would convince him, in time.

A day after Joan’s phone call, Juliet took her first step. Ellen, in the act of putting a box of cereal away, turned to see her daughter, arms outstretched, put one tiny foot forward and connect it with the floor before thumping down on her behind.

‘Oh!’ She crossed the room and scooped up the startled child and danced around the kitchen with her, and told Leo in great excitement when he got home from the dentist what he had missed.

The day before her first birthday Juliet said Mama clearly – and Ellen, chatting with Maggie as the nanny put her coat on, promptly burst into loud tears, which in turn made her daughter cry.

‘Hope Mama won’t frighten Juliet every time she says a new word,’ Leo commented when Ellen reported the incident. ‘It might just give the wrong message.’

‘Mama will try to contain herself,’ she promised.

With a full-time job, and a small daughter waiting to occupy her out-of-work hours, time began to play tricks on her. Days galloped along, weeks tumbled into months, whole seasons whirled past without giving her a chance to grab onto them. Before she knew it, Juliet was turning two.

And once in a while, still, she would glimpse someone on a Tube or on the street who reminded her of Ben – the way he walked, the set of his shoulders, the sound of his laugh – and she would experience a tiny residual squeeze of her heart.

But Ben was in her past, and if her life was hectic now it was good too, and she was happy.