Another voice
Hollow apricots
Auberon Waugh
`C he was silent within my embrace and I L./stroked her hair, there was a tangle at the back, in one of the flaxen fronds that fell and parted around the nine-year-old hollow apricot neck.'
So Polly Devlin sets the scene for a 'mo- ment of truth' with her nine-year-old daughter, to be shared with two million or so readers of the Sunday Times as they sit around burping and farting after their Sun- day breakfasts. Next in the series of 'Con- versations with my daughters' is promised for this week. If nothing more dramatic crops up, I hope to discuss the series week by week, as it appears, but she has certainly given us plenty to think about for the pre- sent.
The drama begins when, during a row with her mother, the daughter picks up a postcard on which she has previously writ- ten 'I love you', crumples it up and throws it in the wastepaper basket. Daughter Devlin then leaves the room, Mother Devlin rescues postcard from wastepaper basket like some James Goldsmith lawyer collec- ting evidence. Re-enter Daughter Devlin: ' "I don't love you," she said, "any more. What will happen?"
"Nothing will happen," I said.
"What will you do?"
"I'll be sad for a while," I said. Was that the right answer? "But it will be all right. We'll love each other again. I'll rescue it." '
Was that the right answer? Mother Devlin reveals that her natural reaction had been to scream at the girl, kick her and hit her. Would that have been better, she asks.
It seems to me she has several problems to face. The first concerns her daughter's hair. Flax is not something of which I have much experience, but I imagine it to be a coarse, fibrous substance of yellowish grey colour when untreated. If it covers her daughter's head in fronds, or leafy bran- ches, tangled at the back, I should recom- mend a powerful shampoo. The very least Mother Devlin might do is to set the girl a good example by brushing her own hair thoroughly. As it appears in the Sunday Times photograph it might provide a friendly shelter for half a dozen sparrows, a colony of bats and even some flying foxes, but it is scarcely a good example to any daughter with hair problems.
The hollow apricot neck sounds more serious. I do not know whether Ms Devlin is suggesting that her daughter's neck has the colour or the texture of an apricot, but in either case I would suggest that it is a matter for the family doctor, if not a specialist. All necks, I suppose, are hollow to the extent that they contain a trachea and an oesophagus, and there need be nothing to worry us there, but if her daughter's neck seems somehow hollower than most, she might be well advised to consult her doctor once again, if only for reassurance. It is not the sort of thing which comes right after an aspirin or two, or some syrup of figs.
On the great postcard question, my own reaction would have been one of mild an- noyance at the waste of a postcard. One should try to discourage children from scribbling on every available surface, even if they write twee little messages like 'I love you'. Perhaps the Sunday Times provides postcards free to its female employees for this purpose, but even so the finances of Times Newspapers are not so strong that they can afford to throw away these impor- tant documents. What will the Look! pages use for their Christmas number? Even so, I feel that to scream, kick and hit the girl would have been an over-reaction. A short lecture on the perils of waste would surely have been enough. But Mother Devlin was not going to let the matter rest there. She decided to take the opportunity for a long lecture on child relationships and reproduc- tion, for later publication in the Sunday Times: "If your love isn't very strong, or is very new, or you can't trust the person you love, or trust their love, which is much the same, then you can really hurt or be hurt — you can do a lot of damage. But the love bet- ween a mother and a daughter is old and very deep, even though you're young. Because remember before we knew each other to look at, we knew each other: you were inside my body — nothing could be closer than that." '
No doubt this advice was well-intended. Mother Devlin sincerely hoped to bring them closer together by reminding her daughter that she, the daughter, was once in Mummy's tummy. She expected, and by her own account received, an affectionate and grateful reaction along the lines of, `Gosh, thanks, mum. Now I understand why we are such good friends.' Perhaps modern children genuinely react in this way to such reminders, but I should have thought it was the ultimate snub or put- down for a child to be reminded of where it comes from, far worse than being asked to stand up when grown-ups come into the
The second clue in the Treasure Hunt is to be found this week on page 37.
room, or even than being told that children should be seen and not heard. It is also, or so I should have thought, the ultimate self-indulgence for a mother to be constantly reminding her offspring the, they were once foetuses inside Ile' reproductive system. The truth is that oric,,e children are born they have a character an u identity of their own. Modern mothers ha' ing once given birth must simply learn t° belt up. The nightmares which children t15' ed to suffer from being told that a long r, e(1.; m legged scissor man would cut off ei' thumbs if they sucked them must pale jilt.° insignificance beside this constant tion to get back into their mother's womb' r can well believe that Ms Devlin's danglit,.e, is odious as well as stroppy, that her cut tle ways and leafy branches of matt,q fibrous hair hide a calculating brain, u" this is no way to put her in her place. for Nor do I think it a very good idea foT, journalists, when short of copy, to take hel ti.ri acres of newsprint with discussion of d children. Both Sir William Rees-Mogg ailed t fCaptainor th this Si ni m Son Raven atvi me ne have beena t l leastl. refrained from harping on the bioloPot aspect of their relationship. TheY did nto feel it added to their parental authority remind their lads that they were 170111'r. their times, one of 75 million or so sPeo matozoa swimming around the place 41,4 happened to have won the race a__ sort tl''c glorified Sunday Times Fun Run — tc)„.,tm ovaries of their dear mothers. One marvel, as aparent, that any child of oneai own can ever win any sort of race, but tbhe is food for private thought, part of wonder of creation. It would extra,31 dinarily offensive to tell one's children tile., they were once carried around in °,.1,„. testicles and must therefore realise nv close they are to one emotionally. My own anxieties about the De 0. household do not end with the chikireber After the two of them have — by Mother Devlin'sDevlin's own account — bored each otk"3/ stiff in this moment of truth, we learn t"cri, Daughter Devlin 'trotted out to the gardod accompanied by a large mewling cat terribly overweight dachshund'. This information raises so many clu,e; tions that we must leave them for anon:id week. Broadly, they are: 1) why rat think I may have to draw this to the atte' why did the 111 Noy Daughter Devlin trot? 2) mewl? and 3) why was the dachslnlid overweight? This last question may reclunot immediate action. Is Mother Devlin „„0 aware that it is extremely cruel to all'of dogs to become overweight? As founders the Dog Lovers' Party of Great Britain,a, tion of the appropriate authorities. 1,-Aen, cats mewl, when going out into the gar'tiii; unless they are in pain. When we add ,t°ass. the evidence which we have already disc se ed about the condition of Datit'd vDiseivtloinrs'.s hair and neck, I think it rflaY reo be time the Devlin household received a '
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