Emma Donoghue Two-Book Bundle (2 page)

Now, these weren’t the sort of thoughts to be having, were they? Relaxing thoughts were what were needed; warm thoughts, sexy thoughts. Beaches and open fires and hammocks and … no, not babies. Would it look like him, he wondered for the first time, this hypothetical West Coast child?

He hadn’t been letting himself think that far ahead. All week he’d been determined to do this thing, as a favour to Carmel, really, though Carmel thought he was doing it for her best friend. He’d been rather flattered to be asked, especially by someone as high-powered as Sarah Lord. He couldn’t think of any reason to refuse. It wasn’t your everyday procedure, and he wasn’t planning to mention it to his mother, but really, where was the harm? As Carmel put it the other night, ‘It’s not like you’re short of the stuff, sweetie.’

Still, he preferred not to dwell on the long-term consequences. The thought of his brief pleasure being the direct cause of a baby was still somehow appalling to Padraic, even though he had three sons and loved them so much it made his chest feel tight. He still remembered that day in Third Year when the priest drew a diagram on the blackboard. The Lone Ranger sperm; the engulfing egg. He didn’t quite believe it. It sounded like one of those stories adults made up when they couldn’t be bothered to explain the complicated truth.

Padraic sat up straighter on the glossy toilet seat. He did ten complete body breaths. It was all he remembered from that stress training his company had shelled out for last year. Three hundred euro a head, and the office was still full of squabbles and cold coffee.

He unzipped his trousers to start getting in the mood. Nothing stirring yet. All Very Quiet on the Western Front. Well, Sarah couldn’t expect some sort of McDonald’s-style service, could she?
Ready in Five Minutes or Your Money Back.
She wasn’t paying for this, Padraic reminded himself. He was doing her a great big favour. At least, he was trying to.

He zipped up his trousers again; he didn’t like feeling watched. If he could only relax there would be no problem. There never was any problem. Well, never usually. Hardly ever. No more than the next man. And Carmel had such a knack …

He wouldn’t think about Carmel. It was too weird. She was his wife, and here he was sitting on a very expensive toilet preparing to hand her best friend a jar of his semen. At the sheer perversity of the thought, he felt a little spark of life.
Good, good, keep it up, man. You’re about to have a wank,
he told himself salaciously,
in the all-new, design-award-winning Finbar’s Hotel. This is very postmodern altogether. That woman out there has flown halfway round the world for the Holy Grail of your little jarful. Think what the pope would say to that!

This last taboo was almost too much for Padraic; he felt his confidence begin to drain away at the thought of the pontiff peering in the bathroom window.

Dirty, think honest-to-god dirty thoughts.
Suddenly he couldn’t remember any. What did he used to think about when he was seventeen? It seemed an aeon ago.

He knew he should have come armed. An hour ago he was standing at the Easons magazine counter, where the cashier had looked about twelve, and he’d lost his nerve and handed her an
Irish Independent
instead. Much good the
Irish Independent
would be to him in this hour of need. He’d flicked through it already and the most titillating thing in it was a picture of the president signing a memorial.

This was ridiculous.
You’re not some Neanderthal; you were born in 1961.
Surely he didn’t need some airbrushed airhead to slaver over? Surely he could rely on the power of imagination?

The door opened abruptly. Sarah, who had turned her armchair to face the window so as not to seem to be hovering in a predatory way, grinned over her shoulder. ‘That was quick!’

Then she cursed herself for speaking too soon because Padraic was shaking his head as if he had something stuck in his ear. ‘Actually,’ he muttered, ‘I’m just going to stretch my legs. Won’t be a minute.’

‘Sure, sure, take your time.’

His legs? Sarah sat there in the empty room and wondered what his legs had to do with anything. Blood flow to the pelvis? Or was it a euphemism for a panic attack? She peered into the bathroom; the jar was still on the sink, bone-dry.

Five minutes later, it occurred to her that he had run home to Carmel.

The phone rang eight times before her friend picked it up. ‘Sarah, my love! What country are you in?’

‘This one.’

‘Is my worser half with you?’

‘Well, he was. But he’s gone out.’

‘Out where?’

Curled up on the duvet, Sarah shrugged off her heels. ‘I don’t know. Listen, if he turns up at home—’

‘Padraic wouldn’t do that to you.’

There was a little silence. In the background, she could hear the
Holby City
theme on the television, and one of the boys chanting something, over and over. ‘Listen, Carmel, how did he seem this morning?’

Her friend let out a short laugh. ‘How he always seems.’

‘No, but was he nervous? I mean, I’m nervous, and it’s worse for him.’

‘Maybe he was a bit,’ said Carmel consideringly. ‘But, I mean, how hard can it be?’

Who started giggling first? ‘Today is just one long double entendre,’ said Sarah eventually.

‘How long?’

‘Long enough!’

And then they were serious again. ‘Did you bully him into it, though, Carmel, really?’

‘Am I the kind of woman who bullies anyone?’

This wasn’t the time for that discussion. ‘All I mean is, I know you want to help.’

‘We both do. Me and Padraic both.’

‘But you most of all, you’ve been through the whole thing with me, you know what it’s been like, with the clinic … And I swear I wouldn’t have asked if I had anyone else.’ Sarah was all at once on the brink of tears. She stopped and tried to open her throat.

‘Of course.’ After a minute, Carmel went on more professionally. ‘How’s your mucus?’

‘Sticky as maple syrup.’

‘Good stuff. It’s going to happen, you know.’

‘Is it?’ Sarah knew she sounded like a child.

‘It is.’

All at once she couldn’t believe what she was planning. To wake up pregnant one day and somehow find the nerve to go on with it, that was one thing, but to do it deliberately …
For cold-blooded and selfish reasons,
as the tabloids always put it. In fantastical hope, as Sarah thought of it. In fear and trembling.

‘Are you sure you can’t come over for a little visit?’ asked Carmel.

‘I really can’t. I’ve a meeting in Brussels tomorrow morning, before I head back to the States.’

‘Ah well. Next time.’

Padraic was leaning on the senior porter’s desk, which was more like a lectern. He spoke in a murmur, as if at confession.

‘Our library on the third floor has all the papers as well as a range of contemporary Irish literature, sir,’ muttered the slightly stooped porter, as if reading from a script.

‘No, but magazines,’ said Padraic meaningfully.

‘We stock
Private Eye, Magill, Time
…’

‘Not that kind.’ Padraic’s words sounded sticky. ‘Men’s magazines.’

The old man screwed up his eyes. ‘I think they might have one on cars …’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he said under his breath.

Then, at his elbow, just the woman he could do without. ‘Are you all right there, Padraic?’

‘Máire.’ He gave her a wild look. She was just trying to catch him out at this stage. Was she following him all over the hotel to examine the state of his trousers? Just as well he didn’t have the bloody erection he’d spent the last fifteen minutes trying to achieve. She’d probably photograph it for her files.

‘This gentleman—,’ began the porter in his wavering voice.

‘I’m grand, actually.’ And Padraic walked off without another word.

What did it matter if they thought he was rude? Máire had clearly made up her mind that he was cheating on Carmel with his wife’s best friend. When the fact was he would never, never, never. He wasn’t that type of guy. He had his faults, Padraic admitted to himself as he punched at the lift button, but not that one. He was a very ordinary man who loved his family. There was nothing experimental about him; he didn’t even wear coloured shirts.

Then what the fuck am I doing here?

He didn’t have a key to room 101; he had to knock. Sarah let him in, talking all the while on a cordless phone. Her smile didn’t quite cover her irritation. ‘Cream,’ she said into the phone. ‘Cream linen. But it didn’t travel well.’ He gave her a thumbs-up and headed into the bathroom.

Now he was well and truly fucked. Tired out, without so much as a picture of Sharon Stone to rely on. Funny how it seemed so easy to produce the goods when they weren’t wanted. He considered the gallons of the stuff he’d wasted as an adolescent when he locked himself into the bathroom on a daily basis. He thought of all the condoms he’d bought since he and Carmel got married. And tonight, when all that was required was a couple of spoonfuls …

He sat on the toilet and rested his head on his fists. What on earth had induced him to agree to this mad scheme? It just wasn’t him. He knew Irish society was meant to be modernizing at a rate of knots, but this was ridiculous. It was like something off one of those American soaps with their convoluted plots, where no one knows who their father is until they do a blood test.

Sarah was still on the phone; he could hear her muted voice. Who was she talking to? She was probably complaining about him, his lack of jizz, so to speak. Padraic stared round him for inspiration. A less sexy room had never been devised. Sanitary, soothing. The only hint of colour was Sarah’s leopard-skin toilet bag.

Reckless now, he unzipped it and rifled through.
Pervert,
he told himself encouragingly. Looking through his wife’s friend’s private things … her spot concealer, her super-plus tampons. He felt something stirring in his trousers. He sat down again and reached in. He clung to this unlikely image of himself as a lecherous burglar, an invader of female privacies. A man who could carry a crowbar, who might disturb a woman who was having her bath, some independent single businesswoman with sultry lips, a woman like Sarah …

Oh my god.
If she only knew what he was thinking, barely ten feet away—

Never mind that.
Hold on to the fantasy. The crowbar.
No, chuck the crowbar, he couldn’t stoop to that. He would simply surprise … some beautiful, fearful woman and seize her in his bare hands and—

If Carmel knew he had rape fantasies she’d give him hell.

Never mind. Do what you have to do. Keep at it. Nearly there now. Evil, smutty, wicked thoughts. The gorgeous luscious open-mouthed businesswoman
…
bent over the sink
…
her eyes in the mirror
…

By now he had forgotten all about the jar. His eye fell on it at the last possible minute.

Now wouldn’t that have been ironic,
Padraic told himself as he screwed the lid back on with shaking hands.

It didn’t look like very much, it occurred to him. He should have brought a smaller jar. A test tube, even.

He gave himself a devilish grin in the mirror. Endorphins rushed through his veins. Now what he’d love was a little snooze, but no, he had a delivery to make.

Sarah was reading some spiral-bound document, but she leapt up when he opened the door, and the pages slid to the floor. ‘Wonderful!’ she said, all fluttery, as he handed over the warm jar. Her cheeks were pink. She really was quite a good-looking woman.

‘Hope it’s enough,’ he joked.

‘It’s grand, loads!’

It struck him for the first time that she might need some help with getting it in.
Oh god, please let her not upend herself and expect me to
… But he was too much of a gentleman to run away. He hovered. Sarah, acting like she did this every day, produced a syringe.

‘Wow,’ said Padraic. ‘I hope they didn’t search your bag at customs.’

‘No, but it did show up on the X-ray screen.’ She gave a breathless little laugh.

‘Wow,’ he said again. Then, ‘It might have been easier to do it the old-fashioned way!’

It was a very cold look she gave him. Surely she couldn’t think he meant it? A touchy subject, clearly. (Weren’t they all, these days?) Padraic knew he should never make jokes when he was nervous. He felt heat rise up his throat.

‘I’ll get out of your way, then, will I? Treat myself to a whiskey. Maybe you’ll come down and join me after?’

He couldn’t stop talking. Sarah smiled and nodded and opened the door for him.

She tried lying on the bed with her bare legs in the air, but it was hard to keep them up there.
Hurry, hurry,
she told herself; the jar was cooling fast. How long was it they lived? Was it true that boy sperm moved faster but girl sperm lived longer? Or was it vice versa? Not that she gave a damn. She’d take whatever God sent her, if he was willing to use this form of special delivery.
Please just let this work.

Finally, she ended up lying on the carpet with her feet up on the bed. She felt almost comfortable. It was crucial to feel happy at the moment of conception, someone at work had told her. Awkwardly, leaning up on one elbow, she unscrewed the lid of the jar and began to fill the syringe. It was certainly easier at the clinic, where all she had to do was shut her eyes, but it felt a lot better to be doing this herself without anyone peering or poking. Just her and a little warm jar full of magic from a nice Dublinman with a name. Nothing frozen, nothing anonymous.

There, now, she had got a good grip on the plunger. She would just lay her head back and take a few relaxing breaths …

The knock came so loud that her hand clenched.

‘No thank you,’ she called in the direction of the door.

No answer. She took one huge breath and pressed the plunger.

Afterwards, she could never remember hearing the door opening. All she knew was that the assistant porter was standing there staring, in his ludicrous striped jacket, like something out of Feydeau. And she was on her feet, with her skirt caught up around her hips. ‘Get out,’ she bawled. She tugged at the cloth and heard a seam rip. There was wetness all down her legs.