The Male Nanny

The fair. Unfair.

  I arrive at the school fair. I stand by the gates and call the mum, as instructed. She appears and, rather than pay for me to get in, pleads with the woman at the gate:

“He is our nanny”.

I don’t know how this plea works, but I am in and I haven’t paid the £2 admission fee. The fair is being held in the grounds of the school, and it is heaving. The mother rushes off to tend to her stall, asking me to find the four year old as she flees. People everywhere, talking, do not notice me. It is refreshing. I am normally the subject of stares. I am a deer, passing through the aftermath of slaughter: the lions do not smell me, their noses are too deep in dead flesh. I saunter around, blissfully unnoticed. I catch tail ends and opening gambits of conversation. I try to piece these morsels together, a verbal jigsaw, to form full conversation, but nothing fits. I should be looking for the four year old, but I am distracted and enthralled. This is a world that will never truly embrace me, but I can penetrate it. Faces pass me at an alarming rate. They are pale and bald, or pale and grey. I squeeze through, I am not a parent, nor a child. This event does not cater for me. I pass stalls. Children are running them and there is no queuing system; rather, a clamour. Prizes are being given out when they shouldn’t be, and withheld wrongly. A tension exists. Good money is being turned away as the young proprietors are too flustered to find the change. Failures in this sense cheer me up – the private school is raising money to build something. Never has there been a more unworthy cause. Someone is calling me:

“Over here!”

It is one of the four year old’s friends. She is standing by a football game. She rushes over to me, grabs my hand and leads me to it.

“This boy is so good at football. He will get loads of points”, she announces. Then, an aside to me:

“I really want the teddy bear. Will you give it to me if you win?”

A small crowd has gathered. People have heard the girl’s announcement. I do not want to do this, but I cannot pull out. A dad, thinking I am a dad, slaps my back and says:

“The pressure’s on here mate”.

I hand over 50p. This gives me 5 shots. The ball is placed right in front of the goal. I take it upon myself to move it back, to make it harder. A ripple of excitement goes through the crowd. My confidence has startled them. There are various targets to hit within the goal, with different points available for each. The friend of the four year old does not look at me as I line up my first shot – her eyes are on the teddy.

My first shot it good, but not good enough. It grazes a target. The crowd remain. My second shot goes into the goal, but not via any targets. My third shot misses the goal. Some of the crowd dissipate. The four year old’s friends narrows her eyes at me. My fourth shot hits the post and my fifth is a frustrated whack which goes over. The four year old’s friend says nothing, and marches off. The crowd do not quite boo, but they turn away: A very middle-class boo. I hang my head.

There is still no sign of the four year old. I spot a cake stand and guess she might be there. I begin walking towards it when I feel a smack on the back of my legs. I turn around. It is the four year old, arm in arm with her unhappy friend.

“Why didn’t you win the teddy for her?”, demands the four year old.

“I tried, I was just unlucky”.

“Well you promised her the teddy”.

“I didn’t”.

“Well you did, and you didn’t get it. So now you must buy it”.

“I can’t buy it, it’d be unethical. It’s got to be won”.

“What?”.

Her friend remains silent, but is clearly still annoyed with me. I give the four year old a pound. She accepts this compensation and they both run off.

I am need a drink, but the squash is 20p a cup and I have no change. I spot a half empty cup of squash, sitting on a bench. I walk over, casually. I sit down and survey the scene. No-one is looking. Quick as lightning, I grasp the cup and throw the squash down my neck. I instantly feel better. There is a rustle in the bush behind the bench. An angry blonde boy of about 6 appears:

“Why did you just drink my squash!?”

The Male Nanny.

Sticking your middle finger up at a four year old is not wise

  Today, as is often the case, I had a mission. I was to get the four year old to make a card for her friend. I was informed of this mission yesterday, so purchased some nice, expensive card to work with.

The four year old hates lots of things, but her top three hates are:

1. Doing what she has been told. 
2. Making cards.
3. Criminals.

I approach the mission with some reverse psychology, which often works on the four year old.

“Today, I really don’t want to make a card for your friend”, I say.

“Let’s make a card for my friend!”, she says.

I hand her a piece of card.

“What could you draw on the front? What does your friend like?”

“I know”, she says. She begins drawing with her left hand and covers her work with her right.

When she is done, she lifts her hands up gleefully, revealing that she has scrawled the word ‘poo’ on the front of the card. I explain that the paper is very precious and that she cannot waste it. She seems to understand. She takes a new sheet and begins drawing some pretty flowers. I leave her alone, to check on the pasta.

When I return, she is chuckling, and the word ‘bum’ has been scrawled over the flowers.

“Okay”, I say, calmly. “You haven’t listened, so we won’t make your friend a card”. I take the nice card with me to the kitchen, where I begin cooking the broccoli.

As I am draining the broccoli, the four year old dashes in, snatches the expensive card off the table and sprints upstairs. She has her back facing me and is ripping up the card. I am tired and pissed off. I do what anyone would do in this situation: I flick her the finger. It is a victimless de-stressing tool. My middle finger is still aimed at her back, when the 12 year old returns and looks at me though the kitchen window.

 I have some explaining to do.

The Male Nanny.

“What should I do with my hands?”

  Every so often, the dad likes to get involved. One of the things he likes to say is: “Take the 12 year old for a run”.

The 12 year old puts his trainers on. We run to the end of the road, then we walk to the shop for sweets. We walk to the local park. We sit on a bench and chat.

Girls in his year have started dishing out blow-jobs, and he is keen on one.

“What is your advice?” he asks.

“For what?”

“Blow-jobs”.

“Enjoy them”.

“What should I do with my hands?”

“Massage her head”.

I steer the conversation towards their previous nannies. He tells me several have left after accusing the mum of bullying them. Several have stolen things and never been seen again. None have lasted more than six months.

“My mum is a bitch though, don’t you think?”

“She is… particular”.

He steers the conversation back to girls.

“They only give blow-jobs to guys with six packs. I don’t have a six-pack”.

“Why”?

“I don’t do sit ups”.

“No, why do they give blow-jobs to guys with six-packs”?

“Because they look good.”

“I don’t think they look good”.

“They do”.

I steer the conversation back to his mum.

“Why do you think she is a bitch?”

“She is always in a bad mood so she thinks everyone else should be”.

“Why do you think she is in a bad mood?”

“Because she is bored. What is lube?”

We begin ambling back home. When the mansion is in sight, we sprint towards it, so we are convincingly out of breath when we return.

“How was the run?” asks dad.

“Hard”, says the twelve year old.

“He’s improving”, I say to the dad.

The Male Nanny.

And then there were none

  I am at another birthday party. It is in a park and it is beautifully sunny. A patchwork of rugs makes up the hub of the party. On it, there is celery, crisps, fruit, squash and adults. The children play around us, on the grass. An old man begins to talk to me. He is the grandfather of the birthday girl. He has a season ticket at Fulham and he enchants me with football tales from the 50’s. I like this old man. Our chats are punctuated by sips of beer and glances at the children, who are playing nicely. One adult is trying to orchestrate a game of Frisbee. I watch as the Frisbee is fumbled by every child. But not my one - she catches it with ease and distributes it with grace. I taught her that.

“Please take off my jumper”, says the old man.

“Excuse me?”

“Could you please take off my jumper. I find it very hard to do on my own”.

“Of course”, I reply, and remove his jumper.

The old man doesn’t ask me what I do, and I do not ask him. He asks me about my interests instead. He knows that one’s job does not define oneself.

When the kids are sweaty and knackered, lunch time is called. They all pile onto the rug and plough into the food. Re-fuelled, the children roam back onto the green and continue to have fun. The old man once lived in New York, but he tells me you cannot see the sky there.

It is nearing time to return to the house for present opening and cake. The birthday girl’s mum gathers all the children on the rug, in an attempt to calm them before they are let loose in her home. They sit obediently, expectantly, their noses and foreheads moist, their hair matted.

“Right”, says the mum, “who has a song they’d like to sing?”

I panic. The four year old knows Rude Boy by Rihanna. But she is too tired to embarrass me. A child suggests Twinkle Twinkle, and everyone joins in.

“What about nursery rhymes? Does anyone know any of those?”

There is a silence, before one boy belts out Baa Baa Black Sheep. A classic - concluded with a cheer.

“Any other songs or rhymes that anyone knows?” asks the mum.

The old man removes his glasses, and places his head in his hands. He rubs his brow. He tuts and clicks his fingers. He is trying to summon something from his brain. The children look to him, we all do.

“Ohhh what is it?”, he mutters, with a brain mustering slap of his knee.

“I think granddad has got one”, says the mum, “Come on granddad, or someone else will choose”.

Some of the children now have their hands up.

“Granddad? I’m going to have to hurry you…”

He closes his eyes and casts his memory wide…

“Ah”, he says, “I cannot remember it. I know it ends with one little nigger boy left all alone. But I can’t remember the rest. No, nevermind, move on”.

The Male Nanny.

OBI

  The family want a dog. The matriarch is not sure they would cope with one, so she has borrowed one from a friend. He is called Obi, and is a Jack Russell. When I meet him, he barks.

“He’s mean”, says the four year old, as she tucks into a cheese string. “How?” I ask. “He is noisy and doesn’t smile”. “He’s lovely” says the housekeeper, as she rubs his neck. The four year old throws her cheese string and shouts “Fetch!” Obi doesn’t stir. “He doesn’t even fetch”, she laments.

I like Obi. The whole family does. It is clear that the four year old dislikes him because he is loved. People chuck food at him, kiss him, applaud him. The four year old wants to be him. I want to be him. Open arms greet his every turn. He is never out of place, or isolated. He is an inferior species, but finds more affirmation than I do.

The four year old gets into her police uniform and puts Obi on a lead. Obi is her Police dog. He looks disgruntled. The four year old screams “bite him” while pointing at imaginary criminals. This dog won’t bite.

It is bed time. I tell the four year old to get her Pyjamas on, and go check that the others are doing their homework. When I return, she is in her cowboy costume and is sat on Obi. Neither of them look happy with the situation. “He doesn’t do ANYTHING”, she complains. He does. He shits on the cream carpet.

 

The Male Nanny.

Sunk

  I pick up the four year old from school. We have a snack in the kitchen, then make our way up to her bedroom.

Noise is coming from her room. It is not the housekeeper; she is downstairs. I tell the four year old to wait at the bottom of the stairs, and I make my way up. I tread carefully and listen hard.

In her room is a man in overalls, putting up a sink.

“Hello”, I say.

“Hiya”, he says.

“You are putting up a sink”, I say, perceptively.

“Yep”.

I turn around to see the four year old. She has put her police uniform on and a smile peeps out from beneath her helmet. In one hand she has her truncheon, in the other a gun.

“Is he a burglar?” she whispers, excitedly.

“No”.

“Oh”. Her smile disappears and she puts the safety clip back on.

I call the mum.

“There is a man putting up a sink in _____’s bedroom”

“I know”.

“In the BEDROOM”

“I know”.

I go back to the man and the 4 yr old. They are arguing.

“Well I would turn you into a sloth, so you are slow”, threatens the four year old.

“Well I would turn you into an elephant, so you are fat”, says the man

“Well I would cut off your trunk and wipe my bum with it”, retorts the 4 year old.

“If you cut off my trunk I would stamp on your head”. Touché.

I interrupt:

“Have you ever put a sink in someone’s bedroom before?”

“Nope, stupid idea”, says the man.

“It’s not stupid, you are stupid”, snaps the four year old.

The man pokes his tongue out in response. The four year old charges towards him and tries to arrest him. He snatches her handcuffs. She goes for the bite. I pick her up and carry her out of the room while she blows raspberries at him from behind my shoulder.

Later, the mum gets home. I ask her when they are going to put the tiles in. “We’re not”, she says. It is a stupid idea.

The Male Nanny.

Kill It!

The four year old and I are bouncing on the trampoline, when we hear a rustle from the surrounding shrub. We stop jumping, climb off the trampoline and go to investigate. We encounter a frog.

“Kill it!”, screams the four year old.

“Hey, shhh”, I plead in return, holding my index finger to my lips, “You will scare him”.

We both crouch down, and assess the creature. He has compressed himself, like a spring, ready to recoil. He does not trust us, but seems to enjoy being admired.

“I will go and get a bucket”, I say. Perhaps if the four year old looks after him for the afternoon, a seed of nurture will replace the murderous ivy that scales the depths of her soul. When I return, the four year old looks at me, confused, and asks:

“Where’s the spade?”

“Why do we need a spade?”

“So we can whack it and kill it and put it in the bucket”.

“We don’t want to kill it. We want to catch it, so you can look after him”.

She looks gutted. I slowly move towards the frog. Quick as I can, I lunge forward and attempt to cover him with the bucket. But he is fast, and leaps away in the nick of time. He hops across the lawn and settles, mockingly, on the bench. This enrages the four year old. “He is on our bench!”, she screams. She leaps up, runs at full speed towards the bench and aims a fly kick at the frog. A crack fills my ears, but not a squishy one: The frog gets away, again.

Bedtime arrives. The four year old is putting her pyjamas on, while I scan her book shelf for a bed time story. I do not want a book that is interactive, or too exciting. It must be slow paced and sleep inducing. I am clearing my throat, ready to deliver some dulcet tones when the four year old lets out a yelp and exclaims:

“Beetle!”

I look over and see a beetle crawling past her feet. I tell her to hang on, and dash downstairs, to get a jar.

When I return, the room is still. The beetle has been mashed into the carpet and is oozing a beige stodgy liquid, like porridge. A fragment of his shell lays beside him. The four year old is in bed, flicking through a book.

“What happened?”, I ask.

The four year old answers, without removing her eyes from the book:

“He had a heart attack”.

 

The Male Nanny.

“I fingered her!”

  It is nearing 10pm. I can hear some shouting at the top of the castle. My ears lead me to the 12 year old’s room. He is standing by the window, shouting at someone outside. A young girl is on the street below. She spots me and dashes under a tree.

“Who’s that?” I say to the 12 year old.

“My friend”, he says.

“Well what is she doing here?”

“She wanted to see me”.

“Well why is she hiding from me?”

“Because you’re an adult”.

“I’m not really”.

“Yeah, I know, but she thinks you are”.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to hide!” I shout down to the girl. She remains hidden.

“He’s not my dad!” shouts the 12 year old. And with this, she emerges from beneath the tree.

“Do your parents know you are out this late!?” I shout to the girl.

“Yeah!”, the girl shouts back. “Can I come in?”

I look at the 12 year old. He clasps his hands together and reasons: “Please, come one, she’s so fit”.

This is a conundrum. Inside my head, Pious dons a sword, Prude picks up a pickaxe and Misanthropy steals itself for malice. Love, Humanity, and Empathy stand united, but do not draw weapons. The depth of the latter’s strength wins out, and I rush downstairs.

“Where do you live?” I ask the girl.

“Just down the road”, she says.

“Please can we go to my room”, asks the 12 year old, “We just want to chat”.

“You’ve got ten minutes”.

Ten minutes elapse. I go upstairs and knock on the door. I hear lots of rustling and a united, slightly frenzied, shout of “Hang on!” When they emerge, the boy looks delighted. The girl looks sheepish. I walk her home. She thanks me, before disappearing down an alley way, climbing over a wall and scaling a drainpipe to her bedroom.

When I return to the castle, the boy is on the stairs, with his Blackberry. He jumps up, high fives me, and says: “I fingered her”. “Wash your hands and go to bed”, I say.

The 12 year old’s parents get home. I change the story slightly by omitting the juicy bits. The mother looks concerned, hand over mouth. I look over to the dad, who is smiling.

“Fantastic”, he says, “I hope they did something. Good on him. Was she pretty?” And with this, a hitherto dormant dad emerges from within him.

The Male Nanny.

Dumbing Down

The dad is driving the four year old and I to yet another birthday party. It will be a half hour drive, I am informed.

I choose to climb in back with the four year old, a show of solidarity. The engine is barely warm, when the four year old asks her dad a question:

“Whose house are we staying in now?”

“Well, it’s owned by a property company, so we are renting it, but the insurance is paying for it”.

The four year old looks bemused, so I translate:

“You are borrowing it from someone who owns it, but doesn’t live in it”.

The dad cannot communicate with the four year old. He is incapable of having a conversation with her because he refuses to alter his frames of reference. Because they cannot converse, they are essentially a different species.

A few minutes later, the four year old has another question for her dad:

“How does that work?” she asks, pointing at the sat nav.

“There are satellites constantly orbiting earth and they communicate with the system in the car”.

The four year old looks confused. I translate again:

“There are these things called satellites, that live in the sky, and they send a map to the screen”.

The sat nav woman announces that we are nearing our destination.

“Is the sat nav lady speaking on the phone?” asks the four year old.

“No, it’s all pre-recorded, not live”, replies the dad.

I open my mouth, ready to translate, but the dad snaps:

“You don’t need to dumb everything down, she needs to learn to talk to adults, to talk like an adult”.

“No, you need to explain in a way that she understands. Otherwise, you may as well squawk at her, like a cockatoo, you cunt”, I snap back.

I do not. I roll my eyes and sit in silence.

The Male Nanny. 

“I Wasn’t Concentrating!”

“We are going to be late”, says the mum, as she turns the engine on. Then, glancing at the four year old:

“For goodness sake, she is a mess. Her jumper is dirty. We are going into town. I don’t like my children looking dirty”.

She is dirty – we had been playing rugby in the garden. But she is four and my belief is that four year olds should be exempt from society’s dress code. I ignore the mum.

“There is no time to change. Let’s just go”, she says.

She is on the phone, whilst driving, trying to organise for the housekeeper to stay late this evening. We approach a red light and she zooms through it. Cars coming through the junction from other directions beep at us and we narrowly avoid a smash.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” screeches the mum, to the other drivers, who flash a perplexed, almost sympathetic look at her. I don’t say anything. The twelve year old does:

“It was a red light mum, what is wrong with you?”

“Was it? I wasn’t concentrating”.

We approach a sign warning us that the congestion zone is approaching. “Oh”, says the mum. “You might as well get a cab. The congestion charge will cost more. Keep an eye out for taxis”. “I see one”, says the twelve year old. We pull over and he leaps out, running back in the direction from which we came, arm flailing above his head. The taxi ignores him and drives off. I watch him in the mirror as he scratches his head, looks down at his Blackberry and slowly begins the 100 meter walk back to the car. The mother huffs and beeps furiously. His head remains down and his speed doesn’t pick up. “Hurry up”, screams the exasperated mother. But he cannot hear. She beeps again, the twelve year old doesn’t react. At this point, she omits a noise that is not identifiably human. I interpret it as frustration. He is now 50 meters away. She winds down her window and bellows “hurry up!” but he continues to amble. He finally reaches the car and stumbles in. The mum is staring at him madly, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“You are so lazy. So so lazy”.

“Huh?”, he finally looks up from his Blackberry.

“You are bloody lazy”.

“Chill”.

Just as we are about to pull away, I spot a taxi and hail it successfully. The four year old, twelve year old and I pile in and give the taxi driver the name of the dentist we are going to. We arrive half an hour late, and the taxi costs a pound more than the congestion charge would have.

It is a nice dentist on a salubrious street in central London. In the waiting room, the four year old spots a big bowl, full of small tubes of toothpaste. “Can I take one?”, she asks. “Yes, just one”, I say. I have brought with me some pens and paper, because the mum told me that the four year old was keen to draw some pictures for her granny. I had received this information with scepticism. The four year old has never displayed, to me, any such altruistic drive.

“We can draw while we wait. Look, I brought some pens. Your mummy said you wanted to draw something for your granny?”

“No”, she replies, disinterested, casually flicking through a copy of Vanity Fair.

“Why not?”

“She is dead”.

The dentist is good with the four year old and the four year old, remarkably, appears to like her. “Just sit up on this special chair here”, says the dentist. “Good, that’s it, okay I am just going to move the chair back so you will be lying down”. As the four year old is lowered into a horizontal position, five small tubes of toothpaste fall out of her pocket and crash to the floor. The dentist and I laugh.

I do not like the room we sit in, because it smells of nothing. I discreetly breath into my cupped hand and inhale my breath back through my nose, to check I have not lost my sense of smell.

The check up is done and the four year old has fine teeth. Before we leave, she haggles with the dentist and manages to get two bouncy balls from her treat bag.

Outside, we hail a taxi. As we crawl back home, through the traffic, I feel justified in not having been to the dentist for two years.

The Male Nanny

The Ball

  A while back, I was asked to work on Sunday, to take the twelve year old and his friend to the Summertime Ball at Wembley. I agreed.

I am to meet at the friend’s house at 2.15, to pick them up. I must take them to Wembley, go to the west box office, produce my passport and a permission slip, collect the tickets and make sure they get in to the stadium. But there is a catch. The area they are sitting in requires them to be at least 14, or to be accompanied by an adult (I do not have a ticket). So, if they are refused entry, I must scour the concourse for an adult who is willing to take them in.

I ring the friend’s doorbell, on time. The door is opened by a man in a tuxedo, with a silver tray of canapés balanced on his hand. I tell him I am here to collect the twelve year olds.

“I think you have the wrong house”, he says.

He is about to close the door, when a man appears behind him.

“Ah we’ve been expecting you, come in”.

Inside, a party is happening. A very stylish and expensive looking one. Dresses, perfume, ties, make-up, high heels, blazers. I haven’t had a bath for a couple of days and I am hung over. I am in trainers and jeans and a waterproof jacket. I am soaked with rain. I do own an umbrella, but it is huge – essentially a portable marquee. I am so embarrassed by its size, that I frequently get wet. People in the house stare at me. I am ridiculous. One of the waitresses, sympathetic to my isolation, offers me a vol-au-vent. I decline, but am grateful for her audacious attempt to include me.

“They are downstairs”, says the man.

I remove my shoes and go down. There are about 20 kids, from 4-14, sitting on two sofas in the playroom. There is no racket, they sit silently. They look bored. They stare at me. The twelve year old leaps up, puts his arm around me and announces to the room:

“He is my nanny!”

They all laugh, the absurdity of my role has broken the ice. They begin chatting. The four year old is there too, and speeds to the centre of the room to perform a cartwheel. Everyone claps and cheers. The twelve year old, along with his friend and I, leave, with the clatter of the newly noisy room fading behind us.

We get on the overground, bound for Wembley. It is full of teenage girls. They dress boldly, they are proud of themselves. They smell nice; of effort. I smell of damp. The twelve year olds recount a story of their friend getting a blowjob in an alley way. “She didn’t actually blow him, she just sucked it”, they say. I am amused and perplexed.

We get off the train. The breeze is brutal and begins drying my hair. We walk around for a while looking for the west box office, defiantly ploughing through the wind. We find it eventually. The woman in the booth gives me the tickets, she doesn’t ask to see my ID. We find their entrance. It is being manned by two officious looking men. Inevitably, they stop the twelve year olds.

“How old are you?”

 “14”, they answer, in unison.

“No chance, when were you born?”

“Ummm…” The twelve year old begins counting on his fingers. The stewards laugh and tell them they cannot enter.

The wind is now so bad it is stretching my skin. I begin approaching strangers. They avoid me at all costs. They walk around me, look through me, or dismiss me with a hand gesture. I spot a dad, with his kids, and approach him. He is very nice and agrees to take the boys in.

I walk back to the tube, engulfed by glee. Multitudes descent on me and I fight their tide. It is a procession of hope, joy and celebration. I am a black drop of resentment in a colourful ocean of anticipation. My inky resentment hasn’t the potential to contaminate, though; it is encapsulated. I do not feel envy: They are going to watch JLS and Nicole Scherzinger. I want to confront these groupies, individually, shake them and tell them that their idols are shit. Rather than listen to me, I think they would ignore me.

As the door shuts behind me on the train, it begins to rain. And I am delighted.

The Male Nanny.

The Trip

A while back, I spent the weekend on holiday with the family I work for. We went to Veysonnaz, which is a Swiss ski resort. I had never before been skiing so approached the trip with shaky intrepidity.

The early start means I am grumpy. The four year old sits on her Trunkie and I drag it through the various airport check-points. She has a remarkably regal poise for one so young; her back is perfectly straight and her chin slightly elevated. My back is hunched and my head down. She is the queen, I am her lackey.

All bags are checked in and we are ready to board the plane. An announcement is made. The family rise, I follow. The dad swings around to face me.

“Oh, you need to wait. We all have speedy boarding. You don’t. See you on the plane”.

My sombre mood is lifted: I will be sitting on my own. I will not have to look after the four year old, who gets terrible plane sickness. The prospect of queuing has never made me so happy. I eventually saunter on board.

I hear the four year old calling my name. She is patting the seat beside her, eagerly beckoning me. I look ten rows back and see the rest of family. The dad is asleep, the mum is reading and the older kids are on their Nintendos. I take my place next to the four year old.

She vomits twice, then falls asleep. We touch down in Switzerland and must now travel by train for 2 hours. I drag the four year old to the train station. She has become less regal. She looks pale and is slouched over her Trunkie. I want a Trunkie. As our train approaches, the dad gives me five tickets and says:

“You will be sitting with the kids in second-class. We will be in first-class. Come get us if there are any problems. Actually, don’t come get us”.

The four year old also gets train sick. I am not prepared for this. I empty the Trunkie and shove it under her nose. She vomits into it and it leaks through the hinges.

After the train, there is a one hour car journey. Everyone sits silently as we climb the Alps. It is an ascent, but I sense impending descent. Tension hangs in the air. The children have warned me about Veysonnaz. They tell me it has broken many a nanny.

Morning is signalled by the dad playing loud opera music through the Bose speakers that inhabit every room. As I exit my quarters, I feel like I am taking to a stage. The singer’s tone crescendos as I enter the kitchen, and his voice falls as I take my seat. The four year old is subdued, and eats her cornflakes without emotion. Everyone is shuttled to ski school, so I have the morning off.

I decide to wander around the resort. It is a strange place, like a giant hotel without a roof. You see only one sort of person: White, rich, under-50, skier. They perambulate the sterile landscape vacantly. They all have goggles and hats and huge coats on. But I know what is underneath – a pure hedonism. They do not care where they are or who they are. They seek pleasure through their hobby. It is not a holiday, or an experience, it is a lifestyle. They enact their strange futile fetish within the confines of the resort, where they cannot be judged. They don’t wish to be human, they wish to be motorised. They seek inhuman speed and try to fly like eagles. I stand out here, ambitionless, in my jeans. I am not shunned, nor am I affirmed. They are flattered by my inquisitive stares, but would never take me to their bosom. I am Louis Theroux, minus the camera and grandeur, and they are the subject; honoured, dismissive.

Everything here feels artificial. I never go into the Rolex shop, but imagine if I did, I would encounter an empty space occupied by a moustached man, smoking a cigarette while holding up the flimsy shop exterior. I imagine that the name, ‘Veysonnaz’, is as recent as the plane that flew me here. I believe it previously existed under an ugly name, such as ‘Klughait’, but that the skiers wanted a name more befitting of the land on which their Swiss chalets deigned to sit. ‘Veysonnaz’ was chosen because the three syllables fall off the tongue with a smooth and fluttering cadence. It is a word used, I am convinced, by a remote tribe somewhere, onomatopoeically, to depict the movement of a butterfly.

The next day, I get an opportunity to ski. The 12 year old takes me down a black run, which I have subsequently learned is not a place for a beginner to begin. I crash into one of the poles that mark the edge of the run. My legs go either side of it and I comically crush my testicles. I cannot get up. I am like a beetle that has been flipped on its back. I flap appallingly in the snow. I eventually remove the pole, but I am not the future king of England, I am the shame of the slopes. 

That evening, an argument erupts between the dad and the twelve year old. The dad utters a line that makes me fall in love with him. He tells his son that he is a “handicapped child”. He then says “the only difference between you and a real handicapped child is that a real handicapped child is usually nice”. It is outrageous, daring and utterly stupid. He is a smart man, but was at the end of his tether. He sought shelter through resigned audacity.

As we return to the airport in the car, I am asked if I enjoyed the trip. “Yeah, it’s a lovely place”, I say.

I will never return.

 

The Male Nanny.

Splash

  While the mansion is being nursed back to its former glory, the family are staying in temporary accommodation. It is a castle. The four year old and I have, unimaginably, found a game that we both enjoy playing within the grounds. We stand at one end of the garden, both clutching a rugby ball. We then take turns to kick our balls toward the other end of the garden, with the goal of getting it into the pond. We call it Splash. I am bigger, so I must close my eyes when I kick.

Despite my eyes being closed, my ball splashes into the pond first.

“You cheated!” cries the four year old.

“How?”

“You kicked it too straight”.

“The pond is straight ahead of us, how am I meant to kick it?”

“Less straight”.

Round two. I close my eyes and boot the ball. I connect with it perfectly and it flies, unbelievably, without bouncing, straight into the pond. The splash is victorious, like champagne. I look apologetically at the four year old. She is marching towards me, angrily. She smacks the back of my legs.

 “You stupid idiot. From now on, use your left foot. And you are peaking, so I will cover your eyes”.

Round three. The four year old takes her kick, and it is good. She could feasibly get it in with her next shot. For my shot, the four year old leaps on my back, tightly wraps her hands over my eyes and instructs:

 “Left foot!”

My shot is terrible and the ball nestles in a bush. The four year old is delighted. I can feel her chest on my back, shaking with laughter. She leaps down, runs up to her ball and kicks it straight into the pond. As soon as it hits the water, she spins around and runs towards me, arms aloft, jumping, smiling. She chants and circles me:

 “Loser loser loser”.

She continues rejoicing, running around. The four year old’s fatal flaw is her enjoyment of other’s misfortune. This is perfectly illustrated by the following occurrence. She is running toward the pond, still celebrating. But, desperate to see my sad face as she does this, her head is facing backwards, still looking at me. She is blissfully and unashamedly happy. She is quite close to the pond now, still running, still with her eyes facing the opposite direction to her trajectory.

Now, I saw it coming. I confess. But I felt safe that she would avoid serious injury and thought that it could teach her a lesson. If she associates boastfulness with cold, wet shock then she may refrain from it in the future. In any case, the four year old doesn’t really listen to me, so if I did warn her about her impending plunge, she would ignore it. For the record, she is an accomplished swimmer.

 

*SPLASH*

 

She tumbles into the pond, flapping around. I run over and fish for her drenched frame. I heave her out. She looks shocked and says nothing. She is shivering. I feel bad. I take her inside, wrap her in a towel and make her hot chocolate. She is silent as she sips while I rub her back. After a few minutes, I suggest a bath. She is unresponsive.

Eventually, the silence is broken:

“Ha, ha. I have hot chocolate and you don’t”. I no longer feel bad.

The Male Nanny.

Wash-out

  It is 10pm and I’m lying on a chaise lounge in the mansion, playing Shrek Go-Kart on the iPad. My face and hands are illuminated by the device’s glow, which is the only source of light in the room. The four year old and thirteen year old are in bed and it is blissfully quiet. I can hear naught but the intermittent spray of the automated air-freshener system. I feel like I am sharing the room with a house whale, who occasionally pops up from beneath the floor boards for air. Each time it dispenses a fresh puff of fragrance, I am startled. The phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hi”. It is the mother. She is at a friend’s dinner party across the road. She continues…

“We need some help over here, would you mind popping over?”

She says I can leave the four year old with the thirteen year old as I won’t be gone for long. I assume help is needed with the children: the 11 and 12 year old are also at the dinner party and the host couple have kids of a similar age. I am reluctant, but drag myself across the road.

I arrive at the house and am lead to the kitchen, which adjoins the dining table. As I walk in, everyone stops their conversations and looks up. The mother introduces me to everyone, then says: “The dishwasher is broken, would you mind doing the washing up?”

I absorb the question, and think that she may be joking. Do I laugh? No-one else is. Before I have answered, people have continued conversing and I am being lead to the sink. The cupboard arrangements are quickly explained to me and a pair of rubber gloves are offered. I decline the gloves, but begin washing up. I am pissed off. I am not above cleaning, no-one is, but it is not my job. Perhaps when you hire various staff, they all mesh into a unified resource: The cleaner can nanny, the nanny can clean, the housekeeper can garden and the gardener can keep house. They are all dogs-bodies whose skills are not refined enough so as to restrict them to one role.

The dinner table conversation is centred on William and Kate. But the interlocutors are not discussing the morality of monarchy, nor the pros and cons of their lavish mores. Rather, they exchange disposable platitudes about how wonderfully ‘normal’ the bride is, and how the country has taken Pippa to its heart. Wealth may have lifted these people out of the doldrums, but their minds remain very much in it.

  I finish the washing up, which takes 45 minutes. There is a lot of noise coming from downstairs, where the kids are hanging out. Someone asks me if I could go and check on them. I make my way down. The play room is empty, save for a pool table, a ping pong table and giant TV. The noise is coming from a neighbouring room. I open the door to discover the swimming pool. The kids are speeding across the pool cover. It looks like great fun and I am about to leave them to it when one of them spots me and makes the others aware of my presence. They stop, apologise and shuffle back into the play room. I challenge one of them to a game of ping pong. He is beating me. He asks if I have a girlfriend. I tell him I do. He asks if she gives “good blow jobs”. His friend asks if she has “licked my balls”. I decide to return to the kitchen.

A new pile of washing up has developed. I get to it. They are now talking about schools. They all agree that their children would get bullied in a state school. They move on to garden renovations: Water-piece or no water-piece? Levelled lawn or slightly sloped lawn? Veg patch or no veg patch? I begin to long for blow-job talk.

I finish the washing up. A Sympathetic “well done” is thrown my way and a piece of cake is offered as payment. I decline and mope back across the road, feeling used.

Back at the mansion, the four year old has woken up and is screaming on the floor. The thirteen year old is sitting on the stairs fiddling with her Blackberry. She points at her sister, tells me to “fucking sort her out” and stomps back to bed. I scoop up the four year old and she falls asleep on my shoulder before we reach her room.

I return to the chaise lounge, the iPad, the dark and the sporadic release of fragrance. I feel thankful. To who, or for what, I am not sure.

The Male Nanny.

 

The Museum

  I take the four year old to the Science Museum. She spends most of her time conjuring up questions about the exhibits that I cannot answer. She then waits until we are surrounded by people and asks these questions in her most audible voice. If only she would share her possessions as willingly as she does my humiliation. We walk around looking at space shuttles, rockets, bits of bombs, cars, planes, trains and engines. There is a queue for one of the exhibits. I am reluctant to wait and the four year old senses my reluctance and insists on queuing. The line is being kept in order by three Science Museum employees, one of whom speaks to me:

“Not too long to wait now. Ten minutes or so”. I smile at her and nod. She remains in front of me, looking at me.

“Thanks”, I say. She looks down at the four year old and asks her:

“Are you having fun with daddy?”

The four year old rolls her eyes.

“She’s not my daughter”.

“Oh”. She remains in front of me, expecting further explanation.

“I look after her… I’m her… carer”. As the word ‘carer’ comes out, I regret it. It sounds clinical. I didn’t expect it to incite the following reaction, though.

The woman’s eyes change and she no longer displays agitated nosiness, but patient admiration. She releases a little “Aww” and crouches down to her knees. She addresses the four year old like one might a deaf person:

“ARE… YOU… EN-JOYING… YOUR-SELF?”

She forms a gigantic smile and delivers it with an over-enthusiastic thumbs up. The four year old looks disgusted. “Follow me”, says the woman, so we do. She takes us past the queue and through to the exhibit, which turns out to be interactive. I watch in horror as the four year old navigates her way through the intricacies of the exhibit, displaying an array of fine motor skills and language capability to boot. The woman scowls at the four year old and the four year old scowls back with a scowl that says: ‘serves you right for thinking I am a retard’.

We stop by the museum shop. The four year old asks if she can buy a compass. I tell her I don’t have any money. She plunges her hand into my jacket pocket and removes a £2 coin and goes to pay for the compass.

 As we leave the museum, the four year old says: “Where was the science?”

We begin the long tube journey home, where I become a transitory exhibit for passengers in our carriage. People stare at me and the four year old, building some mental conclusion of our existence that is almost certainly inaccurate. I imagine they determine that I am the useless but kind hearted dad, having his one weekend a month with his distant child. We should all wear a label, with a brief outline of who and what we are, to prevent such misjudgement, I think. The irony is, the labels would facilitate instant pin-point perception, which is usually more hurtful than a judgement based upon misconception.

Five boys board the train at Camden Town. They look about 14. One of them is carrying a bong, as if it were a handbag. The four year old stares at it. “What is that?” she says. “It’s for smoking”, I say. “It’s a big cigarette?” She asks. “Sort of”, I answer.

An old man with a pencil moustache is sitting opposite us. The four year old points to him and asks “Why is that man’s face like that?”, then falls asleep before I can tell her off.

I decide I will wake her one stop before our final destination. The time comes. I lean over to the four year old and poke her. She doesn’t wake. Passengers opposite smile. The lady next to me says “My granddaughter’s exactly the same - she could sleep through an earthquake”. I lean over again and squeeze her hand. She doesn’t wake. I say her name. She doesn’t wake. I shout her name. She doesn’t wake. I pull her arm. No response. The whole carriage is interested now. I shake her leg. Nothing. I prize her eyes-lids open but they just slip back down. I am worried. I listen for her breathing, can’t hear a thing, but her chest is rising and falling. “Pinch her nose”, says one man. I do, no luck. We pull into the station. I have no choice but to carry her. I bend down to lift her out of her seat and as I do she comes round, startled, and says “Don’t you dare carry me”, before marching off the train ahead of me.

 

The Male Nanny.