Middle East and it’s terribly important to her to have a child. I think the pressure on women is greater in some cultures. At least I don’t have to put up with that! Christ, some men can be bastards, as if a woman doesn’t have to deal with enough sadness when she can’t conceive without a load of pressure and guilt from her husband.
In so many ways I’m lucky with Sam, apart from loving him, that is, which goes without saying. He really is very gentle and supportive in his own way and he certainly never puts me under any pressure. I’ve asked him to give up the booze completely, by the way, in order to get his sperm into tip-top condition. I thought he’d sulk but he’s been very nice about it. He said it didn’t bother him at all.
Dear etc.
Damn, blast and bollocks. I hate being off the booze. Somebody had a leaving do today and I had to drink Coke. It’s surprisingly difficult to kick the sauce. You say to yourself, “It can’t be so hard, I’ll just take a month off,” but then suddenly Trevor’s having a dinner party and you have to drink for that. Then there’s the pub dominos team reunion coming up and you have to drink for that. And of course you’re having beans on toast in front of the telly tonight, and you can’t not have a drink with that.
Ah well. I’m going to stick with it. I love Lucy and I’m not going to let her down, particularly now that I’m actively planning to deceive her. My local Smith’s was out of Lucy’s type of journal today and I didn’t have time to go further afield, but I’ll do it tomorrow. My resolve is hardening. Lucy is being ever so nice to me at the moment as well, which doesn’t make betraying her any easier. We seem to have entered a new stage of affection. Perhaps it’s the treatment. Apparently it plays havoc with a woman’s hormones. Well, that is, after all, the point. Also I imagine Lucy is feeling quite emotional because there is now the actual, real possibility that the treatment will work and in a couple of months’ time we’ll be on our way to becoming parents. My God, imagine that. We’ve got so used to just presuming upon the inevitability of Lucy’s periods that this is a thought that takes some adjusting to. I always stress how small the chances are when I’m talking to Lucy because I don’t want her to be too disappointed, but I suppose it could happen! And what then?!
I got a taste of it today actually. George and Melinda brought Cuthbert round for tea. He’s crawling now, that is when he can find a moment in his busy shrieking, shitting and vomiting schedule. My God, that lad can puke. There seems to be a constant flow of milky vom emanating from his mouth. I mean he doesn’t hurl it, not often anyway. It’s not as if he’s coating the furniture or anything, it’s just always there, sort of falling from his toothless gums. Which of course means that eventually he does coat the furniture because everywhere he goes, and he can get about a bit these days, he pushes his face against things, leaving a stomach-turning slimy, milky, gobby patch behind him. I’ve seen it on George’s shoulder many a time. It’s as if a large and angry seagull hovers permanently above him, waiting for him to put on a decent suit.
Cuthbert also broke a model of a Lancaster bomber I made when I was ill last year and had painted with meticulous care. The model (which I admit was a kit, but a bloody difficult kit) was perfect in every detail. I even sent to Germany for the authentic eggshell blue paint for the underside. Ironic, isn’t it? That you have to send to Germany to get the right paint for a Lancaster bomber. They’re a big modelling nation, of course, and let’s face it, in the end they did win the war. Anyway, I’d thought that I’d put the model way out of reach. “Everything precious three feet off the ground,” Lucy had warned me, but Cuthbert seems to have an extension section in the middle, like a dining room table. Out of the blue he can suddenly reach twice his physical length. You don’t see it happen. You don’t know anything about it until there’s an unholy screaming. Then you turn to see him surrounded by glass or china or in this case plastic (he’d sort of rolled himself on it, crushing it totally), at which point you have to comfort him! It’s unbelievable. I mean, he didn’t spend a week making it, did he?
Penny
I’ll probably be writing to you a bit less from now on. The original intention of the letters was, as you know, in order to become a partner with my emotions and to avoid feeling like a cork bobbing about on the sea of fate. Well I no longer feel like a cork because by beginning this cycle of IVF, gruesome though it is, I really feel a lot better and that I’ve taken control of my destiny. I don’t like to admit it, but I feel very slightly confident. I mean, although the chances are reckoned at about a fifth, I’m top of the list in terms of the perfect patient. I’m still relatively young, very young for IVF, I have nothing apparently wrong with me. My husband appears to be packing a full scrotum. All the signs are good. I don’t even feel strange about trying to get a baby this way, which I thought I might. In fact just the reverse. I’m quite combative on the subject.
I was talking to Joanna at work about it and she said something I hear quite a lot. She sort of shook her head in disbelief and said, “Wow, isn’t it amazing? I mean we really are playing God these days, aren’t we?” Now she wasn’t trying to be mean, quite the opposite. She’s very supportive, but nonetheless I bridled. People do still seem to see IVF as a deeply unnatural process and so it is, but no more unnatural than taking antibiotics or flying in an aeroplane. Left to themselves people’s teeth would fall out in their twenties and they’d die of pneumonia. Everything we do is unnatural but nobody ever shakes their head in disbelief about eating apples out of season or talking on the phone to people in Australia or being able to get from Highgate to Spannerfield Hospital, which is in West London, in under an hour (depending on the traffic). It’s just babies that people get funny about. But I won’t have it. All IVF is, when you get right down to it, is the process of getting the sperm and the egg to meet outside the body. That’s it. It’s my egg. It’s Sam’s sperm. If it works it’ll develop inside me. All they do is create more ideal conditions for the moment of conception than the inside of my plumbing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like a Caesarean but in reverse. Millions of women have their babies removed by the hand of man. I’m just going to have mine inserted, that’s all. I said all this to Joanna and she said she hadn’t meant to offend and I said that she hadn’t, but I suppose in a way she had. I don’t feel remotely different or weird because I have to go through this, and I can do without people shaking their heads in gentle disbelief at my situation and talking about playing God.
I just took a moment out to inject my leg. Sam hates this and turns away (as if I enjoy it!). Just wait till he starts having to give me my bum injections, that’ll give him something to think about. Actually, he probably turned away because my legs look so horrible. These injections leave awful bruises (maybe I’m not doing it very well). I look as though I’ve been beaten up by a midget.
Dear Sam
Nigel and Justin have been asking again about the ending. They want to know when they can expect to see it. I’ve told them that I’ll do it soon, but I’m not sure when. Lucy’s and my IVF cycle will last a few weeks and I can’t decide whether to commit myself to saying how my story ends before I know our result or after. After, I think, so I’ve told them that it’ll be a month and a half. They don’t like it because we’ve planned to begin shooting by then, but I’m being firm. Surprisingly, Ewan is being tremendously good about it. He says it’s only one out of a hundred scenes and since the whole story is one of doubt, hope and unanswered questions he rather likes the idea of leaving the ending ambiguous for as long as possible. He says it’ll be very healthy for the actors to discover their parts in the same ignorance and confusion that the characters are in themselves. I find myself warming to Ewan.
I’ve now bought four diaries from W.H. Smith identical to the one Lucy uses for her journal. One of them is bound to have a key that fits hers. Tomorrow, when she’s gone off to work, I intend to return to the house and read her story.
Dear Penny
I wasn’t going to write to you tonight but then I thought I would because Sam’s been acting very strangely this evening. From the moment I got back from work it’s all seemed rather odd. He’s been alternately offhand and angry-looking and then suddenly very huggy and affectionate. Normally he doesn’t express much emotion either way but tonight he seems to be aglow with it. Perhaps it’s his hormones. I’ve heard that when women are pregnant their partners sometimes react in sympathy with them, experiencing the same symptoms. Who knows, maybe it’s the same with IVF?
I must say I’m feeling pretty strange myself, in fact. I’ve started having hot flushes, so the
