Madam, Your Husband…

“Madam,” said the chap on the scooter, eyeing the motorbike erratically parked some distance from the wrong hire shop (and, indeed, the pavement) with a sort of bemused, yet ineffably polite contempt, “Your husband has asked me to come and find you…”

Now, I guess this sort of “women drivers, pshaw!” shtick happens all the time to married women. And, much though it offends my feminist sensibilities to admit it, I am, sadly, pretty much your stereotypical woman driver, with absolutely zero sense of direction to boot.

However…

Given that neither Z’s father nor I have ever been married, and certainly not to each other, given, in fact, that we’d known each other for about two seconds when we conceived the boy, the phrase “your husband” adds a sort of extra special level to the everyday vehicular humiliation I am familiar with as a regular patron of emergency callout services in the UK.

You know. “Well, I don’t think there’s a mechanical fault. I’m pretty sure it’s not starting because I forgot to switch my lights off again,” “Is that the AA? Yes, I’m afraid I’ve locked my keys in the car,” “Excuse me, Mr. Traffic Warden. Do you know what this red light means? It went on and told me I should pull over, then steam started coming out of the engine and now the car seems to have sprung a leak…”.

S has been with us for the last fortnight, and the last week has been pretty much full of “your husband this”ing and “your wife that”ing. Basically, everyone on Cat Ba island made the entirely natural assumption that the giant Western parents of the giant Western child who were sharing the family beach hut and the laundry, chucking their offspring around the sea, hiring junks, etc, were, well, married.

This has probably been weirder for S than for me. I have, after all, been travelling for over four months, and fielding queries about my husband’s whereabouts with reference to his throughout that time, while, as a non-resident parent who looks younger than he is, the default social assumption is that he is free of bonds either parental or marital.

Z, as ever, has taken it all in his stride. We have always spent time together as a family – we’ve spent Christmas together, go to the cinema together, to picnics together, etc. — so it’s not the first time, for example, that Z has walked with one hand in each of his parents’ hands.

It is, however, possibly the first time he has observed that a deserted hilltop would be a good place for people (in general, naturally, certainly not his parents, oh no) to “snog”…

All in all, the experience has tended slightly to the surreal. And that’s without the added bad-Hollywood-romcom-weirdness of spending the night on a junk in one of the world’s most dazzling environments without, well…, without getting laid. Or the prospect thereof, for that matter.

So there we were in a restaurant, sat by the fishtanks watching my dinner grappling with its blue nylon string bonds and speculating how long the parrotfish had for the world, while looking out over the fish farms, sampans and neon-clad floating restaurants of Cat Ba port.

The owner pops over, and we are having the usual conversation about how old Z is, how many brothers and sisters he has (single-child families are a real novelty all over Asia), when the guy enquires, “Only the one? You don’t want more?”

S and I look at each other. “I don’t know, darling,” I say brightly, channeling a spritely 50s housewife, still on the bennies but due a Valium to take the edge off it just as soon as she gets through with vacuuming the soft furnishings. “What do you think?”

“Well,” he says, solemnly. “We’d like a little girl, of course. But it’s difficult to find the time. You see,” he continues, warming to his theme, “I’m very caught up in my career…”

After the chap leaves, Z asks, “Why don’t you just tell him the truth?”

“It’s complicated to explain,” I say. “It’s just like we talked about when people ask me where my husband is, and I answer with reference to your dad.”

“But why don’t you just say, ‘She’s NOT my wife!’ and explain what you mean,” he asks his dad, using the intonation he uses when correcting vocabularily-challenged strangers with the stern admonition, “I am NOT a baby!”

I am trying to think of a delicate way to phrase an explanation when S spares me the trouble. “Like, ‘She’s not my wife, she’s the recipient of my sperm?’” he says.

“Exactly what I was thinking!” our son exclaims approvingly.

I am simultaneously pleased that Z has fully processed the story of his origins – he’s been told since he could talk that he was the best surprise either of us ever had – and frustrated that I didn’t formulate the phrase first.

Unfairly, perhaps, given that I had been thinking along the same lines, I am also mildly cross with both of them for… well, I’m still not sure if it was precisely rude but if I’d said the gendered equivalent it would have been offensive in the extreme.

Anyway, it has been odd. We have genuinely had some amazing times. But the husband schtick has been very, very odd.

There are roles you default into as co-parents. I find myself saying things like, “I’m not sure, why don’t you ask your father?” “Your dad and I have both told you that you can’t jump off the kayak because of the jellyfish. Now, get back in the boat AT ONCE.”…

S carries things for me. Which is weird for me. When he gets a sinus headache, I go into maternal fussing mode, which goes beyond weird to virtually doing his head in, without the comic impact of Z rushing in with a thermometer and endeavouring to insert it under his tongue.

And when I am on the wrong end of a quite phenomenally discomfiting seduction attempt from a chap at the beach huts who barely comes up to my shoulder and looks young enough to be my son – long story – the phrase I find myself squeaking piteously is: “But my husband! My husband! I need to go and find my husband!”

More weirdly still, I do go and find him.

Anyway. We’re back in Hanoi. In separate bedrooms again. And, lordie, did THAT take some explanation when S first arrived at the guesthouse…