Foetal Attraction (19 page)

That night, coincidentally, Bryce and Imogen’s baby-sitter was taken ill and Alex, magnanimously and totally uncharacteristically, volunteered his services. The couple arrived at Maddy’s employer’s penthouse,
laden
down with baby-bouncers, bottle-sterilizers, playpens, portable cot, pastel Babygros, nappy-liners, nappy lotions, vitamin potions, rattles, plastic picture-books, talking bunnies and a wardrobe of minuscule outfits for all weathers. Having dealt out the numbers of their car phone, portable phone, restaurant, theatre, local police, ambulance, paediatrician, obstetrician, child masseuse, grandparents, neighbours and nearest and dearest, Imogen presented Maddy with the precious flask of expressed milk. With the amount of reverence shown, it should have been vintage Dom Pérignon.

‘What a little Earth Mother, eh?’ Bryce beamed.

Imogen’s penchant for breast-feeding had less to do with earth mothering, Maddy felt, than the fact that it kept her weight down and her boobs big. This woman would be breast-feeding till the kid graduated from university. After they’d gone, Maddy poked through the non-violent, non-toxic, non-inflammable toy collection. For dolls with no genitals, Ken and Barbie had managed quite an offspring. There was Sindy and Paul and their baby sister, plus a whole brood of male action dolls called Zap and Zeus and Terminator, all with strange biological functions. Hair grew inches per second, rouged mouths squeaked ‘Mum’ and nappies got damp, depending on what string you pulled and knob you pressed. The baby ignored them all. He simply lay on his Afghan prayer rug and screamed his lungs out. For three hours.

‘Ah, the joys of parenthood,’ Alex gloated, having received a very convenient ‘emergency’ call to the editing suite. He obviously thought that baby-sitting was the precursor to tubal ligation. But his scheme backfired. So much for ‘preconceptual care’. As Maddy rocked and coddled the squealing bundle, she pondered that if three months’ abstinence from alcohol, coffee and food additives had produced
this
monster, she’d start smoking, drinking and devouring cocaine-laced monosodium glutamate, pronto.

Embryonically Challenged

THE MORNING OF
the termination, everything that could go wrong went wrong. Mr Hypochondriac discharged himself from the clinic and arrived home unexpectedly to find his flat in a shambles, the wallpaper smeared in hieroglyphic symbols, the three-piece suite clogged with honey, the cats feral, the furniture toupeed with mangy dog hairs and his housekeeper cuddled up in his very own antique four-poster bed with a terrorist. (Alex, having spent the night so that he could personally escort Maddy to her appointment, had shoved his photogenic face into a pair of pantihose at the appearance of the old codger.) Maddy blinked herself awake to find her employer looming over her, his mouth pinched up like an ape’s anus. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said feebly. ‘Feeling better?’ If only she’d put more olive oil in that bloody pasta.

She had the strong impression she was about to have what Sonia would call a ‘career alternative
enhancement
opportunity’. He sacked her on the spot.

It took about ten years to walk the four blocks from the car to the hospital. Alex was attached to her arm as unassailably as the yellow orthopaedic devices hobbling the cars all along Euston Road.

‘If you want to keep the foetus, say so now.’ Alex, in dark Raybans and a beanie, glanced anxiously over his shoulder. ‘It’s your choice,’ he added craftily.

Her hand manacled in his, he steered her forward a little more forcefully, Maddy felt, than seemed necessary. She could sense his crossed fingers. He was taking a gamble; the equivalent of his recent infamous dash through the Danakil desert of Ethiopia, where the Afar tribesmen specialize in castrating strangers. Maddy walked on, gripping her flimsy suitcase of salvaged possessions.

‘The good news is, the anthology. It’s finished!’

Maddy shivered. She was goose-pimpled like a plucked chicken. It was unexpectedly cold for September.

‘I’m going to leave her … just as soon as I get the new nanny settled …’

The coarse material of Maddy’s denim jacket scratched at her skin. Summer was gone for good. A truck squealed to a halt right beside them. ‘Don’t be half safe,’ mocked the condom cartoon graffitied down one side. ‘Be cock sure.’

‘You should see the size of her backside! Now I
know
why they’re called au
pairs
, ’cos that’s what she’s shaped like.’

Balloons from yesterday’s miners’ rally bobbed around their feet. White and flaccid, they reminded Maddy of breasts emptied of milk.

The hospital needed no sign outside. It was apparent by the Right-to-lifers, headscarved and heated, clustered on the pavement. Spray-painted across the building’s façade in large white letters was the word ‘Genocide’. One of the God squad swung a video camera in their direction.

‘Um … maybe I’d better wait in the car. That place looks impenetrable.’ Alex patted her on the back as though she were going for a job interview. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered and peeled off down a side street. Maddy had to make her way alone through the forest of blood-splattered placards screaming ‘Murderess’, ‘Let everyone have a birthday – say No to Termination’, ‘Join the Anti-Abortion Soldiers’. She knew the type. Anti-abortionists, arguing that life is sacred, while desperate to reintroduce capital punishment. A woman sprayed her in Holy Water. Another thrust a prayer for the unborn baby into her hand. A man wearing a ‘Stop the Slaughter’ badge shoved an embalmed foetus in her face. She was actually glad she was having the abortion now. Just to bloody well spite these bastards.

The furnishings in the overheated waiting room were in the council-flat beige range. All were badly
made
and ill-fitting. A single bare bulb drooped from the ceiling, casting a urine-yellow light on the other women. They sat tight, eyes bright, smiles fixed, flicking, like Maddy, through year-old colour supplements with all the best bits torn out, trying not to catch each others’ eyes. As she skimmed an article about a remote tribe of Papua New Guinea headhunters, she thought, this is it. I’m having the abortion. This is really it.

The clinic social worker was of the well-intentioned, tee-totaller type, disposed to vegetarianism. ‘Name?’ she enquired kindly.

Madonna, Melody, Monica … No, too posh
.

Gillian was right. You could never nurture Alex’s nature. The New Man was a myth. The bottom line is that a father’s lot is not a nappy one.

Jane, Jenny, Kylie … No, too plain
.

Not to mention the pain, the epidurals, the stitches. The Six-Week Check-up, or what her friends called the ‘Will I Ever Have Sex Again Consultation’. A creature covered in slime erupts from your abdomen. This was the stuff of Hollywood special effects blockbusters.

Marmaduke, Maximilian, Orlando … No, too posh
.

And then there was the baby badge – that permanent damp patch of puke on the shoulders of Mums in the supermarket.

Jack, Joseph, Peter, Paul … No, too plain
.

The London fog was nothing compared to the Baby Fog. New mothers seemed to spend all their time
putting
food in the washing-machine and soap powder in the freezer; locking keys in the car daily and forgetting to finish their senten …

Brie, Blue, Dweezil, Winston, Hero, Hercules, Fodo
, were the definite list of names not to call a baby … There were aboriginal names … but everything seemed to translate as having a rest by a water-hole. Not that it mattered really. They would only get a nickname in England anyway.
Muffy, Buffy, Binky, Boo-Boo …

Maddy was relieved to realize the stupidity of having a child to keep a relationship together. Trying to choose a name would be grounds for separation alone. ‘Madeline Wolfe,’ she answered finally.

The social worker patted her hand. ‘Now you’ve thought it all through, dear? You’re comfortable with your decision?’

Maddy nodded.

But, in fact, she hadn’t thought it through. She didn’t really think it through until she was climbing up on to the table. She lay there, high and dry, like the ring left around the bath. She was painfully aware of the clock ticking in her abdomen. A time bomb. How could something so random, like stubbing your toe or knocking your funny-bone, now be so tangible?

Maddy watched the proceedings like a person hypnotized: the nurses in starched white moving efficiently around the room; the discreet laying out of the instruments on a tray beyond her vision. A nurse
rolled
up the sleeve of Maddy’s washed-out seersucker gown and switched on the overhead light. Maddy could feel the pressure of the light. A deadly weight. She felt crushed, breathless, about to implode and yet she couldn’t move. How had she become so passive? She, who knew how to get bail in every country in the Pacific. She, who knew the first name of every bartender in Bangkok. She, who could open beer bottles with her teeth. How had she become so tame, so timid, so, well,
English?
Maddy suddenly felt linked by a knotted, twisted cord to the possibility of motherhood. The solution to her predicament came to her as she was sliding her leaden legs into the steel stirrups and gazing at the paint-clogged cornices of the Georgian ceiling. It was as clear to her as the glinting metal instruments on the nurse’s trolley. It was like waking up on the other side of the looking glass. It felt right. It felt good. It felt scary as hell.

‘I’m going to have the baby.’ She could hear her voice, strange as a ventriloquist’s.

‘WHAT?’ His voice was like a gunshot.

‘I can’t do it.’ She was glad of his mobile phone. She couldn’t have looked him in the face. She wasn’t game to.

‘Wait there,’ he shrilled.

Alex, clad in a taupe raincoat – better to blend into the walls – managed to find a back way into the ‘impenetrable’ hospital with amazing alacrity. ‘That
sperm
is stolen property!’ All eyes in the waiting room snapped to attention.

Maddy’s face, drained of expression, had turned wedding-dress white. ‘Ownership’, she reminded him, ‘is nine-tenths of the law.’

Alex seized her wrist and shoved her out of view of the others. ‘That foetus means nothing more to me than a wank into a test-tube.’

Maddy shrugged off his arm. ‘What happened to all that “love being a state of grace” stuff? What happened to our “inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?’

‘If you go ahead with this, that’s the end. You’ll never see me again.’

The room seemed to hold its breath. Maddy made a move towards the exit.

‘Maddy … I’m serious. Walk out that door and I’ll have to let you go,’ he said sadly. He made it sound as though she were a cicada in a shoe-box.

Maddy pushed down the stairs and out on to the cold street. Afraid of the protesters’ video camera, Alex declined to follow. She elbowed her way through the hissing crowd. They frisked her with their eyes, like airport officials, checking for contraband – a guilty expression, a defiant smile, a sanitary towel. A woman wearing a ‘Life is Sacred’ T-shirt spat in her hair. The air was icy and bit into her. Maddy let out a cry of anguished relief.

She watched her breath turn solid.

Part Three: Transition

Transition

‘I’M GOING HOME.’
We were warned about transition in class. The time when a woman gets irrational, gives up. This will never happen to me, I’d thought at the time. I’m renowned for my straight thinking and clear-headedness. I once disarmed a burglar. And talked a suicide off a ledge. ‘I’ve had it. I’m off.’ It’s
Pre
-natal depression. The first case known to medical science.

‘Pant, pant,’ the midwife orders.

The epidural is wearing off. There’s a dull echo of pain in the small of my back. Although sensation has returned to my legs, they’re heavy to move. Time is sluggish now. It moves like a frigate through arctic ice floes. ‘Cold,’ I’m calling out, ‘cold.’ Yolanda is there, feeding my frozen toes into a pair of striped Arsenal socks. Alex’s. He used to wear them to watch the game on the box. It is one of his pretences, to like football. To be one of the proletariat.

‘She’s not panting …’

‘Pant, Maddy. Pant. We must delay the pushing till the epidural wears off. Otherwise, it might be forceps …’

‘She’s not listening. M-a-d-el-ine. We must wait till the baby’s head has descended on to the perineum.’

‘Where are my clothes?’ It’s all been some terrible mistake. The truth is, I haven’t got a clue how to bring up a baby. You get the kid, but nobody gives you the Owner’s Manual on how to operate them. ‘Get me a taxi.’ How can I teach someone else how to live her life, when I’ve so thoroughly ballsed up my own? The kid will no doubt sue me for malparenting. ‘I’m going home for a sleep.’ Sleep deprivation is a form of torture in some countries. There is a reason for this. It works. I would confess to anything just now. But there’s nothing to confess to, except that I fell in love with a dirty, rotten mongrel Englishman, who got me up the duff then ditched me. I know. It’s dazzlingly original. Feel stranded below the tide line, scrambling through quicksand. Can’t seem to get over on to my back. If I could just roll sideways … Christ. The bum drops out of the world and I’m crashing on to the floor.

‘Gosh!’ Yolanda manacles my upper arm with her pudgy fingers. But I push her away. There are my clothes. Move slowly as winter across the room. I take buckling steps towards the chair. Exhaustion has sharpened my senses. The gnawed cuticles of Yolanda’s hand, the cracks in the ceiling paint, the finger smudges on the aluminium bedpan, the breath
marks
on the window pane, the sticker on her shoulder-bag reading ‘Childbirth, make it fun, make it natural’. I miss nothing. It strikes me now, for the first time, that I really hate him. I hate the way he parts his hair. I hate the tufts growing out of his ears. I hate his BBC voice. I hate his appendix scar, for God’s sake. And I hate most of all his lousy God-awful bloody puns. ‘You see what happens?’ Yolanda gloats as the midwife tries to seize my other arm. ‘You see what happens when you give them drugs!’