‘Give her to me.’
Sam shushed the baby and took her back, feeling a sense of relief as India’s tiny body was nestled against her. She was good at this, she thought. There were so many things she could do with her baby. If the tablets meant the anxiety was kept at bay and the joy of motherhood could flood in, then she would take them as long as she needed them.
‘Your generation can decide not to have kids. Or you can simply say you’re not the stay-at-home type, go out to work and people think you are amazing. In my day, that didn’t happen,’ went on her mother, as if this was a speech she’d rehearsed. ‘It was different then. Being a mother was your job and if you messed up that job, it didn’t matter how good you were at anything else.’
‘So why did you have children?’ Sam didn’t know where the words came from but it felt good to get them out. ‘What was the point of giving birth to children if you had no interest in them? Because you didn’t, you left all that to Dad. He was the one who took care of us, who brought us for ice creams and for walks in the park. You wouldn’t even let us get a dog. No dog, you said, because a dog might require looking after or walking or cleaning up of dog shit, and yes, I know you told us all often enough, was there anything worse than baby poo.’
She had put on her mother’s elegant voice for these words and Jean winced slightly.
‘You can’t know this, Sam, but in Ireland when you were born things were very different. Do you have any idea what it was like to be a working mother in this country and in those days? Now, we live in a world where you can arrange to work from home. Nobody looks at you like there’s something wrong with you if you get someone in to mind your kids because you’re out at work. But when I was working, it was totally different.
‘Did you know that when I started out in teaching, women had to leave their jobs once they got married. The marriage bar, they called it,’ she said mirthlessly. ‘No matter what the feminist movement did, that bar was there and, oh yes, it was a bar, like a damned big iron bar to stop women progressing because God forbid a married woman took a job away from a man. And even with that gone, it was still difficult. We weren’t getting even half the amount of money as men. I couldn’t take a sick day off if you or Joanne were sick.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Sam, ‘you were working in a school.’
‘Working in a school! Do you think that made the slightest bit of difference? Do you think the board of governors would have cared that we were an educational establishment and I was taking time off to look after my kids? No they wouldn’t. And do you know something really important?’ Her mother stared at Sam fiercely. ‘I wanted to work, Sam. Most mothers looked at women like me and thought we were unnatural.’ Jean’s tone was bitter.
‘Feminism wasn’t just the fight on the streets then, it was in the offices, in the classrooms, and that’s where I fought, so women like you could go out to work. Now you look at me and think I was a useless mother. Fine,’ Jean snapped. ‘I wasn’t maternal, but that’s what women my age did: we got married, we had kids and then we had to figure out where to go next.
‘I’m sorry I’m not what you wanted. I love India, you, Joanne and her children. I love all of you. I’m just not very good at showing it. I wish it was different but that’s not the way I’m made. All I’m asking is that you try to understand that.’
With that, Jean picked up her coat, her keys, her handbag and left, swishing past the dogs who’d snuffled around her heels. Neither of the dogs were terribly fond of her because Jean was not a doggy person anymore than she was a baby person. Sam sat down on the couch, breathing in heavily, holding India to her closely.
That was one hornets’ nest she had stirred up. She wished her mother had talked to her like that before. Sam had never even considered what it had been like for her mother to be at work in an era where working women were not the norm, certainly not working women in positions of power.
Still hugging India to her, she picked up her mobile phone and texted her sister:
Had the most amazing conversation with Mother. We need to talk.
‘Wow, can’t believe she said all that,’ said Joanne on the phone later. It was too late in the afternoon to drop round: she was busy feeding her three girls after playdates, extra art and Irish dancing.
Isabelle loved Irish dancing, which seemed to involve a lot of hopping energetically to Sam’s eyes.
‘I’m still reeling,’ said Sam, talking quietly because she’d finally got India to sleep. ‘I feel—’ She searched for the word.
‘Guilty,’ supplied Joanne. ‘Me too. I never thought of it that way. I just thought she was remote.’
‘Dads were supposed to be remote and mums were supposed to be warm and cuddly,’ Sam said, thinking of how they’d viewed the world from their childish imaginations.
‘No reason it couldn’t be the other way round,’ Joanne said. ‘Poor old Mother. What are you going to do?’
Sam sat down on the couch and both dogs instantly leapt up beside her, delighted with the attention. ‘Learn to forgive her, I guess. It’s not her fault I developed post-natal depression.’
‘You really can’t lay that one on her,’ Joanne agreed.
Roars broke out from Joanne’s end of the line.
‘War,’ said Joanne. ‘Gotta go and negotiate a peace deal.’
Sam laughed. ‘Me too,’ she said.
Ginger
Ginger leaned against the wall of the gym and pleaded with Will to stop.
‘No more,’ she said. ‘I have nothing more to give, please ...’
The sweat was dripping down her back and into the crevice between her breasts. Any deodorant she’d put on that morning had long since sweated off.
