William’s Progress. Matt Rudd
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Then he’ll be smoking cigarettes behind the hut over there. Then he’ll be sitting on this bench with his own baby, thinking about the future.
This is it now. This is my life. It is all mapped out. My plans to resign from my boring office job, retrain as a sailor and enter the Vendée round-the-world yacht race have been put on hold indefinitely. Ditto resigning and moving to a yurt on the Mongolian steppe. Or resigning and moving to Buenos Aires to drink heavy red wine and master the tango. Adventure and unpredictability have vanished, or rather, they have been condensed into the child looking up at me right now. I think this is probably fine.
‘Are you looking for salvation?’ A man in an anorak is peering down at me through milk-bottle glasses.
‘Sorry?’
‘You look sad. Are you looking for salvation?’
I notice he is clutching a pile of pamphlets entitled Let Jesus Save You. Right now, this seems unlikely. Can’t a parent sit in peace mulling over lost freedoms without being God-bothered? I tell him I’d love to be saved, but I have a nappy to change and it’s going to be a big one. So he leaves.
Sunday 20 January
Alex, newly gay and newly full of joie de vivre, has popped round with Geoff to give us our baby present.
‘Surely the tropical rainforest you sent over was ample?’ I ask innocently.
‘Don’t be silly, dears. This is the greatest moment in your lives – ever. Flowers alone would not suffice. Geoff and I have been talking and, well, we’ve decided we would like to give you something very special indeed.’
Oh, God.
‘Something to mark this wonderful time in your lives.’
This is going to be bad.
‘Your three lives.’
He grips Geoff’s hand, and then Isabel’s. Like he’s Madonna about to walk on stage.
‘Geoff and I would like to design your bathroom for you.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, babes. You wanted it done before Baby arrived, but Willy was too busy at work to do it. We can do it for you. Geoff and I. This country’s newest and hottest interior design team. And I know you’re going to say it’s a bad time, but I promise you won’t even notice the work going on. You’ll blink and it will all be done.’
‘But—’
‘Didn’t I say no buts, babes? You’ve done the nursery yourselves, and look what a mess that is. I simply can’t let you ruin the bathroom, too. Now, here are the catalogues. I’m thinking this bath. And these taps. And Geoff was thinking an LED mirror with a built-in sensor, weren’t you, Geoff? You twenty-first-century designer, you.’
And that was Geoff’s cue. Until then, he’d been uncharacteristically quiet, but he made up for it now with a twenty-five-minute speech on how our bathroom would be the bathroom to set the new standard for all bathrooms. And then he just started saying random words. Light. Space. Air. Movement. Energy. Calm. Length. Girth. Swirling vortex. Drip. Drop. Drip. Movement.
‘You already said movement,’ I point out.
‘Movement. Movement. Movement,’ he continues.
Nothing good will come of this.
Monday 21 January
Don’t tell Isabel. Nobody tell her, for goodness’ sake. This must be our little secret. But, oh my, the joy! The joy of leaving home, of bidding farewell to my beloved wife and my beloved three-week-old child, of strolling to the station on a crisp winter morning, buying a coffee, boarding a train and sitting unmolested for forty-five whole minutes – no, more than forty-five minutes because the train is delayed due to the late running of an earlier service. No crying. No screaming. No panicking.
Bliss.
Let the train be delayed all day. Let me sit here in this railway siding, staring into space, dribbling a bit like a baby but not with a baby that I have to worry about all the time. Even when the pointy-faced little woman sitting next to me still doesn’t move her bag on to her lap when I ask politely, I refuse to let the bliss dissipate. I simply open my paper as unthoughtfully as possible, allowing its pages to encroach on her personal space. I have had enough practice of commuter one-upmanship to remain unflustered in the face of pointy-faced rudeness.
The bliss lasts until the minute I get to work. Even though he only sits two desks away, Johnson sends me an e-mail: ‘Welcome back. And by the way, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up to speed with the Media Guardian and I’m sorry I didn’t mention this before, though I was being thoughtful because you were having a baby, but did you know that Anastasia has been made Editor?’
‘Corridor. Now,’ I reply.
He isn’t joking. Anastasia, who was work experience less than eighteen months ago, has been appointed the youngest-ever editor of Life & Times magazine. The teenager over whom I once threw a cup of (cold) tea because she was so irritatingly efficient is now the boss. I start strangling the water cooler.
‘Not having anger-management issues again, are we, Walker?’
It’s her: our four-year-old boss.
‘No, no, he isn’t,’ mumbles Johnson. ‘He was telling me how much fun being a dad is. Turns out not much fun at all. Hahahaha.’
‘Johnson, a baby is a lifestyle choice. We mustn’t feel sorry for people who opt to procreate. Even idiots could grasp the fundamentals of a condom if they wanted to. Now, conference in fifteen minutes. And I want some fresh ideas for front of book. It’s looking tired. Tireder than poor Walker here.’
I go back home that evening wondering how best to break it to Isabel. In the end, I opt for the direct approach.
‘Isabel, I’m afraid I have to resign. Anastasia has become Editor.’
‘Oh no, you don’t. You have a family to support. We can’t live on my maternity leave. Now take Jacob. I’ve had him all day.’
And the matter is closed.
Thursday 24 January
It has occurred to me that now I am a dad with a bitch for a boss, the train is the only place where I can relax. At home, I appear to have developed a sensor on my arse that triggers an order from Isabel. Every time I sit down, no matter how gingerly, I set off the sensor: ‘Darling, I’m breast-feeding. Could you pass a muslin?’
I get up, I get the muslin from all the way upstairs, I come back, I sit down and I trigger the sensor again.
‘Sorry, darling. And a glass of water.’
Repeat. ‘And another cushion.’
Repeat.
‘Could you not group your requests in some way?’ I ask. And this makes her apologise and so I feel terrible. But, really.
At work, Anastasia is on my case. She breaks up a group of people ahhing at the new baby photo on my desk. She barks at me every time I look like I’m about to drop off (which is frequently, because the sofa bed doesn’t provide quite the blissful night’s sleep I had initially hoped for). She criticises my poor grammar, even though it isn’t poor at all. Not really.
The train is all I have left. No one can bark at me on the train. And the sensor on my arse is out of range. And this is the reason why I won’t let the pointy-faced woman who keeps hogging one and a half seats on my carriage annoy me. She is short. She is ginger. Life cannot have been easy for her. This is her way of getting her own back on the world. I won’t rise to it.