What Begum learned from that TV show in Papa Davy’s house was a miracle. She said that science and the law had now made it possible to have babies without having sex. That one man’s sperm combined with another woman’s egg could be implanted in yet another woman’s womb without any of them ever having to meet.
A woman in the Mainland – Dr Joy Philipose, had been running a clinic for two years where she outsourced pregnancies. The TV talk show host, adored and syndicated around the world, called it fertility tourism.
‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’ the talk show host asked, ‘Offering wombs for rent?’
Wealthy clients from foreign countries, where the science was in place but not the law, were visiting Dr Philipose’s clinic in droves. Dr Philipose had become a millionaire, but she sat there as pious as a nun, looking straight at the camera saying, ‘This isn’t about making money for me. The greatest joy is to help couples who can’t have children of their own; to enable the women of my country, who have so little, to have greater freedom in their lives.’
‘Don’t you see?’ Begum said, ‘The clever old cow.’
‘But who would want to carry a baby that was not their own?’ I asked. ‘And why?’
‘Who do you think, Luna? Who do you think?’
And that’s when Kedar lifted Begum to her feet, water still dripping from her skirt. He put his arms around her waist and led her through a waltz around the living room – their bodies pressed close together, swaying to a music only the two of them could hear.
VIII
All couples, even those deeply in love like Kedar and Begum, sometimes lose each other. It’s impossible to say why they go adrift, but you can see when they’re going – in their eyes, their bodies, a slackness in the spine. When Begum got angry she retreated like an animal into a cave, utterly ravaged, but pretending to be calm. All it took was a gesture – an extension of kindness by the guilty party towards her, and she’d emerge, all lightness again. Kedar was more complicated: harder to aggravate, harder to bring back.
Over the years I saw Begum and Kedar extend their arms out to each other many times. I didn’t worry much about their skirmishes because when the love is strong there’s always a rope by which one lover can bring the other back. But things had changed since Mr Owain had come to Fountainville. Begum – always one to look for portents, remembered how he had walked out of the eye of that great April storm unscathed. We lost half our trees in one night. Even the giant alder protecting the fountain had lost all its leaves and many of its branches. People’s houses were destroyed, two young boys died, hundreds of cattle and farm animals killed. Nothing of that scale had ever been recorded in Fountainville. And Begum, being Begum, couldn’t help but connect the arrival of Mr Owain with the arrival of great change.
‘He’s looking to fill my shoes,’ Kedar said, from the start. ‘If he’s not poking around in your business, he’s poking around in mine.’
Kedar wasn’t normally a jealous man. Among the men of Fountainville he possessed the rare quality of self-awareness. His own personal mission had always been for self-actualisation through body, mind and spirit – quite elevated, all considering. And besides, he was a closet feminist. He adored the women in his life – his mother, three sisters, Begum and me.
A lesser man might have struggled with a famous wife – and Begum’s stardom was no ordinary thing. She had put Dr Joy Philipose in the shade within a year of opening our clinic. Not only did Begum revive the myth of the Fountain, she brought prosperity to these Borderlands and forced the government in the Mainland to take up all our long-neglected issues. Besides, she made more money in a month than Kedar did in six, but none of this bothered him. He was proud of her, consistently enamoured. If I didn’t live with them, I’d think their love was an invention. But there was something about Mr Owain’s involvement with the clinic that threatened Kedar.
‘I don’t trust him,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t look me in the eye. Always so friendly and flirty with the ladies, but the minute I walk in he shuts up.’
‘But he’s like a brother,’ Begum insisted, ‘With nothing incestuous going on!’ Why are you over-reacting like this?’
She was pleased of course, for Kedar’s surge in jealousy because it indicated he still cared who she gave her time to. But it soon became tedious. ‘Isn’t it possible he just gets along better with me? Isn’t that allowed? That someone might just prefer my company to yours, that not everyone we know has to like us equally?’
‘Maybe you scare him?’ I offered, when I was still foolish enough to participate in their feuds.
‘What do either of you know? Walking around with blinkers on! This man is out for me. I’ve felt it the minute I clapped eyes on him. He wants something from me, and while he’s at it, he’s taking you all along for a nice song.’
*
If I had to say when everything changed in our town I’d say it began when Mr Owain asked me his big question. For weeks, things at home had been rough. The fights between Kedar and Begum had escalated. There were rumours about Mr Owain and his activities on the other side of town – horrible stories, which I didn’t believe but stuck like fungus to the undersides of my skin. He hardly came to the clinic any more, and when he did, he seemed troubled and distracted.
And then he changed everything by asking me a simple question. Just like that, everything altered. He asked on a Saturday, the busiest day at the clinic, when proxies spend all morning with the team for their weekly progress reports, and Begum and I, between us, oversee that the sheets in the greenhouse are changed, the kitchen stock replenished, the bath house and cow-shed are cleaned out and disinfected.
That particular Saturday I remember having woken early because of a dog fight. Begum and Kedar’s pet – a brindled mongrel called Jenga, had been in heat for a week, so all the neighbourhood males were vying for her, scraping through the bamboo fence at all times of day with their howls and long, horny faces. Jenga slept outside my bedroom door, and so the duty usually fell upon me, to chase after her suitors in nightgown and slippers, and stick in hand – an act that cut into my sleep and inevitably put me in a bad mood. That morning though, all I felt was the warmth of the green world at the edge of our house. The dew on the leaves, the prickle of toughened grass underfoot. I stood under the blossom tree beside our house, and felt a wild kind of joy, standing in the sun, being alive. Part of my pleasure, I’ll admit, had to do with the fact that Mr Owain had said the evening before, that his feelings towards me were becoming soft and confusing, and he had something to ask me.
I took my usual path to the clinic. Through Main Street, where the farmers’ wives were setting out their vegetables, past Lester’s butcher shop and Wesley Marx’s cycle repair shop, past the property of my would-be ancestors – the Philo General Stores – a thriving business run by three rodent-faced men, the sons of my mother’s paramour, Mr Philo.
How many times had I walked down this street, then taken the turn at the Glory Hallelujah Teahouse, into the wooded pathway, past the white houses with blue shutters and tin roofs, the Fountainville School, and the Baptist Church on top of the hill? How many times had I dreamed of escaping it? And today, I thought, finally today, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world but here.
That morning I saw Rafi at the teahouse with his usual entourage of animals jostling around in the gutters for the spot closest to him. I hadn’t seen him in a while.
He waved me over. ‘How are things going for you, missy?’
Rafi’s hair had grown sun-bleached and unruly, and his one cloudy eye looked cloudier, befuddled no doubt, from whisky of the night before.
‘Tea?’
I nodded. ‘Quick, though. Busy day at work today.’
‘How’s your lover boy doing?’ he asked, as he signalled the waiter for another cup. ‘Ah, see! Luna, I didn’t even know you could blush. A girl like you? Didn’t know you had it in you.’
‘He’s a nice man.’
&
nbsp; ‘You should tell him to keep his nose out of things that don’t concern him. I know a few roughnecks who’d like to say hello to him in a dark alley. Better he stick with those hens of yours in the greenhouse.’
‘I thought you of all people didn’t pay attention to rumours,’ I said, knocking back my cup of tea determinedly.
‘And what does Kedar have to say about him? Is he inviting him over for dinner so you can all get to know each other nicely?’
‘He’s listening to the same horrible people as you are, I suppose.’
‘We care about your safety is all, Luna.’
‘Well, thanks for your concern. When you have a moment, come and see Jenga. Those dogs won’t leave her alone.’
*
Love is a confusing emotion. It arrives from nowhere and attacks your body like a predator – filling and emptying you – changing your every mood until you’re quite unsure of what you were before. Till that exchange with Rafi, I had tricked myself into thinking that I had found in Mr Owain the purest of friendships – something inviolable and true. I was angry at Rafi for not being as wise as I expected him to be, and I was angry at myself for not having defended my friend, my love. All the sweetness of the day disappeared. I was left only with the dissonance of screaming children held captive in school for half-day Saturday, and the dull chop chop chop of the hard-working women of Fountainville collecting firewood along the path up ahead.
Inside the clinic – the usual Saturday scene. Proxies stumbling about in their nightgowns with band aids on their veins; the garden staff clearing away leaves and raking sand; Begum in her office going through the menu of the week with Mitsy, the cook. I had half a mind to turn back, disappear, on the wrong side of town, where no one knew me and no one noticed. In hindsight of course, I’d say it was the body’s way of anticipating change, of thinking it could keep the status quo by running away or hiding. But I didn’t turn away. Instead, I waited for Mitsy to leave Begum’s office.
‘I’m bloody sick of Kedar interfering in my life,’ I said, marching in. ‘It makes me so goddamn angry that you both think I’m incapable of making any decisions for myself. As if I don’t have the sense to choose my own friends.’
‘Sit, Luna,’ Begum said. ‘Just sit. Now listen to me: We have to sign Chanu Rose today. We’ve lost too many weeks already waiting about for his highness. Either Mr Owain decides today, or we assign her to one of our many waiting clients, and ask him to kindly leave us in peace.’
‘You believe it too, then?’
‘Luna, it isn’t about belief or disbelief. Do you think I care what a man does in his free time? I like the man. He’s sweet. He flatters me. But he’s interfering with my domestic happiness and my business. None of this wellness line boutique stuff he promised has worked out. I’ve broken rules for him, stretched all kinds of regulations, and I’ve been very patient. He’s a ditherer, Luna. He’s lost. He doesn’t know what he wants, and maybe you think you can help him but I’m not going to sit back while he destroys our relationship. Come on. Let’s talk to him together. Figure out a way to keep everyone happy.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But I’ll talk to him first.’
*
I waited till late afternoon. Mr Owain usually came for lunch, but it was only three when he finally showed up. Begum had gone home, and most of the proxies, tired, after their lunch of rice and vegetables, had rolled over to sleep. Only Chanu Rose and I were up, waiting.
Chanu Rose washed her hair every Saturday. It was an arduous task because her hair was so long she needed three buckets of water just to rinse it out. She looked younger than twenty-four. She’d spent most of her life in an orchard picking fruit, but her hands and face carried none of the wreckage of too many hours of sunshine, except for a spray of freckles across her nose. She had small breasts and slim boyish hips, which the other proxies constantly made fun of. ‘Where’s the room for your package, Chanu?’ they’d jibe.
To me, Chanu Rose was the most desirable woman in Fountainville: she wore trousers, knew how to change car tyres, and had the blackest, quickest eyes that crinkled up in to two little streaks on her face when she laughed. Most desirable of all though was when she set about washing her hair, which she usually kept restrained in two double braids. Afterwards, she’d sit by the fountain twitching her toes back and forth, humming patiently, waiting for the curtain on her back to dry. And it was at this time – when she was her most perfect and self-contained, that I believe Mr Owain desired her too.
I could see Mr Owain watching her from Begum’s porch. Chanu looked like a stick figure in a child’s painting. The ring of mountains that surround Fountainville seemed to nestle behind her like a delicate row of capital Ms with the bright gold ball of the sun peeking through between them.
I walked over. ‘It’s not too late,’ I said. ‘You can still work with her if you decide today.’
Mr Owain took my hand. ‘You know I grew up in a place quite similar to this. In the countryside – with forests and fields and mountains. I liked it well enough as a child, but I can’t tell you how quickly I wanted to get out of there as a teenager. And now I live in a dreadful city, filled with the meanest little spirits and scarcely a bird in sight. Everything is about how you present yourself – the clothes you’re wearing, and the people you know, and what kind of wine you drink, and where you’ve been on holiday, and I can’t tell you how tired of it all I am. To tell you the truth, I came here because I needed an adventure. I wanted to shake myself out of the life I’d been living. When I talked to Cynon and Cei, and they described the journey here, the challenge, I thought that’s what I want to do. Set myself up for something difficult.’
‘Sounds like a strange kind of adventure to me.’
‘My father was a difficult man, Luna. I wasn’t the son he’d hoped for, which made him more difficult, but he did manage, in his miserable life, to give me one piece of advice worth keeping. He said if I worked hard I could keep all my sins at bay, which was rich of him to say, of course, because he never worked a day in his life, unless you count riding horses and writing letters to solicitors as some kind of employment. In any case, I coasted through life, scattering what little talent I had away, sacrificing very little and fearing everything, and finally turned into exactly the kind of vacuous bastard I’d been running away from: a version of my father.
‘I’m trying to change that now. My father died a year ago, and it’s as if his leaving has finally given me the space I needed to become the man I’ve been trying to be. And that’s part of what I’m trying to do here: outwit my DNA if I can.’
‘I thought you were trying to propagate your DNA.’
He laughed. ‘That too, that too.’
Mr Owain was perfectly still for a few minutes except for clenching his fists, something I knew he did when he was nervous.
‘There’s no easy way to do this,’ he said. ‘I’ve been running around and around for weeks now and it’s driven me near damn crazy, so I’m just going to come out and ask: Luna, will you be the mother of my child?’
*
The morning I told Begum and Kedar that I was going to have Owain’s child is one of those days that will always stay in my mind as a moment when I could have chosen differently. Everything that followed seems like a dream. But that morning – sitting with Kedar and Begum in the wicker chairs on the veranda with the sun leaking through the roof and Jenga curled up by a pillar – I still felt like my life was my own. Even though it threatened to break away from me like an out-of-control goods train, for that moment, I was still holding on to it with everything I had.
When I announced my news they were both silent for a while. Kedar got up from his chair, walked over to me and knelt. He put his head in my lap as if he were a child, my child. He gripped my knees and looked up, still crouching on the floor.
‘I know you’ve made up your mind,’ he said. ‘So I won’t try to talk you out of it. And I know you’re a smart girl, so you know what you’re get
ting yourself in to. I just want to make sure you’re covered in every possible way. I’ll call a lawyer today – you’ll need it, just in case things get tricky.’
I kissed the top of his head. ‘You know this means you’re going to be a grandfather, right? Because I’m not giving the baby up. That’s not part of the plan.’
‘Does he have romantic intentions?’ Begum asked, quietly from where she was sitting.
Kedar got up and dusted off his pants, moving towards Begum because he could sense, as I did, a growing fury.
‘And where will you all live then?’
‘I suppose I’ll go back with him,’ I said. ‘But not right away.’
‘It’ll ruin your life. I’m quite sure of it.’
‘Isn’t it possible to think about bringing a child into the world in a different way? Not for society or family or loneliness or mortality. Not for money, and certainly not for the mad biological need to replicate yourself. But only because you meet someone who convinces you otherwise? He’s making me reconsider something I’ve always feared. Doesn’t that count for anything? Regardless of whether our relationship remains platonic...’
‘Platonic,’ Begum interrupted, dumbly. ‘Platonic? What sense does that make, Luna?’
‘Just because you’ve never been a mother, and that’s been your life’s great thwarted ambition, please don’t spoil it for me.’
‘That’s enough,’ Kedar said. ‘Let’s not do this.’
I shouldn’t have walked off, but I did. I went straight to the clinic and met Owain there.
‘Right,’ Dr Willis said. ‘All we need are some eggs and some swimmers.’ He prepared the first round of drugs for my stimulation and sent Owain off into a darkened room with a cup.
That night Begum came to me the way she used to when I first moved there. I kept my back to her, facing the wall. She said of course she wanted me to have children; that her wish for me was the same as any parent’s – for me to marry a man worthy of me, to have a family, be happy.
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