Chapter 43

‘Where’s my mummy?’

Out-of-the-blue one morning, Lars wiped away the foam of toothpaste and asked it again, as if by rote. Not inquisitorial, just a sing-songy question along the lines of the previous one—‘Is my toothbrush red?’

It was a question I had been expecting. That it came from the mouth of a three and three-quarter-year-old not yet able to brush his own teeth is what took me by surprise.

‘Which one?’

The answer was instinctive. I visualised one of his mothers. I decided on Melissa. It was less complicated to answer about her. ‘I don’t really know, Lars. I think she’s in America.’

There was a slight pause while Lars took the offered mug, swished water round his mouth and spat it out, twice.

‘Can I see her?’

‘Not yet, no.’ I could see the inevitable ‘why?’ forming on his lips and anticipated it. ‘She’s never met you, Lars, and Daddy doesn’t know her. I’m afraid you’ve only got Daddy.’ Quite what a three and three-quarter year-old child might make of this and how much of it was more than just the repetitive asking of one of his many questions, I had no idea, but had the vague feeling that I should dissipate the notion of rejection before it formed.

‘Look, Lars, if she knew you, I’m sure she’d love you very much and want to see you, but she doesn’t know you.’ The ‘and fortunately hasn’t expressed the slightest interest in getting to know you’ hung in my head.

‘Is America in Newbury?’

‘Much further away than that.’

‘Is it the other side of Newbury?’

‘Lars, we’re not going to see her.’

‘Can we go and see my mummy in America tomorrow?’

‘No, Lars, we can’t.’

‘Can I wipe the basin instead?’

‘Yes, Lars. That would be kind.’

He busied himself with a towel. The idea had caught his imagination and he wasn’t about to let it go.

‘When can I see my mummy in America?’

‘Lars, I don’t know.’

‘She’s got a red car.’

‘Like yours, but it’s red. And she’s got red and blue shoes and she’s got a boat in the bath. It’s a black one.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘Yes. It’s ‘Pandora’ and she’s very small.’

‘And is she also a cat?’

‘No, don’t be a silly Daddy. She’s a girl. Can I have a Daddy-cuddle on the sofa?

He pressed his small frame into my chest, hands clasped round my neck.

‘I love you Daddy.’

‘I love you, too, Lars. Won’t Daddy do?’

His wiry red hair rubbed against my cheek as he nodded his agreement.

In the meantime, Piers had been demanding the return of his Bob The Builder sketch pad. Rather than be a constant referee, I had decided to make objects that caused squabbles temporarily disappear. The pad had been banished to a high shelf after he and Ian had squabbled over it and the one had brought it down on the head of the other as a way of settling their difference.

‘I want it NOW!’ Piers had put on his tough-guy expression, corners turned down, nose running, face flushed. ‘Or...’ He looked around as he lunged for a verbal weapon. ‘Or I’ll tell my mummy in America.’

Maybe the time will come when they will tell their friends that they have two mummies.

Be that as it may, they effectively have none. This is certainly something that parts of the media have berated me for. I have been accused of undervaluing and rejecting women. Not so. I know what it’s like to love and be loved; to feel desire; to long for the unique fulfilment that is commitment. I know what a loving relationship means physically and spiritually. I know the sublimation of one soul into another. As happens with many people, whatever might have been did, in the end, not happen—did not work out. It could have happened. My fault that it did not. I should have valued that special someone more. I should not have let the chance of happiness slip through my fingers in my search for the ideal, the perfection that does not and cannot exist. The thought is too painful, however. Nature’s safety valve removes from my mind those regrets, strips away the ‘if only’, excises what cannot be brought back.

For those who are fortunate the special union is achieved. And I know that it is very special and precious. They are blessed. There are no absolutes. We all know instinctively what feels right for us at a certain time. Those of us who, for the myriad of different reasons that are part of the complexity of life and how we live it, do not achieve a lasting relationship, have traditionally had to accept various compromises. In this, as in so many aspects of life, scientific advance has gone hand in hand with more relaxed social attitudes.

Not long ago, what I did could simply not be done. Now it can. That it can be done has been accepted. It cannot be uninvented. That it is something that can positively be embraced will take longer. Not to have formed a lasting relationship used to be a failing. Maybe it is. I see it as something that can happen. It certainly happens with carers. It does not mean that one is less human; less loving; less giving of oneself. It does not mean that one has to resign oneself to lovelessness—or childlessness. It should not mean that one has to run the gauntlet of the tabloid press. Who is so imbued with sanctity or embedded in conventionality to condemn those who find alternative routes to happiness? As I have.

I hope there may be a woman with whom to share this joy in a loving and permanent relationship. Indeed, my children are such a joy, they should be shared. If this happens, I shall have done things in reverse order. If it does not happen, I shall still have the unutterable pleasure of my sons and they will have the certainty of my love. Love, no matter where it comes from, is what is important.

My children are in the position of the many children from single-parent families. On the positive side, they are not party to the acrimony that can follow divorce. They do not experience adult disharmony. I am not sure what the negative side will be. As they are such different personalities, I suspect that there will be no easy answer to this, but as long as I remain able to relate to each of these different people on all manner of different levels, I do not see a significant downside. Time will tell. Like all parents, I am still learning.

What time has taught me is to see life Before Children as BC. I am now in the AD of my life. Everything changes and I have changed with it. For instance, I assumed that people who lived down long drives did so because they didn’t want neighbours. I knew other people in the road only by their cars.

It’s different now. Whenever we go for a walk, the boys ask if they can visit neighbours. Sometimes it is Cleo the dachshund; sometimes Auntie Vivienne or Auntie Susan. There are many others. We are always made so welcome. Without the children, I would never have dropped in; never have presumed. The children have no such inhibitions and have given me confidence bordering on effrontery. Now I am really happy to pay unannounced visits and our neighbours are happy to receive them. I know that if ever I were laid so low that I could not cope, I would have no end of help.

And that is one factor I had not even thought about. Illness. BC, I was never ill. Until immunity sets in, I now come down with everything they bring back from nursery school. I can lay awake at night, ravaged by one of the array of viruses that travel between school and home, wondering how on earth I am going to get them up and ready in the morning. As all parents know, you simply cannot be ill.

And they are ill. ‘I’ve hurt my leg, Daddy!’ I’m not sure if a quick rub with pretend magic spray, a kiss and cuddle and then ‘never mind, darling—you’ve got another one’ is the best way to treat these passing disasters. I must try to do better. The most elaborate plans, including the time set aside for writing this book, are thrown into chaos by a single spot or a loose stool. ‘I’ve got earache. Quick! The poo’s coming!’

‘It’s ‘diarrhoea’, darling.’

‘Quick, the dire earache’s coming!’

One of them can be laid low for days while the others are rudely healthy. The answer to ‘Can we go for a ride on Thomas the Tank Engine?’ is sometimes, sadly, ‘Piers/Ian/Lars is poorly. We’ll have to wait ‘til he’s better.’ They seem to be ill one after the other rather than getting it over and done with in one go. Should I be more sympathetic? Is this the feminine side that may be deficient? Or is this just the soul-searching that is part of every parent’s psyche? To be sensitive to the subtle nuances of three small personalities simultaneously requires a combination of psychological skills and saintly virtues that I fear fall short in me. But I try.

‘You unset me.’

‘I unsettle you? I unseated you? I trod on you?’ The corners of the mouth turned down; lower lip extended ready to howl. ‘Ah. I upset you! Oh. Sorry, Lars, how did Daddy do that?’

‘You told me I wasn’t being helpful.’

Lars became inordinately sad at any imagined slight. He felt he was a special support to Daddy.

‘But you did pull the bathrobe off the towel rail when Daddy was busy with Piers.’

‘I folded it up again!’ he sobbed.

The bundle of cloth that Daddy had instinctively pulled off the rail and re-folded was the attempt to help that had not been appreciated enough. Must do better next time. I turned to Ian and lifted him into his Grobag.

‘Naaaawh. Baby’s there!’

His bald doll had been laid under the Grobag.

‘With the wheatie.’

‘An Apricot Wheatie that you have for breakfast, Ian?’

‘No,’ was his patient reply. ‘Not a ‘wheatie’. A ‘sweetie’.’ Ian had become used to having to say the same thing several times to the point at which he was using quite a variety of different words to describe the same thing. Shades of my past. As the speech therapist he used to see told me: ‘All children make some sound substitutions, but Ian makes all the sound substitutions.’

‘A sweetie?’ I ventured.

‘No. The thingy that you put on a high shelf yesterday.’

Everything in the past was ‘yesterday’. I remembered the blue plush-covered box that had caused a ruckus the week before.

‘Ah! The squeaker!’

‘Yesss!’ Ian was proud of his newly-acquired sibilant.

The blue box was by baby’s side. I zipped Ian up and smoothed the fabric over the doll and the squeaker. He smiled and settled for a few seconds before ejecting the doll from the cot. ‘Don’t want baby. Want my nuther toy.’ At least that was more successful. How about Piers?

‘I’ve got dire earache, Daddy.’

‘OK, darling. Let’s unzip you and pop you on the lavatory.’

He sat bemused, Grobag off and pyjama bottoms round his ankles.

‘But I just need some cotton wool in my ear, Daddy.’

*

'Is there going to a catovra at home today, Daddy?' The question was asked with some foreboding.

'If I knew what a 'catovra' was, I'd be able to tell you, Lars.'

'It's a 'catovra',' piped up Piers from the back seat.

'SSS-catovra!' yelled Ian, at that time still under the speech therapist and aware that he needed to pronounce his initial sibilants to be understood.

'OK. 'Catovra'. What do you do with it? Eat it?'

'No! You're silly Daddy. You don't eat it.'

'What do you do with it, then.'

'You smile at it.'

They could have added - 'and you say 'cheese' to it time after time.' It was, of course, a 'photographer'. They had been through several of them and a film crew in the week before Daddy's first book was published. Plucked from obscurity by the Daily Mail, my decision to publish what I had already been writing for the children's delectation in years to come had made us all quite used to cameras moving and still.

There was no regret. They didn't mind 'catovras' at all. The really good ones were happy to run around after them when they strayed from the chosen setting.

'Grab Ian by the feet and turn him upside down.' The catovra had chased him down the drive and bundled him under his arm. Ian was squealing with delight. I did as bid while his brothers stood on the garden bench and yelled encouragement. The camera flashed. It was all huge fun. On bikes, on the slide, up in the playhouse, in the car, on the floor, with toys, with Daddy's book, on Daddy's knees, on his front as he lay on his back on the floor, on the sofa, in the kitchen - we were thoroughly photographed.

'But is it good for them?' I was asked.

The sub text may have been: will it make them think they are special? Will their being on TV at the age of four change them irrevocably? I saw no signs of it. Ian was quite happy to take a leisurely wee-wee and let everyone wait for him, whether the others were his brothers at home or the royal correspondent from a tabloid newspaper at the TV studios of 'Good Morning'. They were happy enough to play with toys in the nursery or in front of Daddy and Esther Rantzen while they were being interviewed by the legendary Richard and Judy. Any thoughts we might had had that we were any more than Z List celebrities would have been rapidly deflated in any case when we were shown past the dressing rooms reserved for the stars such as the model-turned-addict and ushered into where we were to change for the programme. It was the disabled lavatory.

'Saw you on the telly yesterday!' One of their friends bounded up to tell them at nursery school the following morning with no more reaction than if he had told them he had just had breakfast.

I am not sure that they reacted to publicity by being blasé about it as much as simply incorporating it into their lives. Daddy had people visit him. Sometimes they wanted to photograph them; sometimes they wanted to film them; sometimes they did neither. Whatever they did, they chatted to Daddy and Daddy was quite happy to have them sit at the table with them. From Daddy's point of view, the genie had been let out of the bottle when the 'Daily Mail' invited itself into our lives to opine and cavil at will. Here with the book and the broadcasts was the chance to achieve balance. The boys enjoyed meeting new people. They loved the wires and cameras that met them at every turn in a TV studio. They lapped up the attention that the adults gave them.

It was after the publication of 'And Then There Were Three' that I realised what I had been too green to notice before. When I was interviewed, I was always on my own. After a while, I would collect the children from nursery and invite the interviewer to meet them. Although they were all women and the conventional view is that women love young children, not one of the interviewers was remotely interested in doing this. They grabbed their mobile and rang for a taxi, keen to be off. I had not questioned this. They were busy people who had deadlines to meet and, no doubt, far more important people to interact with than my small children. But this was nonsense. It was these children that all the media interest was about. Or, at least, it should be. The penny dropped. They knew exactly what they wanted to write about before they came. All they needed were a few original words from me that they could scatter about to give their pre-written piece some credence. They could be as cutting as they wished to a grown up. If they were to meet the children, it would be obvious that they were, by extension, being equally vicious to them. It might also, I allowed myself to think, become clear that this man really wasn't doing a bad job; had happy children who loved him and who reciprocated their love; was doing all the chores that any single parent would do; was simply getting on with raising a family.

I decided to make a change. If anyone wanted to interview me, it would be with the children or not at all. They were what put me into context. While it might be easier to compose my thoughts in the peace that is the absence of three lively boys, the hullabaloo that is their presence is the reality of my life. The journalists would henceforward see my life and me as it is and as I am.

Having previously 'handled' the publicity myself, it was a luxury to have the services of the publicist that my publisher laid on for me. Mary Jones was a petite redhead with a winning smile - quite different from the severe schoolmarm I had imagined from our many telephone conversations. She was, however, determined to keep my foot as far away from my mouth as possible.

'The trick is,' she said, 'to answer the questions you want the interviewer to ask.' As my publisher had just given me his latest publication, 'The Art of Always Being Right', I knew what she was about. 'And you must never give the impression that you've heard any of the questions before. Answer them as though it's the first time you've been asked whatever it is.'

My birthday in 2005 was spent whizzing between radio stations. I had my first taste of the 'production line interview' that Mary had warned me about. I had not expected an easy ride. Interviewers have to make their points and I knew that, even though I had 'done the job', the normal rules against gender bias did not apply in my case and I was an easy target. I had never listened to Radio Five Live and imagined that, as a visitor to the studio, I would be greeted in some way. Not so. With a cursory inclination of her head, Victoria Darbyshire acknowledged my presence and proceeded to ask me about the issue of paedophilia. There had, of course, never been any such issue, but such is the power of the media that all it needs is for them to raise the topic, any topic, and it becomes an issue. After I had told her that no police checks had been done on me by the agency involved in the procedure and before I could tell her that my good character had been assessed as part of my organisation's official accreditation and my own position in the local Neighbourhood Watch, the casual demolition was over and a slight movement of the hand dismissed me from the room. BBC's World Service was next. Here was a well-researched interviewer with questions that, though probing, were sensitive rather than provocative and elicited suitably detailed responses. A slight ripple of applause from the production team followed the recording. Other interviews took place in a cupboard with a microphone. The disembodied nature of these made Ms Darbyshire seem positively genial. My favourite was 'Woman's Hour' with Ritula Shah. I suspected she might even have read the book. Be that as it may, we had the civilised conversation for which this programme is renowned.

I thought the hard part was writing the book. Then I realised that's the easy bit. Far tougher is getting it published and worse than that is the job of promoting it. I had never before had to stand my ground and sell my wares at the same time. Nevertheless, I was privileged to be invited onto some shows that have become institutions. Of all these, the greatest honour was to appear on RTE's 'The Late Late Show' in Dublin. Because it was recorded live after half past nine in the evening, the boys were not allowed to appear. In true Irish way, this can only happen around Christmas-time. The law does not change, but the ability to turn a blind eye to it does. The host, Pat Kenny, was effusive. Being interviewed by a man was a new experience. It was light-hearted and positive.

'Did the pregnancy go full-term?'

'Thirty two and a half weeks. I was, shall we say, an explosive situation. Tina had a Caesarian'

As I had told the story so many times, it all seemed quite normal to me. One logical event was followed by the next. The studio audience in this traditionally Catholic country had not heard anything like this before. Their laughter was nervous; slightly scandalised; their apprehension at odds with my relaxed confidence. By the end, the applause was warm and I realised I had thoroughly enjoyed it. The feedback was that the audience had wanted me to stay on for a question and answer session. The point I had made that, as a carer, normal life and meeting people simply went on hold was one that many of the callers agreed with and considered not fully realised by the populace. The only negative reaction from a viewer was that the day of the Pope's funeral was not one for such a subject to be aired. The conclave of religious I met in the green room expressed no such doubts and were hugely supportive. I fell in love with Ireland overnight.

All other media interviews were with the boys and were quite different in tone from those conducted in their absence. The agreement was that the book would be mentioned at the end of each article by way of a reader offer. I wondered how the 'Daily Mail' would deal with this as, surprisingly, they had asked Mary to arrange an interview with me. Then they read the book.

'They say you've been unkind to them,' Mary told me. 'They wouldn't mention the book, so I've given their slot to the 'Daily Express'.

The writers came and went as did their catovras, giving us an impressive family album of group shots. The written pieces were fair enough, although all those penned by women made a point that I studiously had not made, that I thought the boys needed no mother in their lives. When something has been written, the simple act of publication gives it the legitimacy of a fact that can subsequently be reported. A pair of inverted commas can put words that I never said into my mouth.