Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  ‘Tremendous news, that,’ said Mr James, who is a brutally cheerful type. ‘Can’t make an omelette without eggs, and by omelette, of course, I mean baby.’

  There are no fibroids on the outside of the uterus and to the best of Mr James’s knowledge no congenital problems in the womb (‘can never be one hundred per cent sure, though’). There are also no cysts, thank God, as the very thought makes me feel sick, and no apparent abdominal diseases. It was quite shocking really to hear the catalogue of things that could have spelled disaster.

  We were also shown some photographs of my insides, which Mr James described as ‘beautiful’ but which Sam and I agreed were absolutely obscene. All yellow and red and purple. They were like stills from a horror movie. Strange to be looking at one’s own innards. Stranger still to have someone admiring them.

  ‘Lovely’ said Mr James. ‘Absolutely lovely. You’ve got tip-top guts. Good big healthy bowel, too. That’s the orange splodge. Beautiful bowel, facilitates a superb movement, I imagine. Well done. Don’t worry about it being orange. It isn’t orange, it just comes out orange on the slide for some reason.’

  After we had all admired my digestive system, Mr James got back to the subject at hand.

  ‘So, as I say, most encouraging, most encouraging indeed. We didn’t find a thing wrong.’

  So that’s all right, then. Lovely. Couldn’t be better. Except for one tiny little thing, of course

  To this I’m afraid Mr James had no answer. Sam and I remain cursed with what is described medically as ‘non-specific infertility’, or, to give it its full scientific description, ‘We do not have a fucking clue.’

  ‘Very common condition,’ said Mr James. ‘Very common indeed…amongst people who can’t have babies, that is.’

  So what now?

  Well, what else? IVF, of course. Mr James said we could easily wait, we’re relatively young, we

  might just have been unlucky. It might work out conventionally. Mr James says that actually quite a few previously infertile women do conceive after having a laparoscopy. Something to do with it flushing out the tubes, but nonetheless he felt it was probably time to begin some form of treatment.

  Bugger. I never thought it would come to this. It would actually have been easier if he’d said, Look, the photos are the worst I’ve ever seen. No eggs. No tubes. No chance. Forget it for ever. Except that would have been unbearable. I just don’t know what I would have done if he’d said that, I really don’t.

  Dear Sam,

  Today we went to see our consultant and got Lucy’s lapa results.

  Good news and bad news. They found nothing wrong, which is good; on the other hand, they found nothing that they could ‘cure’, so to speak, so that’s bad. Poor Lucy now faces the prospect of IVF treatment and she is pretty down about it. Well, I can’t say I like the idea much myself. Of course it does mean that I’ll get first-hand knowledge of the whole horrible process for my film, which will be extremely useful, but that is absolutely and completely beside the point. In fact I want to make this quite clear, right now, lest in future years, when I’m a big Hollywood player, I ever look back and doubt the motives and feelings I had at this juncture. I’m aware that I’m secretly exploiting Lucy’s misery (and my own) for our future gain, but I’d happily give it away right now. Film or no film, if there was anything on earth I could do to make Lucy pregnant, I’d do it. Anything. I mean that.

  But it just doesn’t seem that there is anything I can do, beyond shagging her when required and playing my part in the IVF business if it comes to that.

  Honestly. It’s important that I set this down on record. The film means nothing. If tomorrow Lucy fell pregnant naturally I’d be the happiest man in the world.

  I can research IVF stuff without her anyway.

  Dear Penny,

  Despite the fact that we are now definitely on the road to IVF, I’ve decided to make love to Sam every day this month in the hope that the laparoscopy ‘tube clearing’ theory will bear fruit. We started last night and I have a dreadful confession to make. About halfway through I found myself thinking about Carl Phipps. I forced him from my mind, of course, but I’m afraid to say that my subconscious was being more honest than my conscience because I often find myself thinking about him.

  I love Sam, of course, absolutely. But it’s different.

  Dear Sam,

  Lucy has decided to begin a cycle of IVF after her next period (presuming we don’t score in the meantime with her newly flushed-out tubes). Dr Cooper, our GP, is writing to the people at Spannerfield Hospital, which is one of the top places for fertility treatment, to get us an appointment to see them.

  I had a big meeting at Broadcasting House today. Infuriating, really, because I’m getting along splendidly with the script and the last thing I want to be bothered with is my actual job. The Beeb have now officially commissioned my film, by the way, which is absolutely wonderful. For the first time since I used to write sketches for radio when I was young and wild, I am a professional writer. It’s not a bad deal at all for a first film. Forty thousand, but in stages. Final payment to be made on completion of principal photography, so I’m only actually guaranteed ten thousand at the moment for the first draft. I’ve asked Aiden Fumet to look after my business. I must say, now he’s on my side I like him much better. I didn’t go in with him myself when the deal was made. George and Trevor didn’t feel that Nigel was quite ready yet for the news that the brilliant new writer they’d found is, in fact, the despised and sacked Sam Bell. Nigel probably imagines me as some spiky-haired punk, since Aiden Fumet normally only represents fashionable people.

  Anyway, as I say, I’m now a professional writer with a script fully in development at the BBC, which is an absolutely thrilling thing to be. The only fly in my professional ointment is that I still have my job at Radio which I must keep up in order to avoid making Lucy suspicious, and of course for the cash. We can’t survive for the next six months on ten grand plus the minute sum Lucy makes at the agency.

  So, bright and early this morning, after Lucy and I had had a three-minute quickie (‘Don’t worry about me, just get on with it,’ were her bleary, sleepy words), I left her lying in bed trying to eat toast with three pillows under her bum and her legs propped up against the wall and rushed off for my meeting. They like to start early in Radio because it’s very much a daytime medium, unlike TV, of course.

  The meeting was fascinating in its banality. It was a seminar pertaining to the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive (the DGRDD), which is called ‘The Glory of the Quilt’. I don’t know why it’s called ‘The Glory of the Quilt’. Somebody in the lift said they thought it related to Britain being a patchwork, but for all I know QUILT may be an acronym for Quasi Utilitarianism Initiative Long Term. Or something else altogether. Nobody ever knows these things. I don’t think we’re supposed to.

  The seminar was being chaired by the Head of Youth, BBC Radio, whose name is Tom. Tom and I had already met. He called me in to impress upon me that he did not mind jokes about drugs or even anal sex. In fact he positively encouraged ‘cutting edge’ material, as long as it was on after nine in the evening and was in no way exploitative or offensive to minority groups.

  Anyway, Tom kicked off in pretty general terms.

  ‘Hi, yo. Welcome to this session of the ongoing series of seminars under the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive. The Glory of the Quilt. As you all know, today’s ongoing subtopic is Regional Diversity and Youth.’

  I hadn’t known, actually, but I let it go. Up until now all the seminars of the Director General’s Regional Diversity Directive had been bogged down in debating why all the regional diversity debates were taking place in London, but they had obviously bitten the bullet on this one and moved on.

  ‘So, BBC youth radio and the regions,’ said Tom. ‘As you all know, the Director General is one hundred per cent committed to the BBC diversifying into the regions and I fully support him in his view
…Bill, I asked you to formulate a comprehensive decentralization strategy.’

  I have not yet discovered what Bill’s post is. Nobody I asked knew either (including Tom). My theory is that Bill wandered into BH one day, possibly to be interviewed on Radio 4 about bird- watching or to deliver an envelope of money to the playlist compilers at Radio 1 and he never found his way out again.

  Broadcasting House really is something of a warren.

  ‘The key to regional diversification,’ said Bill, ‘is accents. We need more accents about the place. Northern accents, Scottish accents, at least one Welsh accent.’

  Tom leapt on this like a thirsty man hearing the bell at closing time.

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Accents are the key and I think we need to stress right from the word go that wherever possible those accents should be genuine.’

  Everybody nodded wisely at this, although Tom himself could see problems.

  ‘The BBC is, however,’ he continued, ‘an affirmative action employer. We have quotas and we’re not ashamed of it.’

  The problem was that a vast percentage of BBC senior staff are of course from either Oxford or Cambridge, people unlikely to possess overly strong regional accents. The choice, the meeting felt, was pretty stark. Either BBC executives stop giving jobs to their old university friends, or some of those friends will have to pretend that they come from Llandudno.

  ‘I’m not entirely unhappy with that,’ said Tom. ‘If we’re going to teach the kids to speak badly let’s at least have people doing it who know the rules that are being broken.’

  Dear Penny,

  I got my period today. One more infertile month to add to the long long line of them that stretch back into my distant past. Sam and I will go and see the people at Spannerfield tomorrow. He’s dreading it, I know, although strangely he seems to have suddenly become a lot more interested in the process. During the last day or two he’s asked me really quite a lot of questions about ovulation and LH surges and things like that. It’s good that he asks, but I’m sure he’s only trying to be nice. Still, that’s better than nothing, I suppose.

  Dear Sam,

  We’re going to Spannerfield tomorrow. I’m pretty nervous and a bit depressed about it. I’ve been using some of these feelings in my script (just as Lucy always wanted me to, I might add), and it’s working out rather well. Interestingly, the film is going to be less of an absolutely full-on comedy than I originally thought. Not that it won’t be funny. You couldn’t avoid it with that many knob gags at your disposal, but it’s also going to have its serious side.

  I tried a bit out on Trevor and George today. I was really nervous because I’ve never attempted anything but jokes with them before but I wanted to give Colin (that’s the name of my lead bloke) something of what I’m feeling. I’m going to paste the speech straight across from my Film Document because I think it’s relevant to this book too.

  COLIN (Reflective. Depressed): ‘So it seems that we’ve reached the end of the fertility road and we’re going to have to try IVF. I know it’s a positive thing and all that, but it just feels so sad and…well…grown up…Funny how the penny finally drops that you’re not young any more. That moment when all the cliches that affected your parents and their friends start happening to people you know. All those dreadful, embarrassing, failure-type things that were for older people. Alcoholism [Trevor nodded wisely at this], divorce, loneliness, money-troubles…or childlessness like Rachel [that’s the girl’s name] and me, childless and trying for a test-tube baby…’

  I must say when I read it out to them I thought it sounded far too mawkish and indulgent, but George and Trevor were very supportive. They think that a bit of emotion will really add depth to the piece and that it will play well against the comedy, which I agree with absolutely.

  They still love the comedy. George nearly fell off his chair when he read the bit about me taking in my sperm sample and having to dig it out from down the back of my trousers in front of the nurse. He thinks I made it up and simply will not accept that it really happened.

  Dear Penny,

  Well, we’ve had our meeting at Spannerfield. Our new consultant’s name is Mr Agnew and he seems very nice. He explained that there are two more tests he’d like to carry out before we commit to an IVF cycle. A hysterosalpingogram (HSG) for me and another sperm test for Sam. His old test is no good because apparently the Spannerfield IVF people always test the sperm themselves. The hysterosalpingogram is an X-ray of the uterus and Fallopian tubes. This involves injecting dye into my cervix (again), which I am

  looking forward to. Sam’s test involves him having another wank. But, yet again, he is the one who’s kicking up a fuss! I can’t believe we’re back to all that again. I said to him, I said, ‘My God, Sam, it’s not the end of the world! I’m asking you to have a quick one off the wrist, not fuck a hedgehog!’ He laughed a lot at that and jotted it down on a piece of paper. I don’t know why he did that but somehow I thought it was quite touching.

  Dear Sam,

  Lucy says it’s just a quick one off the wrist like the last time. Oh yes, just like the last time, except this time they won’t let me do it at home! I have to go and masturbate at the hospital! Christ, I can’t imagine a more horrible prospect. Unfortunately I made the mistake of saying this to Lucy and she said that she could imagine a more horrible prospect as a matter of fact…having long telescopes pushed through your bellybutton, having dye injected into you, having your gut pumped full of air and photographed internally, and above all having every doctor in Britain staring up your fanny on a day-to-day basis.

  Well, if she’s going to play the woman’s card then there’s nothing I can say, is there?

  She said a great line about a hedgehog which I’ll definitely use.

  Dear Penny,

  Carl came into work today. He had to sign some contracts. We hardly spoke. He smiled a nice smile but then went straight into Sheila’s office. It’s what he said he’d do in his note and absolutely the right and proper thing, but I can’t deny it gave me a jolt. A very large part of me desperately wished he’d stopped and had a chat, you know, just about inconsequential things. Of course, I must never forget that the last time we saw each other we kissed, long and hard, in fact. And Carl is right: that’s a fire which must definitely not be fed. All the same, I did wish he’d felt able to say more than a perfunctory ‘hello’. Except he

  right, I know that. I mean basically I’ve already been a bit unfaithful to Sam. I mean not really, of course, but a bit, and that’s terrible. Let’s face it, if I discovered that he’d been pashing on with someone at work, even if it was only once, and totally out of character, I’d still be pretty bloody angry, to say the least. I don’t know what I’d do but I do know I’d be terribly upset.

  Dear Book,

  Well, I must say that this morning has to rank as one of the more gruesome mornings of my life.

  Communal masturbation in West London.

  Actually that makes it sound better than it was. It makes it sound friendly and inclusive, like a dance or a musical. Dale Winton and Bonnie Langford in Communal Masturbation in West London.

  It wasn’t friendly or inclusive at all.

  My God, it was grim. They say they’ll see you any time between nine and twelve but Trevor told me to get there at least fifteen minutes before the place opened, as a queue develops. Trevor is an old hand at the sperm test game (ha ha ha), because when he donated to those lesbians they insisted that he have his sperm checked out first. Actually Trevor felt slightly offended about that and accused them of social engineering and trying to create a lesbian master race. The lesbians said that before they wasted a perfectly good turkey baster they wanted to check that his sperm weren’t all immotile, two-headed or dead. Charming, I must say, but I believe people can be very frank in the lesbian community.

  It comes from years of having to be politically and socially assertive.

  Anyway, there must be a lot more wankers around than in Trevo
r’s day, because although I slunk in at eight-forty there were already four blokes ahead of me. All sitting about in this depressing waiting room with posters about the dangers of smoking all over the place. I can’t imagine why they have such an obsession with smoking in a masturbating facility. Perhaps some blokes have been having a cigarette after they ejaculated?

  Anyway, as I say, I slunk in and sat down as far away from any of the others as I could and almost immediately another man arrived. Luckily for me he must have done it before because the first thing he did was go to the empty desk and sign something before sitting down. Instantly I was on the alert! Was there some queueing system of which I was unaware? Did one clock in for a toss? On sneaking over and inspecting the desk I realized that there was indeed a system. ‘Please sign list on arrival and wait for your name to come up,’ it said on the form. On the form, that is, not on a big poster on the wall, but on a poxy little form on a clipboard on a desk. Couldn’t they have put ‘Smoking may harm your unborn child’ on the little form and ‘Sign up!’ on a great big poster?

  So now, instead of being fifth man in, I was sixth. I thought for a moment about appealing to the man who came in after me, explaining that I had in fact been there before him but did not know about signing the form. I didn’t, of course. Let me tell you now that one thing I learned today is that nobody talks to anybody in the wanking queue. The hospital could be burning down and we’d all rather burn to death than shout ‘Fire!’ You sit, and you wait.

  Anyway, the long minutes ticked by and at nine o’clock a couple of nurses emerged from various corridors and began to take an interest in things. By this time three more men had turned up and we were being forced to sit right next to each other on the little square of chairs, which nobody liked at all. One of the nurses went to the desk and called out the first name. Up gets the bloke, goes to the desk, gets his pot and is directed down the corridor to the wanking room.