She smirked. ‘All right then,’ she said, at last.
I stared at her. ‘What?’
‘If he pays me enough,’ she said.
‘No.’
She licked her lips, breathed in smoke, took a sip of tea, wiped her mouth on her sleeve before she breathed it out again. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I get it. I’m meant to refuse?’
Adam came into the room at that moment. ‘The answer’s yes,’ she said, before I could intervene. ‘And it’s the middle of the month. So come on.’ She stubbed out her spliff and stood up. ‘You can get on with the puzzle,’ she said to me. ‘Unless you want to watch?’
†
We flew back to New York a week later. There had been several opportunities for conception. I couldn’t speak to, or even look at Adam, certainly not touch him. It wasn’t until we were back among the Brethren that my repulsion began to fade. It was only sex, after all. I was dubious that it would work, but Adam had complete faith that Stella had conceived. He’d written her a contract, saying that on proof of pregnancy he would double the allowance he paid her every month, and that if she bore him a son he would give her twenty thousand pounds when she handed him over. I thought that even if she did conceive, she might refuse to give us the child. And what if it was a girl? Of course, I pointed these things out to Adam but he looked at me in that way he had, as if I was naïve. His faith that it would all work out was absolute. He asked Stella to write as soon as she knew. And special prayers were made at Soul-Life for a son for Adam.
Adam’s plan was that as soon as we knew for sure that his son was on the way, I would pretend to be pregnant. What was the need for the deception, you might wonder? I didn’t like it myself, but Adam said it would be difficult to explain to the Brothers and Sisters how another woman had come to bear his child, especially since sexual continence was a Soul-Life requirement. The miracle of the conception after all these years would be a source of rejoicing, an injection of energy, something that, since Adam had been unwell, had seeped away.
There was no word from Stella for over a month. Naturally, I thought it hadn’t worked and I admit I was relieved. Not that I didn’t crave a child in my arms again. Adam spent his days in prayer, puzzled by the lack of news, niggling away at Jesus, I’m sure – but there was no sign, no heron, not even a significant dream.
And then one day the letter arrived. He breathed out as he read it, then fell to his knees in prayer. The baby was due on the eighth of October. Adam had Obadiah seek legal advice. Adoption and surrogacy papers were drawn up. To my surprise, Stella signed and returned everything that Adam sent her.
And Adam recovered. Perhaps it was the glad tidings, or perhaps – I wondered then – it hadn’t been cancer after all, but an infection that had, of its own accord, eventually cleared up. Naturally, Adam pronounced it a miracle. The lump didn’t go away, but it got no bigger and he felt fine, though we were no longer intimate, and this I missed. The last semen that he shed he shed in Stella. I tried not to dwell on that. And I argued against the end of sex. How could God mind us expressing our love in the beautiful, physical way? But Adam was decided. Now the son was on his way there was no longer any need for fornication.
†
Stella wrote to us monthly with news of her progress. The pregnancy was normal; the scans confirmed the due date of the birth. In late September, Adam and I flew to the UK and returned to the same hotel. It was a relief to drop my padding; there was no need for pretence away from Soul-Life. I phoned Stella. She told us not to come to the house. She didn’t want to see us. She would keep to the bargain only if we stayed away.
We visited the lawyer Obadiah had found us, the only one he could find prepared to do this work – and he was uncomfortable with the situation. His name was Colin and he was beige all over – hair, skin, eyes and even teeth. ‘It’s most irregular,’ he said, riffling through the papers and frowning. ‘I’ve never dealt with a case like this.’
‘Yet it’s perfectly legal,’ Adam insisted. ‘I am the child’s father and our surrogate is in full agreement.’
Colin grimaced and sucked spit through his teeth. ‘I’ve yet to be convinced of that,’ he said.
There was nothing for us to do but wait. We phoned Stella each morning, but didn’t know what else to do with ourselves besides meditation and prayer. Adam was waiting for guidance and had taken to sitting by the lake in the park, hoping to see a heron. The tension between us was intolerable and we sniped at each other for the first time ever. While he was seeking herons, I shopped for baby things, just enough to see us through until we got home: a packet of newborn nappies, some Babygros, a Moses basket, bottle and infant formula.
The baby was late. A week after the due date I dared to mention this to Stella.
‘It’s in God’s hands,’ she said, which I knew was aimed at riling me.
‘We need to see you,’ I said.
‘I told you no.’
‘But how do we even know you’re really pregnant?’ I said. Adam darted me a startled look. ‘Maybe you’ve been stringing us along.’
I heard her breath suck in.
‘Just let us see you.’ I softened my voice. ‘I’d like to see you, you are still my sister.’
‘All right then,’ she said, ‘but not while Dodie’s home. I don’t want her seeing you. I don’t want her tainted by this.’
‘Tainted!’ I said. ‘Tainted!’
She waited for me to quieten down, and told us when to come. Adam and I sat in the car waiting to see you leave. You came out of the gate and I held my breath. I soaked you up with my eyes in those few seconds. Your messy black hair tumbled right down to your slim, black-clad waist, and even though it looked as if you’d tried to whiten your cheeks, they were still rosy, and your eyes, under their glossy black brows, were that strong deep blue. You looked like Stella, yes, but stronger, more vital and vivid. We both watched you walk along the street with your special graceful gait.
‘Beautiful,’ I said. I looked at Adam and his face was illegible, but there was an extra brightness to his eyes. And then he closed them and shut me out. We got out of the car and went round to the back of the house. We knocked and, after checking us through the window, Stella came to the door.
She was almost unrecognizably spherical. It wasn’t just the pregnancy but all of her; the calves showing under the dressing gown were like fat white skittles.
‘Can I?’ Adam raised his hand. He wanted to touch her belly, to touch through her fat, his son. She held onto the door jamb and came down one step. She looked away, and flinched as Adam put his hand on the mound stretched under her dressing gown.
‘Satisfied?’ she said.
‘Well, you certainly are up the spout!’ I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Stell.’ I reached forward to hug her but was chilled by the look in her eyes. She gave a mirthless laugh.
‘Likewise,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know when it’s born.’ And then she hauled herself back up the step and shut the door.
Three days later we got the call. Stella had given birth to a son, seven pounds, seven ounces, at six-thirty a.m. Although it was expected, the news hit me like a thud between the ribs, leaving me winded. Adam sank immediately to his knees and I kneeled too and watched through my eyelashes the tears of joy that trickled down his face.
†
Colin’s BMW was already parked outside the house when we arrived – and there was also a muddy Land Rover, which I guessed was Aunt Regina’s. She shouldn’t have been there. That wasn’t the arrangement. She shouldn’t have been involved.
Adam was trembling. I took his hand and my thumb sank into the soft depression where his should be. Colin got out of his car. ‘Let me reiterate that I’m not entirely comfortable with this,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to see the mother and make sure she’s clear in her intention.’
‘Naturally,’ Adam said. We went through the squeaky gate to the front door. The cardboard box from a cot mobile was sq
uashed up against the wall. I saw Adam register it, and Colin too. Aunt Regina opened the door. Despite the fact that she shouldn’t be there, I felt a sudden gust of fondness and hugged her hard. ‘Melanie,’ she said. She held me away from her to take a proper look. ‘Don’t you look lovely?’ she said kindly. My hair was speckled with grey, and I was overweight, and in Soul-Life, as you know, we don’t pluck our chins or eyebrows or use make-up. Lovely was not the word for how I looked. We hugged again.
She’d shrunk a little but seemed otherwise unchanged. Her glasses had rainbow frames and she was wearing a V-necked vest that showed the brown leathery creases on her chest. ‘Adam.’ Aunt Regina nodded unsmilingly at him. ‘And?’ She looked at Colin.
‘Our lawyer,’ Adam said.
Aunt Regina sighed. ‘You’d best come in,’ she said.
We all went through into the dining room. Kathy was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring. Her eyebrows were white now, and more wirily wild than ever.
‘Is Dodie here?’ I asked.
‘She’s at school,’ Aunt Regina said. ‘Can we have a moment, dear?’
‘Can I see Stella and the baby?’
‘That’s just it,’ Aunt Regina said, ‘I’m afraid she doesn’t want to see you.’
‘She told us to send you packing,’ added Kathy.
‘She can’t do that,’ Adam said. In my bag was the suit I was to take the baby home in. I saw a bottle sterilizer on the draining board. ‘Can she?’ He turned to Colin, who was hovering on the threshold looking uncomfortable.
‘She can,’ he said.
‘But she signed papers.’
‘Papers mean diddly-squat when it comes to a situation like this.’
‘To try and buy your sister’s child!’ Aunt Regina gave me a look of outraged disappointment. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said, although I shrank inside. ‘It was always going to be ours. Adam’s, I mean. He is the father.’
‘The less said about the ways and means the better,’ Kathy said darkly.
‘Ho hum. Well, I’ll be on my way,’ Colin said. ‘You’ll get my bill.’ The door banged shut behind him. Adam pushed past Aunt Regina and up the stairs. I ran after him. Stella had been asleep but she woke when we came in. The baby was in a basket beside her on the bed. Stella’s face was ashen and her greasy hair tied back. She gave a tired, triumphant smile.
‘Well done, Stell,’ I said.
‘You’re not having him,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
Our eyes met for a moment and then she blinked. ‘Just go away,’ she said.
‘All right,’ I said.
Adam started and looked at me. ‘Martha? We can’t leave without our son.’
‘We can,’ I said, just as Stella was saying, ‘My son.’
He looked at me. I’d not seen him look so helpless since I met him at the prison gates. His mouth hung open and his hands dangled empty at his sides. ‘Can we see the baby?’ I asked Stella. ‘Before we leave?’ Aunt Regina and Kathy had come upstairs by then.
‘All right, dear?’ Aunt Regina said to Stella. ‘Do you want them to go?’
That word them stung like a wasp.
‘Come on,’ Kathy said, ‘off, out. Sling your hook.’
I blessed her for saying that because it woke Stella’s contrary streak. ‘They can see him if they want,’ she said.
‘Sure, dear?’
Stella nodded and Aunt Regina reached across her for the Moses basket. Kathy was lurking around the doorway, flexing her fists and scowling like a bouncer.
‘Adam is his father,’ Stella said, a flick of enjoyment in her voice.
The baby was asleep. He was lying on his side and wearing a cotton hat. All we could see was a wisp of sooty hair, a closed eyelid, a tiny nose and lips like a crumpled moth.
‘Seth,’ Adam said, and reached out gently and touched his cheek.
‘Can I hold him?’ I asked.
‘Shame to wake him,’ Aunt Regina said.
‘I might not call him Seth,’ Stella said.
‘But we agreed,’ Adam said.
Stella gave a little shrug. ‘I might have changed my mind.’
‘What do you want to call him then?’ I asked.
‘Bogart,’ she said, narrowing her eyes. ‘Or Bogbaby.’
‘How nice,’ I said.
A corner of her lip lifted in the ghost of a smile. ‘Well, anyway, you can go now,’ she said. ‘I need some sleep.’
I took Adam’s hand. He was staring down at Seth. ‘Come on,’ I said, and tugged him away.
‘Oh, and you can keep your twenty thousand pounds,’ Stella said, and I felt Aunt Regina’s disgust ripple after us down the stairs and out.
†
We went back to the hotel and prayed. It was a gloomy room with olive walls and dark green drapes. A print of a carp added to the underwater atmosphere. I couldn’t actually pray but I knelt with Adam. I could see our reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door. It looked like a painting: two people in the green gloom, praying. My eyes met my own eyes and it was like electricity. I got a raw, shocking glimpse through a gap that had opened in my own life of how lost I was. What was I doing? No wonder Aunt Regina had looked at me the way she did.
I watched the mirror-Adam: head bowed, forehead furrowed, lips moving. The damaged hand clasped in the other. In his beard there was a blob of jam left over from breakfast when we had been nervous and jubilant that this would be the day he would get his son.
We kept phoning until they stopped answering. We tried to visit, but each time Kathy came to the door and wouldn’t let us in. On the third morning after our disappointment, I woke to find Adam on his knees under the print of the carp. He sensed that I’d woken, opened his eyes and smiled.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. He got up and sat on the bed, and took my hand. ‘I had a dream.’
I shut my eyes against the jeering chorus that set off inside me. I pressed my lips together.
He waited until I looked at him. ‘The child must stay with Stella till he’s sixteen.’
‘Jesus told you this?’
He gave me an irritated look and withdrew his hand. I’d not meant my voice to come with a serrated edge.
‘I saw the boy waving to his mother and coming, with his arms open, to me.’
‘How did you know he was sixteen?’
‘I knew. And in the dream I felt blessed.’
‘OK,’ I said. His eyes were on me, willing me to look at him and to smile, but I couldn’t. The dream was convenient, just as Stella said. It was expedient. Eventually I met his eyes and smiled. ‘OK,’ I sighed. I looked at the pile of baby things I’d bought from Mothercare. ‘We might as well take that stuff back.’
‘No, we’ll give it to Stella,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in peace, bearing our gifts and let her know we relinquish our claim.’
‘For now.’
‘No need to mention that,’ he said.
I phoned to leave this message, and was surprised that Stella answered.
‘Oh good,’ I said. ‘I thought you weren’t picking up.’
‘Reflex.’
‘Who is it?’ I heard Kathy booming.
‘You’re not having him,’ Stella said.
‘We’re going back to the States,’ I said. ‘He’s your baby and you should keep him.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘We’ve got some presents for you, shall we bring them round?’
‘Give it to me.’ It was Aunt Regina. ‘Melanie,’ she said, in a voice of strained patience, ‘what do you want now?’
‘We’ve decided to go home,’ I said. ‘It was wrong of us, it was all wrong, I see that now. You were right. I’m ashamed.’
Adam was glaring at me, and I turned so that I couldn’t see him. I stared at the carp instead. The light was reflecting off the darkly varnished surface.
‘We’re flying back tonight, but we’ve got all this baby s
tuff we bought. Can we drop it round?’
‘You can leave it in the garden. It’s not raining.’
‘Could I see Stella?’ I said.
‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing, honestly, just, I’d like to say goodbye.’
The receiver was muffled for a moment and I could hear them arguing. Aunt Regina came back on the line. ‘You can come in for five minutes before Dodie gets back from school. Just you. We won’t have that man in the house.’
Adam didn’t like it, of course, but consented to wait in the car while I unloaded the baby things. When I rapped the fox doorknocker, Aunt Regina opened the door immediately.
‘Stella’s in the sitting room,’ she said.
‘Auntie?’ I put my hand on her arm. If only she’d smiled at me.
‘The clock is ticking,’ Kathy said, looming up behind her and tapping her watch.
I went through. There was no sign of the baby in there, except for a changing mat on the floor. Stella was curled up in an armchair. Her towelling dressing gown was freshly washed and smelled of Persil. Her hair was clean for once and buttery fair in the sunshine that slanted through the window and caught the ends of her long pale lashes, making clear water of her eyes.
‘I suppose you want to see him?’ she said.
‘That’s not why I’m here.’
‘Kathy said you were up to some trick. She was all for calling the police.’
‘No tricks. Stella, did you plan this all along?’ I said. ‘To keep him?’
She shrugged.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re keeping him,’ I said, and I found I really meant it. ‘You’re his mother.’ She studied my face to gauge my seriousness. ‘You know what Adam’s like, I sort of get drawn in.’
‘Yeah, blame Adam.’
‘No, I don’t mean that.’
‘You know what you are,’ Stella said, ‘you’re Adam’s puppet.’
‘I am not!’ I realized I could hear someone creaking outside the door, ear to the wood no doubt.
‘Anyway, what do you want?’ Stella said.
‘Just to say goodbye,’ I told her. ‘We’re going back.’
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