Stories of the Street - Twenty Eight

She sits every day wondering what to do. How did she let herself get into this situation? The last few weeks have just been dark, slow, tiring pits of grind and she needs to put them behind her.

He just won’t listen; but it is not up to him. She will pay for it. She has the money, she has the better-paid job and he cannot stop her.

She has been reviewing her position of late and part of the daze she is in is because there seems to be nothing left between them. In fact, the last few months have driven them further apart when they should have brought them together. He will not pull his weight and uses it as an excuse to work late and aim for that precious bonus of his – half of which goes on tax and all of which would not add up to the amount of overtime or time in lieu he has put in. Neat trick if you are the employer.

She sits quietly and her mind drifts back to the points through the pregnancy.

She can pinpoint when she conceived. She is convinced of it and the thrill of feeling that something had changed was quite extraordinary. She changed but he did not even seem to notice. It was as if he had put as little into starting the process as he was now putting into dealing with the outcome.

She recalled the time in the restaurant when she was close to term. There they were; He insisted that she sit on the inside in that stupid, tight fitting booth with his father facing her, his knees bumping into hers and his loose tooth making endless noises as he ate.

Every time she had to get up to go to the loo he complained to her and apologised to his stupid parents. They have three children but they seemed oblivious to the plight she was in.

The worst bit was not getting the contractions and having to leave just as the main course arrived. The restaurant staff were really very good and his parents were not too bad – a bit flustered but reasonably concerned as far as their lazy arses would let them be. The worst bit was his anger at her for “letting it happen”, for “not realising that she was about to begin labour” as if she could predict such things.

He was even more furious when they discovered they were only Braxton Hicks contractions – the ones you sometimes got well before labour ever started. It was another three weeks before she went into labour properly and he delayed calling an ambulance for so long that she almost gave birth in the back of the damn thing. The smallest mercy was the short time she spent in hospital.

But she did not relish being a mother. She loved her daughter in a way she would not have been able to predict. It sort of overwhelmed her and still managed to take her by surprise at times. But she was a lousy day to day carer and found it soul destroying to be here, alone, for ever, doing boring, stupid, menial things all day and at the beck and call of a voiceless, primitive creature whose demands were grimly basic and punctuated with noises and smells that left her frustrated, dismayed and angrily exhausted. Her breasts leaked at the very sound or smell of a baby and her head spun at the thought of doing this for many more months, even years. Of course it would not continue to be like this all the time but, despite her enormous love for her child, she could not continue this way.

The solution was to bring in a professional. She could go back to work and in the evenings she could have the quality time with her baby that people are always going on about. And while she was enjoying a fulfilling and human existence which would restore her to the human race she would be earning the money that would pay this professional to give her baby the best sort of care during the day.

It was all very well him going on about the baby needing her. He did not have to spend all day here doing this.

She looks down at the note pad she has on her lap. She had been making notes of what to ask about and tell candidates at the interviews. The first one would be arriving at two this afternoon. That would give her time to clean the place up.

If he didn’t like it, she thought as she stood up, he can go and find someone else to bully.