‘We’ll sort that out when the time comes,’ says Hattie. ‘I took to her on the phone. You can tell so much from people’s voices. Babs says she’s exactly right for us. She got such a good reference from Alice that Alastair said it sounded as if Alice was trying to get rid of the girl.’

  ‘Ah, the Tory MP. And was she?’ asks Martyn.

  ‘Trying to get rid of her? Of course not,’ says Hattie. ‘Alastair was joking.’

  ‘Funny sort of joke,’ says Martyn.

  Martyn is still cross. His blood sugar is low after a day in the office. Obviously he is right; it is not ethical to exploit another in this way, especially if they have little power in the labour market, but it would be kinder to everyone if he left the matter alone.

  He can find precious little in the fridge. Since Hattie took maternity leave they have not been able to afford dinners out, take-aways or luxuries from the delicatessen. Supper tends to be chops if he’s lucky, with potatoes and vegetables and that’s it, and served in Hattie’s own good time, not his. He finds some cheese in the salad drawer and nibbles at it, but it is very hard. Hattie says she is saving it for grating.

  Martyn feels Hattie rather overdoes what he refers to as her ‘frugal number’. Anything will do at the moment to make life bleaker for both of them. She hates spending money on food. Food is full of pollutants which if she eats might end up in Kitty via the breast milk. Since the birth, it seems to Martyn, Hattie has gone into rejection mode. Sex also has become a rare event – rather than the four or five lively times a week it used to be. He can see it might be a good idea if she did go back to work, but he does not like her organising their joint life behind his back. He is Kitty’s parent too.

  Frances Presents Some Authorial Background

  Let me make clear who is speaking here, who it is who tells the tale of Hattie, Martyn and Agnieszka, reading their thoughts and judging their actions, offering them up for inspection. It is I, Frances Watt, aged seventy-two, née Hallsey-Coe, previously I think, but for a short time, Hammer: previously Lady Spargrove: previously – we would have got married but he died – O’Brien. I am Lallie’s bad mother, Hattie’s good grandmother – determined to get my money’s worth from my new laptop, bought for me by my sister Serena. Write, write, write I go, just like my sister. ‘Scribble, scribble!’ As the Duke of Gloucester said to Edward Gibbon, on receiving The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a million and a half words long: ‘Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon?’

  Serena is the one with the reputation for writing: she has been writing steadily since she was thirty-odd, scarcely giving herself a minute’s time for reflection: she pays everyone – the household helps, the secretaries, taxi drivers, accountants, lawyers, the Inland Revenue, friends, grocers – just to make them go away so she can get on and write. But this doesn’t mean she has a monopoly on writing skill. I myself have finally found the time and courage to do it, while my husband Sebastian is in prison. The presence of a man in the house can be inhibiting to any endeavour which does not include him, such as writing a book. I run a little art gallery in Bath, but I choose not to open every day, so I have time and to spare.

  Hattie, beloved only child of my only daughter Lallie, called me this evening to say she was going back to work, and had found an au pair for her baby, and Martyn was being a bit iffy about it. Is her return to work a good thing or not? What can I say? Speaking as the great-grandmother she has made me, she should sacrifice her life to the baby. Speaking as her grandmother, I want her to get back into the world and live a little and have affairs with men – life is for living, not just handing on. I am actually very fond of Martyn, but so far as I know he is only the second man she has been to bed with, and that does seem to me to be rather limiting.

  Hattie will not settle easily to domesticity, that I do know. The Victorians used to pity girls like her, born too clever for their own good, never content as appendages to the Male – daughter, mother, sister, wife – forever striving for an identity which was theirs and theirs alone, whilst living in a society which forbade them to find it. Such girls made bad mothers and worse wives. That was the old world wisdom.

  Martyn, I know, has romantic ideas about having a full-time wife and mother for his child, but I know he is being unrealistic. Couples today need two incomes to get by. And Hattie is bound to pay the new girl too much: she has her great-aunt Serena’s generosity but not the means to fund it. The guiltier the mother, the higher the au pair’s wages – or else it goes the other way and the mother, identifying, is furious that the girl expects any salary at all, let alone any free time, let alone boyfriends in the house. But Hattie will be the concerned kind, and that can come expensive.

  My grand-daughter Hattie is thirty-three. She has a sharp nose, a square jaw, and a mass of striking red-gold Pre-Raphaelite hair, curly on some days, frizzy on others, which she keeps in a cloud around her face. I have the same hair, but mine has gone rather satisfactorily all-over white. It too is striking, and suits me. Hattie has very long legs: this she must get from her father, since her mother Lallie’s are rather short and plump of calf. Not that anyone has seen Bengt’s legs, other than Lallie (presumably) briefly, once, long ago and far away when Hattie was conceived. Lallie is a pouting, fleshy, sensuous beauty with a high colour, very different from her daughter’s lean, high-cheekboned, abstemious, long-fingered paleness. You would think from the look of them that the daughter, not the mother, would achieve world fame playing the flute but it is the other way round.

  Hattie has what her great-aunt Serena calls ‘good bones’ and men can be guaranteed to turn and stare at her when she walks into a room: amazing what confidence this can give to a girl. But she is currently thin to the point of gauntness. The strain of looking after a new baby has told on her. Or perhaps it just is that some women do get pale and thin after having babies, just as some stay with the rounded pinkness of a good pregnancy. The body is wilful and usually goes the way a person very much hopes it won’t.

  The trick with bodies, as with so much in life, is not to let the Fates know just how desperate you are about anything. You must look casual and act casually, play Grandmother’s Footsteps with life. Hattie and the cousins used to play it at Caldicott Square. One child stands in front of the group with her back turned. The others move forward stealthily. The one in front turns swiftly. Anyone who’s caught moving or giggling is out, and has to leave the game. So don’t move; don’t giggle; don’t show the Fates you care, and the less likely you are to develop a cold sore before the wedding, tonsillitis before the holiday, thrush before the dance, and your period won’t come on as you’re putting on your tennis skirt.

  Hattie is really happy to be thinner than she was, but placates the Fates by saying aloud she doesn’t mind what size she is so long as she and Kitty are happy and healthy. Martyn – she likes to add – is certainly not one of those men who would be put off by a few extra pounds.

  Likewise, Hattie does not show how she looks forward to going back to work, but murmurs to others that she might have to start earning again, since it’s such a problem managing on one salary. These sops thrown to destiny are working for the moment: she has got thin by sheer force of secret yearning, a job is waiting for her and now a kindly destiny has put Agnieszka her way. Hattie loves little Kitty, of course she does. Indeed, she is sometimes quite overwhelmed by love, and presses her face against the baby’s firm, soft, milky flesh, and thinks that is all she needs in life; but of course it is not. It’s just so dull at home. You listen to the radio, and struggle to stem a sea of disorder – the trouble with babies is that it’s all emergency: you keep having to stop whatever you’re doing. She craves gossip, in-fighting, the amphetamine effect of deadlines, and the swirling soap opera of office life. She misses conversation as much as her salary. Kitty lies around gurgling and disgorging the food that’s put into her and is not a valid source of entertainment, only of love, received and given. Songs and scriptures tell her that love is all she needs, but it is not true. Love is all she needs just for some of the time. So Martyn is being ‘a bit iffy’. I can imagine.

  A Bit Iffy

  ‘But Hattie,’ says Martyn, ‘we have a problem here.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Hattie asks.

  ‘Just how ethical is it to ask another woman to look after one’s child? Perhaps using child-care is in itself exploitative. I know it’s convenient but is it right?’

  ‘It’s always been done,’ says Hattie, allowing a hint of irritation to enter her voice. ‘Those with the best education get the most money. I use my skills to earn: she uses her human instincts to earn. There are more women like her than there are women like me, so we get them to look after our babies.’

  ‘But in an equitable society,’ says Martyn, ‘the scale would be reversed and we would be paid to make up for the pain of our work, not rewarded for the pleasure we take in it.’

  ‘It isn’t an equitable society,’ says Hattie. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You are so argumentative,’ he complains. But he is pleased at the return of her spirit.

  Soon she may be back to normal, and their diet will improve. But he’s not finished yet.

  ‘We both agree that raising a child is the most important thing anyone can do, and it should be paid concomitantly. And a nursery is probably the best option if you don’t want to look after your own child.’

  But Hattie has won, and his voice fades away and she gives him a half kiss, half nibble on his ear to show there are no hard feelings. If there is to be better food in the fridge Hattie must go out to work, and when it comes to it Martyn would rather that his child was looked after in the home than be sent to a nursery. He has not liked to ask what age Agnieszka is, nor whether she will be a pleasure to look at or otherwise. He is above such enquiry. He has a stereotyped Polish girl in his head: she is pale, thin, high-cheekboned, small-breasted, attractive but out of bounds.

  Hattie has it all arranged. Agnieszka is to live in. This unknown and untested person is to have the spare room, look after the baby as a priority and do such domestic work, cooking and laundry that she can find time to do: she is to have Saturday and Sunday off and three evenings a week to go to evening class. She will be paid a generous £200 a week, with of course full board and lodging. Babs, who is accustomed to employing staff, has been consulted on these matters and this is what she recommends.

  Martyn points out that Hattie will have to earn at least £300 a week to break even on the deal – perhaps more if the girl is a big eater. Hattie says she will be paid £36,000 a year and Martyn complains that that is ridiculously low: Hattie explains that instead of taking statutory maternity leave she actually handed in her notice, so certain was she that she would never want to return to work, and though she expects rapid promotion, she will formally have to start work fairly low down the end of the pay scale.

  ‘With any luck,’ says Martyn, ‘this Agnieszka will be anorexic. That will save money on food. But hey, if she’s what you want, go ahead. Let’s share our evenings and our lives with a stranger. So be it. Only do be sure to ask for written references.’

  Martyn loves Hattie. Dissension is just part of their life. He loves brushing up against her in the kitchen; he loves the warm roundness of her body, so different from his own angularity. He loves the ease of her conversation, her ready laugh, her lack of doubt, the way she didn’t hesitate when she found she was pregnant and just sighed and said it was fate, why fight it?

  Martyn comes from an awkward, belligerent family who look for slights and insults and find them, and would root out an unwanted baby without a second thought. He had no idea, when he met Hattie at a peace demo, that people could be like this, that sheer affluence of good feeling, not a superfluity of rage, could drive them on the streets in protest. It was a destined encounter. Surging crowds pushed them into each other’s arms in an alley behind Centre Point. He had an erection, and deeply embarrassed, blushed and apologised when it would have been more fitting to overlook the matter, pretend it had never happened. She said, ‘Not at all, I take it as a compliment.’

  In three weeks he had moved in with her, and now they have a house and a baby. He would like to marry her but she won’t do it. She says she has no respect for the institution, as indeed neither does he, at least in principle. Both look at marriages within their immediate families and decide it is not for them. The complexity of divorce, and also its likelihood, alarms them both. But he has less objection to being owned by her, than she does by him. That worries him. He loves her more than she loves him.

  ‘What’s for supper?’ asks Martyn, having abandoned any hope of finding something edible in the fridge, kissing the back of her neck, melting her wrath at once.

  ‘I must finish the ironing first,’ says Hattie. Her mother Lallie has hardly used an iron all her life long. It can hardly be in the genes. But then Lallie’s a creative artist and Hattie is avowedly not, and so the daughter must take the normal route to a satisfactory environment, not by filling the air with music, but by providing an easy background for others.

  All the same Hattie stops ironing. She needs little incentive. She bought pure cotton, wool and linen fabrics, natural fibres dyed with organic dyes, to cover the baby’s back. Now she regrets it. Unnatural fibres dry faster than natural, don’t matt, shrink or discolour with washing. They were developed for very good reason. The cot is always damp because ecologically-sound terry nappies are less effective than disposable ones. It doesn’t make much difference to the baby what fabrics it regurgitates over. But Hattie is stuck with what she committed to, if only by virtue of the cost of replacement, and she does like things to look nice. There are still some few items left to iron but when were there ever not? Martyn may feel less stressed if he eats. She is not hungry herself. She opens a can of tuna and a jar of mayonnaise and heats up some frozen peas. Martyn once, rashly, said how much he liked frozen peas.

  ‘Babs and I will be in adjacent offices,’ she says, as the peas come to the boil and bob about at the top of the pan. ‘And we’ll be able to share a taxi home.’

  ‘A taxi!’ says Martyn. ‘If we’re to afford an au pair there won’t be much taking of taxis anywhere.’

  He knows tuna is nutritious and with bread and peas makes a balanced meal, but that doesn’t mean the tinned fish doesn’t clog up the mouth. The peas are not even bright green petits pois (too expensive) but large, tough and pale green. The bread is sliced brown Hovis. In his mother’s household, meals were frequent, generous and on time, no matter how paranoiac and backbiting those who sat around the table were. The bread was fresh, crusty and white. But now in his own home the very concept of ‘meals’ has been abandoned. Since Kitty’s birth he and Hattie eat to assuage hunger, and the desire seldom strikes them simultaneously. Yes, it is time she went back to work.

  Demotic Credentials

  ‘Hattie,’ I say, ‘what I think about you going back to work or not going back to work is irrelevant. You will do what you will do, as ever.’

  ‘But I do like to have your permission, Great-Nan,’ she says. I know she does. It touches me but I have asked her not to call me Great-Nan. ‘Grandmother’ is best, ‘Gran’ will do, ‘Nan’ is vulgar and ‘Great-Nan’ ludicrous, but Hattie will do what she will do.

  Since Kitty came along, she claims her right to set me yet more firmly in the past and advance me a generation in public disesteem. She called me Grandmother in a perfectly proper way until she met Martyn, after which she took to calling me Nan, presumably out of loyalty to her partner’s demotic origins. To possess a father who died in an electricians’ strike is a rare qualification in the political media circles in which Martyn works. Anyone who does may feel the urge to make the most of it. Grandmother or even Granny smacks of the middle class, and the young these days are desperate to be seen to belong to the workers.

  But I daresay next time she sees me she will hold Kitty out to me and say, ‘Smile at Great-Nan,’ and the infant will bare its toothless gums at me, and I will smile back and be delighted. I am totally dedicated to my family, and to Hattie, and to Kitty, and even to Martyn though he is not always a bundle of laughs, but then neither is Hattie, certainly not since they had the baby.

  Martyn is tall, over six foot, solidly built, sandy-haired, and hollow-cheeked but otherwise attractive enough. Girls like him. He has a First in politics and economics from Keele University, and is a member of Mensa. He tried to get Hattie to join but she declined, finding something distasteful about setting herself above others, intellectually. This may be because her mother also once belonged to Mensa, having joined in the days when you could send the qualifying questionnaire by post, so you could get your friends to supply the answers. Martyn has worn glasses since he was five. His shoulders are slightly rounded, from bending over so many computers, so many textbooks, so many reports and evaluations.

  His mother Gloria, forty-three years old when Martyn was born, the youngest of five, had the same big-boned build, making twice of Martyn’s father Jack. The latter was slightly built, although like his son sandy-haired and hollow-cheeked. But Martyn looks healthy. Jack never did, certainly not by contemporary standards. Chip butties, fried fish, mushy peas and sixty cigarettes a day made sure that his arteries were clogged and his lungs black-lined. It was surprising he lasted as long as did. Gloria is still alive and in a nursing home in Tyneside. Martyn and Hattie visit her twice a year, but neither looks forward to the visits. She finds Hattie too fancy and strange-looking. The other siblings live closer to their mother, and visit more often.

  Martyn is the only one who went to university. The others could have, but chose not to. They were like that: so sharp they cut themselves. Their father, Jack, joined the Communist Party as a boy in 1946, leaving when Russia invaded Hungary in 1968 to become a less extreme labour activist, but fighting as ever for the rights of the working class. He died of a heart attack when on the picket line during a strike. Waste of a good death, his friends said, better had it been from police brutality. Jack’s hair thinned and went in his thirties.