Nomance (4 page)

‘Turn it off!’ Carla
yelled.

Gwynne had begun
playing his Gameboy again and the room was filled by the groans of
alien warriors dying in battle.

‘It’s all right now,’
Gwynne assured her, sounding as cheerful as he ever did. ‘The
Neckroids have won.’ He beamed down at the screen and its frozen
picture.

Carla waited, knowing
her presence would soon become too annoying to ignore. And so, soon
enough, Gwynne gave her his attention – as much as he could muster
– and Carla explained what had to be done in the shop today and how
he must slow down when he spoke to Kitty and not expect her to
remember anything he had ever told her before. If Kitty was to do
something again, then he must explain it again.

Gwynne frowned at her.
‘Why do you have to go to the doctor?’

For a second Carla
considered telling him and perhaps obtaining a little sympathy for
what she was trying to do for them. But then she changed her mind –
Gwynne’s sympathy would not be worth the effort.

Four
:
Stepping on the Scales of a Cold
Fish

As the receptionist
guided Carla into the surgery, Gerald stepped from round from
behind his desk and shook hands with her.

‘Hello again,’ he said
with a crisp informality. His tan, she noted, looked like it had
been topped up since they had last met. ‘Please.’ He indicated that
she should sit next to him in one of the two patients’ chairs.
There was a large file on his desk and pointing to this, he said,
‘Those are the case notes of the couple you may be able to
help.’

‘I don’t have to read
any of that, do I?’

‘Good heavens, no. I
happened to be reading them before you arrived.’ He leaned over and
opened the file, from which he took a form, blank except for two
names and an address. ‘These are the prospective parents, though.
If we go ahead, you can meet them any time you like. Juliet and
Philip Westhrop,’ he read, ‘of Ladbroke Grove.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Oh? Well, yes, some
people prefer to maintain a distance, for emotional reasons.’

‘That’s right,’ Carla
said drily. These Westhrops sounded just like the snooty types who
bought flowers from
Romance
. Not a lot of flowers, mind,
just enough to keep her hanging by her fingertips from the poverty
line. And while she hung from the poverty line, she flapped around,
didn’t she? Like an old, sorry, wet blanket at the mercy of the icy
gusts of economic decline . . . suddenly, Gerald’s smooth,
plausible voice interrupted her bulletin-sized reverie.
‘Pardon?’

‘I said, Carla, that I
imagine you’d like to hear about the standard arrangements.’

‘Yes, all right
then.’

Gerald went on to give
her a outline of the service he offered to both parents and
surrogates, and what was expected of her if she got involved. What
must have been five long minutes later, he concluded, ‘Well then, I
think I have told you everything you need to know.’

Carla was quick to
disagree. ‘I’ve been here fifteen minutes and you haven’t told me
anything.’

Gerald looked baffled
for a second. ‘Oh, of course, I forgot! How could I? Yes, the fee
will be five thousand pounds.’

‘Five thousand!’

Gerald sympathised.
‘I’m every bit as disappointed about this as you are, Carla. Yes, I
do think nine months of backbreaking work deserves so much more
than five thousand pounds. Especially if you consider a plumber,
for instance, will earn as much in three months just for draining
boilers and tightening nuts. And here you are, bestowing the gift
of life. Still, the fact is, people nowadays are far more willing
to shell out on a properly flushing loo than the gift of life. It
doesn’t seem right, does it? What can I say? That’s the open market
for you. As I explained over the phone, the full ten thousand was
already looking optimistic. But what’s happened since then is that
another surrogate has come along and offered to bear the child for
six.’

‘Oh, for crying out
loud!’

‘I couldn’t have put it
any better myself. You see, I’m in a sort of halfway house here and
I understand how both sides feel. If you look at it the way I have
to sometimes, from the point of view of the prospective parents,
you can see that for them it’s like any large investment. Like
buying a new car, for example. If they hear they can get the same
model, a Ford Escort maybe, for a thousand less, what are they
going to do? They are going to buy at a thousand less, aren’t they?
Be fair now.’

‘Why should I always
have to be fair when the system isn’t fair?’

‘Very good question.
The best answer I can give is that if you accept the five thousand,
then I promise I shan’t go back to surrogate number one. I shan’t
preside over a Dutch auction.’

‘Oh, I bet they’d love
a Dutch auction.’

‘I take ten per cent,
of course.’

‘What the hell for?’
Carla cried.

‘As your agent. My time
costs something, you know, and there are the phone calls to cover,
stationary, insurance etcetera. It all mounts up.’

‘Oh, right.’ Carla
pouted fearsomely.

‘Look, if you want to
go it alone I can give you the name of a charity. They’d put you in
contact with parents and you can negotiate for yourself.’

‘No, no.’ Carla
submitted to her fate with a scowl. She assumed Gerald would put
the word out and no one in the surrogacy business would deal with
her. She was stuffed – the story of her life.‘You did tell me to
expect less over the phone, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘So, when do I
start?’

‘Will today do?’

‘Might I get more if I
waited a bit?’

‘This is not a light
undertaking, Carla. Yes, we could wait until a wealthier couple
came along. But I can’t say when that might be. What I would say is
– gather ye your rosebuds while ye may.’

‘Okay, okay, I’ve
already said I’ll do it.’

‘Good. We will
then.’

‘It’s just that you
should have given me a more realistic figure on Cyprus.’

‘Oh, I realise that.
But you know how it is when you’re on holiday, you get carried
away.’

Carla felt a tightening
in the pit of her stomach. ‘Anyway, I have a business to run. So
I’ll sign up now, shall I?’

‘Carla,’ Gerald smiled,
‘there’s so much more to surrogacy and child bearing than signing a
form. Yes, there is a form to sign, but that’s not nearly so
important at this stage as a complete physical examination. I’d
like to do that now, just to keep the process moving along.’

‘I don’t think – ’

Gerald stood up and
began pulling rubber gloves on. Carla fell silent, while
paradoxically letting her mouth drop open. For his part, Gerald
kept talking, almost as if the two of them were still chatting away
on a day-to-day level. Except now, Carla was no longer in the
conversation, as such, because Gerald was doing no more than
describing what was happening as it happened.

‘We are checking your
weight in the first instance. Here are the scales and now you step
onto them. Hm, a trifle overweight – ’

Carla interjected a
whinge. ‘Well, we both know who’s to blame for that.’

Gerald stopped
describing what was happening as it happened. ‘Who is to blame,
Carla?’

‘The Government, of
course.’

‘The
Government
?’

‘That’s right. They’re
taxing me out of existence. I don’t drink or smoke and the only way
I can tackle the stress is to eat.’

‘That reminds me,’
Gerald said, after a moment. ‘There’ll be a diet I’d like you to
follow. I’ll get the sheets printed up before you go.’

‘These diets don’t
work. I’ve tried them before,’ Carla said with disdain.

‘No, this isn’t about
losing weight, this diet is to improve the health of the child. And
yours, of course. Nothing strange. Plenty of fresh fruit, nuts and
pulses. And no pills. Just a cod liver oil capsule every Saturday
night.’ He chuckled as he said this. ‘Just the one, mind.’

Carla chuckled too,
thinking,
You know where you can stick your cod liver oil
capsule, don’t you?

Five
:
Complaining for Two

Six months later
Romance
was taking a delivery of potting compost.

The compost came every
year about now and signified that summer had reached its apogee.
After compost-day, the nights started drawing in again. Carla
watched as the van driver and his mate made a neat pile of bags in
the middle of the shop. When they had finished, she signed the
delivery note and they left.

In ways such as these
Carla marked the progress of the seasons. And how monotonous the
routine had become! The years accumulating like vacant lots in a
decaying city.

Oh, but for
this
year, at least, midsummer was going to be a little bit
different.

For a start, she was
expecting somebody else’s baby and Gerald, the doctor, had said she
must be careful about lifting heavy things. That meant Gwynne would
have to carry the compost bags for once.

As soon as she had seen
the van men off she went up to his room, where he was sprawled on
his bed.

‘I’m pregnant and I’m
not allowed to lift bags of compost, and Kitty’s got a strain, so
come and shift them out the shop now. Otherwise the customers will
go flying over them.’

Gwynne stared up at her
in blank amazement. Carla smiled back. Only dropping a brick on his
head could have brought her more satisfaction. Not that Gwynne was
the sort to start complaining straight away, even when a brick was
dropped on his head. For now, he just-about murmured, ‘Okay.’

Somewhat later, though,
having lugged the bags of compost out back and finding that he was
late for work, he let off what might be interpreted as an
expression of righteous disapproval about the fact that Carla was
pregnant all of a sudden.

‘Don’t expect me to
look after it.’

But no, he wasn’t
giving vent to righteous disapproval at all. Carla knew him better
than that. Gwynne simply meant what he said – he wasn’t going to
look after it.

As he turned away and
skulked away down the hall, Carla laughed out loud at his
retreating back. Little did the sucker know that she wasn’t going
to have to look after it either!

All in all, she
couldn’t care less what Gwynne thought. But the opinion her
customers was another matter.

Her main anxiety till
recently had been about what her customers might say when they
noticed she was pregnant. See, there was a chance they would put
her on the spot with a hideously awkward question. Or so it had
seemed for a few weeks of fretful tossing and turning by night.
However, her morbid fears had faded away as her bump became visible
and yet was never remarked on. She came to understand that while
her customers might ask her how much a Busy Lizzie cost, they were
never going to put themselves out so far as to enquire about the
bun in her oven. In the great scheme of things, the bun in Carla’s
oven was always going to be a piddling irrelevance compared to
their Busy Lizzie.

Sublime
indifference
– for that she could count on her customers 200
per cent. There was a good chance they wouldn’t even spot the
difference between her and the temp she would hire when she needed
to take a week off work for the birth.

Having to hire a temp –
now that was something worth Carla’s time and effort to fret over.
It was yet another of those extra expenses she hadn’t seen coming
until it was too late, like all the jars of chillie pickle she’d
had to buy recently in order to feed her craving. This pregnancy
was getting to be less a money spinner by the day. No doubt that
was why she had started getting these weepy spells. From time to
time a near unbearable frustration would well up within her and
reduce her to tears.

If pregnancy always
stuffed you up like this then she could well understand why fewer
women were having children these days. Actually, it was sobering to
realise how much better off she was compared to most pregnant women
– at least she going to get a cash lump sum at the end of her term
instead of a baby.

It just goes to
show
, she told herself,
there’s always someone worse off
than you
.

And this very formula,
as applied to Gwynne, was her most tried and trusted source of
comfort.

Six
:
Love’s in Superstore

At work, later that
day, Gwynne was glassy-eyed and bad mannered, rather than plain bad
mannered.

The way that his whole
life had been turned upside down this morning was preoccupying him.
In the past he had always banked on Carla being a failed lesbian.
It comforted him to believe there was no chance she would ever
bring a bloke home who might try and turf him out of the house.
However, after Carla’s shocking revelation, this had begun to look
like a distinct possibility. See, it stood to reason that someone
who had already gone to the trouble of getting Carla pregnant would
also go to the trouble of turfing him out the house.

Gwynne frowned.

Then he frowned
harder.

He was still frowning
by lunch time, when he sat down in the staff canteen.

His frown looked much
like his usual scowl, but it was, in fact, a different animal. This
frown betokened deliberative thought, rather than any other pain in
his head. He was trying recollected all the blokes who had ever
come into the shop. That wasn’t so difficult. Romance didn’t have
many male customers. And anyway, could any man who bought flowers
be up to the job of getting Carla pregnant?

No, the more likely
propositions were the van drivers who delivered the stock – bog
peat and the like. The salesmen were a bit too flash for Carla, but
the van drivers looked like right psychos. And psychos, Gwynne had
always felt, had a distinct advantage when it came to the wooing
and winning of a woman. That said, it was also true that psychos
never failed to display good taste. Somehow he couldn’t picture one
taking Carla to bed. To the back of a garage, maybe . . .