Carry on Palazzo!

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I packed my bags for the Boy Child’s first trip to The Fatherland.  Papà A and I may not be your average couple but there are certain traditions that must nevertheless be upheld, including, of course, meeting the in-laws.

I’ve met Papà A’s mother, F, many times over the years. Luckily, we have a certain amount in common- namely a liking for drowning our sorrows in booze, reminiscing about the good old days and the oeuvre of various 1970s chansonnistes. And because I’m not really her daughter-in-law, there’s none of that inconvenient Freudian jealousy about having sex with her son.

So it wasn’t her that was occupying my mind. It was meeting the rest of the extended family. Papà A’s father had 8 siblings, all of whom still live in the family palazzo, which F refers to as ‘The Concentration Camp.’ Ever since A stood up last December at the end of Christmas dinner to announce the imminent arrival of the Boy Child, the family has been desperate to meet the Englishwoman who has stolen his heart, their appetite whetted by the fact that he has never been known to bring a girl home.

On our arrival at F’s other house, where Papà A was brought up, she immediately whisks us into the bar for a military briefing, this being the room deemed most appropriate as it has high ceilings and is therefore suitable for chain-smoking in the presence of babies.  Over gin and tonics for the boys and for F, a mini-can of Heineken, her beverage of choice, she instructs us on how to behave the next day, when we are expected at Aunt I.’s drawing room for coffee.

Apart from F, Papà A’s sister and a trusted cousin, no-one in the family is aware of The Situation, as F likes to call it. She herself made A agree years ago not to come out in Italy until she is no longer alive.  The strategy she has adopted is not to tell any outright lies, but to let us meet, and for them to draw their own conclusions. I am referred to as The Mother of Papà A.’s Child. There is the added complication of T’s presence but we agree that everyone will be so dazzled by the beauty of the Boy Child that they probably won’t notice that he’s there. F’s only other stipulation is that I shouldn’t be seen to breastfeed in the presence of Aunt I., in order not to offend her delicate sensibilities.

‘Of course, the last time she visited us here, the Princess of xxx saw fit to feed her child, and if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for anyone. Still, I think it would be best if you did it elsewhere. We shall have a special sign, so I know when to escort you out.’

I agree, having no desire to whip out my bosoms in front of the whole extended family. It’s bad enough deciding what to wear. My post-partum physique not being quite what I’d like it to be, my wardrobe currently consists of washed out maternity clothes that don’t quite fit, bagging in various places and covered in patches of baby sick. I know this won’t do. I need something demure enough to please the elder aunts but not so much that I look like a frumpy mummy to the younger cousins. And it has to allow me to breastfeed. I bet the Princess of xxx didn’t suffer from this kind of fashion dilemma. She was probably back in her Prada the week after giving birth. Cursing my stumpy peasant ancestors, I decide on a plainish but suitable frock, which is a bit tight, but ok if I cover it with a flowing cardigan.

The next morning the Boy Child, after a strategic feed and change is presented to his grandmother while she has her morning coffee in bed.  After a stern word from Papà A, she has made the concession of not smoking while she holds him. This is a good thing, as the baby, after less than 24 hours in Italy, is beginning to small of fags. Duly presented, he behaves angelically, beaming up at F and thus ensuring that his university education will be paid for.

After lunch in town, during which Papà A, T and I down several glasses of prosecco for Dutch courage, we proceed in stately fashion to Aunt I.’s apartment. This being a special occasion, she has opened the front stairs. As we walk up the enormous stone staircase, looking up at the frescoes on the vaulted ceiling, I experience a moment of mild panic but it’s too late to turn back and so I dutifully follow F to the top where we are met by the lady herself - beautifully coiffed and dressed, jewels discreetly glittering on her elegant fingers.  Aunt I. has the manners and demeanour of another age.  She leads me over polished parquet floors to a salon where, perched on a set of Louis Quinze chairs, is the rest of the family, all agog to meet the latest addition to the family – and of course, me.

I hand over the Boy Child to a posse of aunts and sit straight-backed on a chair next to Aunt I., where we begin to politely converse. She leads the conversation, and I follow, answering questions about whether I come to Italy often, smiling modestly when she compliments me on my Italian, and listening intently to a long, drawn-out story about the Second World War.

‘I’m 86, you know,’ she says, ‘now, do you come to Italy often?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘with Papà A, and now with our baby.’

‘Baby?’ she says vaguely.

It is at this point that the extent of her Alzheimers becomes evident. As we sit, having the same conversation over and over again, I feel a growing sense of sadness at the demise of this tiny, beautiful woman who was clearly once a great hostess.

The next time she asks about the baby, her daughters interrupt.

‘You know who this is, Mum, it’s Papà A’s. Now don’t monopolise Lady V. We need to get to know her too.’

There follows a rapid interrogation. I smile nicely and answer, and smile again, while Papà A lurks behind the sofa. I begin to sweat a little under the rapid–fire questions of the aunts, whose curiosity knows no bounds. They look at us expectantly, as if they are waiting for us to verify our union by shagging on the coffee table like performing seals.

To divert attention, I make the special sign to F, who nods to Papà A. We escape, through a series of shadowy, silent rooms, to the sanctuary of the kitchen where I kick off my shoes and feed the Boy Child.

Papà A grins. ‘Top marks, Lady V. You’re doing marvellously.’

Resisting the temptation to stay in the kitchen and agreeing that we need to rescue T, who is also perched on a chair, ignored by everyone, we return to the drawing room, where another discussion is underway about whether or not to invite another aunt, whom no-one likes, because she’s an enormous gossip, but who lives in another wing, and should really, for form’s sake be included. Papà A decides to put his foot down.

‘This is my child, and I’ll decide whom he should meet.’

The aunts tell him not to be ridiculous and telephone her immediately.

‘What’s her name?’  I ask Papà A.

‘We call her Popeye,’ he whispers. ‘Look at her mouth when she gets here.’

Popeye arrives 5 minutes later, eager for the latest information. Her mouth is drawn to the side, in a little pout of suspicion. The name is cruel but hilariously accurate.

More polite conversation ensues, coffee cups are drained, the little lacquer bowl of chocolates passed around again. I look at the walls, from which the faces of ancestors stare down from paintings, as if they, too, are assessing me and the Boy Child. After a while, F stands up and announces that we are leaving. The aunts rise in unison, and we spend the next half an hour saying our goodbyes.

As we descend the staircase, I look back at Aunt I. She waves vaguely, then turns.

‘Who’s that baby?’ I hear her ask again.

Sticking it inside La France Profonde

We carefully timed our return to the UK so as to escape the Royal Wedding, and with it the mayhem in which London was plunged at the beginning of May. We left our house in Maremma on a sunny Monday morning - the first one really since we had arrived - and made our way north towards Genoa. The long journey from Tuscany to Calais, where we would slip our middle-aged looking Volvo into the belly of a train travelling under the Channel, had to be split over two days, so we chose Provence, with its lavender fields and maritime pines, as the site of our mid-journey stop. T - who had accompanied us on the way down - had to catch a flight back to the UK, as he was due to go to the Americas the following day. So it was down to me and to Lady V to get ourselves and the Boy Child back to Blighty. The first time together, travelling like a ‘real’ family. The bare thought of it made us both shiver with horror.

To make things worse, I had chosen an irritatingly quaint, French-looking and absurdly remote B&B near Avignon for our overnight stay. The reason was that it had a highly-recommended restaurant serving local delicacies. As a matter of fact, we never got to taste the restaurant’s delicacies, because, by the time our Volvo had rolled its carcass into Provence, it was dinnertime, and we were still 2 hours drive from our hotel. We were a few miles from Aix-en-Provence, so we decided to stop there for some food, before proceeding into La France Profonde.

Boy Child strapped to my chest, we set forth into the old cobbled streets of Aix. Lady V was in a nostalgic mood (she always is in France, it’s her Pavlovian reaction to years spent in dimly-lit cafes drinking cheap red wine, smoking red Gauloises and listening to croaky records of Edith Piaf). I stopped listening to her when she started muttering about how the last time she was in Aix she had the most exquisite waxing experience of her lower regions, one that had had a marvellous effect on her burgeoning relationship with DJ S. I switched off the sound of her voice (I am getting pretty good at this) and turned my attention towards the bars that littered the grim squares we crossed on our way. Everything was either closed or empty, which, on a Monday night, is unsurprising in a city like London, let alone a shithole like Aix.

Suddenly, a heaving, brightly-lit restaurant appeared at the horizon, and - ignoring Lady V’s protests about French bistros and her need to have the air filled with old chansons - I grinned and parked myself and the Boy Child onto an outdoor table, under one of those environmentally-disastrous heaters. Only then did I turn my attention to the clientele, and I realised we had hit Aix’s equivalent of London’s Chinawhite. The place was covered in gym-buffed men in Versace suits and women who could have easily been either footballers’ wives or whores. They mingled, eating sushi, eyeing each other up like animals do in the savannah, trying to figure out in one sweeping glance how much muscle/money/silicone the person in front of them hid underneath their clothes.

The waitress welcomed us with a shocked look in her face. At first I thought she was merely displaying French coqueterie, or some other French cultural whim that generally leads them to contract their facial muscles in an attempt to look more interesting than they actually are (look at Sarkosy, for example, and how he always looks like he’s sucking on a lemon). Then I glanced around us and realised people were throwing terrified glances in our direction, the way you would look at a man waving a hand bomb while your plane is 12,000 ft up in the air. And then I realised what they were so afraid of: the Boy Child.

Indeed, just as this realisation sunk into my brain, the Boy Child stiffened his back and let out the loudest, most horrific shriek I have ever heard in a human, and proceeded to scream and shout until Lady V hastily uncovered her large bosom and stuffed his mouth with it. If you think the French are indifferent to female breasts, you’ve never been to Aix-en-Provence. Women’s eyeballs popped out of their sockets, men’s tongues rolled onto the tables, and just about everyone in the restaurant stopped breathing for a few seconds in pure shock at the sight of Lady V’s mammary glands. We had become the restaurant’s freaks. Clearly, couples with babies were not the customary clients of Aix’s wannabe Chinawhite.

We pretended not to notice, chatting amiably while the Boy Child screamed, puked, poo-ed, giggled, yelled and passed out in quick succession. But we knew, for the first time, that the line had been crossed. A few weeks ago, we might have been sitting amongst those hideous looking men and women without any of them ever taking notice of our presence. We could have been one of them, as far as they were concerned. But that little parcel we were carrying with us made all the difference. We were a couple. We were parents. We represented everything that is boring and conventional about life. We were the enemy. We quickly finished our dinner, pretending that nothing had happened, and swiftly asked for l’addition.

And as we rapidly walked away from the restaurant, feeling the still-bulging eyes of the waitresses and customers fixed to the back of our necks, we passed a young couple walking towards it. I eyed him up - a handsome, slender, dark-haired Frenchman with a Jean-Paul Belmondo air about him. Lady V glanced sideways at the girl (I don’t really know what she looked like, but I assume she was pretty and French-looking given the loud swooning sounds Lady V emitted when she was at a safe distance). We turned to each other, Boy Child finally quiet in his Baby Bjorn, and gave each other a grin of sexual complicity. Just your average, boring couple? Mon cul, my dear footballers and footballers’ wives, mon cul...!

Happy now?

Ever since the Boy Child has arrived, it is almost as if everyone I know - alongside a good deal of people I don’t know - has been given a secret instruction to do one of two peculiar things. They either reveal their true identity of worldwide child-raising experts, an identity so far concealed to me, and give me military, punctilious and contradictory instructions on how to narrowly prevent the Boy Child from dying and/or turning into the next Adolf Hitler (due to my obviously bad parenting skills). Or they start mumbling confusedly, clutching at my hands, sometimes even touching my face like I was some sort of thaumaturgic saint, and insist on me conjuring up my full emotional spectrum to explain in excruciating detail why becoming a dad was the HAPPIEST EXPERIENCE in my life. It is easy to deal with the former, all they want is undivided attention and a generous ‘thank you, I’ll bear that in mind next time I change his nappy’. But it is impossible to handle the latter, because they are seeking some form of confirmation, without which it seems their life will become meaningless. Their quest will not stop until I give them what they need to make sense of this bizarre thing we call existence.

The other night, for example, I found myself - in a fairly drunken state - sitting on the pavement with an equally-inebriated pretty young woman whom I barely knew through work, and who insisted on me telling her what exactly had gone through my head the first time I held the Boy Child in my hands. Until then, I had always played by the rules, replying conventionally that I had felt, of course, utter happiness. But since I had had no dinner, and my head was light due to a mixture of bad wine, an unseasonable heatwave and an emotional surge in the wake of my first trip back to Italy since fatherhood, I decided I would tell her the truth: that I did not rank that moment as the happiest in my life. She took it with a mixture of revulsion and pity, like I was suffering from some deadly and contagious disease.

    “But how, frankly, can you say that? Surely this MUST have been the greatest joy of your life!” she insisted.
    “Not really.”
    “But... but... fine, if not the greatest, AT LEAST the second greatest!”

No one in my life had ever asked me “when were you most happy?”, and if they had, I - like most people - would have had no idea what to answer. The first time I had sex? It was pretty boring for all involved. The first time I fell in love? I thought I had indigestion. The day I graduated? I was too hangover to feel anything but a throbbing buzz in my head. Happy? What the hell does happy mean, anyway?

The assumption that the arrival in my lap of the Boy Child should automatically be ranked first amongst the numerous happiness-depicting paintings lined up in some corridor-shaped recess of my brain strikes me as both phenomenally odd and somewhat delusional. If I had a ranking of happy moments, I would probably be a psychopath. Only a psychopath could adopt such a surgical approach to life and emotions. Therefore, I can only conclude that anyone asking me if the Boy Child’s birth was the greatest moment of happiness in my life can only be, by deduction, a psychopath. This realisation about many of my friends has made my social life slightly awkward.

So, what did I really feel when the Boy Child was plonked into my hands? The first thing I felt was a slight weight. 3.2 kg to be precise, with a few extra grams for the nappy and towel he was wrapped in. This was of course the most striking element: he was there, weighing, existing. The physicality of his body brought a sense of reality to what was an experience probably far closer to those I have had under the influence of potent psychedelic drugs. Think about it. My brain had been building up to this moment for months, so when it actually came it was almost like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time, a weird mixture of extremely familiar and totally foreign. My brain had also been awake (cannot say “active”, but for the most part it was active too) since 7 am the previous day. It was now 12:14 pm, so some 29 hours later. No sleep, hardly any food, 1 G&T. Over the course of 29 hours I had:

- found out the waters had broken and giggled profusely about it with Lady V in a supermarket,
- set up the garden room to be as romantic and welcoming as possible (the birthing pool was in there and for some reason I was sure it would be a water-birth),
- accompanied step by step the accelerating contractions, amazed each time not only at Lady V’s capacity to endure them, but at my own capacity not to faint,
- seen Lady V descend from a state of pained elation to one of agonising terror,
- ridden in the back of a midwife’s dusty Chevrolet to a dawn-wrapped hospital,
- seen Lady V be poked, injected, inspected, interrogated and probed some 245 times
- seen Lady V’s pussy in its full glory, which itself would have been shocking enough, but in these circumstances was utterly terrifying.

This is the factual backdrop of the hours preceding the Boy Child’s birth. What is one supposed to FEEL at this point? There is only one answer to this question, and that is: exhaustion. Complete and utter exhaustion. Were WW1 soldiers scared when they went into battle (not that I am comparing)? Of course not. They were exhausted. That’s it. Exhaustion is an all-consuming feeling, it’s a void, it sucks up every other emotion in its proximity. And that is, in all sincerity, the main memory I have of those first moments.

Then, of course, elation. But it was more about the whole ordeal ending, than about the Boy Child’s arrival. Well, of course, I was elated and in wonder for that too, it goes without saying, but having seen Lady V carved up like a turkey, I was simply overjoyed that she could still talk and somewhat smile (mainly inanely at the Boy Child, who in return gazed at me with the expression of someone wondering if he’s met you before).

And then there was that other, strange feeling, a mixture of the other two, which usually happens after 3 days at Glastonbury under the influence of a lot of different drugs that at this point have created a potent cocktail in your blood stream and sets you a few feet apart from everything that’s happening, like an invisible observer of the world that unfolds beneath your gaze. I felt - pretty much like Lady V had a few hours earlier - like I was high. And yet, I had taken nothing at all. It was a strange, stoned feeling of being elsewhere and seeing things unfold on a screen in front of me. A feeling of detachment and yet engagement.

Yes. It was totally weird. And frankly, do you think the word ‘happy’ could summarise all this? ‘Happy’ like in ‘Happy-meal’? Oh please. The next time someone comes up to me and asks if the Boy Child’s birth was the happiest moment of my life, I think I’ll simply answer ‘no’, and walk away leaving them shacking and wondering whether they should step in front of a bus and put an end to it all.

Scenes from family life

Ten days after The Boy Child’s birth, when the visitors have finally left, A and I have dinner at home: a large steak and roast potatoes washed down with red wine. My vegetarianism has relaxed somewhat since I had the excuse of needing iron during pregnancy.

A: You know, this is the first time we’ve ever had dinner in the house together alone.

V: Wow.

Brief pause while we digest this fact.

V (weepily): You know, I feel very attached to you and The Boy Child these days.

A: (dreamily): I keep having fantasies that you both die in a terrible accident. And then I’m free.

V: ?!?!

A: It's ok, my book on fatherhood said I’d feel like this.

V: Oh, well, that’s alright then.

Silence.

---------------------------------------------------

Dirty Uncle F comes back from a conference in Brussels. No-one really knows what he does for a living, but it seems to involve lots of first class travel to various parts of Europe wearing brightly coloured ties.

He is in an excellent mood, laden with chocolates and little jars of foie gras, his favourite food, especially in front of vegetarians.

F (smirking): I was talking to the ex-president of the Basque region at a function. I told him about our situation. Our family. I was asked if I was in a relationship with A. And you, Mummy. A ménage a trois.

V: And what did you say?

F (through a mouthful of foie gras): I told him everyone should live with lesbians! They are wonderful! The highest form of evolution!

DJ S: ?!?!

F (swilling down a glass of wine): They are excellent! They do womanly things like you, Mummy, like reproduce, and fixing things around the house, like you, Boyfriend. They are like normal women but much better. They are self-sufficient! Everyone should adopt one!

V: Normal women?

F (ignoring her): And gay men are the least evolved. They combine the worst of straight men with the homosexual bits. They are predatory and, they are vain. Quite useless.

A: Even you, Uncle F?

F: Especially me.

He pulls out a sheaf of magazines from his briefcase.

F: These are for you Mummy. I got them on the train.

I look at the selection.

V: Brides Magazine? The Lady?

F (shrugging): What? You need to prepare. You should be married. Either to Boyfriend or to Papà A. You are a mother now, after all. You should be respectable.

V (sternly): And The Lady?

F: What is it? I just picked up magazines for females. I don’t know what they mean.

V: The Lady is for upper class women from the Home Counties. It has articles on the best gardening gloves to buy and what to bake for village fetes.  It’s where you advertise for nannies and maids.

F: Perfect! We need staff!  And you should be like this, looking after all of us.

V: I will never become that sort of woman. Never.

Two days later, while feeding The Boy Child, I pick up the copy of The Lady. By the time he’s finished eating, I realise that I am engrossed in an article on herbaceous borders…

---------------------------------------------------

Sunday morning. A and I are trying to fill in the Census.

A: Oh god, we have to explain everyone’s relationship to each other.

V: Let’s start with the The Boy Child. He’s easiest.

We fill in his section, marking me as mother and A as father.

A: And we can do you and DJ S.  Partners.

V: And Uncle F?

A: Mark him as other. Oh, and when you’re filling in nationality, don’t put him as Italian. He’ll want to be European.

V: OK.

Pause.

V: So what about us?

We go through the options.

A: Well we’re not married, so not that one.

V: And not civil partners.

A: We’re sort of partners where The Boy Child’s concerned. But you’re already down as DJ S’s partner, so we can’t put that.

V: Hmm. And ‘no relation’ doesn’t quite work either.

We stare at the form. There is no box that describes what we are. In the end we just put Other. We post off the form, wondering what the statisticians will make of it.