Chapter 38

I knew about children but I had really no idea about toddlers. Much of what I have learned has come from the various remarkable women who helped me in the early years. I now know the importance of continuity, of routine, of as many cuddles as possible, of the constant reassurance that they are loved. I grew into the role as the children grew up.

Nevertheless, nothing, not even the most difficult moments with my father, prepared me for dealing with all the unformed, raw emotions of three small boys who, when they had a mind to, were not averse to taking a chunk out of each other with their teeth.

Ian started it off. Like a mother bird squawking when the hunter comes near the nest, revealing its whereabouts and endangering the contents that are most precious to her, Piers would say ‘Ian not do it. Ian not...’

Whatever it was he was not to do, Piers had given the game away. Ian knew just what he had to do to rile his brother and did it.

In the ensuing brouhaha, teeth were bared and I cast around for advice.

I got the same advice from everyone. I was doubtful about it. It couldn’t work. They took their cue from their Daddy. It was going against all logic. But I was told it worked and that everyone did it. I bided my time.

I was on my back on the floor, playing, lifting Lars up into the air. Piers and Ian were yelling. ‘Me! Me!’ I saw Ian sink his teeth into Piers’s back.

Quick as a flash I was there. Ian knew I had seen him. It was at this point that the collective wisdom I had been given should have cut in. I should have bitten him. I looked Ian in the eye. He may have sensed what was going through my head. Maybe my lips twitched for an instant. He started yelling, feet thumping on the floor. I knew it would be disastrous. For a few minutes, I let the tantrum run its course. Ian’s brothers looked on, wondering what Daddy would do. Daddy was wondering, too. The little legs stopped and curled. The noise quietened.

’That’s not the way to behave, Ian, is it? You shouldn’t bite your brother, should you? What would you think if Daddy bit you?’

I thought his expression was one of regret.

‘So having bitten Piers, what are you going to do now? Bite Daddy?’

I extended my hand. Without a second thought, his head was down and his teeth were in.

Tantrums were tricky. I had heard about them, but the concatenation of unfettered emotion that springs from nowhere still took me aback. With three at the same age, squabbles (mainly over toys) were very frequent. Maybe talking through the component parts of a tantrum might help. ‘Look boys,’ I would say, pointing at the one with the incipient rage, ‘Your brother is really angry.’ To him, ‘Why don’t you have a tantrum? Go on, you’ve got to lie on the floor and bang your fists on the carpet. Yes, and why don’t you thump with your feet, too? Oh, really tame. You’ve got to do it with more spirit and lots of crying and screaming to make it a proper tantrum. That’s really weak.’

Slow to learn, I again offered my hand, but at too early a point in the process. It stopped the tantrum, but Lars was so mortified, he was sick all morning.

I suppose sharing is an acquired skill. They enjoyed the stories of ‘Leo the Lion’ (he who only wanted to love and ‘never once asked for a thing’) and ‘Blosson and Boo’ (who cemented their friendship by giving each other whatever was precious to them.) They did not disagree when I told them to give was more blessed than to receive. Putting it into practice was harder. They loved to possess. Often what they loved to possess was the very object of desire that a brother was possessing at that moment.

There are plenty of toys in the world. Most of them live in my sons’ nursery. They are surrounded by possessions. Although ‘no toys, please’ was the request for their third birthday, almost all the 70 plus guests brought three of them. As Ian’s Dutch Godmother said, ‘It isn’t a birthday without presents.’ Yet it was the presents that caused the problems then...

‘My giggles. I want my giggles!’

Blue eyes welled and tears trickled down cheeks now puffed and puce. The crescendo of Piers’s agitation silenced the party. Frankenstein-like, syringe in one hand, chain-saw in the other, stethoscope around the shoulders, hard hat perched jauntily over one eye, Ian injected and then pruned Lars’s arm. Crumpled packaging trampled underfoot, the doctor's set and the builder's set had became one.

‘Where’s my GIGGLES?’

Intent on his goal, Piers hitched his dungarees higher, pushed the gift wrapping aside and strode forward with all the speed his three year-old legs could muster.

‘My giggles,’ he sobbed. ‘He’s got my giggles.’

Ian turned, jaw dropped, knowing he was the quarry. Piers’s fingers flailed at his brother’s eyes, grasping the yellow goggles strapped across them. With a pull, the elastic slipped and the prize fell into the clutching hand.

‘MY giggles,’ Piers informed us. ‘Not Ian’s.’

One of the adults came over to me to elucidate. ‘My fault. I told him he looked like Biggles.’

Tears instantly evaporated, face clear and beaming, hardly able to see through the smeared lenses of his goggles, Piers continued playing happily amid the detritus through which Lars and Ian, making dee-dah noises, manoeuvred crushed boxes. Cardboard, paper, sticky tape, sophisticated electronic engineering, it was all the same to them. A toy was a toy.

Out came the cakes. One white; one chocolate; one red.

‘Blow. Blow. Come on - blow!’

Lips pursed lightly with a slight exhalation upwards.

‘No, not up your nose. Blow the candles out!.’

As this was only the third time birthday cake candles had needed to be blown out and they could not remember the first and second, puzzlement spread across their faces. Godparents to the rescue, the nine small flames were extinguished into spirals of dark smoke. The boys looked for where the gleam of brilliance had gone.

‘Cut the cakes!’

Before they could wonder any longer, they were whisked to the kitchen . Each right hand ensconced in an adult’s, their tiny fingers touched the knives as the shiny coloured coverings fragmented into slivers of icing sugar revealing soft pillows of sponge and oozings of jam beneath. Fingers wriggled from adult hands to touch the sticky softness, to press it into shapes, to direct it via cheek and chin to the mouth, to gorge on the sweetness of it all.

‘Right everyone. Professor Pringelli’s putting ‘Punch and Judy’ on in the sitting room.’

Such was the boys’ third birthday.

‘Who’s coming?’

‘Not sure, darlings.’

‘Wazzat?’

They heard a noise in the trees along the drive.

‘It’s Oliver!’ They were gleeful. Oliver, their friend from nursery school, had been expected the previous weekend, but did not arrive. Clearly he had been in the undergrowth all the time. Having been told he would come, they expected him - at some point - to arrive.

‘Oliver!’ they cried, jumping up and down. Pandora scuttled out, a limp fledgling, beak agape, twiggy legs skywards, clamped in her mouth.

‘Pandora not bite me!’ squealed Piers, running from the sight of nature red in tooth and claw.

‘It’s in her nature,’ Lars observed glumly, shaking his head.

‘I ruv Oriver,’ said Ian. ‘I need a WEE. Now, Daddy!’

All three trooped upstairs.

‘Right, trousers down.’

‘Not trousers. They’re shorts, Daddy.’

‘OK. Generic term. Just do it, please. And wash your hands.’

‘What we having? Is it pasta?’

‘Yes, with tuna. Now, no toys at the table. Toys on the shelf.’

Three small bodies heaved themselves into black Stokke chairs.

‘Wazzat, Daddy?’

‘Cat pooh.’

‘No it’s not. It’s pasta.’

‘You knew! You’re just testing Daddy.’

Ian lowered his head and raised his large blue eyes. A smile crept from side to side.

‘And the sauce?..’

‘It’s cat wee wee.’

‘Yes, Piers. How did you guess?’