by Anna Hope
She wants to tell him that it doesn’t matter. That she doesn’t want to talk about herself. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I am.’
‘Something Russian?’
She nods. ‘Uncle Vanya. Chekhov.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s OK.’
He leans forward. ‘OK? That doesn’t sound too good.’
‘It is. It’s just …’ She gives a small laugh. ‘I don’t know. I’m doubting everything today.’
‘I could have said that.’
‘Really?’ She is silent, waiting for him to go on, watching his hands around the pint glass. His eyes – the thin skin beneath them, the curled edge of his mouth. Call what you see.
You’re sad.
You’re angry.
‘I don’t know.’ His fingers drum the stained wood of the table. ‘I just – I can’t even remember why we are doing this, this thing that our lives have become. Hannah. This constraint. Every. Single. Fucking. Thing. Regimented. Policed. Whatever I put in my body. I see her, hovering. Watching the coffee I drink. Asking me how many drinks I’ve had if I go out after work. Counting. Always counting. She’s become a policewoman.’
He falls silent.
‘She’s just trying to have a child,’ says Lissa softly.
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ He is furious now. ‘But that’s all she’s become. She has become a creature that is trying to have a child. And it’s not fucking working. Shouldn’t a child be conceived from love? And abandon? And good sex? Not a timetable. A spreadsheet. A graph.’
He has said too much. She sees him step back from his words.
He looks up at her. ‘Did you never want kids?’ he says, in a low voice.
‘I – no. Once. I mean, I was pregnant once.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’ A blurred shape on a scan photograph at the Marie Stopes clinic in Fitzrovia. The end of the first year of drama school.
‘What happened?’
‘I had a termination.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Here.’ She lifts her whisky to his. ‘Sláinte.’ It burns her throat. ‘Cigarette?’ she says.
‘You read my mind.’
They step outside, huddling in the doorway, taking it in turns to roll.
‘Go on then,’ he says again, when they are both lit. ‘You still haven’t told me why your day was so shit.’
‘Someone … criticized my acting. I took it badly, I suppose.’ She tries to find an anchor – the rain, the cars with their lights on. The people manoeuvring their umbrellas. She is veering rapidly towards being drunk.
‘Sometimes … I don’t feel real.’ She turns to him. He is watching her. He is close. He shakes his head.
‘What?’ she says.
‘It’s just so strange to me, to hear you speak that way.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I always saw you as so vivid. More than real.’
She gives a small laugh.
‘I remember the first time I saw you. You just – you shone. And then those parties. When we were older. That gorgeous thrift-shop raver.’
‘Yeah. What was I thinking?’
‘They were good, weren’t they, those days? We didn’t care, did we? We were free.’
He leans forward, catching her wrist in his hand. She looks down, sees his fingers, the nails trimmed haphazardly, feels a pulse in her heart, her wrist, her crotch.
‘I miss that,’ he says.
Call what you see.
You want me.
‘Who?’ she says to him, looking back up into his face. ‘Who am I? To you?’
‘You’re beautiful, you’re bright, you’re wild, Lissa. You’re real.’ And he lifts his hands to her face, her face towards his, brings his lips to hers.
The surprise.
The lack of surprise.
Her lips parting for him. The taste of his tongue.
‘Sorry,’ he says, pulling away.
‘No,’ she says.
‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘It’s OK. It didn’t happen.’
He shakes his head. ‘Hannah,’ he says, and his voice is strangled.
‘It didn’t happen, Nath.’
He passes his hand over his face. ‘Not that. It’s just – she wants to do it again. The IVF. Wants to go to another clinic. On Harley Street.’
‘That must be thousands.’
‘And the rest.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ And the despair is back, cloaking him. He looks up at her. ‘What would you do?’
‘Oh God.’ She laughs softly. ‘Don’t ask me.’
‘But I am,’ he says. ‘I am asking you. You’re the first person I’ve managed to talk to about this. You don’t know how good it is to talk. Liss. Tell me,’ he pleads. ‘Please. What would you do?’
‘I wouldn’t do it,’ she says, pulling her cardigan around her, staring out at the rain-washed street. ‘I’d say no.’
Hannah
They come out of the Tube at Regent’s Park, walk past the cream colonnaded buildings, then along the Marylebone Road before turning into Harley Street. She walks quickly, as if by hurrying – by ushering Nathan past these mini mansions, past the huge cars disgorging skinny, headscarfed women, past the elderly ladies carrying their tiny dogs in their arms – he might not register where they are.
She rings the bell of a three-storey house, mercifully slightly less grand than those that surround it. The buzzer admits them and they step into a black-and-white flagged entrance hall, where pictures of smiling babies decorate the walls and the slim curve of a Regency staircase stretches upwards towards the light. They give their names and are shown into a waiting room the size of their flat. Squashy sofas face each other over angular tables and magazines are arranged in tight-cornered piles. A couple sit on a sofa, twenty feet away. They eye Hannah and Nathan across the room.
Nathan sits, his ankle crossed over his knee. His trainers are scuffed. His leg jiggles on the deep pile carpet. In the corner, a coffee machine gurgles. ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ he says, jumping up again. ‘You want one?’
‘No, thanks.’ Hannah leans down to the table: Tatler, Harper’s Bazaar, Country Living, Elle. She slides out Elle and flicks through it, aware her breath is shallow and short.
Nathan comes over with a small white plastic cup.
‘This coffee’s terrible,’ he says accusingly. ‘How much do they charge?’
‘Seven thousand.’ She speaks quietly, but precisely. He knows this. She knows he knows this.
‘Wonder what the rent is on this place?’ His voice is a little too loud. The couple on the other side of the room lift their heads. The receptionist puts her head round the door.
‘Dr Gilani will see you now.’
Hannah stands, smoothing down her skirt. ‘Thank you.’
Nathan follows her up the stairs. ‘Nice paintings,’ he says, as they pass a series of lurid abstracts.
Dr Gilani sits behind a broad desk in a huge room. He is a large, smiling bear of a man. He leans forward to greet them, grasping their hands in his paws. ‘Good to meet you,’ he says, and looks as though he means it. ‘Please, sit down.’
‘So,’ he says, as they sit. ‘I’ve been reading through your notes. As you know, Hannah, there are a large proportion of women like yourself for whom there is no known cause of infertility.’
Hannah nods.
‘And the fact that you have been pregnant once already, despite the miscarriage, is a good thing. The good news is that you might still conceive at any time. The bad news is that there is nothing, other than the usual, that we can tell you to do to help. But’ – he smiles – ‘we are very well equipped here.’
Nathan looks around the room, as though scanning it for equipment, but the room, despite its vast size, looks empty.
Dr Gilani runs through the treatments he can offer that the NHS cannot: the time-lapse
cameras, the frequent scans, the womb scraping, the egg transfers at the weekend. All of it adding up to success rates in the 30 per cent range, for patients of Hannah’s age.
‘What’s womb scraping?’ says Nathan. ‘It sounds barbaric.’
‘It’s a technique,’ says Dr Gilani, ‘that has been shown to help with implantation. Here.’ He passes a piece of paper over the desk. He has underlined the numbers: 32 per cent pregnancy, ages 35–38. The live birth rates that follow are lower. The fee is in small figures at the bottom of the page.
‘Can you give me an idea,’ says Nathan. ‘A breakdown of the costs?’
Dr Gilani’s smile is immovable. ‘Of course, I can have my secretary prepare it.’
‘It’s just – it’s an awful lot of money,’ says Nathan. ‘Isn’t it? For something that is seventy per cent likely to fail.’
Hannah presses the nail of her thumb into the palm of her opposite hand.
‘I understand.’ Dr Gilani gives the smallest of glances to the clock on the wall. ‘Many of our patients use their insurance to cover—’
‘We don’t have insurance,’ says Nathan. ‘We believe in the National Health Service.’
Hannah leans over Nathan, sweeps the paper into her bag. ‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘So – if you decide to go ahead, please make an appointment with my secretary and we can get you started straight away.’
‘Wait,’ says Nathan. ‘Han – don’t you need time? To recover? Hannah’s just had a round of IVF. She’s exhausted.’
‘I’m fine,’ says Hannah. ‘And I can speak for myself.’
‘Of course’ – Dr Gilani spreads his large hands – ‘if you’d rather wait. But every month that you wait, of course, is a month that—’
‘No,’ says Hannah. ‘I’d rather not wait.’
Nathan is looking out of the window, his jaw clenched. ‘Thank you, Dr Gilani. You’ve been very helpful.’
Dr Gilani presses their hands in his.
Nathan walks in front of her down the staircase, but does not stop at the receptionist’s desk. Instead he pushes his way out on to the street. By the time Hannah catches up with him he is round the corner, halfway through rolling a cigarette.
‘When did you start smoking?’
‘Recently. And I haven’t started smoking.’
‘What’s this then?’
‘A cigarette.’
‘Were you smoking? Last cycle?’
‘No, Hannah. I wasn’t. But now I’d quite like a cigarette.’ He lights up. She stares at him. The traffic roars. It is a grey, polluted day.
‘I can’t believe you,’ she says.
‘What can’t you believe, Hannah?’
She casts her hand towards him.
‘Oh. I disgust you, do I? Well, this’ – he waves his cigarette at their surroundings – ‘disgusts me. All these doctors making thousands, millions, out of people’s desperation. This is a street of quacks. You might as well go and chuck seven thousand pounds down a wishing well for all the good it will do.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. They’re fucking faith healers, Han.’
‘What about the children on that wall? They exist. Because of this doctor.’
‘They might have existed anyway.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No, I don’t. I don’t know anything. Neither do you. Neither does Doctor fucking Gilani. No one does. Because the human body is a mystery. Because fertility is a fucking mystery, Han.’
‘There are things you can do …’
‘We’ve been doing them. We’ve been doing every single one of those things, Hannah. For months. For years. We still don’t have a baby.’
‘I’ve been doing them. I’ve been doing those things. What have you done, Nath? Tell me. What?’
He looks at her, takes a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Hannah, I really am. I want you to know that I love you, but I can’t do this any more.’
‘What? What can’t you do?’
‘This,’ says Nathan.
‘What does this mean?’
He throws the cigarette out into the street, where cars growl at the traffic lights, and shakes his head.
Her father meets her on the platform at Stockport. She sees him through the window before he sees her – always the momentary shock at his hesitancy, the white of his hair. As she gets down she sees his head twisting this way and that, searching for her.
‘Dad,’ she calls, and he turns towards her, holding out his arms.
He smells of soap and the sharpness of her mum’s washing powder.
‘Let me take that.’ He moves for her suitcase.
‘It’s fine. It’s not heavy.’
‘Shush. Give it here. Got your ticket? There’s barriers at the back now.’
The car is parked where it always is. ‘Now,’ he lifts her case into the boot, ‘your mother’s made shepherd’s pie. She’s worried about you, love.’
It is raining, a light drizzle. The leaves are brown; autumn is already making itself felt up here. Her mother is in the kitchen when they arrive, the windows steamed up, the dog jumping up to say hello.
‘Come here.’ Her mum presses her to her chest. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she says, tutting as she hugs her.
They eat the shepherd’s pie and broccoli, then fruit and cream for pudding, and after they eat they go into the living room and sit in front of the telly.
‘What would you like to watch?’ Her father turns on the TV, hands her the three remote controls with a small flourish. ‘You decide.’
‘I don’t mind, really. What would you normally watch now?’
She sits beside her mother. They watch an episode of a costume drama.
When the adverts come on, her father goes into the kitchen and comes back with tea and chocolate.
He hands her hers with a wink. ‘Aldi,’ he says. ‘They do these lovely little bars.’
She goes to bed when her parents do, at half past nine, and lies down in her childhood room, in her old single bed. There’s a photo on the wall of her and her dad on her wedding day, standing outside in the park – the afternoon light. That green dress.
Her mother pops her head around the door on her way from the bathroom.
‘Anything you need?’
‘Thanks, Mum, I’m fine.’
‘Hot-water bottle?’
‘I’m OK.’
‘I know, but it’s nippy tonight. And I just thought, for your tummy … after everything.’
‘I’m fine. Thanks, Mum.’
‘All right, love. Night-night.’
‘Night, Mum.’
Her mum closes the door softly, and it strikes Hannah, not for the first time, that her parents, whose sphere of life has always seemed so small, so constrained, have mastered the art of kindness. She used to lambast them – the newspaper they read (the Daily Mail), the telly they watched (soaps and nature programmes). Their politics. Their religion (C of E). Their horizons, always so narrow. Their naivety. Their class.
And yet they are kind.
They love their children, and they love one another still. How do they do it? Did they learn it, over time? The slow accretion of habit, of days built from these small, simple acts?
On Sunday morning her parents get ready for church. Hannah watches her mother pull on her winter coat, then tut and fuss at her dad’s thin anorak; trying to get him to wear an extra jumper, cajoling him into his scarf.
‘Would you like to come?’
‘No, I’ll go for a walk. Get some bits from the shop. Maybe I’ll make some lunch.’
She walks out along the cul de sac: pebble-dash and tiny windows and Union Jacks. It always used to amaze her, how quickly the houses changed, how on the other side of Fog Lane Park you were in Didsbury, where the streets had trees and the houses were huge. Not these little 1930s semis, huddled together as though apologizing for themselves.
She does a couple of laps of the local park, then go
es to the Co-op and buys a chicken and some veg. Her parents are back by twelve, and she sees their faces light up at the smell of roasting meat.
Later, when lunch is over and she and her mum are washing up, Hannah turns to her mother. ‘How do you pray, Mum?’ she asks.
‘What do you mean?’ her mother says.
‘I mean in church, when you pray. How do you do it?’
Her mother takes off her gloves and places them on the side of the counter. She rinses the bowl, placing it back in the cupboard under the sink, then turns to Hannah.
‘I’m not sure, really,’ she says. ‘I close my eyes. I listen. I sort of … collect myself, I suppose. And then, if I’m praying for someone in particular, I bring them to my mind. If it’s for you, I think of you. Sometimes you’re like you are now, sometimes you’re a little girl.’ Her mother’s hand takes hers. ‘And then I ask. I pray.’
‘Do you pray for a baby?’
‘Yes, love. I did.’
‘You did?’ she says. ‘And now?’
Her mother steps forward, takes Hannah’s cheeks in her palms. ‘Now, I pray for your happiness, love. For you to be happy. That’s all. Oh, Hannah,’ her mother says, as Hannah begins to cry. ‘Oh, my lovely girl.’
London
1997
It is August 1997, the summer of graduation, when Hannah arrives in the city.
Tony Blair has been Prime Minister for three months. For eighteen years of Hannah’s life there has been a Tory government. They watched the election together, she and Lissa, just before their exams, in an Irish club in Chorlton. They drank Black Velvets until they were reeling. Even her father voted for Tony Blair.
The invitation from Lissa was issued casually, on a postcard from Rome showing the Trevi Fountain.
I have been doing my best Anita Ekberg. It’s too beautiful here. I will undoubtedly be bored and lonely on my return. Please come to London soon.
Lissa meets her at Euston, wearing jeans and scuffed plimsolls. She is tanned and her hair is loose. Hannah herself is scratchy with self-consciousness. She has recently had her hair cut in a close bob; her hand moves often to the place where the hair tapers to a sharp point at her neck.
