Inconceivable (14 page)

‘Congratulations, mate! Excellent move. Ewan is a genius and a God-sent antidote to all the crap your department normally commissions.’

Alarm bells began to ring.

‘Yes, that’s what
he
said,’ I replied limply.

‘He’s just the kind of raw, edgy talent we need for the new film initiative. It would be absolutely sensational if you could bring him and the whole Above The Line ethos into the Beeb. As it happens I’m having dinner with Justin and Petra at Mick and Jerry’s tonight so I’ll do everything I can to push it along. OK, mate? Well done.’

My coffee had just arrived but I was already rushing out of his office, scarcely bothering even to attempt an excuse. I ran as fast as I could back round the circle, bashing into internal mail trolleys and PAs with trays full of tea as I went. I arrived back in my office just in time to see the fax I had dictated to Daphne emerge from the machine having been transmitted as instructed.

Fate deals me blow after blow.

Dear Penny,

I
’ve decided. Since the next medical step for me is a laparoscopy, which is intrusive and not to be entered into lightly (like my bellybutton), it is foolish for me to ignore other possibilities.

Tomorrow is a full moon, my traffic light says I’ll be ovulating and Sam will just have to like it or lump it.

Oh my God.,

I
got home today and Lucy told me that tomorrow night, at midnight, she wants me to take her to the top of Primrose Hill, which is a
public park
, and shag her under the full moon.

I’m still hoping that this is some kind of joke.

Dear Penny,

T
onight is the night! Full moon! What’s more, the forecast is for a mild night with gentle breezes. Perfect. Perhaps the fates are finally going to be on my side.

Drusilla and I went to a fairy shop in Covent Garden at lunchtime and got some crystals. I don’t really believe in that sort of thing but I must say they really are rather beautiful and Drusilla assures me they’ll help. We sat together on a bench in Soho Square and energized them. This involved squeezing the crystals in the palms of our hands and, well, energizing them. Drusilla made a sort of low groaning noise but I just concentrated. I had a tofu pitta bread sarnie from Pret A Manger in the other hand so I imagine that I energized that too, which can’t hurt, can it?

I’ve also bought a nice thick picnic rug from Selfridge’s, because you want to be as comfortable as possible on these occasions. Also one of those inflatable pillows that people use in aeroplanes. This is to prop up my bum afterwards because I want to give Sam’s sperm as good a downhill launch as I possibly can. I have this vision of millions of them tumbling down some sort of water shoot (like the Summit Plummit at Disneyworld), hurtling off the end and then getting knocked unconscious in a fruitless effort to penetrate my cold unyielding eggs.

I also went to Kooka’i and bought an incredible new frock. It’s just a sheath, really, and I’m afraid my tum will bulge, but I’ll hold it in. The dress cost an entire week’s wages but Drusilla insists that this must be a sensual and erotic event, not just a sly bonk in a park. There’s to be wine and candles and I must reek of musk and primrose oil and ancient pagan scents. I really didn’t know where I was supposed to get ancient pagan scents in London on a Friday afternoon but Drusilla had it all sorted out. Rather conveniently, Boots do a set of soaps that cover the lot and she’d bought me a box as a present.

She also reminded me that I must remember to wear my silkiest pair of split-crotch panties and when I told her that I do not possess

pairs of split-crotch panties, silky or otherwise, she was quite surprised. Drusilla is definitely a dark horse, except I shouldn’t be surprised really; in the end being a witch is just about sex, isn’t it? Anyway, she insisted that we go immediately to a sex shop and buy some erotic underwear, but when we got in there I just couldn’t. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed, I was just laughing too much. I mean these places are
ridiculous.
They have these dildos the size of draught excluders! What on earth you’re supposed to do with them I just don’t know. Stand them in the hall for people to hang their hats on, perhaps? They also had these sets of Oriental Love Balls, which a girl is supposed to push up and then walk around with them in. I was just saying that I didn’t believe any woman ever walked around with Love Balls up her doo-dah when the assistant came over and said, ‘How are the Love Balls going, Drusilla?’

‘Lovely,’ replied Drusilla dreamily, giving her hips a little jiggle and smiling.

Do you know, I swear I heard a clanking sound. I am

so
parochial.

In the end we agreed that the most sensual thing of all would be to wear no knickers at all. I’ve always thought naughty underwear was curiously sexless. Except perhaps a sheer silk teddy, or French knickers, but I don’t think they’d be right for Primrose Hill and I doubt that you can get grass stains out of silk.

I played Celtic music and clannaed on my Walkman on the tube on the way home to get me into a mood of fertile pagan spirituality. I’m quite excited in a funny sort of way. It’s not often I shag alfresco these days. Quite frankly, it never has been a common occurrence with me. Insects and bare bums don’t mix.

I hope Sam cheers up about it, though. I regret to have to report that last night, when I told him what was expected of him, he was

most
unenthusiastic. In fact he got quite hostile. Obviously I can sort of understand his doubting the effectiveness of the plan. It’s a long shot, certainly, relying on the faint echoes and rhythms of the ancient world to jolly his sperm along. I’m highly sceptical myself, but I do wish he’d see that we must try everything. We’ve now been infertile for sixty-two months and all the doctors can think of doing about it is to pump me full of dye and video my uterus. Well, forgive me if I sound feminist, but with that in prospect I feel I have a right to expect Sam to explore every other avenue first.

It’s always the way, though, isn’t it, Penny? The poor woman gets the short end of the stick. Our bodies are so

complicated
! It’s like with contraception. The things women have to go through (all pointless in my case, it seems) and yet still men only worry about their own pleasure. I remember when Sam and I first started doing it regularly he wanted me to go on the pill or have a coil fitted because he didn’t like condoms. He said they were a barrier between us (well of
course
they are, that surely is the point). He said that they spoiled the sensual pleasure of our love-making. Basically what he was saying was that he didn’t want to put his dick in a bag. So instead would I mind either filling my body with chemicals or having a small piece of barbed wire inserted into me? In the end, I got a Dutch cap and God was that a palaver! Trying to put one of those in when you’ve had a bottle and a half of Hirondelle is not easy. The damn thing was always shooting across the bathroom and landing in the basin. Then there was that awful cream you had to put on. The nights that I nearly shoved toothpaste up my fanny and brushed my teeth with spermicidal lubricant! Makes my eyes water just to think about it.

Anyway, I’m digressing. As I often do when on the subject of the selfishness of men. Well, let’s face it, there’s just so much scope. But as I was saying re the Primrose Hill bonk, I just have to give everything a try, it’s a matter of life and…Well, I don’t know what, life and no life, I suppose, which is a pretty terrible thought. And anyway who knows what strange and powerful forces there are in the world? I mean the moon does definitely affect people, we know that. You only have to look at dogs. They go potty at full moon. And as Drusilla has pointed out, even vaginal juices have a tidal flow and so, when one comes to think of it, does sperm. I mean it might all just be a case of never having done it when the tide’s in. As for ley lines, well I admit that it sounds pretty unlikely. On the other hand certain places

do
have a special energy. I can remember once feeling very strange during a walk in the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey, and that’s supposed to be a mystic place, I think, isn’t it? Sam claims it was the macaroni cheese I’d had for lunch in that pub, but I know it wasn’t.

And what’s more, apart from any spiritual and mystical considerations, I had hoped that Sam might find the whole idea a bit raunchy. After all, we are lovers, aren’t we? Besides being boring old marrieds? Surely we can see all this in the light of a naughty, saucy adventure?

No chance, I’m afraid. Sam didn’t get home until half an hour ago (last-minute preparations for the PM tomorrow), and he’s insisting that he still has some calls to make. I’m writing this while he whinges and whines about comedy in his study. This was supposed to be our time, a time of erotic and sensual reflection. I’ve had my bath (by candlelight with rose petals floating on the water) and used all the soaps. I was really beginning to feel quite goddess-like and fertile and Sam is acting like it was just any other bloody night.

I bet Carl Phipps wouldn’t be in his study making calls about stupid comedy programmes while his lover lay damp and scented and naked upon their bed below.

No! I must

not
think that sort of thing. It’s wicked.

Sam has agreed to do it and that’s the main thing. I can’t expect him to suddenly turn into a romantic lead. All I need him to do is shag me at the appointed time and place.

T’will be dark in an hour. The moon is on the wax and the witching hour is nigh. Do you know, Penny? I’ve got this funny feeling that it might just work.

Dear Self,

I
t’s four o’clock in the morning and we’ve just got back from the police station. They were quite nice about it in the end, once they let me put my trousers back on. I thought I handled the whole matter pretty well, actually.

do not

Dear Penny,

S
am was ridiculous tonight, quite bloody ridiculous. I mean you just

give false names to the police, do you? Particularly ‘William Gladstone’. What chance is there of there being a man called William Gladstone having it off on the top of Primrose Hill in the middle of the night? I honestly think that if he hadn’t tried to give them a false name they would have let us go. I mean bonking isn’t illegal, is it? But of course when he claimed to be a nineteenth-century prime minister they asked for ID and immediately the game was up.

‘Oh yes,’ said Sam, ‘that’s it, I remember, my name’s Sam Bell just like it says on my credit card. Ha ha. Samuel Bell, William Gladstone; William Gladstone, Sam Bell. Easy mistake to make.’

When they asked him his occupation I said, ‘Prat,’ which made them laugh and helped a bit, I think. He looked like one of those men who stand on the end of train platforms. Not much of a turn-on at all. I explained to him as patiently as I could that Drusilla had insisted that a steamy passionate atmosphere was essential. We must both be highly, throbbingly almost primevally sexually charged. Timeless animals of passion, caught up in the eternal spinning vortex of all creation. After all, I pointed out, if we can’t be bothered to put the effort in then we can hardly expect the ancient gods and goddesses of fertility to do so either.

‘Hmm,’ he said and nodded in a kind of stunned way.

Anyway, I made him go and put on his black tie and dinner suit, which he wears to the BAFTA awards every year. He’s always been disappointed when wearing that suit, having never won a single award. They always give them to someone fashionable with smaller ratings. I prayed that the ancient and timeless deities of the firmament would change all that tonight and give him the most important prize of all.

Lucy made me put on black tie, which quite frankly made us look like Gomez and Morticia, particularly since she’d really gone to town with the black eyeliner. I must admit, though, she did look fantastic. Like a beautiful model, I thought. I really did and I said so. ‘You look like a beautiful model,’ I said and she said, ‘Oh yeah sure, I do not.’ Odd, that, the way women react to compliments. They’ll expend any amount of energy telling you that you never say anything nice to them and that you don’t fancy them, but when you do pay them a compliment they say, ‘Oh yeah sure, I do not.’ Nonetheless, I think she was pleased.

Sam suddenly started being rather sweet and I must say he looked very nice in his dinner suit. Most men do look good in black tie. Dinner jackets even make a paunch look sort of stately and dignified. Not that Sam has a paunch. Well, maybe a tiny one, but not really. Anyway, I thought he looked lovely, even though he still insisted on wearing his anorak ‘just till we got down to it’.

Actually I can scarcely credit it, but it was all beginning to get rather fun. Lucy had prepared some bits of artichoke on biscuits (fertile fruit, apparently) and oysters! We had them in front of the fire with a glass of red wine (just one) before getting in the car. Lucy had also bought a beautiful black crocheted shawl to keep her warm and it just looked fantastic with her white skin showing through the black, like a Russian princess or something.

As I say, her make-up was all dark and Gothic around the eyes and her lipstick was like a gash of shiny crimson. And she’d put on some long droopy silver earrings I’d never seen before.

All in all, she’d really made an effort, which I loved her for. I myself had tried to enter into the spirit of things by putting on the silk boxer shorts I got last Christmas and had so far never worn.

I do wish Sam hadn’t put on those Donald Duck pants. I know he was trying to be nice but you don’t need Disney characters when you’re trying to be all pagan and ritualistic, even if they are silk.

Anyway, we got there and amazingly found a parking place almost immediately (were the Gods intervening on our behalf?). And having got over the usual car palaver (Sam set the alarm off, I don’t know how he manages to do that so often), we stood there together at the foot of the ancient hill. It was only eleven-thirty so we had a good half-hour to climb up it and get down to it, so to speak. I tried to hold Sam’s arm but his hands were full.

It probably was silly to take along a stepladder but I thought the gates would be locked and we’d have to climb over a fence. They lock Regent’s Park up, I know that. Lucy thought it made us look like burglars and told me to go back and put it on top of the car, which meant five more minutes wrestling with bendy bungies.

It was a very quiet night for London and I must say the hill looked fantastic against the moon. We seemed to have it to ourselves apart from the birds and squirrels and, of course, the spirits of the night. Drusilla had assured me that the spirits would definitely be about. Flitting hither and thither, bringing good fortune for some, a hex for others. I thought I saw one but it turned out to be an unconscious homeless alcoholic slumbering on a bench near the children’s playground.

If we succeeded, if the gods really did bring us luck, I was going to bring my children to play on those swings every day.

Funny, as we made our way up the path, to my surprise I really did begin to feel all ancient and beautiful. I tried to close my mind to the fact of dirty, noisy, modern London all around me and allow my body to respond to the timeless rhythms and vibrations of the eternal cycles of life on earth that were swirling about me.

Of course it would have been easier if Sam had not kept telling me to watch out for dogshit, but I suppose he meant well.

I trod in this huge turd the moment we entered the park. Huge.

No mortal dog could have passed such a turd. Honestly, I went in almost up to my knee. Any deeper and I would have had to call for a rope. London Zoo is situated at the bottom of Primrose Hill and I was forced to conclude that an elephant must have escaped.

Oh, I do so hate treading in dogshit. I suppose that’s what you get for wandering around London’s parks in the dark, but why don’t people clear up after their dogs? In Australia the council supply plastic bags and special bins. You put your hand in the bag, pick up the turd then fold the bag back over it and drop it in the bin. Superb. And we call them uncivilized. Over here of course the bags would instantly be scattered to the four winds and the bins would be the target of every puerile little prat with a can of spraypaint in the neighbourhood. Graffiti artists? Like hell.

God I loathe the way liberal-minded people feel the need to defend this endless depressing scribbling as if it was some kind of vital and vibrant expression of urban culture, rather than just the work of arrogant bored little vandals that it is. I mean, whenever they talk about graffiti on the telly they always show some fabulous mural in the New York style executed over several months and now hanging at the Tate. Of course, people’s actual experience of this loathsome vandalism is nothing like that. It’s the endless repetition of the same identical scribble, executed purely to flatter the ego of the arrogant dickhead with the spray- can.

Halfway up the hill Sam suddenly started ranting about graffiti, which is a particular hate of his. God knows what made him think of it at that time. I told him to shut up because I was trying to influence my ovulation and I didn’t want him spoiling my positive vibe.

At the top of Primrose Hill I was amazed to discover that I was starting to get quite motivated. I mean I had expected to be petrified with embarrassment, but in fact I felt quite sexy. It was such a fine night and Lucy looked so beautiful standing there in the silvery light of the full moon. There’s a sort of look-out area at the top of the hill, with benches and a map of the panoramic view of London. We had it all to ourselves and it was suddenly very beautiful, like we were on a flying saucer hovering over London or something. Lucy took off her shawl and put it on a bench, then we stood for a moment, staring at the city all laid out before us. She looked so stunning in just her sexy crimson dress and with a gentle night breeze playing in her hair. I’d been worrying that I might get stage fright under the pressure and be one dick short of an erection, but no way! I was a tiger! I think I fancied her at that moment as much as I’ve ever fancied her, and that’s quite a lot, as it happens.

London looked like a great starry carpet spread all about us. It felt as if we were in
Peter Pan (
except that’s Kensington Gardens, not Primrose Hill). I thought for a moment about all the thousands of centuries that had gone before, when we could have stood on that very same spot and seen nothing but darkness below us. Suddenly our time on earth and the fact of being human seemed very small indeed. Completely insignificant in the grander scheme of things. Except that what we were hoping to do, what this night was meant to achieve, was in fact as big as the whole universe! New life! A new life was what we had come to this place to make. A brand new beginning. Should we succeed, this very moment would be the dawn of time for that child.

My baby’s entry point into the great circle of eternity.

We chose a place on the grass behind the concrete summit (Sam having first thoroughly checked the area with his torch for dog-do and used hypodermic needles, which was sensible) and laid our blanket on the ground. Then I put out the circle of candles around the blanket (little nightlights in jamjars that would not be spotted from afar) and sprinkled primrose oil about the place.

Then I lay down with the moon on my face and, ahem, raised the hem of my garment. Sam lay down on top of me, and, rather incredibly, we had it off. I must say I was proud of him. I’d been half expecting him to fail to deliver, but apart from complaining a bit about it being painful on his knees and elbows he was quite romantic about it. We kissed a lot (for us) and all that stuff, bit of stroking, etc. I shan’t go into detail, but I’m all for that sort of thing, you know, foreplay. It’s so easy as the years go by to neglect the preamble and just get straight down to it, so to speak. I regret to say that Sam does tend rather to just roll on top and go for it. He doesn’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just there always seems to be work in the morning. Anyway, on this occasion we took a bit more time, not much more, but it makes all the difference.

I won’t say that I actually had an orgasm, the situation was rather too fraught for that, I’m afraid, but I nearly did and I definitely enjoyed it and when we’d finished I thought we’d done well. After all, it’s not every girl that has it off wearing a new satin frock surrounded by candles on the top of Primrose Hill at midnight under a full moon.

Afterwards we lay there for a little while on the rug (me with pillow under bottom), gathering our thoughts and listening to the breeze in the trees.

Anyway, that was when Sam screamed.

This, I’m afraid, brought an abrupt end to our idyll, as well it might. Unbeknownst to us there had appeared upon the hill a nocturnal dogwalker, a nervous old man who on seeing two prostrate figures surrounded by candles had thought that a satanic murder was in progress. He had no doubt been suspecting some such occurrence for years and Sam’s sudden yelping convinced the old sod that tonight was the night. Off he went to flag down a passing policecar and shortly thereafter we were caught bang to rights (with the emphasis on ‘bang’) by the officers of the watch.

What had happened was this. As Sam and I had lain there together in the warm and spiritual afterglow of our lovemaking, a squirrel had found its way into Sam’s trousers, which Sam had left nearby along with his silk jocks, having stepped out of the whole lot in one. I don’t know what had led the squirrel into this dark territory. Perhaps it was after Sam’s nuts. What I do know is that the squirrels of Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park are incredibly cheeky on account of the manner in which they are indulged by all and sundry. Anyway, there Sam’s trousers lay in a state of sort of concertina’d readiness waiting for Sam to step back into them. As Sam stood bent and hovering above his trousers, one foot in and the waistband firmly gripped, the squirrel popped out its head to see what was what. There was of course a confrontation.

They faced each other in the night, Sam staring down at the squirrel, the squirrel staring up at Sam, or in fact at Sam’s bollocks, which it was situated directly underneath.

Amazingly, it was Sam who screamed first.

Lucy says it was a squirrel but if it was a squirrel then someone’s been feeding them steroids. This looked more like a ferret or a weasel to me, possibly an urban fox. I’d just risen to my feet, idly thinking of this and that, contentedly contemplating the large and joyful whisky I’d be treating myself to when we got home. I reached down to pull up my trousers and instantly I felt this hot breath upon my bollocks! Looking down between my legs I saw it, eyes blazing, teeth bared, talons poised. Whatever it was, it appeared to me to be getting ready to rip my scrotum off! Of course I screamed. Who wouldn’t have screamed with an alien creature hovering beneath his bollocks! Of course I know that Lucy is convinced it was a squirrel and it’s true that Primrose Hill is amply supplied with squirrels. It’s also true that these appallingly over-indulged tree rats tend to treat all humans as nothing more than sources of free food. Nonetheless I contend that what I saw fossicking around in my trousers tonight on Primrose Hill was like no squirrel I have ever seen. It was big and tough and toothy and wicked-looking and it will haunt my slumbers for many a night to come.