The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers

  ‘I remember it in the day,’ I said. ‘Not at night.’

  ‘Oh at night it was like being inside a plane,’ she said. ‘The roaring noise it made, and that scratched plastic window. I used to imagine we’d wake up somewhere altogether different, miles inland.’

  We remembered how Dad used to build these huge fortifications on the beach. Not just a castle and a moat, but earthworks like the Great Wall of China. And wide channels to divert the tide and hold it back. We used to spend the whole day digging and other kids and their dads would come and help us, and Mum found me shells to use for windows and doors. ‘Remember the jewellery boxes?’ she said. That was what we did when it rained. We sat either side of the red fold-down Formica table in the caravan, with the rain drumming on the roof, and we glued baby pink clam shells and yellow snail-shells onto Maltesers boxes, which I took home as souvenirs for my friends.

  ‘And the crabs,’ I said, and we laughed. I used to see how many I could catch in a day. All the ones we found when we were digging, or along the tide-line as we looked for shells, I scooped up on my spade and plopped into a bucket. At the end of the day I’d tip them out on the sand and count them to see if I’d beaten my record, and it would be a crab race, as they scuttled back down to the sea. But one day, I don’t know why, I took the bucketful back to the caravan and left them by the steps. And Dad got up in the night to pee and knocked the bucket over. I remember hearing him swearing and Mum calling ‘What is it Joe?’ and both of us got up and went out onto the step. Dad was hopping about trying to catch crabs in the dark, swooshing them onto the spade with a furled up newspaper. We flashed the torch around and they were under the caravan and everywhere, crawling up and down the spiky tufts of grass.

  ‘He could have let them be,’ said Mum. ‘They would’ve headed for the sea eventually.’

  ‘But what about the road?’ I reminded her. ‘Imagine if someone’s driving along and suddenly their headlamps light up a crowd of crabs scuttling across – and then you hear this awful crackle as the car runs over them!’

  ‘A crustacean catastrophe,’ she said and smiled, leaning back against her seat. It was alright to be happy.

  When we got to Scarborough we zipped up our coats and pulled our hats down over our ears and headed straight from the station to the beach. Massive pale clouds came charging across the sky, with spokes of white sunlight wheeling out between them. At the end of the beach we walked past the empty shops and arcades and closed cafes, and climbed up over the bridge to the castle. The ruins made pockets of stillness in the streaming air. We plunged out again across the bleached meadow to the edge of the castle-island and stood there gulping at the air as it blasted into our faces. Mum pointed to a big rock jutting up further along the path and started to battle her way towards it. There was a log rolled against its base, facing inland. Other people must have used it as a shelter, and we sat there huddled out of the rushing wind. Now we could hear each other speak again.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be out in a boat in this!’ she said.

  I imagined the icy spray splashing up at you as each wave slammed into the side, and the fantastic lurch and slide of the boat and the excitement of the danger. ‘I’d love it!’

  ‘I used to feel like that,’ Mum said.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘As if nothing could hurt me.’

  ‘I don’t think that.’

  ‘You think you’ll come out of this unscathed. That you’re different than all the other girls.’

  ‘No Mum, I don’t.’

  ‘You don’t think about losing consciousness and never coming back again to places like this.’

  ‘If we don’t take MDS seriously – ’

  ‘Jessie they’ll fix it. They’ll figure something out. They always do.’ The twiggy branch of a bush came blowing across the flattened grass, bowling over and over itself.

  ‘This is the way of fixing it.’

  ‘There’ll be another way.’

  ‘You mean, let someone else volunteer.’

  ‘The world isn’t like that, Jess. One person can’t just – ’

  ‘One person can, Mum. That’s the point. That’s why it’s so fantastic. I can make a difference.’

  Mum looked at me, then she lumbered to her feet and out into the wind again. I got up and followed her. She was leaning into the wind, going towards the cliff edge ‘Mum!’ I shouted, but she didn’t hear me. I ran after her but she stopped a couple of metres short of the edge. She stood staring across at the rocky inlet to our right. The foam from the boiling waves had been scooped off by the wind, and slathered against the cliffs like meringue. She turned to me, her hair streaming across her face. She was gesturing to the cliff edge but the wind blew her words away. She came and leant right in close to me. Her breath was warm against my ear.

  ‘Why don’t you fly?’

  I tilted back my head and tried to see her face. But she pulled me close again.

  ‘If you are a superhero? Why don’t you just fly?’ Her voice cracked.

  I put my arms around her. ‘Mum, Mum, it’s OK.’ She let me hold her for a moment then she stumbled back to the shelter. She sat on the log and crouched over, burying her head in her arms. I sat beside her and waited. After a bit she raised her head and wiped her wet face on her gloves.

  ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ she said in a flat little voice. ‘I didn’t ask to be mother of Joan of fucking Arc.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this is why I was put on earth.’

  ‘Not knowing why you’re on earth is the human condition.’

  ‘It’s not!’ I shouted happily. ‘It’s not!’

  ‘Jessie, you’ll die.’

  ‘This isn’t about one individual. The mass of people, the human race – that’s more important than any individual.’

  ‘That’s a frightening way to think. Once you say individuals can be sacrificed – ’

  ‘Mum. Think of the women who’ve already died. Think of all the women who have died.’ We were sitting there with the wind howling past the shadow of our rock. I knew we were both thinking about Mandy. But there were all the women. And their babies. All of them. Mum was staring straight ahead at nothing. Tears rolled down her face. She was like a candle burning brightly. Like wax, melting. I thought, at last, she can see. I knelt down in front of her and clasped her gloved hands. ‘You see?’ I said. ‘You see? It’s really really simple.’ I put my arms around her. I could feel her gulping for air like a person drowning.

  ‘Now you see, you see, you see,’ I murmured into her hair. ‘Everything will be alright.’ At last she stopped and lifted her head, and I wiped her cheeks with my silky scarf.

  ‘You make me afraid,’ she whispered, and I laughed at her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s true. You’ve turned into something else.’

  ‘I don’t want you to be sad.’

  ‘What can I do? I love you, Jessie.’

  When I went to bed I lay awake for a long time thinking about Mum, hoping she did understand. And wondering how to tackle Dad.

  In the morning I made myself get up as soon as I heard him moving about. I went into the kitchen and he looked up from the paper with a huge grin on his face. ‘Morning Jesseroon! And how’s my nut brown maid?’

  I was gobsmacked. I’d forgotten how nice he can be! I looked at his monkey-grin and his standing-on-end hair and had a sudden joyous thought that Mum had told him about going to Scarborough and won him over.

  ‘Got something to show you!’ he said, before I had time to speak. And he lifted up the paper to show me the front page. The headline was EMBRYO EMBARGO! I stared at it not knowing what it meant. ‘An end to all this nonsense,’ he said, ‘Sanity has prevailed.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There will be a halt in all embryo implantation. In response to those shenanigans down in Cheshire last week.’

  ‘But they can’t stop Sleeping Beaut – ’

  ‘They can’t stop women who get pregna
nt naturally. Obviously. They’re stopping implants.’

  ‘But there haven’t been any implants into women yet.’

  ‘D’you think Golding’s the only one? Now the vaccine’s made it possible there’ll be clinics poised up and down the country.’

  ‘So why stop them?’

  ‘Consent. The current legislation on consent doesn’t begin to cover it.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘OK. Before all this, a stored embryo legally belonged to its biological parents, the ones who asked for it to be created. If it came from donated egg or sperm then the donors also had a say in it. And now there’ll be the young surrogate who dies to bear the child, whose parents will feel they also have a stake in it. That’s six potential parents for each baby. Common sense dictates the biological parents take precedence. But quite a few of them have up to ten stored embryos. What would they do with ten children? So who decides which ones they keep? And why should the surrogates’ families come away with nothing? Some people are saying none of these should get them – that the babies are so precious they should be assigned to approved foster-parents.’ He laughed and rubbed his hands. ‘Cath was right, it’s a minefield. And the Mothers For Life squabbles over Sleeping Beauty babies are as nothing.’ He pushed the paper across the table to me and got up. ‘I’m making a pot of coffee. Want some?’

  The whole first three pages was taken up with it. There were pictures of Mothers For Life and Embryo Donors. And a grainy picture of a sheep from the animal rights website. There was an aerial photo of the Wettenhall riot. There was a list of bullet points headed Draft Proposals:

  • New (post MDS) embryos: individual donor consent must be obtained for animal research usage.

  • Pre-MDS embryos: biological parents retain legal ownership of up to three and have one year time limit to agree surrogates.

  • After 12 months all pre-MDS embryos revert to the state for implantation in selected volunteers.

  Dad being so happy about it made me fear the worst, but when I read that I realised it wasn’t so bad. Why shouldn’t my baby’s biological parents bring her up? And biological parents would still need a surrogate. Surely they’d be glad to agree to someone a clinic had already vetted? I said that to Dad and he laughed.

  ‘These are people whose embryos are still frozen because they couldn’t decide what to do with them three, six, ten years ago. Now they’ll get up to a year longer. I don’t think they’ll be rushing after volunteers tomorrow!’ He took a mug of coffee upstairs to Mum. I read a statement from a Mothers For Life spokeswoman, which said they would continue to fight for the rights of surrogates and their families. Dad came back.

  ‘They’ll wait till the last minute because they can but also because they’ll be hoping for some scientific breakthrough. The longer they wait the more likely that is.’

  ‘But if there isn’t any scientific breakthrough – ’

  ‘Then you can do your volunteering next year,’ he said smugly.

  I turned on the TV. It was the same. FLAME women were greeting the news happily and talking about how they would organise an egg donation programme for animal implantation research. Mothers for Life were organising protests. Scientists were worrying about losing a year, and politicians were talking about taking time to get it right.

  The phone rang. It was the clinic asking me to come in for a meeting with Mr Golding that afternoon. It was true, then. The phone rang again – Sal. Going on about how pleased she was, that she couldn’t bear it if I threw my life away. She said FLAME were going to focus their attacks on Sleeping Beauty clinics, their aim was to take women out of the research entirely. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you got tangled up in any of that stuff,’ she said. ‘I want to know you’re safe.’

  I thanked her and hung up. I checked my lucky nun was in my bag.

  Chapter 29

  When I got to the clinic the FLAME pickets were outside the main doors with their banners. NO MORE SLEEPING BEAUTIES. NO MORE DEGRADATION OF WOMEN. One of them came towards me as I went up the steps. She looked embarrassed. ‘Excuse me – ’

  ‘I’ve only come to see my Dad – he works here.’

  ‘On Sleeping Beauties?’

  ‘No. He grows embryos for MDS research. For animals.’

  The girl nodded, relieved, and I shoved the revolving door. The security guard grinned and pressed the buzzer. When I was through the double doors I went to the blue outpatients room where we’d had the first meeting for volunteers. Needless to say, Rosa was already there, and the shy girl, Theresa. I nodded at Theresa. I didn’t want to look at Rosa and see whatever was on her face. Gloating, I supposed. I could feel I was bright red. Before anyone could speak, Mr Golding and a nurse came in. He was as plump and smiling and dapper as ever, it made me feel happier just to see him. He pulled up a chair and sat next to the three of us. The nurse started her tape recorder.

  ‘They make life very difficult for me!’ he said and smiled ruefully.

  ‘Have we got to stop?’ asked Rosa. I made myself glance at her. She was pretty, with her pale skin and dark hair. Prettier than me, if you didn’t mind the strangeness of her eye. But if Baz liked her, why had he pretended to like me?

  ‘Ah-ha! That’s what they like you to think. But we have a secret weapon up the sleeve!’ He pulled his chair a bit closer and looked at each of us carefully. ‘What do you think about this news?’

  ‘It’s no good. We’ll be too old in a year,’ I said. Rosa nodded.

  ‘And Theresa?’ he said kindly. He was wearing a little navy blue bow tie with yellow spots on it, it was comical; underneath his bald head it made him look like an Easter egg.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  He reached out and patted her hand. ‘I am not surprised, my dear. Many of us no longer know what to think. Well, I shall tell you what I know and then we decide how to proceed, yes?’ He began to talk about the pre MDS embryos. He made it sound like a fairy story. He said the human race is lost in a dangerous forest. And the frozen embryos are one clear path. There may be other paths that twist and turn through the dark trees, that scale ravines and plunge through rivers and lead eventually to a future. But this is the one mapped path. ‘We know how to look after Sleeping Beauties, and get live births,’ he told us. ‘And we know how to vaccinate embryos. You can hear rumours of other cures, miracle drugs, who knows whatnot. But a scientist must look for the answer that adds up in here – ’ he tapped his shiny head and twinkled at us – ‘and my onboard computer tells me this path is the real hope. Every day we delay – ’ he shrugged – ‘it will be harder for these children. There will be so many old, so few young.’

  ‘But why have they said we must wait?’ demanded Rosa.

  ‘What is precious in this world now? Only these embryos. Money cannot help you, land cannot help you, a brilliant mind or the body of an athlete cannot help you. The rich are those who inherit the future. You understand? Survival of the fittest.’

  We nodded although to begin with I barely understood.

  ‘The fittest now are those with frozen embryos. Only their genes survive. Parents of these embryos have power and if we do not yield it to them, they will fight. This is the one instinct without which we all die, our race dies – the instinct to safeguard our young.’

  I thought of Mum and Dad, and how unhelpful that instinct can be. Dr Humpty Dumpty Golding leaned back in his chair and stretched. Even his shoes were shinier than new. ‘So,’ he said. ‘It grieves me to admit but the politicians get it right. We must proceed by due course of law. We hope so much for these children, they do not need to be the bone every dog is trying to seize in his teeth. Now, tell me. You still wish to volunteer?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosa and I, together. I glanced at Theresa. She looked as if she was going to cry.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘Theresa, you must not be anxious. All the world is rushing but you are one person and you can be still.’ He smiled at Theresa and
she did begin to cry. He patted her hand gently, and took from his breast pocket a folded pale blue handkerchief, which he shook out and gave to her. He asked her if she wanted to stay while he talked to us, and she nodded. ‘I tell you now,’ he said. ‘It is possible. We have some embryos with no parents.’ He looked at us expectantly, pleased with his riddle. ‘Sometimes in the old days when we carry out a procedure such as hysterectomy, we have asked the patient permission to take her eggs. Those she has not need of. She already has her children, or has embryos stored. Her surplus eggs can be used for benefit of other women. But – but but but! We cannot freeze an egg!’ I remembered about not being able to freeze eggs, I’d heard it from Dad before. ‘OK. So we have fine eggs, donated. But how to keep them?’

  Neither of us knew.

  ‘We have to fertilise,’ he said. ‘If we fertilise in vitro, the egg is happy, the egg grows. The ovum, the sperm, the zygote, the embryo. All is well and we can freeze.’ He looked at us triumphantly and I was glad it was Rosa who asked,

  ‘How do they get fertilised?’

  ‘In house. The embryo is anonymous.’ I noticed the nurse, who was sitting by the window listening to all this. She had a little smile on her face.

  ‘What does in house mean?’ asked Rosa.

  ‘Here, at the clinic,’ said Mr Golding simply.

  Rosa was still looking blank, so he patiently explained it to her. But I remembered Father of Wisdom telling me about his heroes in the early days of IVF. They didn’t know how to freeze anything back then, so they always had to use fresh sperm – their own. Rosa finally got it. ‘The egg and sperm donors don’t even know they’ve made an embryo together.’

  ‘The sperm donors know,’ he told her. ‘But they also know these are embryos only for research.’