The Three of Us Page 21

  Our first stop is the steamy confines of Piccolo Angelo, where the patrons are forced to stop mid-mascarpone and listen to our unrehearsed rendition of ‘Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!’ Our song accomplished, we trek across Greenwich Street while the police officer halts the traffic, to the local supermarket, D’Agostino’s, where we elbow our way past the grumbling check-out queue to the frozen food section. There we deliver a rather poor ‘First Noel’.

  Several more restaurants and the Village Nursing Home later, we turn into Gansevoort Street, the transvestite promenade we used to overlook from our loft. The children are getting fractious, trying to prize open a newspaper vending machine until the officer intervenes. Adjacent to the gay club, Hell, the kids are distracted by the sight of a hefty local transvestite dressed up as Mother Christmas and perched upon a customized penny farthing tricycle, squeezing an accordion and singing. Next to her stands her companion, a small red devil complete with plastic horns, pointy tail and spandex stilettos.

  ‘Hey, Mother Christmas, sing us a song,’ the children plead. And primping her huge white wig, the transvestite breaks into a bass chorus of ‘Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, had a fucking shiny nose…’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ shrieks Carole, our team leader, wagging a finger. The officer thrusts his way to the front. ‘Now you be nice, huh?’ he threatens. ‘Go ahead and sing the decent one for the kids here, or I might just lose my Christmas spirit with you, honey.’

  Mother Christmas embarks sullenly on a sanitized version, singing defiantly off key.

  We move on, delivering a ragged burst of ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’, down the street at Florent, Peter’s old lunching haunt, and fall into step with the officer.

  ‘Do you get much trouble around here?’ Peter asks him.

  ‘Nah, I ain’t seen anyone packing a gun in more than two years. No one does nothing no more,’ he says, sounding disappointed.

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘It’s the death penalty, ain’t it?’ the officer declares confidently. ‘More than thirty people got the needle in Texas this year and now they’ve brought it back here in New York. You telling me that ain’t no deterrent?’ And he climbs back into his car, carolling patrol over for another year.

  Friday, 18 December

  Peter

  We have a slight problem today at yoga because our normal exercise space is impeded by a vast Christmas tree which Joanna has finally forced me to buy from a couple of Quebecois lumberjacks operating from an old van parked on Broadway. In advance of our yoga I have plugged in the lights to make the scene more festive, but every time we do Downward Facing Dog we end up with a mouthful of conifer, which Mary Barnes, our instructor, gamely tries to ignore.

  Mary ends the session by bidding us to ‘Feel the energy, feel yourself taking your energy into the day with you.’

  When she has gone I collapse on the floor reading Private Eye. Joanna starts up a mock anti-yogic mantra in which she intones, ‘Feel the energy drifting out of us, feel the spite, feel the malice, feel the Schadenfreude, feel the envy, all flooding back into us as we realign the day according to our actual characters.’

  Saturday, 19 December

  Joanna

  The New York Post reports that Tina Brown, who relinquished her editorship of the New Yorker in June to launch her own magazine, has finally decided on a title for her new venture. It is to be called Talk, with the subtitle: The American Conversation. The definite article makes it sound as if there is only one American conversation going on. It seems a fairly ambitious claim to the Zeitgeist.

  Like most British hacks I am intrigued by the spectacularly successful Brown and her husband, Harry Evans, the former editor of the Sunday Times, and was rather flattered to receive an invitation last spring to dinner at their East River home.

  The other guests were mostly Manhattan media A-list: Robert Hughes, the art historian; Si Newhouse, owner of Condé Nast; Julie Taymor, director of The Lion King; Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright; and Chip McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review.

  Though the dinner was in honour of Adam Gopnik, who’d won a Polk award for his dispatches from Paris, the trophy guest was to be the actor Steve Martin, in town shooting a remake of The Out of Towners with Goldie Hawn.

  Martin had obviously informed our hosts he was going to be late because we sat down to our lobster ravioli with his chair empty. I was on Harry Evans’s table and the conversation soon turned to drugs.

  ‘Have any of you ever done cocaine?’ Evans enquired of the table. No one was forthcoming. ‘I once took marijuana in the hopes of achieving an instant erection … It failed to materialize,’ he concluded glumly.

  Sitting on my right, a dark-haired, distracted man introduced himself as Elliot Goldenthal, ‘a composer’.

  ‘I’m working on the score of Neil Jordan’s new movie, The Butcher Boy,’ he said.

  ‘I hope it’s better than that awful music he used in Interview with a Vampire,’ I replied, breaking into my bread roll.

  ‘Actually,’ said Elliot, ‘that was my score too. In fact it was nominated for an Oscar.’

  I was just about to slide under the table with mortification when there was a small commotion as Steve Martin finally arrived. To my astonishment, and that of the rest of my table, the silver-haired actor made a beeline straight for me, arms outstretched in hugging mode, as if we were friends of old.

  In an instant I realized what had happened: he had confused me with our hostess, whose hair length and complexion I share.

  ‘Joanna Coles,’ I said loudly, leaping up and proffering my hand to fend off his faux pas.

  ‘Oh, how could I have mistaken you?’ he giggled, trying to mollify me as Tina approached unseen behind him. ‘You’re so much younger!’

  The next morning I described the evening to Meredith. ‘Talk about dissing your hostess,’ she grinned. ‘You do realize you’ll never be invited back?’

  Saturday, 19 December

  Peter

  The truth is it’s just as well I’m doing yoga, or I might well have blown up by now. I think we are both more stressed by this pregnancy than either of us is prepared to admit, even to ourselves. I am now in real danger of joining those ranks of New Yorkers who walk around like loaded guns, just waiting for the smallest annoyance to trigger them.

  There is a special sub-set of this category, encountered mostly on the upper reaches of Broadway, the old folk of the Upper West Side. They are pre-emptively argumentative, mithering away to themselves in low gravelly voices as they stomp along the sidewalks, elbows out defensively like tiny urban quarterbacks. Unlike their Upper East Side counterparts, they are not rich enough to be fawned over by domestic staff hoping to be dealt into wills. I imagine that if we stay here long enough we might turn into these sour denizens of the Upper West Side.

  Sunday, 20 December

  Joanna

  I wake up at 4 a.m. this morning, as I do every morning now, unable to get back to sleep. I have never suffered sleep deprivation like this before and I think it must be the fastest route to depression.

  ‘Come on, cheer up, it’s all so exciting,’ Peter says, unconvincingly. ‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ It is, but I still feel dark, dark grey.

  ‘It’ll get much worse after the baby’s born, you’ll never sleep at all then,’ e-mails Jane cheerfully when I write to complain. I spend my waking time entirely preoccupied by how I can take a nap. Several times in the last fortnight I have woken up at 8 a.m., had breakfast and, unable to do anything else, gone straight back to bed and slept until 1.30 p.m.

  It is also affecting my memory. Yesterday I wrote in my diary ‘Lunch, 1 p.m., with Joanna Coles’. I still have no idea who I stood up.

  ‘It’s called pregnesia,’ says Kelly helpfully, who seems to know all about it, though she has never been pregnant herself.

  To break the cycle I suggest we go out to East Hampton, claiming that the change of air will do me good. By 2 p.m
. we are sitting on the deserted sands of Georgica Beach, surveying the calm grey seas and the baby-blue sky, slurping tubs of steaming shrimp chowder followed by Brie sandwiches which we have purchased at Barefoot Contessa.

  ‘There, do you feel better now?’ asks Peter.

  But I still feel grey.

  Sunday, 20 December

  Peter

  Joanna is feeling insecure and unattractive. ‘Bizou,’ she demands in a baby voice, puckering her lips. I try to plant a perfunctory kiss, but our sunglasses clatter like the antlers of rutting stags.

  She pleads to go out to the Hamptons today, though winter on the wind-swept eastern tip of Long Island is notoriously inhospitable. It is suddenly vital for her for mental rehab, she insists. I hail a cab to take us to the car hire depot, and as I load our bags into the boot I notice its bumper sticker: ‘Mean people suck,’ it complains.

  Notwithstanding radio sexologist Dr Ruth’s recorded exhortation that buckling up is the law, my seat belt refuses to uncoil from its plastic cylinder, and I narrowly miss head-butting the Perspex money window when the driver has a belated and uncharacteristic fit of caution about going through an early red light.

  He takes advantage of the break to hawk up a blob of glutinous green phlegm, which he spits noisily onto a pristine white square of handkerchief. He examines the venomous hummock minutely, then folds it into his hanky with all the care of a smuggler swaddling an emerald, and thrusts it into his pocket.

  Monday, 21 December

  Joanna

  Today I go into Second Nature, East Hampton’s health food store, to buy more pre-natal vitamins. Though I am convinced they are essential, Kelly claims it is the equivalent of injecting cattle with hormones. ‘That’s why there are so many Caesareans in America,’ she told me last week. ‘The babies are getting too big to come out naturally.’

  Though the prospect of squeezing out a 10lb baby worries me, I buy the vitamins anyway. ‘Oh, you’re having a girl,’ says the man, a gentle Nigerian, smiling at me from behind the counter.

  ‘Really?’ I say.

  ‘I can see it in your face,’ he grins. ‘I am never wrong. I can see it in your aura. Definitely a girl.’

  Ten minutes later I walk into Top Drawer Lingerie to try on a dreaded nursing bra. I have chosen Top Drawer over the more fashionable Bonne Nuit, twenty yards away, because it has huge, individual changing rooms and I want some privacy.

  The assistant hands me a selection of enormous, upholstered bras with triangular press-studded panels promising ‘instant nipple access’.

  ‘Ah ha,’ she cries. ‘So you’re having a boy!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I’ve had three and there’s no question you’re having a boy. Betsy,’ she calls to the other assistant, wrenching back the cubicle curtain so the entire store can watch me struggling with my industrially wired nursing bra. ‘Betsy, isn’t she having a boy?’

  ‘I should say so!’ says Betsy.

  ‘Do you think this is the right size?’ I ask weakly, trying to wrestle back at least a corner of the curtain.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says the first assistant. ‘Look, it’s stretchy,’ she hooks a thumb around the right cup and tugs at it to demonstrate. ‘For the first two weeks your breasts will get very big and then they settle down, this fits you fine.’

  ‘And then they get all shrivelled and droop,’ cautions Betsy.

  ‘And then,’ adds a middle-aged customer angrily fingering a black lace teddy, ‘your husband will leave you for someone half your age.’

  Tuesday, 22 December

  Peter

  We have agreed to take Willow for a walk. She is the year-old chocolate brown American standard poodle that belongs to Ron and Betsy, our upstairs neighbours here in the Hamptons. Ron is out here working on a book about how he kicked his addiction to gambling. As he hands me the end of the leash and the bounding, enthusiastic dog, he also hands me a little bundle. It contains two polythene gloves and two small plastic bags. ‘In case she poops,’ he says.

  And indeed, half an hour later, in front of the café veranda at Main Beach, where she can be assured of the widest possible audience, Willow decides to launch a haunch-quivering, eye-watering poop. As she uncoils herself from her ablutions, I am very tempted to mosey off. I cannot bear the thought of manhandling her effluent. But a bench of pensioners trussed in tartan rugs are glowering at me, so there is no escape. Joanna is no help either. She has walked ahead, as though she is nothing to do with us. I fit a glove onto my right hand, like a surgeon, and approach the visibly steaming coil. I hold my breath and scoop it up. It is warm and squishy through the thin skein of the customized doggy-do glove. Willow is watching me intently, head cocked to one side, as though enjoying my discomfort as I bag and tie her turd and toss it into the bin.

  ‘You made yourself bloody scarce,’ I complain to Joanna when we catch up with her. ‘Thanks for the help.’

  ‘Well, it’s good training for parenthood,’ she replies, and I groan at the thought.

  Wednesday, 23 December

  Joanna

  Today, as we are poking around for baby stuff in Triangle, the one affordable furniture shop in Bridgehampton, the sales clerk pops the inevitable question. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘I want the surprise,’ I say, somewhat wearily.

  ‘I wanted the surprise too,’ she says, ‘but my doctor blurted it out by mistake. I was in his office and he suddenly said, “When your son is born…” I was like, “My son? You mean I’m having a son?” I was in total shock. I mean, it felt like I had the baby that day. The doctor felt so awful … but there was nothing we could do.’

  I have been worried about this happening ever since the amnio, the first time anyone knew the sex for sure, and I now preface every doctor’s visit with a jokey ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten I don’t want to know the sex.’

  It seems to me obvious that one should savour the mystery as long as possible, but our friends think that I’m being an eccentric contrarian.

  ‘Well, how can I get anything for it, then?’ Meredith moaned at me last week, as if the only choice in the world was blue or pink.

  Peter accuses me of assuming it’s a girl and buying accordingly – as if I was buying stuff for a miniature me. Though I protest this isn’t true, I suspect he may be right.

  Wednesday, 23 December

  Peter

  Back in a snow-laden Manhattan, I try to log onto my Amazon.com rating, which I have managed to avoid doing for several weeks now – a personal record. But I misclick and get my namesake authors instead. Peter Godwin’s Guide to HIV in East Asia stands at number 612,344, leading Peter Godwin’s Concise Guide to Growing Pelargoniums, which is currently out of stock. And Godwin I. Meniru’s new book, A Handbook of Interuterine Insemination has entered the Amazon.co.uk charts at 181,548. Mukiwa, my African memoir, still leads the pack at 23,109. We mid-list Godwins are nothing if not diverse in our literary endeavours.

  Christmas Day

  Joanna

  Preoccupied by pregnancy, neither of us feels remotely Christmassy. We resolve not to bother giving each other presents, though walking down Broadway on Christmas Eve, I am accosted by a man with a black plastic bin liner slung over his shoulder. It is, he says, stuffed with Furbies, the season’s hottest interactive toy, which are completely sold out in toy shops.

  I buy one and present it to Peter and he takes it to Christmas lunch at Dani and Michael’s, where it chatters Furbish and entertains a roomful of adults while terrorizing their dog, a Yorkshire terrier of a somewhat nervous disposition. But later that evening we hit a snag. We have tickets for The Theory of Flight, starring Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, who plays a young woman crippled by motor neurone disease. At first all goes well, and we settle down with our popcorn and Movie Bites. But as soon as Helena begins using her Stephen Hawking-style electronic voice box, the Furby unaccountably breaks into a frenzy of Furbish.

&n
bsp; ‘Nye-tye, nye-tye,’ it chirrups frantically (which, according to the manual, means ‘Tickle me’ in Furbish) from the bottom of its carrier bag. The more Helena uses her synthetic voice, the more the Furby responds with its ludicrous cheeping. The whole cinema is tut-tutting and looking round for the source of the noise, but we play innocent until at last a woman sitting in the next seat rumbles us. Peter dives into the bag and, unable to remove the batteries without a screwdriver, swaddles the Furby in his scarf.

  ‘Achoo! Hold me,’ says the little falsetto voice, only slightly muffled by its cashmere gag. The surrounding tut-tuts are increasingly menacing, so Peter reaches back into the bag again. I hear a squawk and the Furby falls silent.

  Back home we unwrap the little critter and examine it. Its ears are at a strange angle, and though its saucer eyes are wide open it is resolutely mute.

  Tuesday, 29 December

  Peter

  ‘I had a weird dream,’ declares Joanna this morning.

  ‘You and Martin Luther King both.’

  ‘I dreamed that I was hypnotized to stand up and sing “The Star Spangled Banner”, but every time I tried to sing it, my nose began to bleed. What do you think it means? Quick! quick!’ she interrupts before I have a chance to speculate. ‘Feel here, the baby gave an enormous kick.’ She whips up her jumper and indicates which part of her bulge has kicked, but I can feel nothing.

  ‘You should talk to the baby, so it gets used to your voice,’ she suggests.

  ‘It hears my voice all the time.’

  ‘No, actually address it, it can tell the difference. Talk close to my belly.’

  I stoop down and gaze at the Cyclops eye of her belly-button. ‘Er, hello, little one,’ I say, feeling ludicrous.

  ‘No, have a real conversation.’