Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  Of course I admit it’s pretty broad humour, but the whole scene is meant to be a bit over the top. It’s a big comedy moment.

  Colin is bending over Rachel with the needle (which should be funny in itself if they get a decent actor) and he says that the nurse had told him that as long as he does it quickly and confidently it won’t hurt, so he jabs it in, she screams and he faints. Brilliant stuff, I think, and Ewan loved it.

  Anyway, when Colin comes round Rachel says, ‘The nurse said it was me who was meant to feel a bit of a prick,’ which I think is a very strong line. I mean it’s good to give the girl some rude, earthy lines. Quite feminist, I think.

  Nigel just said he didn’t think it was funny and George, damn him, said it was a very old joke and a pun to boot.

  Anyway, I was just getting all heated and defensive as we writers do when Ewan really alarmed me by saying, ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway, we won’t be hearing the dialogue. I always play thrash metal music over my injection scenes. It’s a personal motif. I’m known for it. Have you ever heard of a Boston grunge band called One-Eyed Trouser Snake? They’d be perfect.’

  A bit worrying, that, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Everyone knows that in movies the writer is lower than the make- up girl’s cat.

  Anyway, then Nigel asked Ewan if he’d given any thought to casting.

  ‘Well, the girl’s what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?’ Ewan replied.

  I quickly interjected that in fact I’d been thinking early thirties and unbelievably Ewan just laughed! He could see he’d shocked me, so he tried to explain himself.

  ‘Look, Sam. I think we’ll need to be pretty non-specific about the girl’s age. I mean obviously we’re not looking at teenage waifs but she’s got to be vaguely shaggable, for Christ’s sake. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll accept anything from an old-looking twenty- one-year-old to a young-looking twenty-eight.’

  I couldn’t reply. His pragmatism (I might almost say cynicism) had temporarily rendered me speechless. There was worse to come.

  ‘What about the man?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘I was thinking in terms of Carl Phipps,’ Ewan replied.

  I can’t write any more tonight. All I can say is that it’ll be over my dead body.

  Dear Penny,

  I saw Carl Phipps again today for the first time since what I think we must describe as ‘that night’. It was a bit of a shock. I knew it would happen soon but I still didn’t find it easy. I mean it’s not as if I’ve suddenly stopped fancying him or liking him just because I’ve decided I must not

  anything about it. Anyway, I don’t know if he was as flustered as I was because we avoided each other’s eye. He’d come in to talk to Sheila about a movie script that’s come through. It’s small-budget, mainly BBC money, but Sheila thinks it’s interesting.

  ‘It’s a pretty funny script,’ she said, ‘although it hasn’t got an end yet for some reason. I’ve never heard of the author, but Ewan Proclaimer’s slated to direct and you can’t get any hotter than him.’

  Carl enquired what the theme was and you could have knocked me down with a feather when Sheila said infertility

  . ‘It’s absolutely the theme of the moment,’ she said. ‘Lucy you’re our expert on the subject. Would you like to cast an eye over this script for us? Tell Carl what you think.’

  I wonder if there’s a scientific name for the depth of the colour of red I must have gone.

  ‘No thanks,’ I replied with as much dignity as I could. ‘I can get all that at home.’

  Dear Sam,

  We held auditions today for Rachel, which was very exciting and also most disconcerting since the casting director has definitely erred on the lower end of Ewan’s age range. The venue was a church hall near Goodge Street on the Tottenham Court Road.

  Ewan sat behind a long trestle table with Petra, also a PA with blue hair and an earnest-looking young man with a ponytail who is to be the second assistant director. George and I slunk around at the back trying not to ogle the actresses too much. Trevor had come down but had left again; he said he found me and George too sickening. George as usual could not resist doing battle.

  ‘Look, Trevor, when I fancy a girl I just look at her. I don’t try and shag her behind a tree on Hampstead Heath.’

  ‘We don’t all do that,’ Trevor replied. He really will have to learn not to rise to it.

  Ewan was getting the girls to read one of Rachel’s speeches, which I had basically lifted straight out of Lucy’s book. It’s from the bit where she tried a guided fantasy. Wonderful stuff. There were a couple of actresses who made it sound absolutely marvellous.

  ‘ ‘I mean, why the hell should I have to imagine a baby? Why can’t I just have one! Far less nice people than me have lots. I know that’s a wicked thing to say but I know I’d be a better mum than half the women I see letting their children put sweets in the trolley at Sainsbury’s…I’d read my child Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh and the only glue it would ever get involved with would be flour and water for making collages.’’

  Listening to it was both exhilarating and excruciating. I mean it works so well and yet of course it’s Lucy’s voice, Lucy’s feelings. I really have done a terrible thing. Standing there watching all these gorgeous young women, all ten years younger than Lucy, mouthing her thoughts, made me feel very awkward about myself indeed. But what’s done is done. It’ll be worth it for us both in the end. And I can’t go back now. George was thrilled.

  ‘Very nice speech, Sam,’ he said. ‘The woman’s voice is so much more clearly defined. You’ve obviously really unlocked something.’

  That made me feel both better and worse.

  Perhaps I should just tell Lucy, make a clean breast of it. But I can’t. Not while she’s all hormonally messed up with IVF.

  Besides, supposing she stopped me? This is my big break, my chance, and the BBC would probably sue me for the money they’ve already spent. Anyway, Lucy said to me that if I did this thing that I have done she’d leave me, so I can’t tell her, can I?

  Not yet.

  There was one girl who I thought read particularly well. Her name was Tilda, I think. How is it that all these actresses have such ridiculous names? Darcy and Tilly and Saskia and the rest.

  They’re their real names, too. I don’t think they assume them.

  It’s as if their mothers know at birth that they’re going to be actresses and christen them accordingly. Or else possibly it’s the other way round and that any girl who has to go to school with a name like Darcy has to get so mouthy there’s nothing else for her but to become an actress.

  Anyway, Ewan clearly thought that Tilda had talent, as did I, although like all the girls attending the audition she was ridiculously young for the part.

  ‘Now then, Tilda,’ Ewan said.

  He was studying the script as he said it and did not even look up from it as he spoke. He did that to all the girls, just to show them how important he was. Power definitely does corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well you don’t get power more absolute than that of a movie director. In their own little world, they are absolute monarchs and it can lead to some pretty off-hand posturing, I can tell you. Especially where nervous quaking little twenty-one-year-old cuties are concerned.

  ‘Now then, Tilda,’ Ewan repeated. ‘Bearing in mind the nature of this story, I’m anxious to underline the fact that despite Rachel’s fears for her fertility she remains a sensual and a sexual being.

  Would you have any problem with that?’

  Tilda was confused. So, actually, was I.

  ‘Uhm, no, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘In what way exactly?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ewan. ‘I think it’s thematically absolutely essential that we see Rachel’s breasts.’

  I must say I was nearly as taken aback as Tilda was. She went bright red, which was of course highly attractive, gulped a bit and replied, ‘Well…I don’t suppose I’d have a problem with th
at, probably, if the part really required it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ewan perfunctorily and for a minute I thought he was going to ask her to get them out there and then. I could feel George craning forward in eager anticipation. Thank God he didn’t. I mean I bow to no one in my appreciation of the youthful female form, particularly the bosom, but there are limits.

  ‘Thanks. We’ll be in touch,’ said the PA and Tilda retreated as fast as she could. I suppose in some ways Ewan’s question was perfectly fair. It does seem to be something of a rule these days that, whatever the movie, at some point the girl will have to get her tits out. I’m sure that if they were making The Wizard of Oz today poor little Judy would have been caught in the shower when the hurricane struck or at the very least it would have blown her dress off. Some more right-on directors try to make up for it by including an equal and opposite shot of the leading man’s bum, but it’s not the same. I don’t think you’ll find many women sat on their own in front of their videos late at night trying to freeze-frame the bum shots.

  Reading back over the last few pages I note how much I seem to be mentioning attractive women. I think that this is possibly a symptom of the fact that Lucy’s and my sex life is currently nonexistent. I must say, I’m seriously beginning to miss it, but there you go. Yet another irony in the life of couples like us, infertile couples, IVF couples, is that when we try for a baby, we stop having sex.

  Dear Penny,

  Drusilla has come up with another plan. I blush even to report it. She rushed into the office at lunch today with a map of Dorset and the train times from Paddington. She says that Sam and I have to go to the West Country, walk to the village of Cerne Abbas, go out onto the hillside and prostrate ourselves naked upon the penis of the great chalk man that is set upon the slope. Then, well, you guessed it, we have to have it off! It seems that this is an even more fertile and spiritual place than Primrose Hill, far far more so, in fact. Drusilla says that hundreds of couples use it and the conception rates are considerably higher than with IVF. On summer nights apparently there’s a queue and the local druid has to bless one of the big toes as a sort of backup bonking area. Drusilla says that in reflexology the feet are connected to the genitalia so doing it on the foot is nearly as good.

  I must say the idea of standing in a queue of hippies waiting to have it off on an ancient penis which would no doubt be still warm from the last lot did not appeal to me much, but Drusilla claims that there’s actually a colossal sense of community. She says people who meet there often become lifelong pals, going off to India together in their camper vans and swapping partners. The very least they do is exchange cards at the winter solstice. Anyway, she demanded, what’s preferable? Standing in a queue with some horny hippies or having my body taken over by a gang of mad scientists from outer space (she means the doctors at Spannerfield).

  Well, I told her that I was now committed to the IVF cycle and that I certainly did not intend to interrupt it now. After all, if the ancient spirits have waited since the dawn of time for Sam and me to shag on top of a huge chalk knob then they can wait a bit longer. I told her I’d think about it for future reference. I’ve kept the train timetable, just in case. Not that it’ll be of any remote use in a month or two. These new railway companies keep changing them and they don’t even mean much in the first place.

  I will say this, though. If this cycle doesn’t work (which statistically I know it won’t, although I can’t help feeling sort of hopeful), I might give Dorset a go. Sam and I could use a bit of a holiday and I do love him particularly at the moment. We had such a good time on Primrose Hill (until the arrival of the squirrel) that I think it would be fun to do a little tour of the fertile spots of Britain and shag on all of them.

  Dear Sam,

  Rather an unpleasant day on the movie. We were back in the church hall near Goodge Street looking at men, and of course that complete fucking bastard Carl Phipps was reading for the part of Colin! I have to tell you that it was excruciating sitting there being quiet while the smug, philandering, wife-snogging rat was saying my lines. Honestly, it felt like he had Lucy’s tits in his hands all over again, but no I mustn’t dwell on that, it makes me bloody livid and I know that I’ve no right to get on my high horse. All the same, I wanted to punch him.

  We were seeing the men one at a time instead of bringing in a crowd like we did for the women. This is because Ewan wants a ‘name’ for the bloke and so they have to be handled a bit more carefully. Actually, I’ve begun to notice that there’s quite a lot of casual sexism in the film industry, which is surprising considering that they’re all supposed to be so right-on. It’s the old rules of the market. There are far fewer decent roles for women than there are for men and so even the talented women are more desperate, hence they can be paid less and treated worse.

  Ewan was using the scene where Colin gets his sperm test results to hear the actors read, and I must say it was quite exciting to see the scene come to life. The little blue-haired PA was reading in the part of Rachel. She was wearing a pair of hipsters that hung so low you could almost see her bum, most distracting, particularly since she had a tattoo of a naked Chinese devil at the base of her spine. Girls these days, eh? Amazing.

  ‘ ‘Forty-one per cent swimming in the wrong direction,’’ she read out in that peculiarly depressed delivery that only people who ‘read in’ can achieve.

  Carl Phipps brushed her aside and addressed Ewan directly.

  ‘I’ve got stupid sperm!’ he shouted, far too loudly in my opinion.

  Anyone can shout. ‘The stuff’s been backing away up my dick all these years. What is it with sperm! It’s lazy, it’s sluggish, it’s got no idea where it’s going. It sounds like a pub full of blokes!’

  Ewan laughed heartily, which was fair enough because it’s actually a bloody good line, but I thought the delivery was abysmal. Crap, absolute crap. A performance hewn from solid mahogany. Personally I thought that what with the disappearance of the rainforests it was ecologically unsound of him to produce such a wooden performance and I whispered as much to George.

  ‘Actually, I thought it was pretty good,’ said George. ‘The line’s a bit obvious, though. You don’t need to spoonfeed us the gags, you know. Trust the audience.’

  I hadn’t really noticed before quite what a pompous arse George can be when he wants.

  ‘Superb, Carl, absolutely superb,’ Ewan was saying.

  ‘Yes, and so good of you to agree to come in and read for us,’

  Justin added.

  This was a reference to the fact that Carl is a star and hence should not really have to do such a mundane thing as actually audition for a part because we should all be aware of how brilliant he is anyway. As if the fact that he turned in a passable Tenant of Wildfell Hall should instantly alert the world to the fact that he’d be brilliant at playing a frustrated and infertile executive at the BBC.

  ‘No actor is too big to read for a part, Ewan,’ Carl crawled.

  What a pretentious twat.

  After the low snake had slithered off (no doubt pausing on his way out to try and shag the cleaning woman) we all gathered round to discuss his paltry efforts. I had expected an instant and resounding raspberry, and was bitterly disappointed when Ewan announced happily that he felt we’d found our Colin and everybody readily agreed. I was horrified and protested loudly.

  Normally I wouldn’t have had the guts, but this was personal.

  ‘Oh no, hang on,’ I said. ‘I mean, hang on! I completely disagree. He’s wrong for it. Totally wrong. I mean, everything he did was wrong for Colin.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’ Ewan enquired.

  ‘Well, he was anal, uptight, repressed and terminally stiff.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ewan happily. ‘A completely convincing Englishman.’

  Dear Penny,

  I’m writing this entry in my book with an extremely sore arse. Well not

  my arse obviously, but you know what I mean. Sam, who has been very good
up until now, made a bit of a mess of tonight’s injection and it really hurt. He didn’t mean to, I know, and he was really apologetic. I was telling him about the script we had in at the office about infertility and IVF. It’s called Inconceivable and is to be a co-production between the BBC and Above The Line Films. I’ve been feeling a bit bad about it ever since I heard, having stopped Sam from developing exactly the same idea. He told me not to worry about it, but I do worry. I mean I’ve always been on at Sam to search within himself for his writing and the one time he did, I banned it. What’s more, I actually think that it’s quite a good idea that they’re doing the film. Sam seemed surprised at this eager, almost. I wonder whether he still harbours dreams of persuading me to change my mind. Not much point, I’d have thought, now that someone else has had the idea. Anyway, I’m not going to change my mind, I’m afraid.

  Nonetheless, I do think it’s a good thing that the BBC are covering the subject. It’s important for people like us who are actually going through these things that the issues are brought out into the open and discussed. They need to be normalized so that infertile people don’t feel so marginalized. I do think that comedy can help with that. I know it’s not very fair to be saying all this, particularly to Sam, but then again it’s not really so strange. I like to see sex in a movie but I wouldn’t want my own sex life exposed on screen (not that it would make much of a movie, I’m afraid).

  I explained to Sam that whereas I shall definitely go and see

  Inconceivable when it comes out I just couldn’t have borne for it to be based on our story directly. I mean it would all go just too deep. The pain and all.

  Dear Sam,

  I got a bit of a shock tonight. I’d just been getting ready to give Lucy her nightly injection when she started talking about Inconceivable. I should have expected it, of course. I knew that the Phipps fucker was on Sheila’s books or how could he have stalked Lucy in the way he did. Nonetheless, it was still a shock.