For the first time in his life, Edward is wearing clothes
on the beach. I am watching him from where I’m perched
on a sand dune. I’m trying to pretend I’m not looking at
him as I know he will be cross if he thinks I am: now,
aged ten, ‘or nearly eleven’, as he puts it, he has become
aware of his body. I see him looking at himself in the
bathroom mirror. He has hugely long legs and dangling
arms. Sometimes he smells a bit and I have to remind
him that he needs to use soap.
‘Why?’ he’ll say truculently.
‘Because when you start getting older and you play
more sport, you start to sweat and when you sweat
you –’
‘But you don’t need to use soap for sweat,’ Edward
usually chips in. ‘I asked Robert and he told me that if
you leave your body alone, it looks after itself.’
‘Who told him that?’
‘Auntie Julia did.’
‘Well, I think she was referring to hair. Some people
say that if you leave your hair long enough it’ll replenish
its own oils and –’
‘No, Robert said Auntie Julia told him your whole body
can clean itself so I’m not going to use soap.’
‘Right,’ I’ll say firmly. ‘If you don’t use soap, you won’t
be able to play on your computer at the weekend.’
He’ll glower at me a bit. ‘Where is the soap, then?’ he’ll
say accusingly, as if I’ve hidden it. ‘There isn’t any!’
‘Yes, there is.’ I’ll point to his younger brother’s soap
dispenser, a plastic frog that squirts out something that
smells of a chemical version of strawberries.
‘Not that soap. That’s for babies. Where’s the sort big
boys use?’
Over the past few months we have had many such
encounters and now I have had to accept that, on top of
hating baths, Edward feels he has to cover himself when
I’m around. When he was younger, and I was a single
parent, after his father, John the First, had upped and
left, he discarded his clothes anywhere and everywhere.
On a visit to London Zoo on a hot summer’s afternoon
it occurred to him, aged three, that he would like to be
as free and unfettered as the caged monkeys. ‘I wanna be
like a monkey, Mama,’ he said, as he pulled his T-shirt
off over his head. ‘Yes, Edward,’ I said, ‘but you are not
a monkey. You are a small boy and small boys keep their
clothes on.’
He also had a very exciting time in TGI Friday’s, where
the loos had some spraying mechanism so he came back
soaking wet and utterly naked, having drenched everything
else in sight as well, including the loo rolls and the
hand towels.
‘Sorry,’ said Edward, looking very sorrowful. ‘I just
can’t help it.’
So, nudity is not alien to Edward. His brothers, Bennie
and baby Jamie, the children I have had with my current
husband John the Second, are happy to be naked. I
always think of them as cherubs in the sky, looking down
on us, tooting their horns, held aloft on golden wings.
Maybe that’s what babies are, cherubs waiting to come to
earth, watching us from above and picking out the
mothers and families they like – although God knows
why anyone would pick me. When Edward was a tiny
baby he cried all the time, especially when I was trying to
bath him (see? Thinking about it now, he’s never liked
having a bath). One day, my mother found me crying
with him.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ she said. ‘Why are you
both crying?’
‘He doesn’t like me,’ I wailed. ‘Everything I do is
wrong. I tried to give him a bath and he threw his arms
out and looked terrified and –’ I wailed some more. ‘He
hates me!’
My mother made me a cup of tea and sat me down,
picked up Edward and held him. ‘You need to support
his head when you bath him,’ she said, wedging Edward
firmly in the crook of her arm. ‘Maybe he doesn’t feel
properly supported. That’s why most babies panic.’ She
took him to the bath, put him in and swooshed him
around. He cooed happily. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘He’s a
perfectly affable little chap.’ Then she looked at me.
‘Babies choose their parents, you know, so, believe it or
not, Edward chose you. I’d get on with it and stop feeling
sorry for yourself.’
Now I know two things. First, Edward isn’t really an
affable chap. He’s amazing and magnificent, and probably
the love of my life, but he’s not affable. He’s odd and
scratchy and sensitive. He knows this, too, and I think it
bothers him. His brow furrows when children in the
playground tell him he’s weird, which, according to
Edward, they do quite often.
‘Am I weird?’ he’ll ask, and I’ll do that thing my mother
used to do, which irritated me beyond measure, and reply,
‘Well, Edward, it takes all sorts of people to make a
world.’
Edward will think about this. Then his face will clear
and he’ll say, ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it, Mummy?’
I also know that Edward and I probably did choose
each other. We’re two units that have become a whole. I
like being with him more, perhaps than I like being with
anyone else. Maybe this is why his father left all those
years ago.
Today, on the beach, Edward is going to extreme
lengths not to be seen. He is wrapping himself in a towel,
taking off his T-shirt, clutching the towel round his waist,
then trying to wriggle out of his underpants.
‘Do you want help, Edward?’ I call.
He glowers at me.
‘Do you want me to hold the towel?’ I say.
‘No,’ says Edward. He looks around for his swimming
trunks. He can’t see them. Of course not. I have them –
because I have everything. I always have everything. I
have packed the boot of the hire car with all the things
we might need and among all the things we might need,
Edward’s swimming trunks are in one of the bags I have
brought down to the beach. Now I can see that Edward
is a little panicked. He looks confused, then turns to me
and it’s as if sunlight has shone across his face. He smiles
at me as he always used to do.
‘Mummy,’ he says, ‘do you know where my swimming
trunks are?’
For a moment I wonder if I should say, ‘No. Didn’t
you pack them?’ After all, I spend hours moaning to John
that I feel taken for granted, that my children are too
dependent on me, why can’t they pack their own bags
and make their own tea and clean their own teeth? John
points out patiently to me that, yes, that’s all very well for
Edward but what about Bennie, who is four, and Jamie,
who is two? Then I wonder why John can’t do the
packing. Why is it my job? Then again, he did try to help
pack for this holiday – he put in raincoats, and some tiny
nappies, which Jamie grew out of at least a year ago.