Sticks and Stones 15

This afternoon, when she showed me her crotch for the first time in a week while she nursed a fresh migraine on the sofa in front of French TV and the fire I’d just made, I told her, in no uncertain terms, that she had the most beautiful fanny I’d ever seen.
‘Seriously, Suze,’ I implored to her. ‘You’ve got the most beautiful vagina in the world.’
I told her that she was lucky to have the chance to have a baby at forty-one, that her children were all beautiful, vibrant and intelligent, and she agreed, beginning to cry again.
I told her that we were lucky to have a good sex-life at our age, because the Daily Mail said that, on average, we only get one year of passionate love in a relationship.
When she still wouldn’t take her trousers off, I went so low as to tell her that I’d have to look elsewhere to tame the beast in my pants.
‘You can’t put ultimatums on me, because it won’t work.’
I stopped asking for sex that evening. I discounted even a sniff of it when Suzie told me I was being ‘ridiculous’ (the one word that makes me shrivel up and crawl away). I knew then that I’d have to wait till tomorrow morning, when I would pounce like a tiger.
On the other hand, we’re seeing the gynaecologist at ten-fifteen, and I can’t see her giving in to a quickie before we go there. I think I’ll have to bide my time.
‘You’ll have to get the snip,’ she told me, to which I laughed.
‘No way,’ I replied, adding a finger-tapping nostril and half-closed eyes. ‘I’ll just be ultra careful.’
‘I’ll have to go on the pill,’ she said.
‘There’s no point, you’re pregnant anyway,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you just let me get on with it?’
It’s now Saturday lunchtime. I could be watching Football Focus at home, but I’m here in this electrically heated flat, slipperless on a tiled floor, still unable to get a connection to Wanadoo to check out the BBC’s website.
Yesterday was a typical day for plans being wrecked. Maddy was still ill, so we hung out all day and Clara charged around the house, only stopping for puzzles, play-doh, videos and food.
Suzie went to see the gynaecologist alone. I couldn’t go because the children still don’t know about the baby.
She said it went well, telling me about the little thing inside her on the screen.
‘It’s already got hands and legs and a nose, Jim,’ she said, lost in emotion. ‘We can’t kill it.’ Then, her eyes filled up with the tears of the baby inside her.
‘Of course we can’t kill it, Suzie,’ I replied, taking her around the waist and pulling her close. ‘I’d never want that.’
By the look in her eyes, I could tell she thought I was just angling for an easy inroad to sex by holding her close. She put on her timid look and turned her face away, leaving me with the back end of her left cheek and a bit of hair to talk to.
‘There are plenty of women out there who wouldn’t think twice about abortion, Suze,’ I said, and her face slowly turned back to me. ‘But not you. You’re a real woman. There’s not a bad bone in your body and you should be grateful for that. Tell me, how many women out there have three absolutely stunning children and the chance to round it off nicely with a fourth? Not that many, huh? Maybe one in a thousand? That’s how lucky you are, Suzie.’
But she’d spotted another chink in my wording. She looked me straight in the eye.
‘You wanted to get me pregnant again, didn’t you?’ she said sternly, as if she’d suddenly understood.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ I replied.
‘You are the reason this baby is inside me, Jim.’
‘I know that, but you can’t say it’s all my fault.’
I suddenly remembered the evening we’d arrived at the Angel Hotel in Guildford and how I’d shagged her without thinking it through. Clara was busy watching a DVD at the end of the very large bed as I came inside Suzie lazily. We’d all driven up from Toulouse in the Rover the night before and I was tired beyond belief. That two-second delay was vital.
Finally, I told her about the night when she conceived, conceding that I’d been to blame all along.
She took it well, considering what was at stake (her entire liberty for the next three years).
‘You’ll need to get a job, Jim,’ she said, provocatively.
‘Look,’ I replied. ‘If the writing doesn’t work out here in the next six months, we’ll all go back to England and I’ll start my own painting business, OK? We’ll rent a nice house with a garden and a garage in a nice part of wherever you choose for us to be.’
She gave me a few ultimatums after that. I agreed to her demands and we left it there so I could zoom around the house with Clara for a while.
Maddy and I went to visit our new doctor just after lunch. Dr Filet turned out to be a good sort. We talked about Maddy’s problematic schooling in France and the fog, something the doctor believed contributed to the high incidence of flu and other infections in the area, to which Maddy wasn’t immune, having caught everything going. She’s been ill a lot of the time in France and I worry about her at school.
I seem to have found where my cut-off point is in a day at the house. It’s at about seven, just after I’ve done dinner for the kids, but forgotten to cook for Suzie and I.
I was asked to clean out the cat litter tray, and that’s when I started to swear to myself.
From under the heated blanket of my breath, indignation to cat pee and poo rose and I started to swear out loud.
‘Fuckin’ cats,’ I said, with the horrible tinges of laziness and seriousness that Suzie hates so much in me.
‘If I’m not clearing them off tables of food, I’m scraping their fuckin’ shit off a tray and wet-wiping it.’
Luckily, the children were on the piano and Clara had fallen asleep in front of SpongeBob upstairs, so I thought I’d get away with it. But no.
There was Suzie, ready to hack me down to size for letting Clara fall asleep so early. My insipid tongue’s vitriol didn’t help matters.
‘It’s alright for you,’ she said. ‘You can just go off to your flat or to the bar, get some food in a restaurant, whatever! Your day’s done, isn’t it? Whereas I have to carry on.’ She was fuming. ‘Clara’s fallen asleep, Jim, which means she’ll be up again in four hours and I get no sleep all night.’
‘I only came down to make her supper, Suze. I can’t be in two places at once. Besides, I’m supposed to be DJing tonight. I need to get the decks and speakers into the car and set them up in the next two hours. My day’s not done by any stretch of the imagination.’
I left in a huff and got to the bar by nine with all the kit. I couldn’t set up because some people were sitting in the place I used, a little alcove with a banquette, so I downed a couple of halves and asked them if I could take over at nine-thirty. They agreed.
At nine-thirty, the phone went. It was Suzie, with a screaming Clara in the background.
‘She woke up badly and she’s been asking for you,’ she said. ‘Just say hello so she knows you’re alright.’
I spoke to Clara and I think she tried to explain a bad dream to me.
‘Everything’s fine, darling,’ I told her. ‘Dadda’s only down the road.’
Clara asked for ‘car’, which meant she either wanted to come to Lavaur or for me to go to her, but Suzie thought it a bad idea. She was too tired and it was too late to drag Griff and Maddy out in the driving rain to a dead bar and a dopey Dad.
‘You need the money, Jim,’ she said, and rang off.