Читать книгу William’s Progress - Matt Rudd - Страница 12

‘I can’t believe you left us for a whole day. I’m still wearing the same nightdress I came to the hospital in. I’ve had to borrow some sanitary towels from the nurse.’

‘I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. I got home. I had a quick lie-down. The phone was still unplugged from when you told me to unplug that (“fucking”) phone. Then it was 11 p.m. I called the hospital. They said you were asleep. I called your mobile. It was off. I’m here now. I’m so sorry. Look, I bought a cranberry, yumberry and blackcurrant smoothie. It’s very high in vitamin C.’

‘Thanks. Now, go and change Jacob’s nappy.’

‘Jacob?’

‘Yes, he’s called Jacob. I had to call him something because the midwives were about to call social services and report us for neglect. You had gone AWOL. So I decided on Jacob. We can always change it later.’

Ahh, the old we-can-always-change-it-later trick. Isabel has been using this all year. We can’t agree on a colour to paint the baby’s room. I want a good, honest, sensible yellow. She wants a pinky-white, which is ridiculous if it’s a boy, but she says, on the contrary, it’s perfect because she intends for our child to have a non-gender-specific upbringing. Halfway through the standoff, she paints it pink while I’m at work. I come home and look angry. She says, ‘We can always change it later.’ Kapow!

Also while I’m at work, she pays a proper handyman to come round and hang pictures where I don’t want them on the grounds that we’ve been in this house for over a year and she’s tired of looking at bare walls. The same happens with the placing of plant pots, the reorganisation of the kitchen and the moving of all my clothes to the bottom drawer of the small cupboard in the spare room (to make room for all the cloth nappies). But it’s okay, we can always change it later…

We will never change it later. We could barely be bothered to change it in the first place.

This is fine when it comes to the feng shui-ing of a living room or the buying of a girly tree for the front garden, but not so fine for the naming of a first-born.

Jacob.

I’m not sure. I knew someone at university called Jacob. Did philosophy. Smoked drugs. Now lives on a beach in Bali. How much of that is because his parents called him Jacob?

It does have a ring to it, though. Jacob Walker. You probably wouldn’t get an astronaut called Jacob Walker, but equally, you wouldn’t get a shoplifter. It didn’t sound prime ministerial, but there was a certain gravitas. Broadsheet newspaper editor, perhaps. Barrister. Surgeon. Discoverer of (a) the cure for old age, (b) life in another solar system or (c) the ark of the covenant. If they haven’t discovered that already. I can’t remem—

‘William! The nappy.’