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sort of behavior would excite him. I pulled him down onto
our bed.
    I
remember the way he moved inside me, like a clock with its mainspring running
down. I pulled his face close to mine and I whispered,
Oh god Andrew, are you all right ? My husband didn’t
reply. He just closed his eyes against the tears and we began to move faster
while small, involuntary moans came from our mouths and fled into the other’s
moaning in wordless desperation.
    In
on this small tragedy walked my son, who was more at home fighting evil on a
larger, more knockabout scale. I opened my eyes and saw him standing in the
bedroom doorway, watching us through the small, diamond-shaped eyeholes of his
bat mask. From the expression on the part of his face that could be seen, he
seemed to be wondering which (if any) of the gadgets on his utility belt might
help in this situation.
    When
I saw my son, I pushed Andrew off me and scrabbled frantically for the duvet to
cover us. I said, Oh god Charlie, I’m so sorry.
    My
son looked behind him, then back at me.
    “Charlie
isn’t here. I’m Batman.”
    I
nodded, and bit my lip.
    “Good
morning, Batman.”
    “What
is you and Daddy doing, Mummy?”
    “Er…”
    “ Is you getting baddies?”
    “ Are we getting baddies, Charlie. Not is we. ”
    “Are
you?”
    “Yes, Batman. Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
    I
smiled at my son, and waited. I wondered what Batman would say. What he said
was, Someone done a poo in my costume, Mummy.
    “ Did a poo,
Charlie.”
    “Yes. A big big poo.”
    “Oh Batman. Have you really done a poo in your suit?”
    Batman
shook his head. His bat ears quivered. Beneath the mask an expression of great
cunning settled upon the visible part of his face.
    “It
wasn’t me that done the poo. It was the Puffin. ”
    (The
italics were his.)
    “Are
you telling me that the Puffin came in the night and did a poo in your bat
suit?”
    Batman
nodded, solemnly. I noticed he had kept his bat mask on but taken off his bat
suit. He stood naked except for the mask and cape. He held up the bat suit for
me to inspect. A lump of something fell from it and thumped on the carpet. The
smell was indescribable. I sat up in bed and saw a trail of lumps leading
across the carpet from the bedroom door. Somewhere inside me the girl who had
done science A-levels noted, with empirical fascination, that feces had also
found their way into locations which included—but were not limited to—Batman’s
hands, the door frame, the bedroom wall, my alarm-clock radio and, of course,
the bat suit. My son’s shit was everywhere. There was
shit on his hands. Shit on his face. Even on the black-and-yellow bat symbol of
his bat suit there was shit. I tried, but I couldn’t make myself believe that
these were Puffin droppings. This was bat shit.
    Distantly,
I remembered something I’d read on the parenting page.
    “It’s
all right, Batman. Mummy’s not cross.”
    “Mummy clean the poo up.”
    “Um. Er. Jesus.”
    Gravely,
Batman shook his head.
    “No, not Jesus. Mummy. ”
    Resentfulness
was starting to overcome the embarrassment and guilt. I looked across to where
Andrew lay with his eyes tight closed and his hands twisted at the exquisite
awfulness of his clinical depression, our unhappy sex interrupted, and this
very thick stink of shit.
    “Batman, why don’t you ask Daddy to clean you up?”
    My
son looked across at his father for a long time, then turned back to me. Patiently, as if explaining something to an imbecile, he
shook his little head again.
    “But why not?” (I was pleading now.) “Why not ask Daddy?”
    Batman
looked solemn. Daddy is fighting baddies, he said. The
grammar was irreproachable. I looked across at his father with him, and I
sighed. Yes, I said, I suppose
you’re right.
    Five
days later, on the last morning I saw my husband alive, I finished dressing my
caped crusader, I breakfasted him, and I ran him down
to his nursery’s Early Birds Club. Back at the house, I