You can hardly call what Daniel had just said the natural progression of things between a man and a woman.
But could it be true that even fuckwits like Daniel do want children? They just can’t ever get past their fuckwittage to make a decision?
—
The strange thing about all this is all through my thirties I’ve thought that children were something you had to sort of wrangle men into. Almost something you had to pretend not to want in order to keep a man, otherwise they’d run off screaming.
Maybe that was the difference between Singletons like me, Miranda and Shazzer and Smug Marrieds like Magda. Smug Married women never had that insecurity or ambivalence, and went for a realistic choice and some sort of balanced lifestyle transaction as soon as possible: never even entertaining the thought that a man would not want to have children with them?
—
8.30 p.m. Emboldened by my new revelation, even if not exactly sure what it precisely was, I sent Mark a text.
Bridget Jones
Mark, I understand how complicated this is, but I am having a scan on Monday 23 October at 5 p.m. and if you wanted to come I would like that very much.
—
8.32 p.m. Staring fixedly at blank phone.
8.33 p.m. No reply from Mark.
8.34 p.m. Still no reply from Mark.
8.35 p.m. But what if he does reply yes? What do I do about Daniel? What if I tell Mark that Daniel wants to come and Mark still says yes? What if I don’t tell Mark about Daniel on the assumption that Daniel’s never going to turn up anyway, and then Daniel does turn up?
8.45 p.m. Realize there have been so many times in my life when I’ve fantasized about going to a scan with Mark or Daniel: just not both at the same time.
—
9 p.m. Right. Broccoli. We’re eating too many cheesy potatoes and we need to enter different food groups. Broccoli is a Crossover Food that embraces more than one essential food group. Like pomegranates.
9.30 p.m. Baby hates broccoli. Am going to have cheesy potato.
10 p.m. Still no text from Mark.
FRIDAY 20 OCTOBER
6 p.m. Sit Up Britain studios. “Sit Up Britain!” said Miranda, to camera, in her urgent newsreader voice. “The hard-hitting news show that makes you shit up!”
BONG.
“Did I just say shit up?” said Miranda, as the title footage showed reporters striding around the globe with determined expressions.
“Yes,” I whispered into her feed, glancing round to check that Peri Campos wasn’t watching.
“Unpronounceable headline, anyway,” said Miranda, looking up at the camera for her next autocue. “So my point is, what sort of MONSTER doesn’t reply to a text inviting him to a scan?”
“Maybe he’s in a meeting?”
“For FOUR DAYS? Sod him. And now—fascinators! Are they the new earrings?”
BONG.
“WTF?” said Miranda. “Who wrote this rubbish? Who wears two fascinators?”
“Peri Campos wrote it,” I hissed, while shots whizzed by of the fascinator-adorned heads of Camilla and Kate and Princess Beatrice and Eugenie. “Assisted by the man-bun youths who say ‘woah’ and ‘bro.’ ”
“Ugh,” said Miranda. “Go with Daniel, bro.”
“But his first reaction was to get rid of my baby.”
“At least he’s coming up with the goods now, and he’s a legit shag, bro. And protests in the Maghreb, spilling over to the London embassy.”
BONG.
“Oh my God, Bridget! Look at the clip.” There was a shot of crowds milling around in white robes outside a red-mud palace, a close-up of people shouting, and in the background, making his way through the crowds with Freddo, his Oxbridge assistant, was Mark Darcy.
—
9 p.m. My flat. Feeling much better now that there is a reason for Mark’s silence. Have been reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting and We Need More Crossover Foods. Am making Crossover Food muffins with broccoli in. I found them in a cookbook full of ingenious ways of trying to make children eat vegetables. Next I’m going to do chocolate mousse made with avocados.
9.15 p.m. Shit, shit, have just reached up to get a glass from the cupboard and dropped it. There was one big bit in the muffin mixture, but I got it out. Sure it will all be fine.
10 p.m. Still no text from Mark. Looks like it’s just me and Daniel. Or more likely just me. Oh, goody, text.
DANIEL FUCKWIT DO NOT ANSWER
Still on for the big day, Jones. See you tomorrow.
MONDAY 23 OCTOBER
4 p.m. Dr. Rawlings’s office. “Ah! Is this Daddy?” Dr. Rawlings bustled into the room, with an arch glance at Daniel and myself. “Nice to finally see who you are. Right, let’s get started, shall we?”
She folded up my top to reveal my bump.
“Good God, Jones,” said Daniel. “You look like a boa constrictor who’s eaten a goat.”
“Wait!” said Dr. Rawlings, poised with the ultrasound thingy in the air and starting to smile at Daniel incredulously. “I recognize that voice. You’re on the television, aren’t you? Didn’t you do that travel show?”
“Yeeees, The Smooth Guide,” murmured Daniel, at which Dr. Rawlings went all giggly and fluttery.
“Daniel Cleaver! The Smooth Guide! Oh, we used to love it. We used to watch it every single week. We absolutely hooted when you were rolling around in the mud with those girls in Thailand.”
“Can we look at the baby, please?” I said, thinking, “Is there no area of life impervious to celebrity culture?”
“Oh my goodness, wait till I tell everyone,” Dr. Rawlings carried on. “I say, you couldn’t do me an autograph, could you?” She put down the probe and started looking around for a piece of paper. “Here! Prescription pad! Perfect! Put something funny.”
Saw a glint come into Daniel’s eye. Oh God. Was he going to draw a penis or something?
“What are you up to now, Daniel? Any new shows coming up?”
“I’m bringing out a novel,” he said, writing something on the prescription pad.
“Oh, super! Is it funny?” she asked flirtatiously.
“No, no, not at all, actually. It’s a literary thing. It’s called The Poetics of Time. It’s an existential study of—”
“Right! Better get on,” said Dr. Rawlings, clearly even more quickly bored by The Poetics of Time than I was. She glanced at the note Daniel had written for her and collapsed in giggles.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” she said, wiping her eyes and starting to rub lubricant on my stomach as if she was wiping something off the floor.
“Ding dong!” said Daniel. “Dr. Rawlings, could you possibly do that to me afterwards? My waistband has become increasingly tight of late. I seriously fear there may be something growing in there.”
“That’s your penis, Daniel,” I said, drily, as Dr. Rawlings collapsed in giggles again.
“OK, settle down, now, Bridget. Settle down,” she said.
“Me settle down?”
“Shh! Let’s listen to the heartbeat.”
She turned up the machine and a giant thumping boomed out. Daniel looked genuinely freaked out.
“Is everything all right in there?” he said. “It sounds like a French high-speed train.”
“Tip-top shape. Right! Let’s look at the screen. Oh, there’s the little hand! Look! And, oh! There’s the penis!”
I sat bolt upright.
“Penis? She’s got a penis? My little girl has got a penis?”
Somehow I’d been absolutely convinced that the baby was a girl. You know how a mother just knows?
“Yes, you see it there? Pretty big.”
“Like father like son,” purred Daniel.
“I don’t want a great big penis inside me!”
“First time I’ve ever heard that from you, Jones. Oh, look, look he’s rubbing his nose with his little hands.”
“Oh he’s trying to wave,” I said. “Hello, sweetheart. It’s Mummy, it
’s your mummy, hello!” I was completely overcome. It was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life ever, apart from the last scan, which was also the best thing I’d ever seen in my life ever.
I looked at Daniel to see that he too was choked with emotion. He looked as if he was about to cry.
“Jones,” he said, fumbling for my hand. “It’s our little boy.”
—
We departed from the scan in Daniel’s newly valeted Mercedes, the pale grey interior still smelling faintly of sick. Daniel was driving incredibly slowly, so much so that cars were honking and swerving past us.
“I think you could go a tiny bit faster,” I ventured, immediately feeling like I had catapulted from a person from The Jerry Springer Show to the sort of Smug Married who passive-aggressively backseat drives with her husband.
Daniel put his foot on the accelerator, hit a speed bump, and braked.
“Oh Christ! Oh Christ! Has he fallen out? Is he all right? Jesus, Jones! Move the seat belt. Move the seat belt off him now or it’ll squash his head.”
“Oh no! Will it?” I cried, taking off the seat belt. “Have we squashed him? But how are we going to drive him home if I can’t wear the seat belt?”
We both looked at each other, panicked, like seven-year-olds.
—
Somehow we made it back to the flat, me holding the seat belt away from my bump, Daniel growing increasingly quiet.
I took the seat belt off as gently and carefully as I could as we pulled up, to ensure it didn’t ping back and squash the baby.
“You go on, up,” said Daniel. “I’ll park the car. Make sure your phone’s on in case anything else happens.”
—
I took out the phone as Daniel roared away, remembering I’d turned it off for the scan, to find a string of texts from Mark.
MARK DARCY
Bridget, I’m just getting on a plane back to Heathrow and have got your texts. Is the scan still scheduled for today? I shall try to be there if we’re on time.
MARK DARCY
Just landed. Am going to rush over. Where is the scan?
MARK DARCY
Which hospital are you in?
MARK DARCY
Bridget? Please don’t sulk. I’ve been in North Africa with no signal for four days.
—
As I walked very, very carefully towards the flat, to avoid the baby falling out, I saw a familiar figure in a dark overcoat approaching from the opposite direction.
“Mark!” I said, hurrying towards him.
His face broke into a grin. “I couldn’t find you. Didn’t you get my texts? How did it go?”
There were footsteps behind me.
“Darcy! What the devil are you doing here?” said Daniel. “We just came back from the scan, didn’t we, Bridge?”
Daniel attempted to put his arm round me. I wriggled free, but then, to my total horror, he took out the scan photo and showed it to Mark.
“What do you think? Handsome little devil, isn’t he?”
Mark didn’t look at the photo. “I would have been there, but I was in the Maghreb.”
“Ah, yes, I know it well. Little belly dancing club in Old Compton Street?”
Mark lunged towards him.
“OK, Mrs. Darcy, keep your wig on.”
“Stop it,” I said. “Don’t fight. I already have one child inside me.”
“You’re right,” said Mark. “We need to discuss this calmly, as adults. Can we come inside?”
“If only,” said Daniel, “we’d thought of asking that before.”
—
My flat. “Anyone want a cup of tea?” I said brightly, as if I was Mum in Grafton Underwood and the vicar had just popped round for some butterfly buns and a sherry.
The two men were looking at each other sideways, like U.S. presidential candidates about to kick off one of their slagging matches thinly disguised as debates.
“Darce,” said Daniel, in a kindly tone, “I understand how emasculating this must feel, after all those years of everyone saying you were firing blanks.”
Mark started pushing him towards the balcony.
“Darcy hasn’t got the soldiers,” singsonged Daniel.
“What are you DOING?” I said as Mark shoved him outside and locked the French windows.
“Maybe he’ll jump,” muttered Mark.
“Will you two stop bickering and grow up; it’s like having two children,” I said, bustling around with the tea. “Mark, let Daniel back in.” I had literally turned into Magda and was on the point of saying, “Mummy will smack, she will smack, she will smack.”
“Grow up?” said Daniel, coming back from the balcony. “You slept with both of us in frankly alarmingly quick succession like a member of Generation Z.”
I sat down wearily at the kitchen table. Was this what it was going to be like being a mother? Preparing people MEALS and GRINDING MYSELF TO THE BONE while they squabble and fight? Suddenly remembered I had forgotten to put the kettle on. Maybe I could serve them the Crossover Food muffins?
“Look, the situation is far from ideal,” said Mark. “But it is, perhaps, an opportunity for us all to look at our behaviour and responsibilities, and act with everyone’s best…”
“Right, great, Mother Superior. Is one going to start singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ now?”
“Teas up!” I trilled. “And I’ve got homemade muffins!”
Daniel and Mark looked at each other, more horrified than by anything before.
—
The three of us sat at the kitchen table, struggling to eat the, by my own admission, disgusting Crossover broccoli muffins.
Suddenly, Mark started choking. He pulled a large piece of glass out of his mouth.
“What’s this?”
“Oh shit! I broke a glass when I was doing the mixture. I thought I’d got it all out. Are you all right?”
Daniel leapt up and SPAT his muffin into the sink. He picked up another piece of broken glass and held it out. “I feel like my life is disintegrating before my very eyes. Is this what parenthood is? Vomit in my car? Chocolate on my suits? Broccoli-and-glass-chip muffins in my stomach?”
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I thought I’d got it all out. I’ve just made a terrible mess of everything. I can’t do this.”
I slumped at the table, head on my arms. I just wanted it all to stop. Apart from the baby.
Mark came over and put his arms round me. “It’s all right, it’s all right. You’re doing fantastically well.”
“You haven’t actually killed us, “said Daniel, freakishly clearing out the sink. “Unless powdered glass is at this moment puncturing all our intestines.”
“It has actually been a near-death experience for us all,” said Mark, starting to laugh.
“So now can we all sort of unite and pull together?” I said, hopefully.
“Push, surely,” said Daniel.
—
Everyone settled down then, and we drank our tea nicely like the sort of well-behaved family you see in old-fashioned movies from the 1950s: unlike modern TV shows where the children snap out sassy and slightly insulting lines at their gay parents written by sophisticated writers’ rooms in Hollywood.
“What about our parents?” I said, suddenly sitting bolt upright.
“We have to tell them, of course,” said Mark.
Oh God, I thought. The village! Grafton Underwood! Admiral and Elaine Darcy! Mum, Una and Mavis Enderbury!
“Parents?” said Daniel.
“Yes,” said Mark. “Do you have parents?”
“Not that I’m ever going to tell.”
“Interesting. It is the Queen’s visit rehearsal next Saturday, Bridget. I understand you are planning to be there?”
“You mean we should tell them there?” I said, horrified.
“Separately, privately, of course.”
“You can’t tell I’m pregnant yet, can you? I can’t go if everyone in the village is going to notice.” r />
There was a slight pause, then they said:
“No.”
“Nope.”
“Can’t tell at all.”
“I seriously think the baby’s going to come out flat, Jones.”
EIGHT
FAMILY VALUES
SATURDAY 28 OCTOBER
Grafton Underwood: Queen’s visit rehearsal. “Family values!” Mark’s father, Admiral Darcy, was bellowing into the microphone.
The entire village was assembled, together with the Lord Mayor, and representatives from the Palace, who were checking out the scene.
“Family Values and Village Life shall be our theme,” the Admiral thundered on, “as, for the first time in her thousand-year history, the Ethelred Stone, and its gracious vestibule, the village of Grafton Underwood, welcomes a reigning monarch to our strawy rooftops!”
“Strawy rooftops!” said Uncle Geoffrey, way too loudly. “Is he on the sauce already?”
I glanced at Mark, on the other side of the group, who was trying not to laugh. We had arrived in Mark’s car, driven by his driver, but I’d jumped out first, round the corner from Mum’s house, so we could appear to arrive separately. We didn’t want to set everyone off just yet.
“And today,” Admiral Darcy went on, “we are honoured to have with us the Clerk to the Northamptonshire Lieutenancy here to approve our plans for the visit of Her Majesty, and guide us in our protocol for the Reception Committee, and for the seating plan.”
“Admiral.” Mavis Enderbury raised her hand. “Can I just ejaculate for a moment over the luncheon.”
“She just means she wants to sit next to the bloody Queen,” Mum hissed to Una.
—
As the speech ended and everyone started to disperse, Mum turned and spotted me. Her eyes went straight to my boobs and bump.
“Bridget,” she said. “Are you preggy?”
Gaaah! Was it that obvious already? But Mark, Daniel, Tom, Miranda and Shazzer all said you couldn’t tell.
“She is, she’s preggy, Pam!” said Una.