by Jane Rogers
Chapter 25
In the Eden pantry I found a tin of peaches and had them for breakfast. By the time I’d had a wash and packed up and made it look as if I hadn’t been there, the mist was lifting. I was ashamed. I walked out through the back garden. There was a raw new latch gate at the far end, swollen with damp. It let out onto a path which ran alongside the stream. On the other side there was a hedge of bare black prickly twigs sprinkled with star-white flowers. Blackthorn popped into my head and I remembered walks with my Father of Wisdom when he was trying to teach me plants’ names. I used to tease him by deliberately getting them wrong and calling everything ‘hydrangea,’ but now I thought to know about plants would be one of the most useful kinds of knowledge, if I was going to live here.
As I picked my way through the puddles I started to hear all the layers of distance around me; close by the rushing of the stream, and a robin singing in the hedge; further away the bleating of sheep and cawing of rooks building their nests in the high bare trees near the top of the wood.
The path was becoming boggy and I climbed up away from the streamside to drier ground. It smelled bad, and as I pulled myself over the wall and jumped down into the field, two crows flapped up in my face nearly making me overbalance. A dead ewe was lying there. And a raw mess of blood and slime beside her. It must have been her lamb. I steadied myself against the wall. There were a load of sheep by the opposite hedge. Their matted wool was trailing off them in clumps.
They watched me as I went on slowly to the next gate and then back down to the stream. For an instant I thought I saw a searing flash of blue. Was it a kingfisher? It was gone before I could tell. ‘Better than a peacock,’ I whispered to myself. I crossed a footbridge and took the path up the opposite side of the valley, climbing till I could look down on the whole thing as if it was a model. The sun had finally broken through the mist, in soft white light. I imagined Lisa’s pear and apple trees in a haze of blossom, neat green rows of vegetables growing, smoke spiralling up from the farmhouse chimney. The goat and her kid gambolling in the field, hens clucking and crowing, Lisa with a basket collecting eggs. It would be an idyll.
But I could still taste the smell of the dead sheep. As we grew old and stiff, weeds would start to choke the fields. Foxes would take the chickens, the goats would run wild through the decaying fence, cabbages and onions would go to seed. Then unpruned trees would grow into a tangled thicket, the bees would swarm, and winter gales would lift slates from the roof again. I imagined an old crone hunched over a fire gnawing a wizened apple. The last human being.
To live in this Eden, you would need fruit of the tree of No-Knowledge. How else could you dig the ground, repair the buildings, rebuild stone walls? You could only do it if you blanked out MDS. You could only do it in ignorance – like the poor young couple who had lived here last year. I sat on a tumble-down wall and stared at the view as the mist burned off. It came to me like a leap beyond my own fear. Like taking off and flying. I could see there was only one thing to do. And this time I really really knew.
I knew it was real because I was frightened. I would do it.
I phoned Dr Nichol from the train as soon as I got a signal, and told her I was ready.
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘So soon?’
‘Yes, I promise you.’
‘Then come and see me on Monday morning. 11.15.’
There was a message on my phone from Mum, sounding upset, saying please to call her. I knew what that was. When I rang she told me the funeral would be Sunday. I said I was on my way home.
On Friday and Saturday I helped Mum clear Mandy’s flat. She had started on the kitchen while Mandy lay sedated in her room; she told me she couldn’t sit and do nothing. She wanted me to have the puppets and masks. I filled a suitcase with them because I didn’t know what else to do. How could I ever tell her? I imagined ringing her up from hospital on the day of my implantation. Or even asking Mr Golding to do it, afterwards. Maybe that would be kindest. At least she wouldn’t have the anguish of waiting for it to happen. It would be clean and sudden, as if I’d been knocked down by a bus.
Dad and I wrote the speech about Mandy’s life, and I agreed to read it at the funeral. It was the least I could do. There were only 12 people there; her old friends had drifted away, over the months she’d been ill. Clive came, looking wretched, and her neighbour Caroline, and Christine and the others from her theatre group; with us and the celebrant, that was about it. It was just another MDS funeral. None of us cried, the crying had all been done. There was comfort in the routine of it, the singing, the account of Mandy’s life, the happy pictures on the wall. In my head I kept transposing it to my own funeral. Maybe Sal and Baz and Lisa would be there. There would be less of a story to tell, since my life was so much shorter than hers. But there would be one new person there. A brand new life, cuddled in Dad’s arms. She would make it up to them. Somehow we got through the weekend. And then it was Monday morning, when I could go and see Dr Nichol.
I told her what had happened to make me certain. I was certain, I was clear; she called in a witness and I signed the papers. I wanted it to be soon, because every day that passes makes me older. The younger the mother, the better chance the baby has.
‘You have to tell your parents.’
‘But how can I? how can I when all this has happened?’
‘You have to tell them.’
‘If I’d left home – or if I ran away – they wouldn’t know then.’
‘Don’t be silly Jess. Looking at your cycle, you could be ready for implantation in 10 days. Or, of course, we could wait another month. Either way, they need to know. And if you want early implantation they need to know today. Think how it would reflect on the clinic, if we were seen to be taking on girls without their parents’ knowledge.’
Publicity. Iain. Baz had taken it off the website for me, but what else might Iain be planning? Well, in 10 days I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this – in 10 days I would be free.
I went home with dragging feet.
I told them as soon as they were both in from work, and I felt like a monster. Mum kept repeating, ‘You can’t do this, Jess.’ Dad didn’t believe me; and after he’d asked about every stage of the process, he got angry with the clinic, and took the phone into the spare room to ring Mr Golding. We could hear his raised voice through two closed doors. Mum was pelting me with questions. Was it because of Mand? Was it because of those boys who attacked me? Was it because of her and Dad fighting? Or YOFI? Or being left on my own so much recently? Had they pressured me or ignored me or somehow made me think …?
‘You don’t pull my strings, Mum. I’ve thought this out for myself. It’s not because of anyone.’
I was upset, she said. What had happened to Mandy was enough to upset anyone. I was depressed, there had been too much bad news. What I needed was to see a counsellor, to get some treatment for depression, to be helped and loved and protected until I could feel good about my life again.
‘I feel good. I’m happy. I know what I’m doing.’
Pointless talk, I couldn’t make her see anything but what she already saw. Dad came back white-faced and furious and told Mum he’d go and see Golding first thing in the morning. ‘We’ll get this stopped.’
I told them I was sorry, really really sorry, but that it was up to me. When we got into the same round of questions and objections for the third time, I told them I was going to bed. I washed my face and cleaned my teeth then lay on the floor listening to the rise and fall of their voices down below. I knew they were telling each other it was impossible. They would find a way to bring me to my senses. I stared at the beech tree through the open curtain; at the way the street light made the branches shine with a dull blackish-orange. I wanted this time to be over because none of it would be any good now. It would all be tears and anger. 10 days had seemed short but now it was too long.
After a while Dad came up and knocked. He apologised
for being angry and said we needed to talk.
‘I don’t know what to say, Dad. I can’t make it better.’
‘Come in to work with me tomorrow. I want to show you something.’
‘D’you promise not to fight with Mr Golding?’
‘I promise, if you come in with me.’
‘OK.’
He went back down and the voices ran on and on, until Mum’s broke down in sobs. I peeled myself off the floor and pulled off my clothes and got in bed. I felt as flat and heavy as if a steam roller was on top of me. I just wanted it to end.
Chapter 26
I woke up feeling happy; everything was clear for me. Then I remembered Mum and Dad. It was pitiful to see them in the morning, crashing around the house, ugly and clumsy, stiff with unhappiness. I tried to cheer them up with a story I read in the Sunday paper, under the title Monkey Business. There was an animal rights protestor who set off by car from Chester, trying to get to the research lab demo with his friend and his friend’s pet monkey. They took the monkey to show solidarity with the victims incarcerated in the research lab. They got stuck in the traffic jam, and then their car was singled out by a gang who’d come down to the motorway from a footbridge. The gang dragged the two friends out and stole their iPods, phones, and the monkey, tying a scarf to its collar and dragging it away. But then a carful of FLAME women spotted them trying to get the monkey over the crash barrier, and rushed over and attacked them. They rescued the monkey which they thought had been stolen from the labs. They flagged down a passing police car and handed it over to them. The police got a few miles down the road and had to stop at a barricade of burning cars, and while they were sorting that out, a bunch of Noahs liberated the monkey to take back to their congregation as evidence of the devil’s work being committed in the research labs. The monkey’s owner walked ten miles up and down the motorway to find it. The Noahs had to give it back because the monkey started hurling itself around their van with joy when he came to the driver’s window.
They both looked at me as if I’d fallen from another planet. Then I got Mum on her own in the bedroom and asked her to come to the Mothers For Life meeting with me.
‘Jess, I’ll do anything you want – anything in the world, but you must listen to what Joe and I are saying.’
‘I’m listening. I’ve listened. Will you come tonight?’
‘You’re not listening. You’re not taking any of it in.’
‘I’ve already thought about it, Mum, I’ve been thinking for weeks. Tonight?’
She sighed and pulled a face but she didn’t refuse.
By the time we got into the car they had both lapsed back into grim silence. When there’s that kind of silence between them it’s like a force field, you simply can’t break through it. I didn’t say anything about travelling by car. It wouldn’t have been fair to make a fuss.
Even after we’d dropped Mum off, Dad still didn’t talk until we were walking across the carparks to the lab. Then he said, ‘There’s something I want you to see.’ I hadn’t been down to my Dad’s lab since the day of my medical. When he tapped in the code and pushed open the door for me there was that lovely smell it always has, that hits a funny-bone in my head.
I remembered all the times I’d been to Dad’s lab; hanging about waiting for him to finish work, chatting to Ali, looking down the microscope. But today the lab was different. It was so full you could hardly move. One wall was crammed with stacked-up freezers. They were all wrapped round with that yellow and black police tape, the sort they put around the scene of a crime. I asked him why.
‘The FLAME women were still on the front steps yesterday,’ he said. ‘But they haven’t come round the side, or tried to get in, since last Thursday. We’ve moved all the freezers down here, security’s been tightened up.’ I hung my coat on the back of the door and sat on one of the high stools at the bench. ‘I’ve got to take stuff up for the morning clinic,’ he said, ‘then we’ll visit the Sleeping Beauties.’ He’s never taken me on to the ward before – I’ve only ever seen the labs. In the little washroom he scrubbed up and changed his clothes and put on his white coat. ‘You too,’ he said. ‘You can wear Ali’s.’ He started taking racks of test tubes out of the sterilising unit and putting them on a trolley; bottles of clear liquid, vacuum-packed instruments.
I wanted to ask about the police tape but something held me back. I thought there must be bodies in the freezers. I scrubbed under my fingernails with the tingly soap and switched my mind to the subject of the morning clinic. What on earth were they doing in the clinic? ‘I thought there wasn’t any more IVF?’
‘There isn’t. These are egg donors. How do you think we’re supplying the research labs with embryos to work on? We’re fertilising as many eggs as we possibly can, we’re an embryo production line.’
‘For experiments like at Wettenhall?’
He put down the box he was holding. ‘Yes Jess. Weren’t you listening when we talked at the reservoir? Don’t you understand how much research is going on all the time, to find a way of ending this?’ He covered the trolley and pushed out through the swing door, and I buttoned up my white coat. It was the first time I’d really thought about the donors – apart from the ones on TV fighting at the animal labs and making a fuss. But women were coming here every day to donate their eggs. They were taking drugs to make themselves super-ovulate, then going through the whole business of egg extraction. They came here quietly, day after day, giving up their eggs to help solve MDS.
By the time Dad came back I had plucked up the courage to ask him about the freezers.
‘They’re the pre-MDS embryos.’
‘Why have the police put tape around them?’
‘They’re Government property.’
‘Government?’
‘I thought you were supposed to know what you’re getting yourself into?’
‘I do.’
‘Alright then,’ he said. ‘Now I want you to come with me onto the ward.’
I realised then that one of the embryos in those chests would be given to me. She was like those people on star-ships who get frozen so they won’t grow old while they travel through light years. She’d been frozen since her first spark of life, and lain hidden and innocent, waiting for the moment when they’d take her out and gently warm her, and put her inside me to grow.
My Dad turned round and adjusted my mask, then he hurried down the corridor, pushing open the swing doors with his elbow, turning right and up the stairs, and at last stopping to glance through the window in a door, before elbowing it open and leading me in to the ward. It was a long dark half-empty room. I could hear a rhythmic swishing sound, a bit like waves crashing on a beach. I remembered the ALF film of the monkeys and sheep in the research lab. What if I saw something terrible?
That was why he’d brought me. He wanted me to be frightened. Something cold and sharp seemed to stick in my throat. Dad walked between empty beds to the first one surrounded by a bank of machines. In the strange glow of the monitors I could see the still figure lying there. Dad stopped a little short of the bed and motioned for me to go ahead. His eyes above his mask looked glittery.
I walked closer to the bed. There was a chair at one side for visitors. I made myself look. She was lying very neatly, with her arms outside the covers and a tube going into white bandaging on her throat. Another tube snaked down under the sheet to her chest. There was a peg on one thin finger, attached to a wire that led to a monitor. She looked as if she was asleep. I wasn’t sure what Dad was wanting me to do, but he just stood there staring at a screen. So I sat in the visitor’s chair. The loud swishing sound made my heart race. After a while I realised that it was actually breathing, it was the thing that was pumping air into and out of her lungs. I forced my own breathing to slow until I was inhaling and exhaling in time with it. In, out, in, out, this is how we breathe. Calm. In the dimness she had a sweet face. Her nose was turned up just a tiny bit at the end, and her fair hair was spread out on the pi
llow. She looked about 17. I watched green lights winking on the monitors, and liquid moving through a transparent tube. It was alright. I could see why they called them Sleeping Beauties. She had a wide wedding ring and she had tiny studs in her ears, gold with a blue stone in the middle. I thought about her choosing the earrings – or maybe being given them as a present from her husband. I thought of her opening the box and smiling; ‘I’ll wear these for luck.’
Dad motioned me over to the next bed. This girl was Asian and she looked even younger. She had a tiny frown on her face, a little crease between her eyes, as if she was having to concentrate on something in her dream. I wanted to kiss her and smooth it away. My Dad flicked some switches and a greenish picture came up on the screen. ‘That’s her baby,’ he said. ‘There’s the head, see?’ It was hard to make out, the image was moving and flickering a bit, it seemed terribly remote. I could believe it was hidden deep deep inside her, and was shy maybe of being seen. I nodded at Dad and he switched it off. I didn’t know if I was allowed but I just wanted to touch the girl, and I brushed my fingers along her arm. Her skin was warm and soft, it wasn’t frightening – she was alive. I thought, the whole of her is turned inward. Turned inward to that fragile creature we just saw glimmering on the screen, all her stillness is focussed on that. She was suspending her whole being for the baby.
Dad set off back towards the door. When we got to the lab he ripped off his mask and asked me what I thought of the Sleeping Beauties.
‘They look peaceful.’
He stared at me. ‘Peaceful? They’re in a coma. Their brains are rotting with MDS.’
‘They’re doing what they’ve chosen to do.’
He sat on one of the stools and put his elbows on the workbench. He rested his head in his hands, staring down at the dark wood.
‘Dad?’
‘It makes me feel sick.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re living dead. Zombies. Machines are pumping their lungs. And then their mothers come and sit by them and hold their hands and comb their hair – ’