Inconceivable (18 page)

nothing

Penny,

M
y period started this morning.

I just want to die.

Why did I let myself hope? How could I have been so pathetic? I don’t know why, but I was. What with the crystals and the ley lines and the positive thinking and everything. I just thought for once I’d get some luck. Just for once it would be me who was lucky. But of course it wasn’t. Obviously. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Why me?! Why bloody me?! Some women scarcely even want children and have them.

I want

else! All my life I’ve wanted to have children. Right from the first game I ever played, I’ve known I wanted to be a mum. It’s my life’s fucking ambition.

But I can’t do it.

Sixty-three periods! Sixty-three fucking months of trying and trying and trying and

nothing
! I feel wretched, just wretched (quite apart from these God-awful period pains). I keep thinking, why me? I mean, why should I be the one who can’t have a little baby to hold?
Why?
My sister’s got two. Melinda’s got one. Every bloody woman in Sainsbury’s seems to have about twelve. I know I shouldn’t resent them but sometimes I do. It just is so unfair! Of course I know that lots of other women are in the same boat as me and all that but I just
don’t care
about them. That’s all. I don’t.

Dear Self,

W
ell, the Primrose Hill Bonk bore no fruit. Bugger.

I’m afraid to say that even I had begun to get my hopes up a bit.

Poor Lucy was being so positive that she made me feel positive too. I was even having fantasies about what life would be like if we had one. Just tea-time and story-telling-type fantasies, that sort of thing. Loading up the car to go camping and I’m going to stop now.

Dear Penny,

I
was alone at work again today so I spent five hours on the phone trying to get through to Dr Cooper to see if I can get a referral to have a laparoscopy. Most of the 247 ‘getting pregnant’ books that I own suggest that this will probably be the next step and Dr Cooper certainly said it would be. The alternative and homeopathic books of course do not approve of this kind of brutalism but what is one to do? I’ve tried so many things and honestly if I gave up eating and drinking all the things that some of these books tell you to give up I’d starve to death before I could conceive.

I couldn’t even get through to the surgery. There’s some sort of flu epidemic on and it’s obvious that they’re a bit pushed. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to consider having it done privately. I don’t like to because Sam and I have always felt very strongly about the NHS, but I don’t think I have any choice. I mean the waiting lists are so long now that even though you want to do the right thing you can’t. Funny, really, because these days I actually feel that because the lists are so long I should go private anyway if I can afford it, just in order to free up a bed. Extraordinary. I remember when Mrs Thatcher had that operation on her hand and said, ‘I didn’t add to the queue,’ we all went potty at dinner parties all over London and now we’re saying exactly the same thing.

I am

depressed.

Dear Sam,

L
ucy wants to have a laparoscopy done privately because she can’t get through to Dr Cooper. I said
absolutely not
. I pretended that it was a matter of political principle and expressing our solidarity with the NHS. The truth is it’s the money pure and simple. What with my cock-up over Above The Line Films and the fiasco with the Prime Minister it’s now pretty much a certainty that Nigel is going to shaft me and until I know what the future holds I can’t countenance any additional expense.

I went to Oddbins today and downgraded from single malt to blended.

Dear Penny,

I
am really quite proud of Sam. He was absolutely immovable on the private operation bit. I had no idea he had retained such a firm grip on his political principles. Good for him.

I’ve booked the private operation for the end of next month.

I mentioned my political fears to Sheila at work because she’s a bit of an old lefty and she said something awful. She said, ‘Yes, but the reason that we all worried about Thatcher’s hand was because it was about essential surgery, which is what the Health Service is for. Fertility treatment is hardly essential, is it? It’s more of a personal indulgence.’

She actually said that, and she was trying to be nice. Well, I suppose it’s what a lot of people think. Perhaps I’d think it myself if fate had dealt me different cards.

Dear Sam,

W
ell, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the axe fell and it fell today. I finally lost my job. I think the whole corridor knew before I did. Trevor avoided my eye and Daphne looked distinctly upset. I’m a pretty easygoing sort of boss and I think she’s scared they’re going to give her to some twenty-eight-year- old Armani clothes hanger who thinks only American sitcoms are funny.

Anyway, there was a warning sign in every face, so by the time I got to Nigel’s office to which I’d been summoned I was ready for anything. In a way it wasn’t so bad.

‘Radio,’ said Nigel.

‘Radio,’ I said.

‘Radio,’ said the Head of Radio and Television, who was also in attendance. ‘I’m extremely keen to up our light entertainment output in sound-only situations. Your massive experience in bringing on the best of the new comedians and writers makes you the perfect person to head up this major new entertainment initiative.’

Which of course means that it would be more trouble and expense to sack me than to shift me to a job where it doesn’t really matter what I do. On the other hand I had been expecting immediate redundancy, or, at the very best, the post of Programme Coordinator: Daytime South West, so this was, in a perverse, reverse kind of way, quite good news.

‘What’s the job title?’ I asked.

‘Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio,’ said the Head of Radio and Television.

I let it hang in the air a moment, waiting for the words ‘deputy’ or ‘sub’ or ‘Midlands’ to follow. They didn’t, but you can’t be too careful. I heard a story of a bloke who went to see the DG and thought he’d been offered ‘Controller, BBC1’ but actually after the DG said the word ‘one’ he coughed and in that cough managed to add ‘Planet Green Initiative, Bristol Environment Unit.’ The poor man was on the train pulling out of Paddington before he’d worked out what had happened.

So there I was, the new ‘Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor, Radio’.

‘What about the money?’ I said.

‘The same,’ Nigel replied, to my delight, ‘if you go quietly and
don’t
write any bitter whistle-blowing articles in the
Independent
media section or
Broadcast
magazine.’

And so the deal was done, effective immediately. I was to clear my desk that very day. One slightly dispiriting thing. I’d asked Nigel if I could take Daphne with me over to Broadcasting House (where my new office is to be). He said fine but then
she
refused!

I could tell that she thought that radio was a definite step down and could see no reason why she should have to share in my reduction of status.

‘No, thank you, Sam,’ she said. ‘It’s very kind of you but I’m the personal secretary to the ‘BBC Controller, Broken Comedy and Variety’, which is a
television
post. I am not personal secretary to the ‘Chief Light Entertainment Commissioning Editor,
Radio
’.’

So there you go. Was it Kipling who said they were more deadly than the male? (Women, that is, not personal secretaries.) I must say it was lucky that Lucy did not require one of her servicings on demand tonight because I don’t feel much of a man at the moment. I can still support us in the style to which we are accustomed, but at what cost to my pride? If I thought I had a nothing job before, I don’t know what I’ve got now. A timeserving sideways shunt of a dead-end grace-and-favour pile of shite, that’s what. I mean, radio entertainment’s fine up at the posh end, the Radio 4 clever quizzes, witty, ‘varsity stuff and edgy alternatives, but all that’s already spoken for. I’ve been dumped down at the Radio One yoof end and they don’t want comedy. They want attitude and I’m a deal too old to give them that.

Anyway, to my surprise Lucy was quite positive about the situation. She seemed to think that it was a good thing. She pointed out that I’d never liked my job anyway, and now I’d have the time to do what I really want to do, which is write.

Well that of course brought on the same old row.

‘Oh yes, that’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘I’ll just bash off an award- winning script now, shall I? Except hang on, that’s right, I remember, I haven’t written a bloody word in years.’

A bit bitter, I know, but it had been a pretty rotten day. Lucy always hates it when I get negative on her.

‘And do you know why?’ she snapped. ‘Because you’ve given up on your emotions, that’s why. If you live your life entirely superficially how do you expect to write anything?’

Well, this sort of thing carried on back and forth until we went to bed, both pretty depressed. Lucy was out like a light, emotionally exhausted, poor thing, what with all that infertility about the place and having a completely useless husband. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. What Lucy had said kept ringing in my ears.

Maybe I do avoid my writing so that I don’t have to explore my emotions? Or is it the other way round? Do I ignore my feelings so that I’ll be sure that I’ll have nothing to write about? Either way it’s a pretty sad effort. Then I began to wonder what my emotions would be if I had any. What was happening inside me?

Did I care much about losing my job? No, I didn’t really care much about my job because I was no good at it. In fact I didn’t deserve it in the first place. I was no good as a commissioning editor because I was too bloody jealous of the people I was commissioning, which was pathetic. So what did I feel? When I wasn’t avoiding my feelings? That I want to write? Who cares?

That I love Lucy? Well that’s not a bad subject. Love always goes down well. That I want Lucy and me to have children? I certainly feel that. I may never say it, but I want more than anything else in the world for Lucy and me to have children.

And then it struck me! It was such a shock that I went cold. It was so obvious! How could I have missed it! That’s what I would write about! I sat bolt upright in bed. The whole thing seemed to leap into my mind fully formed. It made me dizzy there was so much of it coming to me at once.

‘I’ve got it, Lucy!’ I shouted and she nearly fell out of bed in shock.

‘Got what?’

I could hardly form a coherent sentence I had so much to say.

The words tumbled out in a stream.

‘My theme. The inspiration I need! It’s so obvious, darling, I can’t think how I’ve missed it. I’ll write about an infertile couple! It’s a real modern drama, about life and the absence of life…There’s jokes, too. But proper jokes. Sad jokes, which are the best kind.

Sperm tests, postcoital examinations, guided fantasy sessions…

Imagine it! The disintegration of this couple’s sex life, the woman beginning to think about nothing but fertility, going all tearful over baby clothes…Adopting a gorilla…’

Writing it down now I admit it looks a little insensitive but I swear I didn’t mean it to be. After all, I was talking about writing a
story
, a fiction, about two fictitious people, not
us
at all. Perhaps I could have put it better, but I was so excited. This was the first decent idea I’d had in years.

‘The thing will write itself,’ I said and the ideas just kept tumbling into my head and straight out of my mouth…

‘How about a scene where the woman can’t decide which herbal teabag would be most aromatherapeutically conducive to her biorhythms? Or some sort of open-air ritual…It’ll be bloody hilarious…’

I would have gone further. I could have gone on for hours. I was really on a roll, as they say, but at that moment Lucy stopped me. Well, when I say stopped me, she threw half a cup of cold herbal tea in my face.

‘How about a scene where the woman throws her herbal tea all over the callous bastard who wants to rape her soul for a few cheap laughs,’ she said.

It took me a moment to cut through the bitter irony to realize the point she was making. I was astonished. I’m not astonished now, of course, having had time to reflect on what she was getting at, but at the time I couldn’t work out her attitude at all.

‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘But you said! You said! You told me to look within!’

‘I didn’t tell you to try to turn our private misery into a public joke!’ I’ve hardly ever seen her so angry. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing if we are infertile. If we did have kids you’d probably expect them to pay their way by becoming child prostitutes!’

This was pretty strong stuff. I mean, I understood that she was upset and everything, but child prostitutes? Come on.

‘You don’t understand anything!’ she said. ‘I’m thirty-four. I’ve been trying for a child for over five years! I may well be barren, Sam!’

Well now I admit that I lost it a bit too. I mean it seems to me that Lucy has developed a habit of seeing the fertility thing as being pretty much exclusively her problem, just because I deal with it in a different way to her. I mean I’m in this marriage too, aren’t I? I have feelings and I had thought that I was under orders to get in touch with them. I mean, maybe we are infertile.

I don’t know, perhaps we can’t have children. But if we can’t, what does she want me to do about it? Go into mourning? Weep and wail over the absence of a life that never even existed in the first place?

I’m afraid I put this point to Lucy and she took it as confirmation of her long-nurtured suspicion that I don’t care whether we have a baby or not. In fact I probably don’t even want one. After this I probably said too much. It’s just that I don’t think she was even trying to see it from my point of view.

‘And what if I don’t?’ I said. ‘Does that make me a criminal?

Have I betrayed our love because I happen to place some value on my own existence? On my career and my work? Because I have not committed my entire emotional wellbeing to the possibility of some abstract, non-existent life which we may or may not be able to produce?’

Lucy was near to tears but like the bastard that I am I pressed my advantage.

‘I mean isn’t this near deification of the next generation all a bit bloody primitive? A baby is born. Its parents devote their lives to it, sacrificing everything they might have hoped to have done themselves. Then, when that baby is finally in a position to fulfil its own destiny and also the dreams its parents had for it, that baby has its own baby and the whole thing starts again. It’s positively primeval.’

Lucy got up and went and made herself a cup of herbal, which I hoped she wasn’t planning to throw at me. When she came back she said, ‘It’s life, Sam! It’s what we’re here for, not…not to make bloody films.’

But that’s the point, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned I am here to make films! Or at least to fulfil and express myself in one way or another. I mean I only have one life, don’t I? And it’s the one I’m living, not the one I may have a hand in creating. I know that sounds selfish but is it actually any more selfish than seeking to replace yourself on the planet? I don’t know. Anyway, I tried to calm things down a bit, so that we could get some sleep if nothing else.

‘Look, Lucy, I’m sorry…I don’t want to upset you. Of course I want us to have a baby, it’s just…it’s just…’

Lucy was not in the mood to be calmed.

‘It’s just you want to write a comedy about it,’ Lucy said. ‘Well, if you
ever
even so much as
mention
the idea of exploiting our personal misery for your profit again I’ll leave you. I will, Sam. I mean that, I’ll leave you.’

With that she turned her back on me and we lay there together in grim, wakeful silence.