Very early one Sunday morning when Jacob and Clare were just a year old, Jenny and I both found ourselves awake in bed at the same time. We were anxious. Without saying anything, we had an eerie intuition that something in the house was wrong. We didn’t know what it was, but things were not right. The whole place felt unfamiliar.
Suddenly it dawned on us what the problem was. The house was quiet.
Most new parents know that uncertain feeling of stepping into a silent baby’s room with a doubt at the back of your mind that perhaps the little one has stopped breathing in the night. A quick check reassured us that the children were all fine; they had simply decided to try a new idea, one which had never entered their minds before, which was to all sleep simultaneously. We were amazed. We knew that this rare occurrence had been described in some of the medical literature but we never believed it could happen to us.
At this point, we could have slipped into the lounge and watched the early morning Sunday religious shows on TV. Call it strength of character but we managed to resist the temptation.
Instead, we decided to make hay before the sun shone. We went back to bed and indulged in what, when I was a priest, we used to refer to coyly as intimacy. It had been some little time since both the opportunity and inclination had fallen our way at the same time. But we soon found that the different parts of ourselves that come in handy for sex had neither rusted nor withered during their break. We dusted ourselves off and got on with the game.
Before long Jenny was making those lovely noises which, if I may flatter myself for a moment, suggested to me that she was having a pleasant time. The noises gradually got louder.
‘We might wake the kids,’ she gasped.
‘Call it revenge,’ I replied.
Our luck held and we were left to our pleasures for the moment. After an interlude, we started again, this time noisier than before.
Matters were reaching a crescendo when we heard a plaintive voice from the foot of the bed. We hadn’t noticed but our almost-three-year-old, Benny, had crept into the room in his Captain Hook pyjamas. He was concerned by what was taking place.
‘Don’t worry, Mummy,’ he announced. ‘I’ll rescue you.’