More Than a Woman Read online

  She disappears. Now I’m just furious. She knows that I know the answer is never to ‘Follow your heart’. Your heart’s a fucking idiot – it just wants to sit on the sofa and watch Say Yes to the Dress. The true answer is always ‘Make a fucking brilliant plan, and then endure with it beyond all normal parameters of exhaustion, until you eventually triumph.’

  Why is Me lying to me? What should I prepare for? I have so many questions!

  There’s another commotion, and Future Me reappears.

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ I say. ‘You’re back! I knew me wouldn’t let me down! Quick! Tell me things! What stocks should I invest in? Should I do neck exercises? Did you even try to marry Mark Ruffalo? TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO PREPARE FOR!!!!!!’

  Future Me looks at me, stricken.

  ‘I just came back for these,’ she said, taking my fags. ‘And – and – ’

  I stare at her. Just one wisdom. Just one.

  ‘And … drink as much as you can now – because once you get to forty, you can’t drink any more. All your enzymes give up, and the hangovers kill you.’

  ‘I CAN’T EVEN DRINK????’

  ‘Bye. And – good luck. I love you. You’re a good kid.’

  She fist-bumps me, and disappears.

  ‘“More than a woman”?’ I say, disconsolately. ‘I have to become “more than a woman”? What – two women?’

  I hear a voice, calling through the ether: ‘That would be useful. Because it gets so much fucking worse.’

  ‘A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.’

  Robert. A. Heinlein, describing the average day of a middle-aged woman.

  ‘Providence has an appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results – we can only strive.’

  Mahatma Gandhi, describing in greater and more efficient detail the average day of a middle-aged woman.

  Chapter One

  7am: The Hour of ‘The List’

  Some years later

  The alarm clock goes off. I wake.

  I am a modern woman, and I do modern things, so I have set the alarm to go off five minutes before the kids’ do. This is so I can spend the first five minutes of every day Being Thankful.

  I learned about Being Thankful a couple of years ago, from some experts – a conversation on Facebook – and now I do it every day; like in the way you’re supposed to do yoga every day, but I don’t, because the idea of yoga, perversely, makes me tense.

  By way of contrast, Being Thankful is quite relaxing. You simply make sure you’re comfortable – and then mentally list all the things in your life that make you happy. I like lists, and I like being happy, and I’m extremely good at lying down, so it immediately appealed to me. I now do it every day. It’s very satisfying.

  Today’s list runs as follows:

  1) I’m not homeless.

  2) I’m not ill.

  3) My family isn’t ill.

  4) My husband is a pleasant and amusing man.

  5) I still haven’t been fired.

  6) Time for coffee!

  I get out of bed. I have started to feel a bit stiff in the mornings – but nothing that heartily saying ‘Ooooof!’ out loud won’t cure.

  ‘Ooooof!’ I say, tottering over to the toilet. I do a satisfying wee, check the loo roll to see if I’ve started my period – for a woman, toilet paper is by way of a print-out, or receipt, on all your internal doings – note that I haven’t, and pick up my phone; Being Thankful that I have a phone. I want to see what the weather’s going to be today, so I can work out if I need a jumper or not, and then Be Thankful for the invention of ‘layering’. But, when I look at the screen, I see the last thing I looked at last night: The List.

  I instantly de-relax. The List is the one constant in my life. In many ways, The List is my life. The List is the eternal note I keep open on my phone – the running totaliser of all the jobs that need doing, but which I haven’t got round to yet. Some of the items have been on there since I got pregnant. My youngest child is now seven. The List is the shadow-self of Being Thankful. Being Thankful is about rejoicing in what you are. The List is, essentially, a running apology for what you are not, yet. All middle-aged women have a list like this:

  Blind for bedroom.

  Kids’ passports.

  Cut cats’ claws.

  Clean gutters.

  Tax return.

  START RUNNING.

  Stick tarpaulin on broken windowsill.

  Buy coat-hooks.

  Moth repellent.

  Lightbulbs: bathroom, hall, bedroom

  Lino basement

  Caz birthday present

  MEDITATE???

  BOOK HOLIDAY.

  PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES.

  Doctor allergies Nancy?

  Pension

  Replace IUD

  Leak toilet fix

  Broken basin replace

  Read Das Kapital

  Fleas

  Secondary schools Lizzie?

  Driving lessons

  Yoga????? STRETCHING???? New leggings?????

  INVOICES!

  Order new fucking online banking dongle that actually works.

  Cervical smear

  That’s only the first page. There are five.

  These are all the things that stand between me and a perfect life.

  I choose to view this list with what I call ‘spirited determination’ – it is the twenty-first century, so I am grateful this list does not include ‘agitate for women’s votes’, or ‘discover radiation, then, ironically, die of it’. I am a grafter who believes in hard work. I know that, unless you are a spirited and beautiful heiress, life is, essentially, a To-Do List, which begins with ‘escape this vagina’, and ends with ‘escape this Earth’ – and so there’s no point in moaning about it. However onerous The List might seem, it will, eventually, set me free – for I am one five-page list away from becoming a happy, accomplished woman with a perfect house, exemplary accounts, excellent capsule wardrobe, well-brought-up family, fabulous job, and a pelvic floor so redoubtable, every trampoline will fear me.

  I decide to give a moment of Thankfulness for The List. I refuse to see the list as a burden. No. The List is my guide to life. All I need to do is carefully apportion each hour of the day to a specific task, in order to maximise my productivity – and then I reckon I will have ticked everything off it by, say, 2020. I’ll have definitely done it by 2020. And then my real life can, finally, begin. I can buy a trampoline!

  I put on my dressing gown – which has never been washed. It has face-pack crust on the neck. I must wash this dressing gown! I put ‘wash dressing gown’ on The List – and go downstairs.

  Because I am married to a good and amusing man who is also an early riser, Pete is downstairs, getting the kids ready.

  The kitchen is very bright. Very bright.

  This is because I have a hangover, which I haven’t mentioned so far, as it’s entirely my fault, and I am being brave and noble.

  ‘How was last night?’ Pete asks, cheerfully, putting cereal on the table for the kids. Because they are now nine and seven, we don’t need to put plastic sheeting on the floor any more. That’s one job off The List!

  ‘Oh, very good. We got a lot of important work done,’ I say, discreetly palming two Berocca tablets into a glass, and filling it with water.

  The ‘important work’ was me and three siblings sitting on my patio until 4am, discussing the impending divorce of our parents. Things are escalatingly grim between them, and it can only end one way. This conversation was deemed to be ‘gin work’. For reasons I can’t quite remember now, it involved, around 11pm, me standing on a chair and crying as I sang ‘Everything’s Alright’ from Jesus C
hrist Superstar. However much I tried, no one else would join in with me.

  ‘Yeah – I saw you ‘working’ on Twitter,’ Pete says.

  I don’t remember posting anything on Twitter. I look on my phone, and scroll down my timeline.

  Oh. That’s interesting. At midnight, I appear to have posted a picture of my bare feet, with a Jacob’s Cream Cracker wedged between each toe. I see this ostensibly light-hearted piece of drunken tomfoolery has gathered, so far, two rape threats and someone calling my feet ‘unfuckable’. My feet.

  Whilst buttering toast for the kids – in order to establish, through a selfless action, that I am not drunk now, and am a good person, underneath it all – I ring my sister, Caz.

  ‘Hey hey. Dude, why did you let me go on Twitter and post a picture of my bare feet with a Jacob’s Cream Cracker between each toe?’ I ask her.

  ‘We spent half an hour trying to stop you,’ she replies. ‘You were obdurate. Then you fell over. You feeling that this morning?’

  I touch the bump on the back of my head. Ah, yes. I remember now. That cupboard took a hell of a wallop on the way down. I look out on to the patio. It’s covered in empty glasses and bottles. In the centre of the table is Nancy’s special Little Mermaid plate. It is heaped with cigarette butts. I close the blind, so she won’t see it.

  ‘Mum! How do you clean shoes?’

  Lizzie has put her trainers on the table. They used to be white – but they are now caked in mud. The laces look like oomska filth-snakes. I stare at them. Christ – they look how the inside of my head feels.

  ‘I’ll do them later, bab. Wear something else today.’

  ‘I don’t have anything else! My feet have grown! You said you’d get me new shoes!’

  Ah yes. Yesterday’s shoe-buying expedition that got cancelled, when we had to flea bomb the house. It all seemed to be going so well until the cat – who sneaked back into the house through an open window – inhaled the flea bomb, went ‘all weird’, and started acting like a Vietnam veteran who’d taken too much acid. We had to take her to the vet – they put her in a cage overnight, to ‘come down’. That was £100. Jesus. We could have bought six new cats for that. Better ones. Betty very much views my herb garden as ‘a luxuriously-scented cat-litter tray’.

  I start cleaning the shoes. Then I realise the sponge scourer I’m cleaning them with is covered in lamb fat, and is making the issue much, much worse. I get the Shoe Cleaning tin out of the cupboard, and Google ‘cleaning white trainers’.

  ‘So, Cate – you remember what the final conclusion of last night’s meeting was?’ Caz asks, tentatively, still on the phone.

  Following the instructions of a man on YouTube, I start scrubbing the trainers with my special shoe brush. Why are the most popular shoes for children and young adults white trainers? Why would we invent a system of clothing whereby the item that comes constantly into contact with the ground is generally made of white fabric? It’s entirely impractical – the worst possible outcome, footwear-wise. This is a con by capitalism to make us buy new white trainers every four months.

  ‘Last night,’ Caz says, on the phone, slightly more urgently. ‘You do remember what you said last night? It was a brave conclusion, man – but we’re all behind you.’

  There are few things more terrifying than someone praising you for being ‘brave’. Caz once called a haircut of mine – where I’d tried to get a black bob, like one of The Corrs – ‘brave’. I simply wore a hat for the next three months.

  ‘What did I say?’ I ask.

  Pete is pointing at the kitchen clock. It’s time for the kids to go. I hand Lizzie her half-scrubbed, damp trainers.

  ‘Sit near a radiator,’ I say, kindly, as she puts them on, and squelches off to the bus. Nancy follows her. I wave goodbye, distractedly.

  ‘We talked it over,’ Caz continues, ‘and we all agreed that, while the parents are divorcing, Andrew can’t live with them. It’s disrupting his A-Level revision. So you said he’d move in with you.’

  ‘I said that?’ I ask, faintly.

  ‘“I’m already parent to two children – a third will be easy!” you said,’ Caz recalls. ‘“It will be cool to have a brother in the house! The more Morans, the merrier!”’

  ‘I said that to you?’ I ask, sitting down. Pete is looking at me, mouthing, ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘No – you said that to him. You rang Andrew and told him he has to move in with you. “Fuck the parents’ bullshit,” you said. “You have a haven of peace in our house. Come live in our spare room.” Then you fell over.’

  ‘We don’t have a spare room!’ I cry.

  ‘I think you meant the loft,’ Caz says.

  The loft! The one perfect thing in my life? The room with all my Ordnance Survey maps of Wales pinned on the wall, and the complete works of Sue Townsend on the shelves, and where – most importantly – I can lock the door, and smoke out of the Velux window?

  ‘Andrew was super happy,’ Caz says. ‘He said, “Finally – I can get my nieces into Red Dwarf. It’s going to be smegging awesome!” ’

  I sit, staring at the table. I notice Nancy has left her packed lunch. I’ll have to go and drop it off. I strongly dislike going to the kids’ school. As a working mother, I so rarely go, and people can be so judgemental. There’s always one mum at the gates, beaming, ‘Oh! We haven’t seen you here for a while! Is everything okay?’

  Last time one said that, I replied, ‘They’ve let me out on electronic tag!’, but her humour was very weak, and she didn’t appreciate it. She never spoke to me again. So, in a way – result!

  I stare at the bloody lunchbox. Oh, God. My teenage brother Andrew, living with us. I haven’t even asked Pete! Or the girls! We really should have had a family meeting about this. One without gin.

  I start quietly singing ‘Everything’s Alright’ from Jesus Christ Superstar, for comfort.

  ‘Ah. You’re remembering now,’ Caz says, then hangs up.

  The phone rings again. It’s Andrew.

  ‘Hey, roommate,’ he says. ‘You’re a pal. I’m all packed. I’ll be over around lunchtime?’

  A second call is coming through. I see it’s from the vet. Fuck! We forgot to pick up the cat! Two nights now! Another £100. I hate that cat.

  Enraged, I do my pelvic-floor exercises. Then I realise I’m just clenching my bum, give in, have a fag, and order some moth repellent online.

  I will tick something off The List today! I will be triumphant! I WILL END TODAY THANKFUL. THESE ARE THE BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE.

  Chapter Two

  8am: The Hour of Married Sex

  Pete stands by the window.

  ‘Wait for it; wait for it,’ he says, watching the kids at the bus stop.

  I hover tensely in the doorway.

  ‘Aaaaaaand – they’re on the bus!’ he says. Still watching the departing bus, he takes his trousers off. It’s on.

  With the children gone, it’s time to start the day with a vital part of our To Do List: The Maintenance Shag.

  My friend Sali came up with the concept of the Maintenance Shag – it’s the shag middle-aged people have to schedule because they’re so busy, and have such small children, that if it wasn’t written on the calendar using a special, child-proof code – ours is ‘Wukka wukka wukka!’, in tribute to Fozzie Bear – it might not happen for months; possibly years. One is still free, of course, to have spontaneous, care-free sex as and when one wishes, but the Maintenance Shag is there just to keep the wheels of commerce oiled, as it were. I think every person in a long-term relationship knows the feeling when it’s been so long since you’ve done it that the whole concept seems like some madly improbable dream you once had – like being Barack Obama, or suddenly flying, or being Barack Obama and flying.

  As we’re both freelance, we can schedule the Maintenance Shag for Fridays, 8am – as soon as the kids have left for school. We have learned to wait until we have visual confirmation that they’re actually on the bus after The Inci
dent of 2009, wherein someone returning for their netball kit heard the screamed injunction, ‘DON’T COME IN THE KITCHEN – WE’RE TRYING TO CATCH A RAT!’, and possibly had their sex education put back five years.

  I run upstairs, to ‘prepare’ myself. In the early days of our courtship, my ‘preparation’ would have included washing, leg-shaving, teeth-brushing, flossing, the application of hold-up stockings, and the lighting of mood-enhancing candles. We might start with an hour of fruity chat, and then gradually slide into a long, languorous sheet-tangling hump lasting many, many hours; with seconds, and then pudding, for all.

  Fifteen years later, and my preparation entails swilling a blob of Colgate round my mouth, then spitting it out, taking off my pyjamas, and fluffing up my pubes so they look a bit less like an old coir doormat, and a bit more like, well, a new coir doormat. I then shout, ‘COME ON, SEXY – LET’S DO IT! BEFORE THE WINDOW CLEANER COMES!’

  Pete runs up the stairs, trouserless, taking off his t-shirt, and stands by the bed.

  ‘So – the delicate dance of seduction begins,’ he says.

  In a marriage, it’s essential to keep the sexual spark going. Every source agrees on this – from Woman & Home, to an overly frank Uber driver I had once. It acts as a vital memory bridge to why you got together in the first place – to the two giddy young people who once fell in love. For, in almost every respect, those two people will have now disappeared, and what was once forged by the power of your white-hot sexual attraction, now continues on the basis of your ability to remind each other to do vital tasks (‘Have you swabbed the cat’s stitches?’) in the least-accusatory way possible.

  Segueing into this problem is the way female sexuality works. Although there will always be notable exceptions – e.g., The Legendary Spontaneous Pret-A-Manger Toilet Shag of 2007 – by and large, women take a bit longer to get in the mood for sex than men. We have to establish a bit of a vibe, get some kind of scenario going – which is difficult to weave into the everyday schedule of bullshit.