by Tony Parsons
Jessica laughed gaily, a lump the size of a tennis ball throbbing on her forehead, a bruise pulsing on one of her shins, the palms of her hands red and sore from carpet burns.
‘Oh, I’m fine, fine, just fine,’ she said, turning brightly to her husband. ‘Is that really the time?’
They sat in the car and Paulo listened to her pouring it out.
‘Have you noticed that everyone’s having a baby these days?’ Jessica said. ‘Gay men. Lesbian couples who wouldn’t touch anything with a penis. Sixty-year-old Italian grandmothers with one wonky ovary. I even read that they might start making babies from aborted foetuses – how about that? Someone who has never even been born can have a baby. But I can’t.’
They were sitting outside Michael and Naoko’s house in Paulo’s blue Ferrari. The car was a perk of the Baresi Brothers, but also a necessity. Michael always told Paulo that you couldn’t sell imported Italian cars when you come to work in a Ford Mundano. Michael’s red Maranello sat in the drive, as well as a BMW with a baby seat in the back.
‘They don’t do it to hurt you. To hurt us. They don’t mean to rub it in our faces. But they’re just so happy with their baby, they can’t help it. They don’t mean to hurt us.’
‘I know,’ she said, hanging her head.
We would be the same, he thought. If Jessica and I had a baby, we would love it so much that we wouldn’t care who we hurt. It seemed to Paulo that having a baby made you care less about the rest of the world.
Because the baby became your world.
‘Do you know what my brother told me? He said that he hasn’t had sex with Naoko for seven weeks.’
Jessica stared at him. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘I’m listening to you. I’m just saying.’
‘What? What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that it’s not perfect in there. I know Chloe’s great. I know how much you want a baby of your own. Our own. But I’m just saying. Something’s happened to them. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like since Chloe was born, they have something between them now.’
‘She’s younger than me,’ Jessica said, not listening to him. ‘Naoko. Four years younger. Same age as Megan. When Naoko is the age I am now, Chloe will be starting school.’
‘It’s not perfect in there,’ Paulo insisted.
His conversation with Naoko had shocked him. His sister-in-law had a PhD from Reading University. She had been an archaeologist when she met Michael. And now all she talked about was how this week Chloe preferred brown mush to green mush.
Paulo loved his little niece. He had loved her from the moment he saw her. He knew that he always would. But in a secret chamber of his heart, he had his doubts.
He didn’t mind the indignities of making love to a plastic cup. He didn’t feel less of a man because apparently some of his sperm were dozy bastards who couldn’t find one of Jessica’s eggs if you gave them an A-Z.
The doctor had told him they just needed to keep banging away. Plenty of people conceived babies with far worse odds. And whatever his wife had to go through—the endless scans and tests, the laparoscopy, whatever new humiliation they came up with – Paulo would be right there at her side. He would always be there. She was the one for him. He had known from the first time he had seen her face.
But he wondered if he would really be any good at this fatherhood lark – the endless games of peek-a-boo, and in-depth analysis of ‘pooing’ (Jesus, his brother – the arch shagger, the great womaniser, the Don Juan of Dagenham – was suddenly talking like a little kid), and watching it – the baby – every waking second, so that it – the baby – didn’t collide with the coffee table, or crawl out of the window, or swallow the remote control.
It was like you created this new life, but your life was over. Mother Nature had finished with you.
And here was the funny thing. Paulo’s sex life with Jessica had become bleak and desperate because they were trying for a baby. But Michael’s sex life with Naoko was non-existent because they had a baby.
Once Michael had been crazy for Naoko. The only reason Michael gave up Sunday morning football in the park was because it gave him an extra ninety minutes under the duvet with Naoko. But that was before they had a baby.
Paulo still wanted a child with Jessica.
But the most pressing reason he wanted it was because he knew it would make her happy. And was that a good reason to bring a baby into the world?
Five
The job was too much for her.
Megan could handle the workload, but not at the pace required. Her patients still filled the waiting room long after the other doctors had gone to lunch, and more were there when she came rushing back late from her house visits. So it was no surprise when Lawford came into her office and told her, ‘There’s been a complaint about you.’
All those years at med school. All those blood-splattered hysterical nights in A & E at the Homerton. All the tired flesh she had pressed, all the dicky hearts she had fretted over, and all the rubber gloves she had donned to probe some ancient and decaying rectum.
And now the ancient rectums she worked with were kicking her out.
She wondered which of the surgery doctors had lodged the complaint. They had some nerve. Bastards, she thought. Rotten bastards the lot of you.
No wonder female patients flocked to her, away from these old men with hair in their ears and stains on their trousers and contempt for their patients and their talk of ‘plumbing problems’, as if the aftermath of an ectopic pregnancy was no different from having a leaking pipe, as if crippling period pains were somewhat similar, when you thought about it, to having a broken boiler.
Megan could deal with any of it, all these things that she had never experienced herself, only studied in a classroom at medical school. But she just couldn’t do it in the few fleeting minutes allowed. She needed time.
She was just about to tell him to take his job and stick it up the terminal part of his large intestine when he spoke.
‘I think you’re doing a terrific job,’ Lawford said.
‘What?’
‘So do the other doctors.’
‘But the complaint…’
‘It’s from a patient.’
‘A patient? But my patients love me!’
‘Mrs Marley. Remember her? The large woman from the Sunny View Estate? One of your house visits.’
‘I remember Mrs Marley. And Daisy.’
‘Daisy’s the problem. You diagnosed a fever, correct?’
‘Her temperature was a bit high. She was listless. I thought –’
‘She was rushed to hospital the next day. It turned out to be a thyroid condition. Daisy’s hypothyroid. Hence the lethargy.’
Megan could feel her heart pounding. That poor child. She had failed her.
‘A thyroid condition?’
‘We all get it wrong sometimes. We’re doctors, not God.’
‘How’s Daisy? What will they do?’
‘Give her some Thyroxine pills and she should be back to normal.’
‘But she will have to take them for life.’
‘In all probability.’
‘Are there any side effects?’
‘Side effects?’ Lawford was suddenly impatient. ‘Yes – they make her well.’
It was the response of a vastly experienced doctor. Are there side effects to these pills, doctor? Yes, they make you well. Megan filed it away for future reference. She knew she would use the line many times in the coming years. If she ever became a fully registered GP.
‘Don’t worry about Daisy. She’ll be fine. Mrs Marley’s the problem. You don’t want a complaint of negligence on your record. Doesn’t look good at all.’
‘What do I do?’
‘You apologise to Mrs Marley. Grovel a bit. As much as necessary, in fact. Admit you’re only human. As you know, this year is a continuous exam for you. I’ll be writing a summative assessment. I don’t want a misdiagnosis on your record, Megan.
’
It was the first time that Lawford had ever called her by her first name. She could see that he was trying to get her out of this thing with her career intact, and she felt a flood of gratitude.
‘You’re not just apologising because it will get Mrs Marley off your back,’ he said sternly. ‘You’re apologising because it’s the right thing to do.’
‘Of course.’
Lawford nodded and headed for the door.
‘Thank you, Dr Lawford.’
He turned and faced her.
‘How far along are you?’
She placed a protective hand on her stomach. ‘Is it so obvious?’
‘The constant vomiting was a clue.’
‘Eight weeks,’ she said, finding it difficult to breathe.
‘Are you planning to have the baby?’
‘I don’t see how that’s possible. I can barely look after myself.’
I’m not going to cry, Megan thought. I am not going to cry in front of him.
‘I do want children,’ she said. ‘Very much. But not now.’
Lawford nodded again. ‘Well,’ he said, suddenly shy. ‘That’s it then.’ He smiled with a softness that Megan had never seen before. ‘I’ll let you crack on.’
I do want children, Megan thought when he had gone. And one day I will have children, and I will love them far more than our mother ever loved my sisters and me.
But not now, not when I have just started work, and not with some man I fucked at a party.
Yes, she would apologise to Mrs Marley.
But Megan felt like she should really be apologising to Daisy.
And to this little life that would never be born.
Bloody doctors, Paulo thought. They never tell you what you are letting yourself in for. If they did, they would all go out of business.
Paulo carefully steered his Ferrari through the streets of north London as if he had a cargo of painted eggshells on board. Jessica was sleeping in the passenger seat, white-faced and exhausted by the events of the morning.
They had made the laparoscopy sound as routine as having a tooth filled. But Jessica was dead to the world – pumped full of drugs so they could drill a hole in her belly and send in their camera to find out what was wrong.
He slowly drove home with one eye on the road and one eye on his wife, and he knew with a pure and total certainty that he loved this woman, and that he would not stop loving her if they couldn’t have children. He would love her even if she found it impossible to love herself. He would love her enough for both of them.
When they got home Paulo undressed Jessica and put her to bed, her sleeping face as white as the pillows.
Then he went into his study and took down all of his pictures of Chloe.
When Megan left the surgery, a young man stepped into her path.
He was big and good-looking, in a bashed-in, careless kind of way, and at first she thought he was one of those charity muggers – chuggers, they called them – who increasingly ambushed you with their clipboards, stepping over the homeless to assault you with their good causes and direct debit forms. She tried to swerve past him, but he moved quickly to intercept her. She shot him her look of cold magisterial fury, usually reserved for patients refusing to take their prescribed medication.
‘Megan?’
And then all at once she realised that it was him. The man from the party. The father of her child.
‘Oh – hello, Kurt.’
‘It’s Kirk.’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s great to see you, Megan.’ A lovely accent. Full of wide-open spaces and healthy living and Christmas on the beach. ‘You look fantastic.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave him a quick smile. He was a nice guy, and she had liked him a lot, and she had no regrets – apart from the fact that a doctor who spent her days lecturing teenage mums about contraception should probably never leave her own family planning to the fates. But there was no time left for anything more.
‘Nice bumping into you, Kirk. But I really must be –’
‘I had to see you,’ he said, and at last she understood that this man had actually been waiting for her.
Megan’s head reeled with the insanity of the situation. Here she was carrying his baby inside her and here he was angling for a second date.
She didn’t know him. And he didn’t know her. Yet even in the cold light of Hackney, without one too many Asahi Super Drys inside her, Megan could recall very clearly how they had ended up in bed, on a pile of coats dumped by the guests. He was tall, athletic but with a kind of genial innocence about him. His children will be beautiful, Megan reflected, and the unbidden thought made her feel like weeping.
‘I thought you were going back to Sydney.’
‘I am. I will be. But I wanted to see you before I go.’
She had to be strong. He might be making beautiful babies one day, but they would not be with her.
‘Why’s that then?’
‘Because, well – I like you. It was terrific, wasn’t it? It was great, wasn’t it?’
‘It was okay.’
‘It was unbelievable!’ He grinned, shook his head. ‘I don’t usually do that kind of thing.’
‘I am sure your girlfriend is delighted about that.’
He had let slip the girlfriend early on in their conversation, but she had been quietly forgotten when he started reading Megan’s signals, cottoning on that – maybe – she was interested. Now he had the decency to blush. He did that quite a bit for such a good-looking man.
‘I just wanted to say goodbye. That’s all. And say that I hope we see each other again.’
‘How old are you, Kirk?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘I’m twenty-eight. I’m a doctor. Remind me what you do again?’
‘I teach.’
‘What subject?’
‘Scuba diving.’
‘Right – so you’re a young scuba diving instructor living in Sydney, and I’m an elderly GP practising in London.’
‘You’re not so old.’
‘I just – I really don’t see how anything can come of it, do you?’
He hung his head, and Megan had to fight back the urge to take him in her arms, taste some more of those good kisses, and tell him the truth.
‘Just wanted to see you. That’s all. I don’t usually do things like that. Get pissed and fall into bed with a complete stranger.’
‘Could you speak up a bit? I think one of the old ladies at the bus stop across the road didn’t hear you.’
Kirk hung his cropped blond head, knowing at last that coming here had been a bad idea.
‘Take this,’ he said, handing her a scrap of paper with a scrawled telephone number. It looked like long distance. Very long distance.
‘If you ever need me. Or, you know, come to Australia.’
‘Thanks.’
‘As I said – I just like you.’
‘Yeah, well. I like you too.’
‘Well – like the song says – I guess I’ll see you next lifetime.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘See you next lifetime, Kirk.’
As soon as she had disappeared around the corner, she began ripping the telephone number into tiny pieces, her eyes blurring with tears.
Young, dumb and full of come, she thought. On his way home to his girlfriend and their beautiful babies without me ever telling him, without ever knowing, without ever being asked to carry his share of the load. And he was right – it had been fun while it lasted.
But he should consider himself lucky. She didn’t want a family with this man.
She had a family already.
In some other family, they might have drifted apart by now. In their late twenties and thirties, other sisters might have found the demands of work and home life closing in on them, clamouring for attention, taking up all their time. In some other family, men and jobs might have got in the way.
But although Jessica had her husband, her house and her
dreams in one of the leafier parts of town, and while Megan and Cat had their demanding jobs at either end of the city, they clung to each other now as they had clung to each other as children, growing up in a home where the mother was absent.
They didn’t talk about it. But when Cat had first started with Rory, he had been surprised to discover that, no matter what was happening in their lives, the sisters spoke on the phone every day and tried to meet for breakfast once a week. ‘That’s unusually close, isn’t it?’ he said, with that gentle, querulous Rory-smile on his face. But of course to Cat – and to Megan, and to Jessica – it seemed perfectly normal.
This is what Cat thought about it – nobody loves their family more than someone from a broken home.
They always tried to meet in a restaurant that was equidistant from their lives.
When Megan was at the Imperial College med school, and Jessica was living in Little Venice with Paulo, they had met in Soho, in the shabby opulence of Cat’s private club, where the members were as frayed as the carpets.
Now that Megan was working in Hackney, and Jessica was up in Highgate, the axis had moved east, to a restaurant next to the meat market in Smithfield. Cat’s suggestion. It was a place where young foreign waiters dressed in black served traditional British fare such as bacon butties, porridge and fried breakfasts as if they were exotic delicacies, and every hot drink came in a mug, rather than a cup and saucer. Everything was authentically working class, apart from the sky-high prices.
Cat was the first to arrive, and through the huge windows of the restaurant she saw white-coated porters who had worked all through the night hauling massive slabs of fresh meat onto the waiting vans.
Jessica turned up next, and together they watched the porters of Smithfield at their work.
‘In ten years this will probably all be gone,’ Cat said. ‘All pushed out to the suburbs, and Smithfield turned into another Covent Garden, full of clothes shops and street performers and little cafés.’
‘Oh, that’ll be nice,’ Jessica said, picking up the menu.