Going Too Far

by Catherine Alliott

  She sighed. ‘Well, then we got on to more serious things. I had an operation in hospital to check my tubes were open – they were. Then I had a scan to look at my womb – that was fine. Then the doctors started talking about IVF and I had to have all sorts of other tests and examinations to see if it would be possible, if I was suitable – and so it went on. There seemed to be no end to the different ways they could poke, prod and peer at my reproductive organs. I can’t tell you how traumatic it was, Polly, physically and emotionally. I was a complete wreck.’

  ‘God, I can imagine, and I only got to the thermometer stage.’

  ‘And the worst of it was that every time they did a test they’d come back with the same reply – as far as we can tell there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Mrs Weston, just keep trying.’

  ‘But that’s good, surely?’

  ‘No, you see I wanted there to be something wrong. I wanted there to be a reason, I felt the doctors could do something about it then, put it right, make whatever it was that wasn’t working work!’ She slammed the palm of her hand down hard on the counter. ‘You see, I just felt so bloody helpless. I was dying inside, there was this ghastly void, and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could do to help myself.’

  ‘And Sam? Wasn’t he supportive or anything?’

  ‘Oh, Sam was wonderful. We talked endlessly, he reassured me, calmed me down – gave me hope, actually, because he was so thoroughly convinced everything would be fine. But you see, he wasn’t the one going through the humiliating rigmarole and he’d already fathered two children, so he was completely in the clear.’

  She paused and pulled a lock of hair out from behind her ear. She began twiddling it furiously around her finger.

  ‘Then one day,’ she said softly, ‘I went to one of those Christmas charity fairs – you know the kind of thing, lots of worthy Sloanes selling you totally pointless but frightfully tasteful things like tartan bottle warmers and inedible game pies.’

  I grinned. ‘I know the ones.’

  ‘Anyway, there I was, on the point of being talked into parting with the best part of fifty quid for a wooden box with a chicken on it to stash my loo rolls in, when suddenly I turned and bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for years. She used to be quite a mate, actually, but she was also a great friend of Sam’s first wife so we’d rather diplomatically lost touch.’ She paused and sucked the end of her hair into a point, gazing avidly at the marble breakfast bar as she remembered. ‘She had her baby with her, on her hip, a little girl with red tights and blonde curly hair. Divine. I was playing with her, cuddling her, totally enchanted. I must have murmured something about wishing I had one of my own, because I can see this girl’s face now, full of pity, concern. Poor you, she said, isn’t there anything they can do? I remember being surprised, because I’d kept my tests deadly secret, but I assumed she’d just guessed. “No,” I said, “we’ve tried everything, but nothing seems to work.” She stared at me. “But can’t they just reverse it?” she asked. I stared back at her. “Reverse what?” I said. She looked away, embarrassed. I remember feeling the blood literally drain from my face, down my neck, through my body. I grabbed her arm. “Reverse what?” I said, “reverse what?” She licked her lips, trapped. “The – the snip,” she said nervously, “I – I thought Sam had had a vasectomy, after his children with Veronica, but I must have got it wrong …” ’ Sally gulped, her eyes wide, staring past me now, her face ashen. ‘I remember gazing at her with my mouth open. She was pink, flustered. Then she quickly leaned over and kissed me goodbye, saying she had to dash. She bustled away with her baby, covered in confusion.’

  She bit her lip and looked down at her lap. ‘I don’t remember leaving that fair,’ she whispered, ‘don’t know how I got home. All I remember is sitting here, on this stool, in this kitchen, waiting for him to come home. It was early afternoon and he wasn’t due back till about six, but I sat here all that time, hour after hour as it got darker and darker, not putting any lights on, just waiting, waiting. When he finally opened the front door I flew at him. I ran down the hall and almost took off, landing on top of him, ranting, raving, pulling at his clothes, his hair, anything I could get at, screaming like a mad thing. Two years of agony and torment came out in a matter of seconds. I remember his face, white, trapped. He sank down on his knees right there on the doormat and covered his face so I couldn’t see his shame. But I didn’t have to, I could smell it, it was all over him. Then he cried. Hot tears, flowing down his cheeks, he broke down completely, told me everything.

  ‘He said he’d wanted to marry me so much but thought I wouldn’t have him if I’d known he couldn’t give me children. Said he’d tried to have the vasectomy reversed and it had failed. That he hadn’t been able to tell me, that it had killed him. Not as much as it had killed me, I remember shrieking, still pummelling him with my fists. He said he’d never imagined I’d want children so badly, that I’d go to the lengths I had. He said it had been horrific to watch me go through it all, to pick me up from the hospital each time I had an operation, knowing I was on a hiding to nothing. Said it had been a nightmare for him.’

  She gave a twisted little smile. ‘He clung on to me like a baby, and after a while I just let him. I gave up, effectively. One minute I was punching him, kicking him, screaming at him, and the next I threw in the towel. I just sort of went limp and let him cling to me. He sobbed into my hair and kissed my face, desperate, tortured kisses. We held on to each other, crying. He said he’d done it because he loved me so much, couldn’t bear to lose me. Then finally he asked me to forgive him. He was on his knees, right there on the doormat.’ Sally looked past me, her eyes full of pain. ‘And I forgave him,’ she whispered, ‘because – because I still loved him, you see, and I wasn’t strong enough not to. I’d forgiven him his infidelity by turning a blind eye and finally I forgave him his cowardice and his cruelty. Just like that.’ Her face was blank, a mask. At last she found my eyes. ‘So you see,’ she whispered, ‘that’s how much of a bastard he is, and that’s how much of a fool I am.’

  There was a silence. I stared at her, wide-eyed, all sorts of conflicting emotions battling for supremacy within me. Pain at her pain – I couldn’t remember when I’d been so moved by someone’s anguish, but neither could I remember feeling quite so hysterically, madly, unbearably, deliriously happy. I breathed deeply, trying desperately to quell it, to keep it down, to control my overwhelming desire to shriek with joy. Sam had had the snip. Sam was incapable. Sam was firing blanks. Sam was not by any stretch of the imagination the father of my child, which by a deft process of elimination meant that Nick most definitely was. I clenched everything I possessed very hard – buttocks, teeth, knees – and shut my mouth very tightly, but it was no good. A strangled, joyous, whinny-like noise still escaped my lips.

  ‘Hrmmmm!’ I squealed, and then again, ‘Hraaa! Hrmmmm!’

  Sally looked at me in horror.

  ‘Sorry!’ I gasped, but the moment I spoke I lost control of my mouth and it split my face into a mad, helpless grin.

  ‘So sorry!’ I yelped again, desperately wrestling with my facial muscles and trying hard to think about starving children in Ethiopia, multiple pile-ups on the motorway, anything horrendous. Didn’t work.

  ‘Can’t help it!’ I gasped, shaking my head helplessly, my face writhing with joy. ‘Hrmmmm! Ye! Ha!’ A succession of weird strangled yelps continued to escape me.

  Sally looked first astonished, then desperately hurt. ‘Wh-what’s so –’ she began in confusion.

  I quickly reached over and seized her hand. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I gasped. ‘I’m so sorry, what must you think of me? But please believe me, it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with what you’ve just told me, I think that’s the most horrific story I’ve ever heard, ghastly, barbaric, awful – but, oh God, I can’t tell you what good news it is for me!’

  She looked at me aghast. ‘G-good news? But how can it – what on earth d’you mean?’
r />   I had to tell her. There was no other way. I gripped her hand tight, eyes shining.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I breathed.

  Her face twisted momentarily in envy and I winced at the pain I was giving her. Then she shrugged and looked confused. ‘S-so …?’

  ‘So I slept with Sam.’

  Suddenly her face cleared. ‘Oh! So you mean you thought – oh!’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘You thought –’

  ‘Thought! I was sodding convinced!’ I yelped. I was desperate to do some full-blooded yelping now.

  ‘Oh no, no way. No chance of that at all.’

  ‘Because he’s impotent!’ I screeched. ‘He’s flaming well impotent, isn’t he?’

  She gave a wry smile. ‘No chance of that either, unfortunately, but he’s certainly infertile, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘YE-HAA!’ I screeched, loud and clear, punching the air with my fist. ‘YE-HA, YE-HA, YE-HA! HE’S INFERTILE! YE-HA! AR-R-RIBA!’

  It was no good, I couldn’t help it, I simply couldn’t keep it in any more.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I gasped when I’d finished, clapping my hand over my mouth, ‘but I just can’t help it, I’m afraid. I’ve been worried for so long, desperately worried. Nick and I have been trying for ages, I was convinced it couldn’t be his, that it had to be Sam’s, and now it’s not! It’s not, is it?’

  She grinned. ‘Most definitely not. Go on, go ahead, do a war dance or something.’

  I breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, and shook my head furiously, gaining control. ‘No, no, I’m fine now, honestly.’

  My face, I knew, was wreathed in smiles, my eyes were shining uncontrollably, that was enough for her to cope with at the moment. I’d do my war dance later, out in the street perhaps, or, if I didn’t make it that far, on the marble steps just outside the front door.

  Suddenly she leaned across and patted my hand. She smiled. ‘I’m pleased for you, really I am.’ She looked surprised. ‘Actually, I meant that too – I wasn’t just saying it.’

  ‘Course you weren’t, you’re far too nice.’

  ‘Not that nice, I’m afraid. I’d still rather it was me. I still want what you’ve got, and I can’t have.’

  ‘But you can!’ I said eagerly. ‘You can have babies, you know you can, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Gosh, you’ve had a complete bloody overhaul! Everything’s been flushed out and polished up till it’s absolutely gleaming; you’re probably as fertile as a gerbil now. And I just know that once you’re shot of Sam you’ll meet someone, someone totally divine, who’s going to want to marry you and look after you and have babies with you and you’ll only have to look at him and you’ll be pregnant; you’ll end up with loads! Hundreds! Too many! They’ll all be running around this kitchen drawing on the immaculate walls before you can say bugger off up to your rooms!’

  She laughed. ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  Her laugh died away quickly, though, and her smile faded. She looked down at her wedding ring and twisted it. Suddenly I went cold. I knew she wasn’t completely over him, wasn’t completely cured. I wondered then if she’d ever really leave him.

  A silence fell. We sat there, opposite each other, gripping our mugs of cold coffee, both preoccupied with our own thoughts. Me with my intoxicating joy – a baby, our baby, our first of many babies, he’d have to forgive me now, he’d just have to – and her with her pain. Suddenly it came billowing over the counter towards me like a thick, enveloping fog and I realized my own vibes must be doing the same. There didn’t seem to be much point in sticking around rubbing in my happiness. I drained my freezing coffee in a quick gulp and slipped quietly off my stool.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  She looked up, and came back from a long way away. She nodded and gave a faint smile. ‘Sure.’

  I gathered my things together, still tingling with excitement, and followed her back down the yellow hall, trying hard not to skip, not to jig, not to leap in the air and punch it mightily.

  As we went, we passed the open door to the drawing room and I caught a quick glimpse of a beautiful, high-ceilinged, pale-yellow room. The lemon walls were crowded with pictures, oil paintings mostly, all originals, and at ground level there were gorgeous, covetable, faded antiques scattered around on the Persian rugs. It was elegant yet comfortable and not too imposing. However hard I tried my house would never have that effortless grace.

  ‘How beautifully you’ve done it,’ I breathed. ‘You really have got quite an eye.’

  She looked surprised and followed my gaze. ‘The drawing room? Oh, that’s not me at all – I’m much more interested in the garden. No, this is all Sam’s idea.’

  I frowned, and stepped forward to take a closer look. ‘Really? But this is all old stuff, isn’t it? Antiques? I thought he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing; he told me he was only into the really modern look, state-of-the-art and all that.’

  Sally threw back her head and hooted. ‘Sam? He told you that? God, you must be joking. He lives for all this antiquated rubbish, can’t get enough of it. He’s always off at some auction house or another buying more junk to clutter up the place with. He’s obsessed by it, if he was here now he’d tell you precisely where each piece came from, when it was made and whether it’s true to its period or not. That’s his pride and joy over there – he spends hours with his head in that,’ she said, pointing to an elegant Queen Anne corner cupboard.

  ‘What – that cupboard?’

  ‘Oh no, not the cupboard, what’s inside it. I’ll show you.’ She walked over and took a key from a china box on the shelf above it. Then she bent down and fitted it into the lock. I followed her, my heart pounding. The door swung back.

  ‘There,’ she said with a slight sneer, ‘his precious collection. Sometimes I think I’m only here to finance his obsession.’

  I gazed inside. All four shelves were crammed fit to bursting with the most exquisite collection of porcelain figurines I’d ever seen outside of Trewarren.

  ‘Meissen!’ I breathed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ‘That’s right, how did you know?’ asked Sally in surprise.

  ‘Oh, um, Nick likes it,’ I muttered, my mind racing. ‘We used to have one or two pieces.’

  ‘Oh really? Oh well, Sam’s a complete fanatic. You should see him sitting here on the floor every Saturday morning with all these figures spread out around him, polishing every piece lovingly with his little yellow duster.’

  ‘But … is it all his?’ I asked, picking up an artisan figure and turning it around in my hand. ‘Did he collect all this?’

  ‘Oh no, I only call it his collection because he’s the one who takes an interest, but in actual fact it’s all mine. My grandfather left it to me – he was mad about porcelain. All this furniture was his too, in fact,’ she said, looking around. ‘We’ve added very little. Just a couple of chairs over there, oh – and that mirror. You see, it sounds ridiculous but we’ve never really had much money. We were given the house but it’s so expensive to run and Sam doesn’t make very much. I suppose we look as if we’re loaded because of all these antiques and things, but it all belongs to my family.’

  ‘I see …’ I said slowly, as she locked the cupboard. My heart was still pounding. ‘But Sam knows a lot about antiques, does he? I mean, porcelain in particular?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s a bit of an expert in his own quiet way. He’s always up at the V & A, nosing around, and whenever we go abroad we always have to trudge around a few dreary museums and peer at their bits and pieces. It’s more than a hobby really, it’s an all-consuming passion. His other all-consuming passion,’ she added caustically, popping the key back in the china box.

  ‘Gosh,’ I said, following her out to the hall again and trying hard not to sound too interested. ‘I had no idea he was such a – a whassicalled, aficionado.’

  ‘Well, why should you? He keeps it very much to himself, doesn’t really talk ab
out it, can’t think why.’

  I can! I thought tremulously.

  ‘Perhaps he thinks nosing around stuffy old museums doesn’t quite go with the trendy-film-director image,’ she went on, opening the front door for me.

  Perhaps, I thought, but perhaps not.

  Sally smiled shyly as we stood on the step together, blinking in the sunlight.

  ‘Thanks for coming round, Polly. It can’t have been easy, but I really appreciate it and, honestly, I’m really happy about your news.’

  I smiled back. ‘I’m glad I came.’ So glad, I thought privately.

  We kissed each other on the cheek and I ran across the road. I waved as I got into my car. She stood on the steps, a tiny blonde figure in her little black dress, watching as I pulled off.

  I drove sedately down the road, keeping an eye on her in my rear-view mirror, but as soon as I knew I was out of sight I gave a great whoop of delight. I hit the gas, and shot off down the road. Bloody hell! What a morning! What an unbelievably riveting morning! I took my hands off the steering wheel for a second and gazed at them in wonder. They were trembling! They were actually trembling with excitement, and why not? I mean, God, first of all – and here I threw back my head and gave another great shout of joy into the roof of the car – Sam was not the father of my child, that much was wonderfully, beautifully, blissfully clear! He might strut around like a highly sexed tom cat, like a walking, talking sperm bank, but his missiles were all doing U-turns the moment they’d been fired. Hoo-bleeding-ray!

  I looked down at my tummy and took a hand off the steering wheel for a second, stroking it gently, gazing with wonder, with awe almost. I was pregnant. By my husband. No one else. A radiant smile spread dreamily across my face. What a wonderfully warm feel – Oh Christ! I hastily dropped the radiant smile and put my hand back on the wheel as I narrowly missed colliding with a double-decker bus. Horns blared and obscenities were mouthed but I was much too excited to care.

  Because what about that other revelation? What about that, eh? So much for Sam the modernist man. What an equally intriguing discovery that had been. Our Sam was no more a trendy minimalist than the entire Antiques Roadshow team put together: he was a history man, a heavily-into-antiques-and-porcelain man, a Meissen man no less!