Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  ‘He always has these ideas, though…’ started Rebecca.

  ‘Exactly. And they always come to nothing, which is why I didn’t want to worry you.’ James started to relax, feeling like he’d made his point, proved he’d done the right thing. He took off his jacket, dumping it on the stand, and headed towards the living room.

  ‘Did you mean what you said to your mum about the birth?’ Rebecca asked from her place on the stairs. She’d moved up one step when James had started bustling about as if it was all sorted, and as he turned back to talk to her, he had to crick his neck slightly to catch her eye.

  ‘What? When? I wasn’t even talking to Margaret about the baby today. I’m not sure I can think about birth again after all that stuff about stitching up your mum’s fanny.’

  Rebecca didn’t react to James’s try at bringing the conversation back to the horrors of the afternoon’s events.

  ‘About having a home birth,’ she said.

  ‘What are you—’

  ‘When we told her I was pregnant you said we’d be having a home birth, and wouldn’t be like the Beckhams.’

  ‘I didn’t! I wasn’t…’ started James, before remembering maybe he did and he had. ‘When was this, Christmas?’

  ‘You said we’d be doing everything naturally, and I just wanted to say it will be me making those decisions.’

  ‘I wasn’t, I was just—’

  ‘It’s my body.’

  ‘Well you can get your own fucking ice cream from now on then.’

  ‘You just tried to take charge, like you had it all worked out.’

  ‘I was just trying to say we wouldn’t be acting like a pair of attention-grabbing celebrities.’

  ‘You sounded like you’d thought a bit further ahead than that. Do you know the level of risks associated with first-time pregnancies and home birth?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Well I don’t either. But I’m not making assumptions about what’s going to happen to my body.’

  ‘I forgot, it’s just you having this baby isn’t it?’

  ‘Feels like it. You couldn’t even be bothered to come and meet the midwife.’

  ‘Ah now come on…’

  The blow had hit home, but Rebecca knew straight away it had been a low one. He’d wanted to come. But he hadn’t protested much when she’d said not to. And the way he was trying to manage everything…

  ‘I’m going to get myself some ice cream,’ she said coming down the stairs past James, where he stood vibrating with anger by the phone table.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he came in and put the kettle on, she was sitting by the wine rack in the kitchen, with a bowl of ice cream and the tub sitting out on the table ahead of her for easy refills. She wanted to say sorry, but not for everything. She was still angry about all the secrecy, and hated not knowing things.

  While the kettle was still boiling he diverted to the fridge and grabbed a small Belgian beer instead. He just wanted the row to be over so they could get back to normal, and maybe salvage at least a bit of their weekend. He knew she hadn’t meant it about the midwife, and he could see she was feeling bad about it. But he didn’t know where all that stuff about natural births had come from.

  ‘I know you would have come to see the midwife if you could,’ she said.

  ‘I could’ve done, we were just…’ He decided not to re-tread the way they’d made the decision. He got the point. ‘Sorry about, y’know, all the stuff with your dad.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, getting up to put the dregs of the softly melting ice cream back in the freezer compartment.

  ‘Tomorrow should be good. 9.30 at the hospital isn’t it?’ he asked cheerfully.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said with a small smile, thinking about the scan.

  ‘We’ll need to be on the road by about half eight with the school traffic and everything. We can leave the car at the station afterwards and get the train into town.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Whatever you want to do, for the birth and everything, I’m totally behind it.’

  ‘I know, darling.’

  ‘I say darling, it’s going to be a frightfully good wheeze, what?’

  Sometimes the ‘Sebastian and Jemima’ routine helped these things pass quite quickly. Sometimes they didn’t.

  ‘I’m going up to bed, love. I’m wiped out.’

  She put an arm around his waist and he kissed the top of her head, then she headed up the stairs. It wasn’t quite quarter past seven. James stood there for a while in the kitchen, before going to see if there might be a Simpsons on.

  Chapter 12

  Rebecca lay in bed, for the first time in weeks unable to sleep. It wasn’t the row with James, which she thought was entirely justified, even if she had been looking for it. It was because of a talk she’d managed to get with her parents before they left the house. She couldn’t quite believe what had happened, and what she’d got into.

  She’d tackled her dad on his own first, grabbing him for a word while they were collecting Ben and Margaret’s coats. In no uncertain terms, she’d asked him what had happened at the station, and what the hell he thought he was doing exactly now. She scrunched her face up when she considered quite how she’d tried to shake him out of his pompous campaigning voice.

  ‘Look, Dad. Are you a poof?’ she’d said.

  ‘I thought I’d brought you up to not use disrespectful language like that.’

  Rebecca’s eyes slid to the side. Was he remembering the same childhood as she was? ‘Poofter’ would’ve been polite from him in those days.

  ‘And I’m certainly not a poof, thank you very much.’

  ‘Really? What other reason could there be?’

  ‘There’s a perfectly innocent explanation for what happened, and if you’d just let me finish a sentence without rolling your eyes I’d be able to tell you all about it.’

  Rebecca suppressed a shudder at the prospect of her dad going into too much detail, but she kept quiet.

  ‘I have a sort of…I suppose you’d call it a medical condition. Nothing to worry about, just the kind of thing that happens to chaps my age.’

  He’s going to tell me homosexuality’s a mental illness! she thought, but definitely didn’t say.

  ‘For some reason or other I can’t seem to pee when I want to. I can be standing there, bursting to go, and nothing comes out. Not a drip!’ he exclaimed, arms raised in disbelief. ‘Now I’ve always been one for taking the pee out of fellows with a shy bladder, pardon the pun. Never thought it was their bladder it was that they had to be shy about. But that was between them and their wife on honeymoon if you get what I mean.’

  The subtlety’s beyond me Dad, she thought.

  ‘But the last few months I’ve been getting quite worried about it. And as well as that, it is awfully humiliating, trying to coax out a drip while the little fellow next to you is letting out a stream of piss that’d make a horse proud.’

  Rebecca was conscious her face was arranged like a stroppy teenager being both embarrassed by and for a parent. Which seemed appropriate, because it was exactly how she felt. It didn’t put Howard off his stride though.

  ‘I hadn’t told your mother about it until now. Too embarrassing, and I wouldn’t want to do anything to embarrass or upset her, you know that.’

  He honestly believes that. The man planning to make his arrest for cottaging front page news honestly believes that.

  ‘And you know the office is awfully busy. And with my other projects and obligations for the council, I haven’t had time to get to see a quack. Plus, it’s not easy to go to the doc’s at the best of times. Not really my thing.’

  Howard flicked a fingernail intensely, no longer able to make eye contact with his daughter. For a moment, compassion began tipping the scales away from anger, as she watched her dad trying to admit to vulnerability and fear.

  ‘But it’s good that we’re talking about it now actually. Because on the advice of Mr Maplestone I�
��ve made an additional statement to the police explaining the circumstances – explaining to them just why I was at the trough, shaking it about a bit with nothing to show for the effort, giving their copper a sheepish grin. And to back it up I told them that I’d told you all about it and that you’d vouch for me.’

  ‘You did fucking what?’

  The compassion hadn’t lasted.

  ‘Now, dear, I know it’s a stressful time, but your mother and I did not bring up a sailor. That kind of language will be no example when you have a child you know. ’

  ‘You!’

  That was all she could manage to squeeze out; there were too many angry responses trying to get out of her mouth at the same time, causing a pile-up where none could get through the door.

  ‘You know what you’re asking me to do?’ she finally managed. ‘I’m a solicitor!’

  ‘Exactly! You’re trustworthy, credible. I could think of no better person to stand up for me. I’m very proud of my little girl you know.’

  ‘You’re asking me to commit perjury. I could be fired! Thrown out of the Law Society. Sent to prison.’

  ‘It’s not perjury, darling, you’d just be telling them what it is you’ve heard about my condition. OK, the timing might have been a bit off, but you know I would have come to you sooner if I’d thought I needed to. I’ve told you now. It’s a private conversation, they can’t prove when it happened.’

  ‘Can you hear what you sound like?’

  ‘When I asked you for help, I certainly didn’t expect to be treated like this, Becky.’

  ‘Do not fucking call me, fucking Becky.’

  She could see Howard thinking of making another comment about her swearing. And thinking better of it.

  ‘Does Mum know about this?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve told her that we’d talked in the past.’

  ‘So you’re lying to her too now?’

  ‘When I told her about the old plumbing thing, she wanted to know why I hadn’t spoken to her about it. She would have worried if I hadn’t told someone. As it is she’s nagging away at me about getting to old Doctor Hall to get myself checked out.

  ‘I won’t do it. I won’t.’

  ‘You were the person in our family strong enough to help me with this. I could’ve told the police I’d spoken to your uncle Jack, or your brother.’

  ‘I’m honoured to be your stooge. Have you noticed I’m a bit pregnant?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not as if you’re going to have to do anything. It’s not like I’m asking you to move heavy furniture,’ he said, ‘although Maplestone did mention the police might be in touch. Just for corroboration—’

  ‘You mean I’m going to be part of the investigation, and I could be at work and expect the receptionist to buzz me about Harrow police on line 2?’

  ‘They said they might visit…’

  At that point, Howard at least had the decency to look a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Will you do this for me Bec – Rebecca? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Of course. You always have a choice. Although I don’t know what it would do to your mother…’

  ‘What’s keeping you two?’ asked Penny coming down the hallway. ‘Ben and Margaret have places to be you know.’

  ‘On our way, dear,’ said Howard, grabbing their guests’ coats, ‘I was just filling in our own little Rumpole here with the latest from Maplestone.’

  ‘Your dad told me about the chat you had, and how he’d told you all about his condition,’ said Penny expectantly.

  ‘I wouldn’t say all about it,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘I was so relieved to hear he’d told somebody. And it all makes complete sense now doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well…’

  Rebecca looked at her mother, trying to work out if she was in on Dad’s plan. She assumed not. And from the look on her face, of someone clinging to a last frayed thread of hope, telling her the truth right now would be like telling a doubting but hopeful seven-year-old that there was no such thing as Father Christmas.

  ‘I can see there’d be a logic to it,’ Rebecca conceded.

  ‘I mean, there’s a sensible explanation. And you’re a lawyer, you won’t be fazed by having to talk to the police or judges. I can have a lovely chat with Chief Inspector Wilson from down the street when there’s a Tidy Town meeting, but if it was in an official capacity…’

  ‘She’s a marvel, our girl,’ said Howard. He put an arm around his daughter, and gave her a hug. Rebecca had felt his fingers pleadingly squeezing her upper arm.

  ‘I hope this makes this crap go away soon,’ she muttered.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ Howard trilled as they walked down the corridor. ‘What a family!’

  Yep, thought Rebecca, what a family…

  Chapter 13

  ‘This is worse than the bloody airport, it’s gone from the signs again.’

  Rebecca and James were stood at a four-way junction of corridors connecting several outpatient buildings at the local hospital, scanning the directions for the ante-natal unit as more purposeful people milled around them.

  ‘It was down the corridor, left, then right, then right again wasn’t it? Then into the new building and follow the signs up the stairs?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I dunno, you asked for directions, I was checking whether the hospital shop sold porn. They’re like corner shops for an alternate universe.’

  ‘You’re the one supposed to be good at directions,’ said Rebecca as they headed off uncertainly down the path that seemed busiest. ‘After she said the first left turn I was just concentrating on making sure it looked like I was taking it all in, and figuring out what to say if she asked me to repeat them back.’

  ‘Is that the new building?’ he asked as the corridor emerged from the central annex, and began snaking towards a series of outbuildings. Their chosen route had got quieter as people disappeared down burrows marked with signs for medical procedures or complaints neither of them had heard of before, and now it was just them on a covered path looking out at the hospital grounds in the drizzle.

  ‘It’s a less old building. But I don’t remember there being so many right turns in the instructions.’

  ‘No, I think I recognise it,’ he said, squinting at it in the distance. ‘It’s the way we came in. Let’s try this way.’

  Despite his growing anxiety about being late, James was delighted he’d chosen to wear his newest, heaviest-heeled brogues to the appointment, enjoying the noise as they cracked the concrete underneath the thinning vinyl while they walked up and down the glass-covered connecting paths of the labyrinthine hospital. His echoing footsteps made him feel like he was a top surgeon, striding towards a world-first dangerous transplant procedure he’d invented, and wondering if there might be time for a round of golf later – as long as another emergency Winfield-ectomy patient wasn’t helicoptered in before he left.

  ‘What’s that over there?’ asked Rebecca swigging from her litre of water bought from the hospital shop. She’d not been able to remember if she was supposed to show up with a full bladder for the scan, or an empty one. Then, after plumping for empty and making sure to do a wee before she left the house, realised she might need to provide a sample so had started chugging fluids so she would be ready. Now, while unable to stop her nervous sipping, she was beginning to think that unless they reached maternity reception soon, there’d be another urgent trip she’d need to make before long.

  The latest hope proved to be another mirage, this one turning out to be the X-ray department.

  ‘We need to find a pregnant woman to follow,’ suggested Rebecca.

  ‘Is that a good idea? We’re in a rush and they don’t exactly waddle that quickly.’

  ‘Well you’re not coming up with any better ideas. And I can tell you’re pretending to be in ER by the way you’re walking.’

  ‘It’s ’cos I’m troubled with a surprising past. Would you l
ike to have an emotionally fraught moment together against this backdrop of pain, death and despair?’

  ‘I think this way is taking us to the varicose veins unit,’ said Rebecca, paying more attention to her bladder than her husband.

  ‘OK, so which way then?’ asked James, slightly irritably.

  ‘That way,’ decided Rebecca.

  ‘We’ve just come from that way.’

  ‘Well, that way.’

  ‘That’s the way to the sports injury clinic.’

  ‘Well where do you bloody suggest then?’ snapped Rebecca. ‘We only have two choices.’

  ‘Are you sure they didn’t send you a map with the appointment details?’

  ‘I said they maybe did, but you said we were in a hurry and it’d be well-signposted.’

  ‘If you’d got your arse out of bed on only a full twelve hours sleep we might have had time to find it.’

  ‘I said we were going wrong the second we came in, but you were too busy practising your Clooney sensitive doctor blinking and shouting “get this woman into theatre – stat!”.’

  ‘’Scuse me, can I get by?’ a large red-faced woman asked James as she tried to get through the door he was partly blocking.

  ‘And another thing…’ started James before two more women, complaining about their ankles, forced James to shift back the other way.

  Rebecca looked at the piece of A4 printer paper in a plastic wallet taped to the door they were standing in front of as James continued to list the things he considered important, and unimportant, when getting ready to leave the house in a hurry.

  ‘I think you’ve found it,’ she said.

  The door led to another, more cramped, corridor and, after a couple of turns into empty treatment rooms and a little more light bickering, they found a reception room where behind a high-fronted counter a woman at a desk was doing paperwork. Rebecca and James stood there looking over, but the receptionist didn’t look up from her forms. Rebecca looked at James and James nodded at her to do something. Rebecca shuffled her feet across the lino as noisily as she could and half-heartedly cleared her throat. The receptionist kept writing. Rebecca turned to James with a look that said ‘I’ve done all that I can do, we’re in the lap of the gods now…’ James decided to take charge of the situation. ‘Hello there!’ he said in his most authoritative meeting-new-clients voice. The receptionist’s pen didn’t waver over her boxes for ticking.