The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers

  ‘I thought you lived with your Mum.’

  ‘I can’t stay there. Her druggy mates come round and that’s that, everything gets nicked.’

  I was reminded of Lisa. ‘Well you could go and live in one of the Kids’ Houses – the Rising Sun, or the place in Wales.’

  She didn’t know anything about them, and I had to explain the whole idea to her. She shook her head when I said she wouldn’t need any money.

  ‘You always need money. It wouldn’t work anyway. They wouldn’t want someone like me messing things up.’

  I was about to deny it. But what was the point of meeting that with a lie? ‘You’re different,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. I’d piss them off. I’d drink all the wine and screw their boyfriends, and forget to feed the chickens.’

  I couldn’t not ask her. ‘Did you sleep with Baz?’

  ‘Sure.’

  There was no reason for me to care either way. But tears pierced my eyes.

  ‘You see?’ she said, walking heavily to the door. ‘Now you’re pissed off with me.’ She pulled the door closed behind her.

  I dragged the blankets over me and breathed into the warm darkness underneath them, until my own breath had made it all so hot and damp that I had to stick my head out to gasp lungfuls of proper air. My nose was blocked, I was too hot and then too cold. There was nowhere I could go.

  I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke there was a breakfast tray on the table by my bed, with orange juice and bread rolls and dinky individual packets of jam. The tea was cold but I drank it anyway. It was a cloudy windy morning, from my bed I could see big masses of cloud trundling past. It was like my bedroom view at home without the beech tree. I sat back against my pillow and stared at the sky.

  It didn’t matter about Baz. It mattered, of course it mattered, but only if we were both going to live for 80 years. Then there would be time for everything to change. There would be time to understand. Right now I couldn’t know if he really liked her more than me or if he was only sorry for her or if he would still have been going out with either of us in a year. Maybe even he didn’t know. I had to rip it out of my head. I wouldn’t ask her any more about it.

  I kept on staring at the clouds. They were moving across the window from left to right, massive blowsy shapes in different shades of grey, and at different heights in the sky. The closer ones were catching up and sliding in front of others which were further away from the earth. I wanted to volunteer because I wanted to make a difference. That was the thing to hang on to. The coming week would be weird – of course. I would have to say the real goodbye to Mum and Dad, which I dreaded. I would have to talk to Rosa. But the rest of it was my own precious time, and I could use it how I wanted. I put the breakfast tray back on the table and got dressed and went across to the office to ask for some paper.

  I decided to finish this. Dad can add it to the pile at Nanna Bessie’s.

  The history of my decision. For you, my child. I want you to know my story – our story, your beginning. So you understand everything I’ve thought and felt, and so no one can tell you I was a silly brainwashed girl, or a puppet of Iain’s. I don’t want anyone trying to claim you for a movement or an idea. You’re free, and whatever you want to do with your life, the thought of it makes me glad. Above all I want you to know I’m glad. I’m glad this is happening.

  I have been writing and writing, till my fingers ache and my neck is stiff; I am going to write myself right to the end of my story, and tell you how things have changed this week, and how I am right now, up to the minute. But now I’m talking to you, I have to give you a name. What can I call you? I don’t even know if you’re a boy or a girl. I’ve been thinking about your name for ages and what I came up with was Ray. (Rae, if you prefer.) A ray of golden sunshine, a ray of hope. But I wonder how old you are as you read this? When I was 13 something soppy like that would have made me cringe. You could think of the other kind of ray, the fish gliding along the seabed like an arrow. And the mermaid’s purses, you’ll find those on the beach, where the ray’s eggs have floated safely across oceans. Maybe that will seem alright. If not, look, change it. I won’t mind!

  It’s so funny writing to you – I can’t believe I won’t see you, Rae. You’ll see me – Mum and Dad have loads of pictures, plus video of holidays, you’ll be bored to death of seeing me splashing around in the sea and slurping ice-creams. I might look young to you, for a Mum. But no – of course, all the mums are young in your world.

  I want to tell you one thing I’ve decided, my darling. If they implant on Monday and it doesn’t work – if my pregnancy is not confirmed at the end of the week – I shan’t try again. That chance of me not being pregnant, is the last deciding straw. If I am pregnant then you are meant to be. If I’m not, then you’re not – well, you won’t be! You won’t be reading this. And I’ll stay alive and go to Eden.

  The sirens have been going mad all night. Early this morning lots of police vans drew up on the side road of the park, and police with riot shields ran across the road. The window here won’t open but I could hear faint bursts of shouts and chanting. I turned on the little TV in the corner and it was weird seeing the main entrance of this very hospital up there on the screen. There was a massive protest going on. FLAME definitely, and some women with the purple Mothers for Life banners, and a chanting chorus of Noahs. There were Animal Liberation Front kids too, the commentator said the police were taking their threats very seriously. I turned off the sound. I watched the people pushing and struggling and waving their arms at each other, and the police shoving through them, and it made me feel really tired. Let them carry on, I thought. They will carry on. They’ll carry on like that, thrashing about, hitting each other and smashing things, blindly lashing out at the world – until some way forward becomes clear. Until the new babies are born. I touched the remote and the swirling mass of them disappeared.

  Mr Golding came to see me this morning, bringing a consent form for me to sign. He told me that for the time being, no one was going in or out. Staff had slept in the hospital. ‘We are under siege!’ he joked. There were FLAME activists picketing all the entrances. Some Animal Liberationists had been arrested. He told me the hospital has all essential supplies. ‘We hope they will get tired and go home,’ he said ‘We avoid escalation. But we must explain to your parents.’

  I was relieved it was Mum who answered but as soon as she heard my voice she burst into tears. She kept telling me it was too soon. It wasn’t a conversation, it was just two people repeating opposite things:

  Me – I’m fine, I’m where I want to be.

  Mum – You need more time.

  In the end I just had to tell her I’d see her very soon, and put the phone down. I wanted to keep my mind happy and peaceful for you, to stay inside my own calm, and keep floating forward.

  I spent the whole day writing, stopping now and then to stare out at the sky, at the slowly, endlessly shifting clouds. Rosa knocked on my door in the afternoon and I told her I would see her later. We had our tea together and sat talking for a long time after it. She was different. I still don’t know whether to believe everything she says, but I guess I did believe her when she said, ‘Nothing good ever happens to me.’ She never knew her Dad. Her Mum’s boyfriend was awful to Rosa and tried to make her have sex with him. There was no one she could tell, there was nowhere she could go. That was when she ran away. She went to London and slept rough and got taken to a hostel. She said she had sex with men to get money. She went back to her Mum’s flat after her Mum kicked the boyfriend out, but she and her Mum fought all the time. Rosa met a drummer at a club and it was love at first sight and she moved in with him. But when he’d been drinking he was violent. He beat her up so she moved back to her Mum’s again. Her Mum was an agency nurse and that’s how Rosa found out about the frozen embryos.

  Everyone she met seemed to make Rosa’s life worse. All the kids at school – like me. Avoiding her, thinking she was weird, hating her for goi
ng with Baz. I thought, she’s only volunteering because of us. It was almost as if I was her murderer. I wondered about telling Mr Golding. Then I remembered that Baz had said, ‘You’re both mad.’ What would she do if Golding told her she couldn’t volunteer? Go back to her Mum’s? This was the place she wanted to be; like me.

  Now we’ve started telling each other our dreams, and the daft things that pop into our heads. And we’ve started talking about our babies, and imagining you might be like a sister and brother. She wants her child to be called Zac. I hope the two of you will know each other.

  And that is strange. Because you’ll know if it’s happened, and I won’t. Your reality is my dream, and I must lose my reality for you to become real. Then I will be just a dream to you. Swapping places, either side of the line of being alive. Except you’re not dead. You’re not alive yet, but I don’t have the word for what you are. You’re waiting to be alive, they are probably unfreezing you right now, and the whole magic pattern of genes and cells which will grow into you, is triggered. It makes me think of a Chinese shell I got in my Christmas stocking; a dull little grey shell. You drop it into water and slowly the shell opens, and a beautiful pink flower magically spirals out of it. That’s you!

  The protestors have been going mad and there have been lots of arrests. But anyway, Dad got in to see me. I told Mr Golding I was nervous about seeing him again, so he was escorted to my room by a security guard who waited outside the door. Dad hugged me then he went and sat at the chair by the window. He had a bandage wound round his right hand, with his fingers poking out. I sat on the bed and there was this silence. I tried to think of something to say, then I looked at him and he was crying. I asked him to stop. He got up and turned his back to me, staring out the window and rubbing his eyes. When he was still I crept over to him and he put his arm round my shoulders and we stood looking out the window together at the watery spring sunshine and the buds on the trees in the park.

  ‘Perfect crime,’ he said softly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She’ll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you’ll get away scott free. At the end of nine months she’ll be taken off life support and she’ll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed.’

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘That’s wrong.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You know what was the perfect crime? MDS. Engineer a virus so it’s deadly and airborne. You don’t even have to be there, it travels all around the world on its own and kills millions of women, and there’s nothing to link it to you. Remote mass murder. That’s the perfect crime.’

  ‘Well that’s true,’ he said.

  ‘And what I’m doing is the perfect solution.’

  He squeezed my shoulders. ‘An answer for everything, my Jess.’

  ‘Well I have got a Father of Wisdom.’

  He faced me and I looked for the tiny beginning crinkle of a smile. But what he said was, ‘This is wrong, Jess. I wish you wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘I know. But I’m going to.’

  He let go of me, and sat in the chair again. ‘Right. Well what d’you want to talk about?’ There was a pause then he said, ‘The weather?’

  ‘I want you to promise you and Mum will look after her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Her, him, I don’t know. I’ve been imagining a girl.’

  ‘If I said I wouldn’t, would it stop you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cath and I have to give up our own daughter and substitute the child of strangers. We have to go through every step of the past sixteen years that we’ve loved and lived with you, being reminded every day of what we’ve lost.’

  ‘She won’t be a stranger’s child.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘The baby will be my half-sister, or brother. Mr Golding said it would be fine.’

  There was a little pause. ‘That’s no reason for you to expect us to agree.’

  ‘It is a reason for you to look after the baby.’

  ‘It’s no reason. You don’t need to do this. There will be other solutions.’

  ‘Dad – ’

  ‘There will be, believe me. Please.’ He knelt on the floor and put his arms around my legs. There was nothing I could do.

  The security guard helped him up and took him away. Then Mum came in the afternoon and it was just as bad. I can’t bear it and I can’t change it and I can’t help it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Today

  Well my dear one, now you are implanted. Now it’s up to you, whether to live or not. I’ve written and written till my arm aches and a writer’s bump has appeared on my middle finger. And now I’ve just been sitting by the window letting my mind go blank. Whatever I write now is me hanging onto your coat sleeve because I don’t want to part. I should just say goodbye, shouldn’t I ? Rosa and I have tried to guess at what your lives might be like – yours, Rae, and Zac’s. We hope you’ll be friends. But what it boils down to is this: I have to end for you to begin. Your life is after mine.

  Rosa went down to the ward this morning and Dr Nichol has just told me her pregnancy is confirmed. They’ll test me tomorrow. Now I’ve said my goodbyes I don’t have to see anyone else. I’m enjoying being quiet, sitting by the window in my little room, staring out at the world. I’m enjoying the way it is receding, all worries becoming flimsy, as easy to brush away as cobwebs.

  I like watching the main road from up here. Now they’ve cleared all the protestors the traffic is flowing again. I think about where the drivers are going. Maybe that one’s heading home after working late. He’ll open the door and call ‘Hello?’ and go into the warmth of the kitchen, unbuttoning his coat. ‘At last!’ his wife will say, ‘I’m starving.’ She’s taking the fish pie out of the oven. ‘Did you wait for me? That’s nice,’ he says, pulling up his chair to the table. ‘That smells good.’

  Maybe that one is on his way to a meeting to discuss staging the closure of a nursery. When he arrives no one else is there yet, so he moves the chairs into a circle on the blue carpet and sits at one of the little desks to write an agenda. Maybe that one is looking for her lost cat, which is brown and white like an unripe conker. The motorist crawls along slowly, peering into the darkness.

  Maybe that one is driving to the airport, meeting nobody, speaking to no-one. Silent and deadly, a little cotton-wool wrapped vial in a metal box in his briefcase. A new virus. He hates everyone, he’s a perfect criminal. But as he accelerates away from the roundabout, a cat which is brown and white like an unripe conker darts in front of the oncoming car, which brakes and skids and comes crashing into his. His car flips and bursts into flames, killing him on the spot. The intense heat burns through his briefcase and melts the metal box into a sealed black blob, safely entombing that virus forever.

  A man who stops to try and help rings the ambulance. As he drives slowly on to the all-night supermarket he is obsessing about the new formula which he and his colleague are convinced may be the first step towards a cure. He puts a jar of damson jam in his basket and has a sudden flash of inspiration. Excitedly he rings his colleague. She thinks he could be right, and they agree to adjust their research first thing in the morning.

  Everyone is moving. We each follow our business as importantly as dogs trotting down the street. No one can tell who is special or who is not. All these stories must go on. On and on to their children’s children.

  Dad talked about fear. He doesn’t understand why I’m not afraid. ‘Fear is like pain, it’s the body’s warning system. It teaches us to protect ourselves.’ I told him I’m not afraid because I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to have an injection and fall asleep. What’s to be afraid
of? ‘When people are executed they know exactly what’s going to happen and most of them are terrified,’ he replied. I told him, these people weren’t choosing to die. Look at suicide bombers, they don’t display fear. They have to concentrate on what they’re doing, on putting themselves near the enemy and detonating their device without causing suspicion. They really have to be brave. All I have to do is be looked after, I don’t have to worry about doing it wrong, messing up, getting caught. There’s no need for fear.

  What I’m doing has made him ill and old, he’s gone smaller and the bags under his eyes sag right down his cheeks. And when I saw Mum’s white face and red eyes I felt like a torturer. I know I’ve written bitchy things about them, and stupid kinds of childishness. But it’s the only chance now of them ever understanding. So I’m writing them a note to go with this, saying they can read it too. I hope that’s alright. Mum? Dad? Hello from Jessie! Imagine me leaning out of a train window, blowing you a great big kiss!

  I’ve been thinking about going. I was thinking about fireworks. After a rocket explodes. What happens to its trajectory? Not the burnt stump and stick that fall to earth, but the trajectory of the rocket’s rise? If you could take a pencil and draw a line on from where it explodes, keep going on and up and round, higher and higher, curving out into space. Or what happens at the end of a CD. When you’ve listened to the music and the music finishes. You know the sound you hear, the recorded silence at the end? Something still going on. Even though it’s not the song.

  Dearest Rae,

  This really is the last, because it’s four in the morning and today is my test and they’ll keep me on the ward if it’s all OK. They’ll take me down at 8. I’ve been sitting here by the window and it’s so beautiful, I have to tell you. The sky is clear and about an hour ago the moon came up. It’s nearly full, just a couple of days off full, I’d guess. In the small hours there was no traffic and everything was perfectly calm and still. You can’t see the stars because of the streetlamps, but you can see the moon up there alone in the sky. The bright deserted streets look mysterious and welcoming, waiting for everything to start again, waiting for the world to wake up.