The Cows Page 17

  Cam

  Lying naked on her new shag pile rug, Cam is feeling pretty smug, her call to action piece is trending. Lazily scouring Google for new feminism blogs, it’s like more pop up every day. What is flattering but annoying is that most of them cite her as their inspiration. There is one called ‘One Night Stance’ where a twenty-three-year-old blogger called Julia Rylan does online interviews with various women about their relationships with casual sex. A woman called Becky Martin has a site called ‘The IVF Crowd’, all about women above the age of thirty who are having children by themselves. And another, by Jemma Osbourne, called ‘All Work No Play’, about her life as a working mum. They have all got over fifty thousand followers on Twitter and there are hundreds of comments under each post, proving to Cam that their readerships are huge. When she started out there was no competition; now there are so many writing in the same field as her. She needs to focus her writing if it’s going to keep its position as the ‘Number 1 Voice for Forward Thinking Women’. What would the book be? What makes www.HowItIs.com different?

  Her phone rings.

  ‘Mother!’ Camilla says confidently, answering it. She visualises her in the hallway on her landline phone, dressed in M&S trousers with a long M&S cream cardigan. Her ‘house shoes’ on her feet. Also from M&S.

  ‘I heard you on the radio.’ There is a pregnant pause. Cam knows her mother well enough to know that when she allows a space for Cam to speak before she has made her point, she doesn’t really mean it’s OK for her to speak. ‘Everyone in Brockley is talking about it.’

  ‘Mum, everyone in Brockley is always talking about everything.’

  ‘But everyone is not always talking about you. And why did you have to write that one about the twenty-eight-year-old? If you’re going to have a sexual relationship like that, it doesn’t have to be broadcast news, does it?’

  ‘I wrote it so people don’t think I’m sad and lonely.’

  ‘But you are sad and lonely, Camilla. You always have been.’

  ‘Mum, one day you’ll realise that I am happy. I just find my own company riveting,’ she says, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder so she can paint her toenails with a peachy nude.

  ‘I know. That’s why you hid in the cupboard under the stairs for two whole days. I thought you’d been kidnapped.’

  ‘I was seven. I can’t keep apologising for it, I’m thirty-six.’

  ‘Some people wrote terrible things under the article. One man even called you a whore.’ Another pause, short, but definitely pregnant. ‘Are you a whore, dear?’

  ‘No, Mum, I just don’t want children. You have forty thousand grandchildren, please stop acting like I am letting you down.’ Cam softens her voice a little, genuinely tired of saying the same old thing. ‘I want you to be proud of me for other things, Mum. I do other really great things.’

  ‘I am proud of you, but can’t you get a column in Red magazine and talk about fashion? You love all that.’

  This is a prime example of how Cam’s mother boxes her into all female stereotypes in her head. Cam really couldn’t give two shits about fashion.

  ‘I want to write about things that matter, Mum. It’s important that women who make unconventional choices speak out, or the world will never change.’

  ‘You’re like that Gloria Steinem in the Sixties.’ Cam smiles. For her mother to compare her to Gloria Steinem means she sees her in a political capacity, and that is progress. ‘She went on about feminism and ended up alone as well.’

  Or maybe not.

  As Cam tries to think of a way to end the call, Mark appears from the bathroom. She holds both a toe, the bottle and the brush in one hand, and pushes her other hand to her lips as if to tell him to shush. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he puts both of his hands on his hips and shakes his hips from side to side so his penis makes a slapping noise on his upper thighs. She wonders if he practises all of these little penis tricks when he is home alone, they are so well executed.

  ‘Mum, I have to go. There’s a bird stuck in my bedroom.’

  ‘OK, Camilla. But please, no more of the twenty-eight-year-old, OK?’ But Cam has already hung up.

  ‘I trimmed my pubes so you can see my dick better,’ Mark says. He’s more proud of his body and his penis than Cam is of anything she has ever said, owned or done. He is a young, handsome, cut-to-perfection man who has no idea what a lack of self-confidence feels like because he’s never encountered one. They have the most phenomenal sex.

  ‘Shall I shave your pussy tonight?’ he asks, lying down beside her and stroking her pubic hair. He is so young and sexual that he wants to try everything, and he continuously watches porn. Soft, easy stuff. The kind of softcore that’s on TV late at night, not horrible, sexually abusive porn that so many people watch on the Internet. He’s got a constant erection, but a well-meaning one. ‘A penis with a conscience’, as Cam likes to think. He’s not pushy, and she imagines he’d always wait to actually hear the word ‘yes’ before he had sex with anyone. He’s a good guy, just so young and too handsome for Cam to take him seriously for anything other than sex.

  Also, she has no desire to behave like a porn star just to please him.

  ‘No, I don’t want you to shave my pubes. You can go down on me for twenty minutes before I have to get on with some work, though?’

  ‘I can do that, or if you want to work I could whip us up some food? Or run out and get a pizza? You can work for a bit, I’ll watch TV, then we can just eat and hang out?’

  ‘But I have to work,’ Cam says, flirtatiously, trying to entice him down.

  ‘I know, babe. I know you have to work. That’s why I’m saying you can work now, and when you’re done, we can hang out.’

  Cam stiffens, she doesn’t want this, she doesn’t want him encroaching into her alone time, that is not what a fuck buddy is supposed to do.

  ‘Mark, sorry, I don’t like having a time limit on how long I can work for, OK? Maybe you should just go now, you think? We can hang out, or fuck, or whatever, tomorrow. Cool?’

  Mark knows there isn’t much point in trying to change her mind. She’s made it clear from the start that work comes first. He gets dressed.

  ‘Will you go out?’ she asks him, as he goes to leave.

  ‘Nah, not in the mood. I’ll just have an early night,’ he says, defeated.

  ‘I’m sorry, OK? I just have to work.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah I know, you mentioned that. Maybe leave me out of this one though, OK? My mum reads your blog, that last one about me was embarrassing.’

  Cam sits up straight and moves her laptop to the side. ‘You read that?’

  ‘Of course I read it.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry, I never even thought for a minute that you would,’ she says, feeling genuinely horrified.

  ‘It’s OK, just don’t write my name, OK? I’m not really a public person. And maybe leave out stuff about my dick. My mum’s got a dodgy heart. I’ll see you tomorrow then?’

  ‘Yeah. And Mark, I’m really sorry I wrote about you without telling you. That wasn’t cool. Mark?’ she calls after him, but he’s gone.

  FUCK! Cam says to herself. He’s told his mum about me?

  Stella

  I deactivated my Facebook account and I miss it. It might have driven me crazy in some ways, but I’ve spent hours and hours over the past few years clicking on profile after profile, stalking various people’s lives. It’s been pretty much all I’ve done since Jason has been on his deadline and now, I have nothing else to do. How pathetic is that?

  I think maybe I enjoyed the jealous hate that swirled inside of me when anyone posted baby pics or wrote posts about the joys of family life. That fireball of rage kept pushing me through the day, it gave me something to think about. To worry about. To be passionate about. Because I want to be passionate. I don’t mean sexually, I mean about something, anything. I have nothing that motivates my day now, other than the actual logistics of my job. But it’s so quiet here right
now, that after I’ve made myself a cup of tea and Jason a black coffee, I’m kind of done. I’ve organised everything in the office to the point of craziness, created well over thirty completely pointless spreadsheets and even started putting together a list of who Jason needs to send Christmas cards to. Now all that is done, I can’t think of another single thing to keep me busy apart from wallowing in my past, and now my present too. I can’t quiet the ticking biological bomb that lives in my mind as much as it does in my genes.

  I get a cereal bar out of my top drawer. Food doesn’t taste of anything right now; I’m just eating to pass some time.

  I miss Alice. I was never bored when she was alive. I’d call her to talk about what I was having for lunch, she’d call me to tell me she was going for a wee. We spoke or texted all day about the tiniest details of our lives. Long, pointless conversations whilst on our way to work, just so we weren’t alone. Ever. My arm would ache from holding the phone to my ear so much. We’d talk on the way home, only to hang up when whoever was already in opened the front door and we could see each other’s faces. Then we’d get into bed that night, and if we were in separate rooms, we’d text until we fell asleep. I look at my phone. I’ve sent three text messages in the last three days. One to Phil, telling him he forgot some socks and that I was throwing them away. One to Jason, asking if he wanted me to pick him up a croissant on the way in, and one to my next door neighbour telling him to stop filling the rubbish bins with his Amazon Prime boxes. What a tragic trail of communication that is. But that’s my life. Tragic.

  I find the article about Tara again. I need to read about someone else whose life is shit.

  ‘Stella, did my phone arrive?’ says Jason, appearing out of his office. I quickly shut my laptop.

  ‘No, not yet. I’ll chase them now. How’s the writing going?’ I ask him.

  ‘Getting there.’

  I know I should tell him about Tara, but I don’t know where to start. ‘Yeah, so, Jason, the girl you like is a global wanking sensation?’

  Nope, I just can’t. Not just because I’d have to find the words, but also because I’d have to show him the video, and I think watching what is essentially soft porn, with my boss, might be crossing unnecessary boundaries. Not to mention what it will do to his concentration. Jason has to finish this book; he doesn’t know it yet but him losing his phone is a blessing in disguise. Keeping him in check also gives me a purpose, which I need right now. So I am not backing down. I look at him. He looks so, so sad.

  ‘I’m getting I’m-going-to-die-alone vibes,’ he says, looking at the floor. I stand up and walk over to him, putting one hand on his shoulder like a father would to a son in an old-fashioned movie. I’m not sure I have ever intentionally touched Jason before, other than shaking his hand when we first met. With just the two of us in here, it feels quite intimate.

  ‘Ahhh, I’m sure you won’t, Jason. Guys like you don’t die alone.’

  ‘You’re so lucky, Stella. Having a relationship. I know you’ll probably think I’m a sad case, but I get so lonely. Like I’ve got this big gap inside me that I can’t fill. I should be married with a kid right now but I’m still meeting strangers in bars and holding out for text messages like some stupid teenage boy.’

  He’s so emotional, it’s really disarming. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a guy who displays feelings in the way that Jason does. Phil was tender and thoughtful but not like this. Jason makes me feel like I could talk to him, tell him how I’m doing. Like a friend. But no. I am his PA; I do not, and shall not, explain to him that I am also, with very little doubt, going to die alone.

  ‘I know I only met her once, but there was something about Tara. The connection was real; I know it was. She’s exciting,’ he says, looking at me with sorry but sweet eyes.

  I suppose exciting is one way to describe her.

  ‘Come on, you’ve been in solitude for a few weeks. You’re bored, maybe lonely? That’s why you’re feeling down. Come on, hang in there, it will be over soon. When this book is in you can get back out there again,’ I say, walking back behind my desk and taking a seat. It always amazes me how logical I am about organising Jason’s life; I’m sure I come across as really together. No wonder he has no idea about who I really am – I hide it very well when I’m around him.

  ‘You’re right, of course. OK.’ He starts to walk back into his office. ‘Maybe I should just get on Tinder and broaden my horizons,’ he says, looking back and smiling sarcastically, although I suspect he is genuinely wondering if he should.

  When he’s gone back into his office, I open my computer and read the article about Tara. ‘As far as she was concerned, the father didn’t need to know.’ Why is this line playing on my mind so much? So, she just had a one-night stand, got pregnant and kept the baby, it was that simple? I wonder if she planned it. Because you could plan that kind of thing, I suppose. If you really wanted a baby …

  I search the App Store for Tinder and download it. I set up an account and start swiping.

  Just for the heck of it, of course.

  Cam

  ‘“The Face of Childless Women”, are you kidding me?’ barks Mel as she storms into the reception of Dream Spa where Cam, and her sisters Tanya and Angela, are waiting.

  ‘Excuse me?’ asks Cam politely, wondering why Mel has just, quite aggressively, thrown a copy of The Times at her.

  ‘Look, top left; it’s you and your crusade. Look!’

  ‘What is this? Give it to me,’ says Tanya, the eldest of the four sisters, snatching it from Cam’s lap. She reads aloud.

  Camilla Stacey, The Face of Childless Women

  By Susan Miller

  After a career of punchy articles and provocative tweets, journalist, blogger, women’s rights pundit and founder of www.HowItIs.com, Camilla Stacey, seems to have found her new position as the Queen Bee of the childfree.

  ‘“Childfree”? They make it sound like we’re in parent prison,’ interjects Angela, the spikiest of the four.

  ‘We kind of are,’ says Mel, ‘but wait, she hasn’t even got to the best bit yet.’

  Tanya continues:

  After a series of emotionally explicit postings on her feminist website about her decision not to have children, Stacey followed on her pledge to educate society of the value of childlessness by battling it out with the rather conservative listeners (and host) of Female First on BBC Radio London.

  When referring to some of her childless heroes, Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Steinem and Helen Mirren, Stacey said, ‘I think it’s important we take the lead from our heroes and for everyone to stop valuing women on whether they do, or do not, become mothers.’

  The interview welcomed a wave of cyber cheers as Twitter praised her for her support of the ‘non-mothers’, one follower even awarding her with the accolade, ‘The Face of Childless Women’.

  It’s about time we had an icon to represent the fastest growing social demographic in our society today; the female NON parent.

  Of course, there are the naysayers. Traditionalists who believe that a woman’s place is at home, and that it is her obligation to reproduce to continue the evolution and growth of the human race. But as Stacey has so rightly put it, ‘There are lots of humans, and plenty of babies being born. If you decide not to do this, we’re gonna be OK!’

  All hail our new queen, Camilla Stacey, The Face of Childless Women. Take your crown, girl!

  ‘Holy shit!’ gasps Cam, taking the paper back from Tanya. ‘This is major.’

  ‘Major embarrassing, you sound like a dried-up old hag,’ snaps Angela. ‘What’s next? The Face of Mad Cat Women? The Face of “Fucking Hell I’m Suddenly Eighty and I Haven’t Left the House for Forty Years”?’

  Tanya, Mel and Angela all laugh, then stand over Cam like witches round a cauldron. No matter how big she feels in her online life, Cam always feels like a little girl when she’s with her sisters. Tanya sits to her left, Angela to her right. Tanya puts her hand on Cam’s knee. ‘Are
you sure this is what you want, Cammie? I know we complain about being tired and it being hard work, but we wouldn’t give up our kids for the world. You’d love it, if you opened your mind to it. It’s not that bad.’

  Angela leans in to her. ‘We just wonder if you’re using the no kids thing to hide something else, you know, something …’

  ‘Oh just say it,’ snaps Mel from a seat opposite. She’s gently rolling a compression stocking down her left leg. ‘She thinks you’re a lesbian. Are you?’

  ‘I have been telling you I’m not a lesbian since I was a kid, guys, what more can I do? I write about sex with men, I have sex with men, what more proof do you need?’

  ‘Is that true then? You are actually seeing a twenty-eight-year-old? You didn’t just make him up for your blog?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Yes, he’s real. Very real. Getting realer, in fact,’ Cam says, thinking back to Mark leaving and his feelings being hurt.

  ‘What does that mean? He’s your boyfriend?’ asks Angela.

  ‘No, no he’s not my boyfriend. Not at all. God, no, he’s a kid. I just mean, you know, the more time you spend with someone the more you get to know them, I suppose.’

  ‘Ooooooh, Cammie’s got a boyfriend, Cammie’s got a boyfriend!’ The three sisters start chanting, giggling and taunting her like it’s twenty-five years ago and she’s just been asked to a school disco. This scene is all too familiar. Cam doesn’t need Sigmund Freud to work out where her social issues have come from.