by Adele Parks
The doctor sighed and said, 'Unexplained is exactly that. It's self-explanatory.' He shrugged apologetically. 'Physically there's nothing stopping either one of you conceiving a child. Elizabeth is ovulating on time. Your sperm count is fine. There's no sign of tube damage or endometriosis. Everything is in order. You're a healthy young couple.' He pushed his glasses further up his nose and looked doubtful. 'Thirty per cent of infertility is unexplained.'
'That is ridiculous,' snapped Roberto. 'There must be more you can do.'
The doctor shrugged. He looked as tired and worn as we did. I wanted him to reassure and encourage, like some sort of sports coach, but I got the feeling that he knew we were dropping down the fertility league tables and he couldn't brook our relegation. He sighed.
'We could run a test and see if Elizabeth's vaginal fluids repel your sperm; that's often the answer in cases such as this.'
If he was intending to be more specific about exactly what this test would entail or whether he could offer us a treatment depending on the results of the test, he wasn't given the chance. Roberto leapt from the chair as though someone had put thousands of volts through it, grabbed my arm and dragged me from the surgery.
Out on the street it suddenly seemed miserably cold. An autumn wind scratched my skin and I watched leaves and litter skittering across the road. The doctor's ugly words stood on the pavement with us, more real than the longed-for pram with a chubby baby inside. Roberto swore, repeatedly and in Italian. He kicked a discarded, crushed can and then a wall. For a split second I wondered if he wanted to kick me or at least my hideous repelling juices.
'Va fanculo stupid doctor,' he muttered time and time again. 'He know nothing. Nothing.' Roberto finally dragged his eyes to mine. He stopped cursing and pulled me to his lips. The swearing and blaspheming was swallowed as he kissed me passionately. He flagged a cab, bundled me into it and gave our home address. I didn't realize I was crying until the tears splashed on to my hands, which were folded on my lap. I guess I was practising self-restraint. If my hands were free to flay I might have caused myself harm. What good was I? What was the point of me? Roberto resumed the muttering and vicious swearing and maintained it at a ferocious level for the entire journey. We were, most likely, terrifying. We must have been, because even the cabbie (normally an irrepressible breed) did not dare to pass bigotries or pleasantries.
We were barely through the door before Roberto started loosening his belt and pulling up my skirt. He yanked down my knickers and entered me almost immediately. We had sex on the stairs; urgently and angrily he rode me hard and fast. The sweat ran down his back and slipped between his buttocks. I clasped him tightly and tried to ignore the friction burns that were developing on my shoulders and elbows. He thrust over and over again, as though he was chasing something. Perhaps he wanted to go deeper than ever before. Perhaps he sought to be nearer than ever before. It was clear he thought that he was battling my murderous juices. His needy rutting was not exciting or fulfilling, it was desperate. It put me in mind of Alice chasing the crazy White Rabbit. I'm late. I'm late. I heard him repeatedly mutter the names of saints. He sometimes did this to delay orgasm, which I'd always thought sweet and amusing. I liked the fact that he found me so desirable he had to employ particular techniques to prolong our pleasure. That day I listened carefully and soon realized that this time he wasn't trying to counter the carnal by thinking holy thoughts; he was praying.
'This time, please God,' he whispered. Roberto and I locked eyes. His face was swimming through my tears. He kissed the wetness from my cheeks. 'This time please God. We need this baby.'
After he came he collapsed on to me. His body, a dead weight, desperate to make a new life. He lay still for some moments before he summoned the energy to struggle to stand. Still in his socks, with his trousers around his ankles, he impatiently kicked his clothes away and then carried me, like a new bride, to our bedroom.
There, we made love slowly and carefully for the entire afternoon. He kissed and caressed me, as though he was trying to wipe away the doctor's filthy words. With each stroke he tried to ease the misery of our uncooperative bodies and ward off the desolate thought of a childless future. His touch patched me and comforted me for brief seconds at a time and – when I let my self-hate recede – his touch excited me.
He expertly eased me from one position to the next, leaving me feeling delicate and ladylike (not true – I'm reasonably sturdy and solid); he appeared powerful and controlling. It was brilliant of him to know that I needed to feel feminine and he needed to feel masculine. The months of tests had eroded those roles and the doctor's words had desexed us in a final fatal blow.
He slowly took off the remainder of my clothes and his. He made a long, lingering trail of kisses up and down my body. He'd always been a conscientious and careful lover but that day he took us to a new level. He cupped my breasts as though he'd never held them before. He trailed his fingers along my spine and over my buttocks. He seemed to anticipate where I needed to be touched next and the pressure I required him to apply. Moaning softly, roving leisurely, so gently, as though he had all the time in the world to spend on me, his long fingertips finally provoked, and tugged, and spun me into overdrive. He made me feel wanted, needed. Thrilled and thrilling. I came and then came again. With each wave of orgasm we hoped, wished and prayed that we were creating. We wanted to believe that the doctor's hateful analysis could be willed away, that if we loved long enough, deep enough and hard enough we'd make a life. It was the best sex we'd ever had or certainly had since. It felt clean, purposeful and important. I felt passionate, consumed and joyful.
But there was still no baby.
5
We stopped talking about it. Roberto greeted the period after my right royal seeing-to in silence. He watched me throw a box of Tampax into the supermarket trolley but did not comment. There was nothing left to say.
Thirty-two with no children wouldn't actually be too bad if I wasn't married. Then people would satisfy their curiosity about my life by constantly asking me if I'd 'met anyone special?' Then you fast-forward six months and the same people would be able to ask, 'Have you named a day?' There's a natural progression to conversations about relationships. Everyone knows the script. After discussing bridesmaids' dresses and the honeymoon for a reasonable period of time, the next question is always, 'Are you thinking of starting a family, any time soon?' But Roberto and I have been married for six years and it's obvious to everyone if we were thinking of starting a family 'any time soon' then our plans are not panning out. It's embarrassing all around really. People don't know what to say to me any more. My barrenness renders them dumb.
So, for the last three years, I've pretty much confined my emotional meltdowns to the occasional outburst to Alison. If I have too much to drink or if yet another one of our mutual friends falls pregnant then I might have a moan or even a bawl, but largely I suppress my feelings of hideous self-pity which constantly battle with murderous envy and blind fucking fury and I manage to attend baby showers with a smile on my face. It's quite an achievement.
I'm still trying for a baby. Correction, we are still trying for a baby. Only we don't allow ourselves to indulge in imagining a family any more, at least not verbally. Roberto and I no longer talk about whether we need to move out of our small flat in order to have a proper-sized garden, we don't comment on other kids' behaviour and discuss what we'd do differently when we bring our own into the world. We don't talk about Roberto wowing our kids and their friends with his cooking skills, nor do we discuss how we'll spend family Christmases.
I still discreetly take my temperature every morning. I pee on a stick quite often too. I wait for the results. If I didn't feel ill before all of this became necessary, by now it would be easy to imagine that I have something seriously threatening. I try and have sex when there is (according to the books) the best chance of my conceiving but I know that Roberto can become resentful of this approach. So, while I know that my most fertile ti
me is eight to eleven days after my period (and I try to have sex every night around that time), I still try to slip in a quick one at least once a week, just so he doesn't see a pattern develop.
Roberto continues to think that we should just have spontaneous loving whenever the mood takes us. He reckons that's more natural and what will be, will be. He has greater faith in the big guy upstairs than I do. My money is on the scientists. Or the natural herbalists. Or the nutritionalists. Oh, OK, I do still have the occasional word with the big guy upstairs as well. I'll take anyone's help. On the up-side, I think Roberto's grateful that we have an active sex life. Other couples who have been together as long as we have settle for once a week – tops. But then other couples who have been together as long as we have often have two kids demanding attention and breaking their sleep.
Lucky buggers.
Whenever I get my period I become insufferable. Many women are irrational, angry, spotty or greasy-skinned around this time; I realize that I am all of those things plus fat, clumsy, forgetful – oh yes – and heartbroken. Every period is a failed baby; each bleeding seems one step closer to a lonely old age. I've never enjoyed having to bleed like a split pig once a month; there was no great moment when my mum took me out to buy sanitary pads and high heels, or if there was, I've totally forgotten it. I can't remember my first time; it was not a magnificent rite of passage, it was just life. Or so I thought. I accepted the embarrassment and inconvenience and downright mess of the whole business because I thought it was a necessary evil leading to what I most wanted in life. Now the hideous hassle of having to own two wardrobes – one to accommodate fat days – seems particularly galling and pointless.
Children anchor you. I'm weightless. Floaty. Like a balloon on a string hovering above rooftops, I need my string to be held by a chubby child hand. Everyone who has ever seen a floating balloon knows it's going to burst any moment. Balloons need hands.
I wish I could embrace my childless state. After all, we're still young; lots of our friends haven't even started thinking about having babies yet. Many of our friends rent cottages for cosy weekends away in the Cotswolds in the winter and go scuba-diving in exotic locations in the summer. Many still sit in noisy bars and drink until they fall off their stools, but it's different for them. Those friends sit in noisy bars because they have a choice. They believe that the moment they do want to procreate they just have to stop drinking, pop some folic acid and zinc and then have a shag. And you know what? It normally turns out that way too. It seems that all my friends are as fertile as a 50 kilo bag of Miracle-Gro garden fertilizer.
Roberto and I do not have a choice. We sit in noisy bars because there's no point sitting at home, listening to the emptiness of rooms that should be filled with kids' chatter. I know I should probably train at something and then throw myself into my career. At the very least we should sling on backpacks and run around Australia. But I don't want to. I want to sling on a Baby Bjorn and stroll around Kensington Gardens with all the other yummy mummies.
My friends who have kids try to tell me that being a parent is not always all it's cracked up to be. They grumble about their lack of independence and the endless nights of broken sleep but then they undo all their work in one unguarded glance. I see them look at their kids and it's clear that they adore them. Worship them. They love being mothers and would not swap their babies for all the riches imaginable. I watch couples pushing kids in prams. I'm not insensible, I know that many of those couples are bewildered and bickering. Sleep-deprived and bitchy. But I long to have a domestic about who changes the next nappy.
Alison does not share my longing for a child. She stopped being a waitress when we were twenty-two and now she's got this incredibly well-paid, stimulating, meaningful role advising Britain's farmers about marketing their organic produce. PR director or something, for . . . oh, I forget. Not the Soil Association but a similar body. Anyway, it's very worthwhile and she makes a difference. I know that much. She's always being asked for comment in the Guardian. My brother, Max, couldn't hide the fact that he was genuinely impressed and somewhat bemused by our friendship. He doesn't credit me with serious friends, or anything serious, come to that, except maybe a serious overdraft. He couldn't help himself, he actually asked me what we find to talk about. I told him mostly we talk about lipstick and her lesbian lovers. This isn't strictly true. We do talk about lipstick and Alison is a lesbian but we talk about other things too. I just wanted to shock him into being less patronizing. Just because I don't have a child my family think I am one.
I once asked Alison if she thought it was her fulfilling job or her sexuality that made her disinclined to have kids.
'My job, I think. Oh, yes, and lack of partner. I wouldn't fancy doing it alone. I'd want to be with someone who wanted to co-parent. But maybe it is my sexuality that means I don't have the same desire to subjugate all my needs, to care for someone else or several someone elses, in a set-up that has been crushing women's creativity and eroding their independence since time began.'
I can't believe the way she talks about family life.
Alison and I agree to differ on this issue and many others. Sometimes I think Max has a point, and even I wonder how the hell we've managed to stay friends for so long. We are so dissimilar. She thinks marriage and family life are the devil's work; a family home – modern take on hell. Or at least she would think that if she didn't completely reject any concept of an afterlife as anything other than superstitious nonsense, fence-sitting or delusion. I really think there's a possibility that there's life on other planets, Jesus seemed a nice man and I'd never walk under a ladder. I haven't got the confidence to go it alone without superstition and conjecture. I don't see any appeal in being a corporate slave, not even for a worthy corporation (although I do think she wears lovely suits). She's Old Labour. I'm a floating voter who often forgets to vote at all. She can point out any city in the world on a map and she can tell you most of the main historical events that have taken place there. My understanding of geography is limited to which act each country is putting forward for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Yet we love each other.
I think she appreciates the fact that I wasn't freaked out when she slipped out of the closet, aged twenty-three. Unlike many of her friends, I did not avoid her calls, make jokes about wearing dungarees or try to convince her that she just hadn't met the right man yet. Nor did I exclaim that she is too pretty to be a lesbian (as her mother insisted). Alison is very pretty, but if anything, only a woman would appreciate her true beauty. My best friend being gay has never been a problem for me, although it does cause other people more than a moment's discomfort. Her girlfriends (few and far between) are suspicious of me, as she always prioritizes our relationship over her latest lurve interest. She is not the sort to fall off the friendship radar only to reappear again a few months later, shamefaced and in need of a box of tissues.
Alison and I defy stereotypes. She is gay, but despite clichés, she's not in the slightest bit promiscuous (this has always disappointed my old boyfriends and even Roberto, who secretly long for me to fall off the heterosexual log just long enough for them to film something saucy); Alison rarely gets any action at all. I, however, have not gone longer than a few weeks since I was eighteen. I'm not promiscuous either, but I have always been a serial monogamist. The most generous way of describing the pair of us is I'm romantic, she's choosy.
Time counts. The fact that we have known each other for eleven years means a lot. Neither of us has any family in London. Roberto and I are her adopted family, she's ours. We've seen one another through the good, the bad and the ugly. She's probably the person who knows me best in the world, including Roberto, which is something he'd be horrified to hear. She's the person I ring when I get my period.
'Hiya,' I mutter. I don't bother to introduce myself, the mobile does that, and anyway of course we know each other's voices.
There's a pause. I can hear Alison type something. I bet she's checking
her electronic diary.
'You got your period,' she says with sympathy. I nod but can't trust myself to speak. For the last two months I've been struggling to swallow a herb called agnus castus (also known as chaste tree berry, which seems a bit odd to me considering it's a herb that's supposed to assist in impregnation). The herb tastes like a witch's vile brew and smells so badly that Roberto threatened to divorce me if I continued stewing the thing in the kitchen. Alison knows all of this and she's been supportive of me as I tried this latest fix. Occasionally she lets her guard slip and I catch her throwing out a glance which is clearly questioning my sanity, but most of the time she manages to pretend to be optimistic.
'This month's herb of choice didn't cut it, hey?' Alison states the obvious. I appreciate the effort she makes in keeping up with my treatments and remedies. She gets me a great discount on my organic veg boxes too. 'Isn't agnus castus supposed to help restore hormone imbalance?' she asks. She really must take notes when I blub.
'Yes,' I mumble.
'But you don't have a hormone imbalance, honey. The doctor said there was nothing wrong like that.'
'Well, he might have been mistaken,' I groan. 'Something is wrong, clearly. I'll try anything.'
I'm in an internet cafe and I'm looking at a web page entitled 'The Natural Way to Assist Fertility'. When I first discovered the site a few months back, I'd been quite excited. I know most of the sites related to my problem and have digested all the advice available. This site was new and therefore whispered possibility. There's a picture of a lady doctor wearing a white coat and a big smile. She's quite curvy, subliminally suggesting that she's given birth at least a dozen times. She's sat in the middle of a green alpine forest and exudes an aura of calm and confidence. I believed in her.
'The herb also helps increase fertility, it says so here,' I hiss-whisper to Alison. I'm aware that I am in a public place but I'm not as embarrassed as I probably should be. I've cried in much busier places.