It's 1985, and something is in the air. Walk into the kitchen and, chances are, Mum’s already in there having a whipered telephone conversation. She twists the cord around her finger, as if in a trance. Eyes red, she snaps at Jonathan and I for no reason. Two years and nine months younger than me, Jonathan is not so keenly aware of the sense of there being something big going down. Nor is he burning with the injustice of being left out of that something big. Finally, I can stand it no longer.
“Why have you been crying?”
“I haven’t,” my mother lies.
“Well, something’s going on, what is it?” I am more annoyed at being considered too unimportant to talk to about whatever is going on than worried about any possible trauma my mother may be going through.
“Someone might be coming,” she says, eventually. “But I’m not sure yet.”
This at least gives me something to go on. My grandparents, Dad’s parents, were here only a few weeks ago, bearing gifts of shiny AM/FM radios and baklava and ma’amoul enough for months, so I can safely rule them out.
Uncle Teeth, Dad’s younger brother, is a more likely possibility. Keith flies often enough to have friends in every airline, ready to upgrade him or bump him onto an earlier connection. He arrives weighed down with nougat and bagfuls of brown sugar crystals, designed for stirring into coffee but that we will be encouraged to crunch raw. It seems strange, him being a dentist. It’s almost as if he wants us to get cavities.
It could be an au pair or another student lodger, to replace Morag, who wore chunky-knit sweaters and got homesick for Inverkeithing after three days. But would that really warrant such a crease in the usual smooth running of our family fabric?
My godmother, Evelyn, laden with Oriflame make-up samples, Avon’s lesser-known, pink-packaged competitor, en route to a sales seminar?
After a night of strange dreams, the wonderful thought occurs to me that we could be talking about something a lot more important than a visit from relatives or friends or some student who wants a cheap room, home cooking and doesn’t mind living out in the sticks, miles from the nearest bus route. I get up and search for Mum, find her in the kitchen nibbling at a piece of dry toast. She is talking quietly into the phone. When she sees me. she says goodbye to whoever is on the other end and slides the receiver back into its cradle.
I know I might be spoiling a surprise, but I have to ask. I’m already fantasising about the merchandise I’ll buy; the posters, badges for my schoolbag, pink satin scarf to pin on my bedroom wall…
“Is it Shakin’ Stevens?”
Mum regards me blankly. This despite the fact that I’d been humming Green Door when I walked into the kitchen, a kind of subtle advance warning that I’d worked out the surprise.
“You know,” I say, more slowly, “when you said that someone might be coming, did you mean Shakin’ Stevens?”
Much as I’m sure my mother would have loved to accompany me to another Shakin’ Stevens concert at The Capitol, following the thrill of the previous two, she shakes her head, refuses to meet my eye. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s nothing at all. If you’re not busy, will you please set the table for tea?”
It is 9am.
On Saturday morning we find out the truth. Jonny and I have squashed onto Mum and Dad’s bed, a long-outgrown habit. I half expect Dad to pull a hobby horse out from under the covers, as he did on my fifth birthday, or Mum to start reading a Mr Man book, as she used to do, but I’m 11 now, Jonny, eight, and there’s a weird tension hanging over proceedings. Maybe they’re about to announce we’re moving house. Or they’re getting a divorce. Or worse.
“We’re having a baby.”
I hear the words as they issue from my mother’s lips, but the meaning swims just out of reach. Having a baby? Us?
“We wanted to wait until we were 100% sure to tell you. And now we’re sure.”
Jonny leaps out of bed and runs through to Mum and Dad’s bathroom, where he throws up, loudly. Mum follows him. Dad and I listen to her making soothing noises.
“Jonathan must be in shock,” Dad says.
“Yes,” I agree, which allows us to avoid touching on the, come to think of it, quite embarrassing, subject of the pregnancy itself. How old are my parents, anyway? Aren’t they practically 40? As the news sinks in, I am less in shock, more in a hurry to tell people. Am I allowed to tell people? God, please let me be allowed to tell people. With gossip as good as this, I am assured a big part in our class Dynasty re-enactment during lunch period. Our costumes – bottle green kilts, tights, shirts, sweaters, ties – might be lacking a certain je ne sais quoi but the Colby attitude is all there.
Fast-forward 24 years, to our new bedroom in Brighton, the faint smell of wallpaper paste in the air, our old phone in my hand. It’s cordless, but if there were a cord, I’d be twisting it around one finger.
“Guess what? I’m pregnant. I’m not meant to be telling anyone yet, it’s too early, but I had to call, I’m going insane…”
Karen lights a cigarette, inhales deeply. “Oh my God, hon. Are you still smoking?”
Before I answer, Goober darts out from under the bed, into the hallway, where he retches, loudly.
I would not have dreamed of being so candid if I had known he was there. I was going to work out a way to break the news gently to the cats. Show some sensitivity…
“I have to go, Goober’s sick, I’ll call you later.” I hang up, run into the hallway.
There’s not much you can do for a cat who’s barfing. Sure, you can take preventative measures – buy anti-hairball-formula food, brush out mats and tangles on a regular basis – but by the time your beloved feline is hunched up in the corner with his back to the world, hacking and spluttering, blinking at the sheer indignity of it, you’re powerless to intervene. He won’t even let you get close enough to hold the hair out of his eyes.
“Goober’s being sick.” I yell. Elvis doesn’t come running, continues, in fact, making breakfast. “He heard me telling Karen we’re pregnant…"
Sailing out of the kitchen window, my voice reaches our downstairs neighbours who are sitting on their terrace, smoking. In one fell swoop it’s not just Goober who knows but the always-arguing Jack and Sonia, too, but this I won’t find out until another day.
“Do you think Zozo knows?” I call, unsure if Elvis can hear me over the sound of butter sizzling. “Where is he? If he’s under our bed he would’ve heard, too, no?”
I try to get a trip on my rising hysteria. I am beginning to sound as anxious as I do when one of the cats is locked in a cupboard; when I become convinced that one of them has snuck out two front doors, both locked, to reach the road. Hovering over Goober, I watch as he retches again. A puddle of frothy liquid spews out of him and onto the new, chocolate-tinted, maple wood floorboards.
At five o’clock, and six puddles of watery froth later, I call the vet’s surgery. We can be squeezed in at six. Zozo, eyes half closed in suspicion, watches me getting the cat box out of the cupboard.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, “it’s not for you. Your brother has to go to the vet. He’s not feeling well.”
They’re half brothers, of course, Goober being five years older than Zozo, from a different part of the country, and a different breed of Persian, but the love these two feel for each other when they’re playing hide and seek or sharing a patch of the duvet, little flat forehead to flat forehead, couldn’t be stronger were they from the same litter.
Zozo blinks. Yawns. I've exlained the situation to him, have promised that my love for him will not diminish when the “new kitten” comes along. I think he’s okay with it. Goober, on the other hand, is deaf to my reassurances. I can only guess it’s something to do with the special bond between a mother and her firstborn son.
I find him under the sofa, sulking, and scoop him up quickly. He’s in his box before he has time to think “the bitch better not get so absent-minded in pregnancy that she forgets to feed me”, and we’re on our way to the surgery, Goober’s incessant yowling drowning out the radio.
With every set of red traffic lights, I become more worried that something is seriously wrong. If we need to enlist the services of a cat psychologist, the expense will be staggering. Then, thank God, I remember we have cat insurance. Come to think of it, I wonder if the same thing is available for babies. If my parents could have looked into the future and seen how much I would end up shelling out in therapy, surely they’d have taken out some kind of policy at birth, given the chance.
“Katalax should do the trick,” the vet says, taking off the thick gloves all vets have to don, however quick their reflexes, when dealing with Goober. “It’s probably just a hairball. Smear a little of this on each front paw and he’ll lick it off. It will help get things moving.”
I sing to Goober all the way home. When we pass a sullen-looking teenage girl in a tracksuit struggling to get a double buggy off the bus, I realise I could never have been a single mum. There would have been nobody to change the cat litter during pregnancy. Toxoplasmosis would have been more or less a certainty.
Five days later I’m back in the same surgery, talking to the same vet. Only this time it’s Zozo on the table. “No, it’s pronounced Zoo-zoo,” I stress, making a mental note to bear this in mind when naming our child; to not subject him or her to a lifetime of correcting people.
“It’s just this bald patch on his tail…” I stroke the two-inch long section in question, Zozo’s tailbone showing through it, scary and rat-like. “He’s never had it before, I have no idea what’s causing it… except…” I look the vet straight in the eye: “I’m pregnant, you see, and I think maybe that’s had some kind of effect.”
“Hhhmmm,” the vet murmurs, inspecting my little lamb’s tail, glove-less this time and in no danger whatsoever. “It’s not a parasite… not an infection… Doesn’t seem to be anything here at all.”
So I was right. It’s psychosomatic.
“The skin seems somewhat dry, however,” the vet notes, rubbing his thumb in small circles against Zozo’s fur. “Maybe he has a touch of dandruff; it’s possible in cats.” He pulls a pump canister out of a cupboard. “Try this spray, once a day, in his food,” he tells me. “It contains fish oils, should help keep him in top condition. That patch on the tail will have cleared up in a month or two.”
We leave five minutes later, £73 poorer, taking into account both the consultation and the fish-oil spray.
Back home, Goober is sound asleep on the sheepskin rug. Nearby is a small puddle of watery vomit, the centrepiece of which is a successfully expelled hairball. It’s grey and slimy, a satisfying three or four inches long, as fat as a chipolata. I clean up the mess, relieved that he’s managed to let it go, sure this is a sign that he’s found a new sense of peace over the fact that we are soon to be a family of five.
One week later, it has become apparent that neither cat will touch food that’s been contaminated with the fish-oil spray. But then it turns out that it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Dandruff, it seems, is not the problem.
Sitting at my desk, I realise I need a magazine from one of the shelves behind me. I roll my chair across the Persian carpet to get it, narrowly missing the Persian cat. And that’s when it all comes flooding back: Zozo, a few weeks ago, dozing by my feet, anticipating the happy moment when I’d get up to feed him. Me pushing my seat back a couple of feet without realising he was there; the hiss, the flick of his tail, the chunk of fur left on the carpet where he’d been lying…
This whole episode has taught me a couple of things. One: I have had more practice at mothering than many would give me credit for. And if I can’t always get it right? It’s not for want of trying. Secondly: it’s true what they say about pregnancy making you forgetful, no matter how much I scoffed at the notion. How could I have thought Zozo had some strange, pining disease when less than a month ago I picked up his missing piece of fur from the carpet?
As to whether a newborn baby can really smell sweeter than a kitten… On that one, I remain to be convinced.
