Just to let you know I've published a new fiction book. It's a collection of short stories, well, it's two short stories, and one novella. Both the shorts are horror, and the novella is an occult thriller.
One of the shorts is about mothering. Badly. In my opinion. I thought you might be interested in seeing an excerpt from it. Trigger warning, therefore, on those who might have experienced stringent, routine driven mothering, that involved crying it out and other delightful ideas about How To Train A Child.
Alma
Mater
‘What is that stench, how can she
make such a foul odour?’
Although quiet, and polite, Alma’s
husband could hear the repulsion in her tone: could hear her muscles clenching
and her body turning to piano wire as she spoke.
‘Don’t speak like that in front of
Catherine, she can hear you.’ Acutely
aware of his wife’s moods, his own words were muted and light, with an attempt
at humour. He smiled down at three week old
Catherine, and rubbed her belly with a light tickle.
‘Oh don’t do that, she doesn’t want
a poo-ey hand touching her. Haven’t you
finished?’
James had indeed finished changing
the nappy. Poor Catherine had seemed a
little constipated, and had squealed and cried and turned bright red as she
howled. He’d come home from work to be
greeted by the shrieks from the pram in the outer porch whilst Alma had been
finishing making dinner in the kitchen.
Alma liked dinner to be on the table
in front of him as he walked in the door at 6.15. The screeching from Catherine had been
matched by the icy silence from Alma, as he entered at 5.55. Prior to his daughter’s birth, he’d have hung
around at the train station until he could walk in the door at the correct
moment. Now, his desire to hold his
daughter in his arms, lift her up and cuddle her, and have that bit more time
with her before she was sentenced to the bedroom at 7.15, over rode other
considerations.
Alma was furious on two counts. One, he’d come home ‘early’ and two, dinner
wasn’t nearly ready. Catherine, it transpired,
had been an absolute nightmare all day.
Crying, refusing to sleep, refusing to swallow all her bottle, and deliberately vomiting up her milk on her
nice clean clothes.
‘Honestly James, she is just like
you. She never listens and does exactly
what she wants.’ Alma had stirred the bolognaise
sauce she was working on with such speed it slopped out onto the cooker.
‘Now look what she’s made me
do!’ Alma took the saucepan off the ring
and washed down the cooker top before putting it back on and continuing the
frantic swirling.
James had smiled a smile of
consolation and comfort, picked up Catherine and taken her upstairs. Twenty minutes later, with her tummy rubbed
and her legs bicycled up and down, she’d finally managed to get rid of the
thing that was hurting her, and had stopped crying. James had cleaned her up and was just about
to put the new nappy on, when Alma had arrived to comment on the smell, and to
state that dinner was on the table.
James thanked his wife and carried Catherine back down the stairs. He placed her in the little Moses basket his
mother had given them, and watched her look around as he ate his spaghetti.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep looking at
her like that, she’ll get spoiled. She
has to learn she’s not the centre of the Universe.’
James smiled and carried on eating,
carried on gazing at his beloved Catherine.
*
The shrieks were ear piercing. James felt his nerve begin to break. He’d been pacing the living room for over an
hour, despite Alma’s promises that it wouldn’t go on for more than ten
minutes. So far he’d kept to his side of
the bargain: not to interfere, not to intrude on her authority as the
mother. But the feeling of his skin searing
off his body, and fear knotting up his stomach, was becoming impossible to
ignore. Every one of Catherine’s screams
and wails was killing him. He could feel
his heart jumping in response. He gave
in to his instincts and went upstairs.
Alma was sitting outside the nursery,
reading her Women’s Weekly. She’d put her chair in front of the door,
barring the way. She looked up at him as
he emerged onto the landing. Her eyes
rolled and the magazine was put down with a huff.
‘Oh for goodness sake, James! She’s perfectly all right!’
‘She doesn’t sound all right.’ He’d had to raise his voice to be heard above
the cries.
‘She is warm, well fed, safe and
comfortable. I double filled her bottle to
get her through the night and her nappy is dry.
There is nothing wrong with her.’
‘She’s lonely!’ His voice raised until it was almost matching
Alma’s extortions.
‘She’s in a TEMPER. You don’t propose to raise a spoilt brat, do
you?’
‘She’s six months old, how can she
be spoiled?’
‘Easily, with you around. Always picking her up, cuddling her, telling
her what a good girl she is. Always
rushing to her for the slightest whimper.
You’ve caused this!’
James stared at his wife. The schism that existed in their world had
never seemed so great, so profound.
‘How can you bear to hear her in
pain like this?’
‘She is not in pain. She’s in a temper, and heaven knows, if we
don’t control it now, we’ll have worse to come.’ Alma seemed not to hear the pain in James’s
voice. ‘She has to learn to sleep, and
this is how she’ll do it. Not by being
mollycoddled by you.’
Alma picked the magazine back up and
purposely stared at the pages. James had
been dismissed. Short of physically
pushing her out of the chair to get to the nursery, there was nothing he could
do. He stormed back down the stairs,
pulled his coat off the hook, and left.
‘Another night at the pub whilst I
do the hard work.’ Alma spoke out loud, as if addressing the baby through the
door.
‘Now see what you have done...’
*
James opened the door at 6.13. ‘I’m home!’
Alma smiled her greeting, and her
thanks, as she placed the dinner out on the table.
‘Smells good!’ said James, as he
hung up his coat. ‘I’ll just wash my
hands.’ He ducked into the down stairs
toilet that Alma had had installed under the stairs. She was immensely pleased with this civilised addition to the house. James would have preferred... well, quite a
lot of things, actually, but it was keeping Alma happy.
Alma was settling Catherine into the
high chair, as he seated himself. Beef
Cobbler was one of his favourites: once again, Alma was showing her thanks for
him giving in on the extension.
‘Well, how have my girls been
today?’
Frost formed in the air as Alma
launched into her tirade of how trying her day had been. James tried to tune it out, and concentrate
on Catherine, who was playing with a rattle he’d bought for her, but it was
difficult.
‘...And then she spit up all over
her new bib. I’d starched it too, when I
ironed it, and she got bits in the little embroidery roses. I’ll never get them looking that good
again...’
‘Tut,’ said James, quietly. He winked at Catherine. Alma didn’t pause for breath.
‘... so I tried the new banana one,
and she spat that out too. I mean, what
child doesn’t like mashed banana? It
took me an hour to get that jar into her.
I was exhausted by the time for her nap, and then she threw up all over
her clean bedding, so I had to re-feed her and
do the bed linen...’
James spooned down his dinner,
trying to juggle his attention between the women in his life. Alma would erupt if she felt she wasn’t
getting enough, or that Catherine was getting too much. All he wanted was to beam and smile at
Catherine, and talk to her in little whispers and tickle her until she started
to hiccup with laughter. He nodded and
smiled at Alma enough times to keep her mollified whilst giving Catherine his
secret smile and pulling faces that Alma couldn’t see. Catherine giggled. Alma droned on...
‘Claire was round, and she said
little Emily never spits out her food, and every scrap is taken from the jar...and
heaven knows Emily doesn’t manage to stink out the room every time she
breathes...’
Catherine dropped the rattle on the
floor as she squealed in laughter.
‘That’s it, that’s the third time
today.’ As James had leaned down to pick up the rattle, Alma swooped up
Catherine. A sharp slap and a sharper
cry rent the air, and James’s heart.
‘Never, never, never, do that
again.’ On each ‘never’, Alma slapped
the back of Catherine’s hand hard.
Catherine’s howls became screams, as Alma whisked her up the
stairs. ‘When will you learn?’
James looked at his beef congealing
into the gravy, as he heard the uproar upstairs as Catherine was stripped of
her clothes, pushed and pulled into a sleep suit, and the door firmly closed on
her cries. By the time Alma came back
downstairs he was in the pub.
OR
The type B formula feeding mother is very scary. She is impeccably dressed in a smart linen suit. Her hair is not only in style, and in place, but it smells of fresh apples. Her make up is immaculate and her nails are pink and shiny and all the same length - long. Her baby is in some sort of outfit that you are sure you remember seeing in Vogue. She has a nanny, and a body guard. She is holding her baby and cooing at it as she feeds it from a tub of pre-mixed UHT formula with a disposable one-use chuck in the bin push in teat. The correct response to this mother feeding her baby is:
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