The Cows

by Dawn O'Porter

  His gaze is like a laser beam. That introduction was horrendous. I sound pathetic, and even though I feel pathetic, I don’t feel that pathetic. I open my mouth, but all that comes out is a weird croak that Damien cuts off quickly.

  ‘I’m sure it’s hard to find the words. So let me ask you some questions, and I have to say,’ he puts his hand up to the camera, ‘off the record, if at any point this gets uncomfortable for you, you just tell me and we will stop. If I ask you something you don’t like, just let me know and we will move on, OK?’

  I say OK. But I know he’s lying. I’ve said that a thousand times at work. That is the host or producer’s way of manipulating contributors to feel like they are on their side. They are not. If I say I didn’t like a question, he will see that I am becoming emotional and know to push that particular subject as far as he can, in the hopes of getting some tears. It’s a classic tactic. I am not stupid and I won’t fall for it. He drops his hand and carries on.

  ‘Tara, take me back to that night. The night on the train. Where had you been previously to that?’

  ‘I’d been on a date and I was heading home,’ I say, thinking that part at least sounded quite normal.

  ‘Had the date been bad in some way? I mean, I don’t want to make any assumptions but you were going home alone. Were you upset?’

  ‘No, actually. I’d had a lovely time.’

  ‘OK, so you’re on the train, having had a lovely time. And then what happened?’

  ‘We all know what happened. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’

  ‘In your own words, please. For anyone watching who didn’t see the video.’

  ‘OK, I— I masturbated on a tube train.’

  The whole crew take a sharp inhalation. It’s hard to tell if they are shocked, or holding in laughter.

  ‘That’s right,’ continues Damien. ‘And why did you do that?’

  ‘I just did, I can’t be sure why.’

  ‘And would you say that is how you live your life; by succumbing to your urges, doing things your way, when you want to do them? Is that a trait of yours?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. I think I generally consider other people before acting for myself. That’s just part of being a parent, isn’t it?’ I say, thinking that sounded fair.

  ‘Hmm. We have a clip from a short interview last night that I did with your old employer, Adam Pattison from Great Big Productions. I wouldn’t say he completely agrees with that.’

  ‘Wait, what?’

  Damien tells a short guy in a baseball cap to play the film and I am urged to look at a tiny TV screen to my right. Adam’s face appears.

  ‘Tara was good at her job, there is no doubt about that. But part of the skill set for the kinds of programming she makes is being able to detach from other people’s pain. She did that very well. She would also lash out sometimes, and say incredibly cruel and unfair things, accusing people of being things they are not. Just out of nowhere, usually on email, which I thought was cowardly. She’s like a snake, she’ll slither along quietly and then SNAP, that tongue shoots out and stings. She could be very hurtful.’

  My mouth falls open. ‘That fu—’ I stop, thinking twice about giving a visual on the crap he just spouted about me. Damien carries on.

  ‘So, would it be fair to say that you live a life based on what is right for you, and not anyone else? Like having a child by someone and never telling them, for example?’

  ‘We’re not here to talk about that, though? I’m here to talk about what happened on the train, and how my life has been turned upside down since,’ I say, leaning my head away from the camera, as if that would stop them filming this bit. I know it won’t.

  ‘We are, and of course we will get to that. But firstly I think it’s important that we establish your nature, what led you to that moment of public indecency. And I’d like to start with the way you had a child, because the viewers will want to know how you told yourself that was acceptable.’

  ‘I’d really like to just talk about the masturbating part, please. That’s what we agreed.’

  ‘And we will, but first, did you deliberately have sex with that man with the hope of getting pregnant?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Now, please can we talk about me on the train?’

  ‘And when you found out you were pregnant; did you consider his feelings at all?’

  ‘Please,’ I continue, ‘I’m not here to talk about my daughter, or how I had her. That isn’t anyone’s business but mine.’

  ‘Well I’m not sure that’s entirely true, is it? Her father is somewhere out there and the poor man has no idea.’

  ‘The “poor man”? He’s not a poor man. He had a nice house and he got laid. Now, please, can we get back to what we agreed.’

  He puts his hand up again, as if speaking off the record. ‘I’m just asking you the questions that the public want to know, Tara. If there are stones left unturned, this won’t be over.’ Annoyingly, I know he’s right.

  ‘But OK, we’ll move on for a minute while you get yourself together.’ He sits up straight, and gets back into arsehole mode.

  ‘How does it feel to have the public judge you in this way?’ he asks me.

  ‘It’s awful, it really is. I’ve cried more than I’ve ever cried in my life and I made myself sick because I could barely eat a thing. Everyone seems to have this perception of me and it just isn’t true. I’m a good person, and a good mum, and to be a hate figure like this is really upsetting, and very confusing.’

  I’m happy with that. Not too desperate. Articulate, precise and true.

  ‘You must deeply regret what you did?’ Damien asks and I find myself freezing. Cam’s words come flashing into my mind. Don’t apologise. Women do not need to apologise for being sexual. I realise she’s right. There are many things I should probably say, but sorry isn’t one of them. I can turn this around.

  ‘I wish I had waited until I got home,’ I say with a small smile on my face. He does not smile back.

  ‘And you must be very, very sorry?’

  ‘Not really, actually. I want people to know I’m not mental, but I’m not sorry for touching myself when I thought I was alone.’

  Damien looks twitchy, he shuffles in his chair, trying to think of manipulative ways to seduce me into a grovelling apology. But I won’t, I won’t say it. No matter how persecuted I feel, my future depends on the decisions I make from now on. I can’t change that my dad saw the video, I can’t turn the Internet off, but I can control how I cope with this publicly, and as far as that is concerned, I have two choices. I allow the public to win by begging for forgiveness and basically offering myself as comedy fodder for the rest of my life, or I own my own life and don’t diminish it by apologising. I mean, apologising? Who would I actually be apologising to? Sitting in front of Damien, some chubby TV twat who thinks he has one up on me because he believes acceptance from strangers is more important to me than acceptance of myself. But it isn’t, so I just don’t do it.

  ‘Tara,’ he pushes, ‘is there anything you would like to say?’

  I sit still and look at my knees, as if building up to the breakdown he is hoping I have, and then I lift my head and say, ‘Yes. It’s such a shame I got into so much trouble over it, because I had a really fantastic orgasm. Are we done?’

  11

  Cam

  Cam wakes up slowly; she feels terrible. The air is thick and musty in her room as she gets out of bed and opens the curtains and a window. Cool summer morning air flows in, and sunlight creeps over the London skyline, flooding the room with its luminous rays, but the usual high it offers her isn’t there today. This early summer brightness makes her feel worse. She gets back into bed, and curls into the foetal position.

  ‘Errrr,’ she says, in a groggy voice.

  ‘Still feeling ill, babe?’ says Mark, waking up next to her. He’d come over late last night with crisps and Diet Coke, as she thought they might have helped with the nausea. They didn’t. He reaches ove
r to gently stroke her boobs, and her reaction is to smack his hand away.

  ‘Woah, what was that about?’ he says, understandably taken aback by the violence.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbles, putting her hands to her boobs herself to investigate the swelling and the pain that she’s suddenly aware of. ‘PMT,’ she confirms.

  She rolls onto her back, exhaling through pursed lips, and feels sick again. She gets up and goes to the bathroom, where she vomits instantly.

  ‘You OK, babe?’ calls Mark from the bedroom.

  ‘All good now,’ she calls, casually, as she goes to clean her teeth. But a thought is lurking in the back of her head. The implant was supposed to last for three years; how long ago was it she had it put in? Two? Three? … Four?

  She drops her toothbrush on the floor, and bangs her head as she reaches down to get it.

  ‘FUCK EVERYTHING,’ Cam shouts, using it as an excuse to be emotional.

  ‘What’s the matter, babe?’ Mark says, suddenly appearing at the bathroom door. She turns to look at him, not knowing what the right thing to do is. When she opens her mouth, she doesn’t know what is going to come out.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she says.

  ‘What?’ replies Mark.

  Cam stares at him, as if he’s going to tell her it can’t be possible.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asks instead.

  ‘I don’t know; I’ve not done this before. Get a test?’ suggests Cam.

  ‘OK, shall we go now?’

  ‘OK.’

  They get dressed without saying a word, both with glazed, zombie-like looks on their faces, feeling like total strangers, despite months of physical intimacy.

  When she’s dressed, Cam sits on the end of the bed and puts her head in her hands.

  ‘Don’t worry, babe, if it’s happening, we’ll do the right thing,’ Mark says, being a great guy. Cam gets up and steps away from the support. She has a feeling that her idea of what constitutes ‘the right thing’ and his idea of ‘the right thing’ are probably very different.

  ‘You know, you don’t have to come. I’ll be OK. I’ll get a test, and if it’s positive I’ll text you later, OK?’ she says, feeling like she needs to be alone and regretting telling him.

  ‘No way, I’m coming. We’re in this together.’

  ‘No, Mark, please. I’d really like to be alone, OK? I’ll text you later.’

  ‘Babe, it takes two to ta—’

  ‘Mark, please don’t say tango. Were you going to say tango?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cam pushes a long, slow breath through her tight mouth. She might be sick again, or maybe she just needs some air.

  ‘Mark, I’d really like to be alone, OK? I’m feeling really sick, I’m sure it’s a false alarm, and that I’ll do the test, take some Pepto-Bismol, get my period and all will be fine. OK? Please, go to the gym, I’ll let you know later.’

  Mark thinks about arguing, but he knows Cam well enough to know that when she says she needs to be alone, there is no negotiation.

  ‘OK, but call me, OK? Not text.’ He puts on his denim jacket, and goes to the door. ‘This doesn’t scare me, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Cam says as he leaves.

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  In Boots, Cam takes one of every type of pregnancy test they have and drops them into a basket. There are five in total. She also grabs a big pack of Always Ultra to throw anyone who might be spying on her off the scent. At the check-out, she looks down and bobs gently up and down on the balls of her feet, doing all that she can to show the cashier she’s in a hurry. The cashier looks around to make sure her superior isn’t listening.

  ‘You must be very excited to want to know five times?’ she says, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Yeah, really really excited. I’m also in a hurry, sorry, can you …’

  ‘I understand. I was the same, just desperate to know. And to think there is this movement where women are deciding not to have children. It’s so sad.’

  ‘What movement?’

  ‘Oh, I read this awful article by this woman who says she never wants children. Trying to make other women follow in her footsteps. It’s not right. I have two and wouldn’t change it for the world.’

  ‘Yes, well, everyone is different.’

  ‘Well, fingers crossed for this test then.’ As she scans the pregnancy tests, her perfectly swept-up ponytail swings from side to side, making Cam feel sea sick.

  ‘I actually don’t want to be pregnant,’ she blurts out. ‘If I am, I won’t keep it.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I’m sorry if you find that upsetting, but I have the right to make that decision and not feel I can’t admit it.’

  ‘I just …’

  ‘Stop judging me!’

  ‘I’m not, I …’

  Cam snatches her card out of the card reader, grabs the bag of pregnancy tests and sanitary towels and storms out of Boots. Standing in the street with a carrier bag in her hand, she can’t stop the tears from rolling down her face. She has no idea why she is crying.

  ‘Fucking hormones,’ she says to herself, as she wipes tears from her eyes.

  Back at home, in her empty flat, Cam gets a coffee cup from the kitchen and pees into it. Sitting on the toilet, with the cup on the floor between her feet, she unwraps each test and drops all of them in at once. After a very long three minutes staring at the ceiling, she pulls the first test out. Then the next, then all the rest at once.

  ‘FUCK IIIITTTT,’ she screams, squeezing her head with her hands.

  The Face of Childless Women is pregnant.

  12

  Stella

  As the plain circle indicating NO HORMONES appears on the ovulation test, I learn that I am not ovulating again today. It’s OK, I can wait. This will happen, and it will be perfect. I wrap the test up in loo roll and put it in my bag. Coming back into the studio, I sit at my desk and take a huge glug of cough syrup right from the bottle. I imagine it thinning my vaginal mucus as it slops down into my guts. I’ve also brought in a high-alkaline, roasted vegetable bake for lunch. I’m doing all the things I can to ensure I conceive a boy. I realise this is a little obsessive, but I might as well do everything I can.

  Jason is busy writing. I think of him in his office, tapping away, his penis resting casually between his thighs, unaware of my plans to ravish it. Am I being cruel? I don’t think so. Men waste sperm all the time, tossed into the atmosphere like the dregs of a cup of coffee down a sink. They have no emotion toward that sperm, why should they have any emotion toward the ones that get used for their intended purpose?

  I am approaching this whole thing with a completely guilt-free attitude. Yes, Jason wants a baby, but he doesn’t want one with me, and I don’t need him beyond the obvious input he needs to have. My mother didn’t paint a glamorous picture of being a single parent, but she certainly painted the alternative as worse. I can do this alone; I want to do this alone. Forcing Jason to have a baby with someone he doesn’t love isn’t right. But deciding to keep a baby after a one-night stand with him is fair game.

  If there is anything I can take from my relationship with Phil, it’s that two adults who don’t love each other probably shouldn’t have a baby together. Or at least, they shouldn’t stay together if they have a baby.

  I’ll miss him though. Jason, I mean; I like seeing him every day. His handsome face, his charm, it’s all really nice to be around. Maybe there will be a way for me to have it all? I could say it’s someone else’s baby? But then he’d think I was slutty, sleeping with him and someone else so close together, and how would I prove it wasn’t his? What if he wanted a paternity test? No, I’ll need to quit work. He can’t know about the baby. Maybe we can stay in touch over email. I can write to him in a year and say I had one, but lie about when? Or maybe I just have to accept I can never see or speak to Jason again. The joy of motherhood will override the sadness of losing my job and not seeing him; it’s a small price to
pay for my life falling into place.

  I’m enjoying this. This feeling of being preoccupied. I sprang out of bed this morning, rather than my usual heavy slump. I have a mission, a purpose. I feel interesting. The only problem is I can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. For once I’d love to write a Facebook post; I have so much to say. But no, people wouldn’t get it. They’d think I was mad, deluded, they wouldn’t even try to understand. But I am itching to tell my story to someone.

  I guess there is one way I can share … I open my email.

  Hello Camilla

  So you probably think I’m some angry, crazy woman because I send you the messages that I do. But I’m not, really. I mean, I’ve got my shit, but I’m actually quite together. And what is crazy anyway? Is crazy letting life pass by without taking what you want from it? Or is crazy doing whatever it takes to get what you want? Is crazy only crazy when you hurt someone else? Like, when a tree falls, does it only make noise if there is someone there to hear it? A person can only be crazy if another person thinks it, right? Because to me, what I am about to tell you, is completely sane.

  Camilla, I am going to sleep with my boss. Not because I love him, or want him, but because I want a baby. I’m going to do what you said in your column, and take what I want. I don’t want to hurt him, he’s a good guy, so he never needs to know. Women get accidentally pregnant all of the time ‒ don’t you think, deep down, that it’s usually not an accident? Women pretend it is, but they know exactly what they are doing. So don’t judge me like you judge everyone else. You wouldn’t understand how I feel, because you say you don’t want children. You can’t even imagine what it’s like for someone like me, someone who wants a child so desperately but may never have the chance, because I can’t find a person who loves me enough to share the experience.