by Tony Parsons
‘Stone me,’ said one cockney wag. ‘It’s The Exorcist. That head will start going round and round in a minute. Your mother sucks cocks in hell! Your mother sucks cocks in hell!’
Oh, that’s lovely talk in a parenting class, Rory thought.
He angrily pulled off the head and jammed it on the right way. He placed the doll on the mat and tore off the soiled nappy. Its pink plastic private parts were flooded. Rory delicately swabbed them with a baby wipe, controlling his breathing so that he calmed down a little, then quickly applied a layer of cream and began fumbling with the new nappy. He bent over the pretend baby, smiling proudly, the nappy ready to go. Then the doll squirted a jet of water in his face.
The class applauded and cheered.
‘Incidentally,’ the teacher said, smiling calmly through the laughter, ‘fresh urine is sterile and not at all harmful.’
Oh yes, I remember it now, thought Rory, it’s coming back to me.
It’s all a nightmare.
The class ended with the teacher telling them that next week they would be dealing with the colour of stools – vivid yellow to pale green, apparently – and, as a special treat, they would be meeting a baby, the six-month-old offspring of a graduate of the class.
On the way back to the car, Rory chose to make meeting a baby the focus of his discontent.
‘How can you meet a baby? You don’t meet babies. What’s he going to do? Stand around with a cocktail in his hand, making small talk and chatting about the weather?’
‘Maybe he’ll give you a few pointers on changing nappies.’
‘It’s all rubbish.’
Cat stared at him. ‘You really don’t want to do it, do you?’
‘Of course I do. It’s just these stupid classes. All that talk about mummy and daddy and baby. That’s not who we are.’
She shook her head, thinking it through. Really thinking it through for the first time.
‘No, you really don’t want to do it.’ She stared at him, and it was if she had realised he was someone she didn’t really know. ‘It’s not your fault. I should have seen it coming. I forced you to do it. And now it’s all coming out.’
‘Come on, Cat, let’s go home. Your hormones are running wild.’
She smiled sadly.
‘It’s not my hormones that are the problem. It’s you. All your doubts.’
He tried to take her hand. ‘Come on. We’re in this together.’
‘I wonder. Because it feels like I’m in it alone.’
‘Cat, stop it. You know I don’t like these women with big earrings.’
‘It feels like you’re here because – I don’t know. Because of your conscience, or because you would feel guilty about leaving, or because I trapped you. That’s what it feels like. Do you know what I think?’
‘Let’s stop this. It can’t be good.’
‘I think you don’t have the guts to go the distance.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I think you’re not really here for this baby and me. If you were, some old hippy in an antenatal class wouldn’t matter at all. I think your luggage is packed. I think – sooner or later – you’re going to leave.’
‘I want this baby as much as you do.’
She smiled sadly, shaking her head, and it broke his heart.
‘I think you’re just like my mother,’ she said, and he knew it was the very worst thing she could ever say.
The traffic was insane.
Bicycles gliding like schools of fish through the teeming streets – she had been expecting that in mainland China, but not all the cars beyond number, none of them keeping to their lanes, all of them constantly sounding their horns, even when they were stuck in one of the apparently permanent gridlocks and going nowhere. What would happen when the bicycles were gone and they all got cars?
As the traffic ground to a halt again, a pick-up truck pulled alongside their taxi. The back was a high, wire mesh cage, the kind of thing that her gardeners used back home. But this cage was loaded with pigs.
Overloaded with pigs, grotesquely overloaded, because there were twice as many of the curiously small animals than could be comfortably contained by the truck’s cage. They had been thrown on top of each other, as if they had no more rights or feelings than her gardeners’ sacks of compost, and now they fought for space, stepping on each other, their eyes gleaming with wild panic as they desperately lifted their heads for air, and shrieked with a terror that turned Jessica’s stomach.
She wanted to go home.
This wasn’t what she was expecting at all, this wasn’t like Hong Kong. China was dirty, and desperate and cruel. Beijing was a hard place, choked with dust from the ever-encroaching Gobi desert. If Hong Kong had seemed full of life, then here everyone seemed to be fighting for their life. Struggling for life, scrabbling for it, stepping on each other without thought or pity.
The old taxi driver was contemplating Jessica and Paulo in his rear-view mirror.
‘Meiguo?’
The young translator in the passenger seat shook his head.
‘Yingguo.’ He turned to grin at them. ‘They are English. Not American.’
He had attached himself to them in the vast concrete expanse of Tiananmen Square, as they stared across at the epic blankness of Mao Tse-tung’s giant portrait, and for the last few hours he had acted as their guide, translator and chaperone as they wandered the Forbidden City, ancient hutong back alleys and tacky tourist shopping malls. He was a pleasant, good-looking young man, an architecture student who called himself Simon. When they asked for his Chinese name, he said it was too difficult for them to pronounce.
‘What you do?’ he asked Paulo. ‘What you do in England for job?’
Paulo sighed, staring grimly out of the window. At first he had been happy to respond to Simon’s constant questions. But it had been a long day. And the questions never stopped.
‘He sells cars, Simon,’ Jessica said. She shoved Paulo. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’
‘Well. It’s like the Spanish Inquisition with this guy.’
‘How much money make?’ Simon said, as innocently as if he was asking how they liked the weather.
‘None of your bloody business,’ Paulo said.
Simon turned to Jessica.
‘You marry? Or boyfriend-girlfriend just partner?’
‘We’re an old married couple,’ Jessica said.
She smiled and lifted her left hand, displaying her wedding ring.
‘See?’
Simon took her hand and inspected the ring. ‘Tiffany. Very good quality. Cartier better though. How long marry?’
‘Five – no, six years.’
Simon nodded thoughtfully.
‘Where the baby?’ he said finally.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Paulo said. ‘Not here too. We’re on holiday, mate.’
‘No babies,’ Jessica said.
‘Six year no baby?’ Simon said.
‘That’s right,’ Jessica said. ‘What a pair of freaks, right?’
She took her husband’s hand, and he squeezed it, still staring out of the window at China.
Simon turned in his seat and said something to the driver. The old man nodded.
The stalled traffic began to move.
When morning surgery was over, Megan called in her extra patient.
‘There’s a man in your reception area with a dog,’ said Olivia Jewell, coming into her office, ‘and they are sharing a packet of potato crisps.’
‘Don’t worry, Mother. I don’t think he’ll bite you.’
Olivia shot her a look that made Megan smile – the same startled double take that had tickled the watching millions thirty years ago.
‘We are talking about the dog, aren’t we, dear?’ Olivia looked around Megan’s tiny room. ‘Is this where they make you work every day?’
‘I know it’s not quite what you’re used to. So why didn’t you go to see Dr Finn?’
Finn was the private doctor her moth
er had seen since they were children. Megan remembered the reception area of his practice on Harley Street. Deep-pile carpets, glossy magazines, comfy sofas and a chandelier that had impressed Megan deeply. It was more like a hotel lobby than an NHS waiting room. It was only years later that she realised the most luxurious thing of all was that Dr Finn could spend thirty minutes with every patient.
‘Dr Finn retired last year. I don’t like the one who replaced him. Keeps going on about my smoking. And besides. I wanted to see you.’
Megan rubbed her eyes. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘God, you look awful.’
‘Poppy was up for most of the night. She seems unsettled with Jessica away. Kirk’s taking time off to look after her, but she misses Jessie.’
‘They’re just so much work, aren’t they?’
‘How would you know?’
‘Charming bedside manner.’
‘You should come and see her some time.’
‘I keep meaning to. It’s your flat. It depresses me, Megan.’
‘Yes, it depresses me too. Look, can we get on with it? I have to go home and take over from Kirk. What’s wrong?’
What was wrong was that the pins and needles in her mother’s arms were getting worse. She had blurred vision in one eye. Sometimes she was so overcome with fatigue that she could hardly light a cigarette.
Megan’s face was an unreadable mask, but she was shocked. She thought the old girl was lonely. It was worse than that.
‘You need to see a specialist.’ Megan started scribbling a name and address. ‘A neurologist. Someone I use in Wimpole Street. Very close to where Dr Finn used to be, in fact.’
‘What is it? What’s wrong with me?’
‘You need to see a specialist. You can talk to him about your symptoms. He will almost certainly ask you to have an MRI scan. You should also prepare yourself for a lumbar puncture.’
‘What the fuck is a lumbar puncture?’
‘Don’t be alarmed. Please. A sample of fluid is drawn off from around the spine and given a series of tests.’
‘Megan, what’s wrong with me?’
‘That’s what they’re going to find out.’
‘But what is it?’
‘It’s not my place to make guesses.’
‘You know what it is, Megan. You know.’
‘No, I really don’t.’
‘I’m not going until you tell me.’
Megan took a deep breath. ‘Okay. From what you’re saying, it looks like the early stages of multiple sclerosis.’
Her mother reeled.
‘Am I going to end up in a bloody wheelchair?’
‘It’s unlikely. Most people diagnosed with MS never need to use a wheelchair. But it’s unpredictable. No two people with MS experience exactly the same symptoms. If MS is what it is – and we don’t know yet.’
‘Is it curable?’
‘No.’
‘It’s incurable? They can’t cure it? Oh, God, Megan!’
She took her mother’s hand, feeling the bones and the tired skin.
‘Incurable but not untreatable. There are some very effective beta interferon products. They’re self-injected.’
‘Stick a needle in my arm? Are you serious? I couldn’t possibly–’
‘And there’s a school of thought that says what works best of all for controlling MS symptoms is cannabis. But you can’t get that on the NHS. Or on Harley Street.’
Olivia hung her head.
‘I could be wrong. Please. Please see this specialist.’
Her mother lifted her head.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’
Her mother held out her arms, and Megan went to her, but just then there was the sound of screams and breaking glass and a barking dog. Megan ran outside.
Lawford was on the ground grappling with Warren Marley. He appeared to have recently thrown the surgery’s ancient coffee table at the receptionists. There was broken glass and shards of cheap wood all over the carpet. When he saw Megan, Marley’s face warped with fury.
‘Because of you! My sister lost her girl! Daisy! In fucking care because of you!’
When Megan got home that night she talked to Kirk about his dream of getting out.
How would it work? Where would they go? All these little slices of paradise where he could teach diving, and she could do what she had been trained to do – could they really live somewhere like that? She pushed him, seeing if the dream could survive in the real world. What about visas? Work permits? Day care? She was ready to get out of London.
She was ready for another kind of life.
Because she saw now that Kirk was right.
When you had a child, it changed everything. You couldn’t worry about the rest of the human race. You had to be selfish, you had to think about your baby, and find a place that was safe for your own flesh and blood.
As soon as you became a mother or father, then everything was about the next generation. The new family.
You couldn’t even worry too much about your own parents.
No tears.
That was the first thing Jessica noticed.
Not exactly silence, for it was a long, poorly lit dormitory with cots pressed close together on both sides, every one of them occupied by a baby or a toddler, and the musty air was full of the singsong chatter of small children talking to themselves. But there were no tears.
‘Why don’t they cry?’ she said.
‘Maybe happy babies,’ Simon said.
No, not that.
‘What is this place?’ Paulo said. ‘This is some kind of home. This is an orphanage.’
She had been afraid to enter. She had been afraid of what she might find. Negligence and cruelty and filth. Like the pigs piled on top of each other in their wire-mesh cage, and nobody even looking at them. But it wasn’t like that in here.
As they slowly walked through the dormitory, she saw that these children were clean and fed. They regarded Jessica and Paulo with baffled curiosity, but they were not frightened or cowed. They had been treated with affection and kindness.
But there were so many of them that they had realised there was no point in crying. Their tears were not like the tears of a baby outside, not like the tears of Chloe or Poppy. Their tears were not the end of the world for a mother and a father, and those tears would only be ignored.
Because they were so many.
‘Four million baby girls,’ Simon said. ‘Four million baby girls like this in China.’
‘They’re all girls? All these children are girls?’
He nodded. ‘Because of one child policy of government. People only have one son or daughter. Many prefer son. Especially in countryside. Low people. Uneducated.’
Four million baby girls in care because of the one child policy.
And yet everywhere from Tiananmen Square to Beijing McDonald’s, they had seen the other side of that policy – a generation of overweight, overindulged children, the biggest spoilt brats in Asia, China’s Little Emperors. And now Jessica thought of it, the Little Emperors had all seemed to be boys.
A nurse approached them from the other end of the corridor.
‘You want baby?’ she said.
‘Oh, thank you, but we’re just looking,’ Paulo said. ‘Jessica? We have to catch a plane.’
‘Very difficult to have baby now,’ the nurse said, ignoring him. ‘Many Westerners come. Think easy. Oh – go China, get easy baby. But not so easy. Much paperwork. Need proper agency. Called international child programme.’
Simon cleared his throat.
‘I have,’ he said.
Jessica and Paulo stared at him.
‘You run an adoption programme?’ Jessica said.
‘I know. Can introduce.’
‘For a nice fee, I bet.’
Simon spread his hands. ‘All have to eat.’
‘Jessica, we’re being scammed, can’t you see that? I wouldn’t mind if it was just a fake Ming vase and a jade dragon for the man
telpiece. But not a child, Jess. Not this.’
He gestured helplessly at the endless rows of cots. The cots were old-fashioned and heavy. Inside them the babies were wrapped up tight, swaddled like tiny Egyptian mummies, so their arms were bound to their sides, while the toddlers had a gap at the rear of their trousers where their bare little arses poked out, making it easy for them to go to the toilet. And Jessica couldn’t help smiling, because they were beautiful. Serious, almond-eyed little angels, some of them with surprising shocks of hair, all these Elvis-like eruptions of jet-black plumage.
Paulo shook his head. You can’t just bring home a baby from your holidays. You can’t do it. This was madness.
‘Don’t forget, you dealing with the governments of two countries,’ the nurse said.
‘Now wait a minute,’ Paulo said. ‘Nobody said–’
‘Your government and Chinese government. Need checks. Visas. Permission. Not so easy. Not so easy as Western people think.’
‘Ah, but agency help,’ Simon said to Jessica. He had given up on Paulo.
But Jessica wasn’t listening to any of them.
She was walking to the end of the dormitory, where a small girl of about nine months was shakily standing in her cot, holding on to the bars for support.
Jessica watched her fall on her bum with a thump, then grimly drag herself up again. She fell again. She got up again.
Then they were standing by the baby’s cot. Paulo thought she resembled one of those cartoons of what an alien is supposed to look like – huge, wide-set eyes, a tiny mouth and an even tinier nose that looked as though it had been stuck on as an afterthought. That tiny nose was streaming.
‘This Little Wei,’ said the nurse.
‘What happened to Big Wei?’ asked Paulo.
‘Big Wei gone Shenyang.’
‘Shenyang? Where’s that?’
‘City in north. Dongbei region. About ten million people.’
This country, thought Paulo. China. They have got cities of ten million people that we have never even heard of.
Jessica was staring at Little Wei. The child stared at her and then at Paulo. He looked away from those huge, wide-set eyes, and touched his wife’s arm, as if he were trying to wake her. It was time to go.