by Zoë Jenny
A dog was scratching at the door of one of the flats, barking its heart out. But Claire didn’t pay any attention. She was thinking of the strange coincidence that Mrs Ross possessed the same necklace as Sadie, when suddenly five or six children dashed out from a side alley into the street, shouting and howling, their arms stretched out, deliberately blocking her way.
She was forced to brake suddenly, before swivelling around, cursing. “Get out of the way, dammit!” she shouted. But they only jeered louder, showing her the finger. For a few seconds she lost balance, the creaking tyres leaving a long black mark behind. When she finally brought the scooter to a halt the children were gone. It was only when she was back in the house that she noticed she was shaking and her knees were weak and wobbly. The children probably came from the flats of Nelson Place or from one of the towers off City Road. It was somehow disturbing to know they were so close by, and maybe even knew where she lived. The neighbour opposite had his scooter secured to a tree with a massive chainlock, which until now she had thought excessively cautious. But maybe he had good reason.
Preparing dinner, Claire could hear Anthony coming down the street, recognising the distinctive sound his soles made on the pavement. His steps came closer quickly. He always walked fast. From Canary Wharf to Angel it took him just over 30 minutes when the tube was running smoothly, and five minutes from Angel, walking down City Road to Remington Street. She was relieved to hear the reassuring sound of his key turning in the door.
Following his invariable routine, he kicked off his shoes as soon he was inside and threw his Mandarina Duck working bag onto the sofa in the living room – the monotonous structure of day-to-day life, like the good bye and hello kiss on the cheek, the after-dinner cigarette or the sound of water filling a bath. After all that had happened, Claire listened to these noises like a consoling rhyme.
As soon as he entered the kitchen she hugged him boisterously as if she hadn’t seen him for ages, pressing her lips against his. However, from a stiffness in his movements she could tell at once he wasn’t in a particularly good mood. Pouring himself a glass of Pinot Grigio, he mumbled something about his boss giving him a hard time. He never smoked before dinner and she was surprised to see him light a cigarette. Leaning back in the chair, pivoting on two legs, he blew smoke towards the ceiling. He closed his eyes and told her in a dark voice how the head of the department had summoned him to his office. Apparently he had projected the quarterly earnings of a pharmaceutical company much too positively and his mistake had lost the bank £600,000.
Claire looked at him. £600,000 was what their house cost. “Will you be fired?” she asked.
“No, but if it happens again I will be. Of course it won’t happen again,” he said angrily, hitting the table with his fist and furiously stubbing out the halfsmoked cigarette. It looked like a broken leg.
Finally, over dinner, he told her about a particular executive who had let him down badly, giving wrong indications. But after all, it was his responsibilty, and this setback came as a huge blow. Anthony had hoped for a promotion the following year. When he started at HowlandRoberts he had told her excitedly about analysts who were highly ranked, treated like stars, who got huge promotions, and he had left her in no doubt that this was exactly what he was aiming for. He worked hard, getting up at six every morning and, at least twice a week, he called her from the office to tell her not to expect him for dinner because he was working late.
Claire admired his dicipline and ambition, and after his MBA and a Masters in Finance he had all the tools he needed for a career in the City. He shifted around the broccoli and carrots on his plate with a concentrated expression as if he was figuring out some complex mathematical problem, only half-listening when Claire told him about the near accident.
“They are just kids, fooling around,” he said, playing it down as if she was making too much of a fuss about it.
“Fooling around? I could have hit one of them, or hurt myself. They’re mean little bastards, Anthony, you should have seen the hatred they had in their faces. I wonder where that comes from.”
For a moment they were silent, and the only noise was the scraping of cutlery on plates. Anthony looked tired. “Unfortunately, you’ll just have to put up with it, because at the moment we can‘t afford to move to South Kensington, or even Duncan Terrace for that matter.”
“I didn’t suggest that we move house. I just told you what happened. Apparently we don’t have the friendliest neigbourhood, that’s all.”
Maybe it wasn’t the best time to talk about something delicate, but Claire had been waiting to tell him all along that Sam and Christine were thinking about adopting a child, and she couldn’t hold back any longer. Anthony looked at her flabbergasted. “Well,” he said, chewing slowly on a piece of steak, “if that’s what they want to do, good luck to them.”
“Is that all?” she asked. “I mean, why aren’t we considering it? Since it seems we can’t have our own children either.”
“I would never ever adopt a child unless we had tried absolutely everything else first.”
“But we have been trying for –”
“15 months,” Anthony said and after a pause, “I want to reproduce.” Claire smiled afflicted. How technical that sounded. ‘Reproducing’. Like something animals do to sustain the population. “I want to pass on my genes,” Anthony continued, “so something from me lives on, you know. Some people even say this is the meaning of life.”
Anthony followed a clear path: the house, the marriage, a child, then a bigger house... the usual aspirations. And why not? After her accident, Claire knew she could never dance again and have a fabulous career like Anne, the award-winning architect with work in magazines. She saw herself ready to settle and have a family. But Anne now had a child... she had it all, and where was Claire?
“Just stop feeling so goddam sorry for yourself!” Anthony said briskly, getting up from the table. He had read her expression, that withdrawn, distant look again, which he saw as an indication she was brooding over all the bad luck she had. And how right he was, she thought.
Standing behind her, he slowly massaged her shoulders, a sign that his mood had changed, a familiar gesture that indicated he was calm and wanted her to be calm too.
“I can’t help but think we still have a good chance, Claire. That the problem is something that hasn’t been detected by the routine tests, something that could be overcome.”
She knew before he said it. It was what she had hoped to avoid. The three letters had hovered over her head for the last few months like a fat black cloud.
“Let’s try IVF.”
“IVF?... but that’s... that’s expensive, invasive and... and desperate.”
Of course she had considered it before, but had never really thought it would actually come to this. She never thought they would be one of those unlucky couples, and somehow she could still not imagine it. “Maybe we just need a bit more time,” Claire added.
But Anthony was insistent. “No, Claire, we’ve wasted enough time already. And we are desperate. Or why is it then that you feel the need to bond with other people’s children?”
“Nora, you mean?” Claire asked sheepishly.
“Yes, Nora.”
She knew he was right. And it felt like a knife turning in an open wound. There was also no doubt that if Anthony knew what had happened that very afternoon, he would have been beside himself.
He finished the bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of the telly, watching Friends. With the canned laughter in the background, Claire surfed the internet, reading one horrific story after another. Miss Zelda had told her at the very first session never, ever to search the internet for the term ‘infertility’. For a long time she had restrained herself, but now she was lapping it up, all the greedier for it. She read about clinics offering IVF – she was surprised how many there were – and the risk of multiple births. There were stories of woman with triplets, women who suffered ectopic pregnancies, ovarian hyper
stimulation syndrome and miscarriages. One woman tried IVF unsuccessfully 12 times, and another died of internal bleeding during egg retrieval. Numerous in-depth articles dealt with the scientific phenomenon of the increasing decline in sperm quality. One doctor even warned that the sustainability of the European population was at risk, with every third couple being childless in the future. Apparently, she and Anthony were in line with the trend of a dramatically shifting demographic balance.
All sorts of dubious ‘miracle cures’ were advertised, from vitamin supplements and potions to herb juices promising to turn any woman into a baby-making machine if ‘everything else had failed’.
A chat site offered contact with other women who were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. That’s what the global village was also good for – sharing misery. Claire thought of an anonymous faceless crowd of women around the world, their nightmares and dashed hopes, deprived of what was universally seen as ‘the meaning of life’. But in many articles there was also a strong undercurrent of judgement, that woman who left it too late have only themselves to blame. Childless women were either pitied for being cut out of the circle of life or, if childless by choice, judged as being selfish. In any case Claire got the message very clearly: she lived in a society that still saw the primary object of womanhood as becoming a mother. Childlessness was treated as either some form of madness or horrible disease.
‘Childless? Welcome to the outcast’ one website captioned. There she was, in the club of ultimate failure and anathema. And with the anger and sadness came fear. What if they tried IVF and it didn’t work? What would happen to their marriage? She knew they would do it, but suddenly she felt an incredible pressure; what lay ahead was a sort of trial where she was on the table, stripped bare for everyone to see. There was no way out, like being forced to a near impossible task at gunpoint.
*
It had happened countless times before. Just as she pressed the buttons of Anne’s number, the phone started to ring. Maybe it was telepathy.
“Claire?” Anne’s voice sounded as clear as if she was talking to her from the next room.
“I was just about to call you,” Claire said. “You beat me to it once more.”
She imagined Anne, standing in the kitchen, her clothes stained with food and snot.
“How is little Margarethe?” It was always the first thing Claire asked now.
“Everything is interesting to her, the whole world one big playground. I just put her to bed, for her afternoon nap.”
Anne wanted to discuss Mother’s 60th birthday. Being the good daughter, she was always eager to organise a family gathering, trying to keep the family together, especially now that they all lived apart. Planing a surprise dinner party, she wanted her opinion on whether to book a private dining room at Borchardt’s or Hugo’s.
“Hugo’s has a 360-degree panoramic view over Berlin and Mum has never been there,” Claire argued. OK, that one was ticked off the list. Anne was babbling away about giving their parents a voucher for a round trip on a hot air balloon, from which they would have a bird’s-eye view of chateau Sanssoucis, the Prussian Gardens and the lakes of Havelland. At that moment Claire changed her mind and decided she wouldn’t tell Anne about their plan to embark on IVF, cautiously agreed on after their conversation the other night. It would only put unnecessary pressure on her and if it failed they would soon enough shower her with compassion, pouring their pity into her as if she were an empty, useless shell. ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst,’ was one of her former dance tutor’s mottos that she had absorbed for her own life, and she decided that in this case it was indeed a good idea to prepare for the worst. Carried away by her own thoughts, she only half-listened, but suddenly her full attention was caught. Anne was reaching out into delicate territory, reminding her of calling home now and then. “They are asking about you,” she said, emphasising the word ‘as-k-i-n-g’, as if to make clear that there was a profound lack of communication on her behalf.
Anne on the other hand was on the phone with Mum almost daily. Now that Margarethe was in the world, their first grandchild, they saw each other often at weekends in Hamburg or Berlin.
“You know, they’re not gonna live forever.” That was the sentence from the phone conversation that stayed with Claire for the rest of the day. Between the lines, wasn’t this a rebuke, an undercurrent of, “hurry up with your offspring sister?” On past occasions, a patronising comment like that could have sparked a fight between them, but nowadays Claire just overlooked it, intrigued how Anne’s side blows were skilfully embedded in a diffusion of well-meaning and apparent harmlessness.
“Sure. Will do,” she replied, somewhat obstinately.
“And what about a birthday cake, something special, maybe tiered?” Anne continued.
“Whatever you say, Anne; you decide and we’ll split the cost.”
Anne’s call left a sour after-taste. If she had meant to leave her feeling guilty and remorseful she had succeeded. It was true, of course, she rarely called home anymore. What could she tell them, anyway? There was no news.
After she had moved to London her relationship with her parents had changed drastically. They didn’t approve of her going to London and leaving her job in the ensemble of the Berlin Staatsballett. For them it was simply a disastrous career move. Also, there were no friends or relatives in London, no connection whatsoever. They couldn’t do the good parent thing and give her advice, not even an address or phone number. London just wasn’t on their map. And maybe that was – apart from what Claire saw as a ‘necessary career change’ – what most appealed to her. The experience of being in no-man’s-land. Alone. It was her thing, and back then she was full of running away from home energy. Sure, she could have made it easier for herself by staying at the ensemble, like her parents suggested. But she was never the one to choose the path of least resistance. It felt right to veer off-course for once and be unpredictable.
She had a strong sense that that’s what artists have to do, expose themselves, get out and leave the comfort zone; it makes them stronger, purer, closer to the core of truth; it refines them like a rough diamond, being polished by experience and loneliness. She wanted the world to wash up its driftwood on her. To go down under and come up again, take the plunge and swim. It was as much a mental exercise as it was physical, and she knew it was going to be hard.
“Why are you throwing away your talent and so many years of training and hard work?” her parents argued. But she didn’t throw it away at all; she was just going to use her skills differently. After all, what was there left to achieve? Long gone were the days when she beamed with excitement and enthusiasm because she got assigned to the Berlin Staatsballett. It was a smooth transition from ballet school to becoming a professional dancer. Back then, there was never a moment of doubt that this was where she ought to be, on stage. And her parents made no secret about how proud they were of their two gifted daugthers. While Anne was ramming posts into the ground to build houses, she was pirouetting and flying through the air. Recalling her parents proudly sitting in the front row – they didn’t miss a single performance, and often Anne would be there too, supporting her little sister – she felt rueful. It was those early years of performing that were by far the happiest. All she had dreamt of during her childhood and youth had finally materialised. She was in full command of her strong lean body, the product of many years of hard training. As soon as she went on stage she changed into someone else, someone untouchable, every movement a triumph of grace and beauty. After years of discipline she had finally overcome the profanity of the body; it wasn’t just a peculiar machine anymore, eating and shitting and ultimately dying, a botched job, vulnerable and prone to thousands of illnesses. She had turned it into something else, into a perfect tool and medium. That was what ballet was – a smashing fist to the ugliness of the world. A fist to the terrible frailty of the human body. Ballet was for her the most convincing statement countering the unbearable imperfection of it
all. There she was, united with the other dancers to create something that was better and truer than reality ever could be, combining symmetry, proportion and harmony to the highest level. Every night it reminded the audience that there was something grander then the trivial petty misery of their everyday lives.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye needs to know.’ A fomer boyfriend she had danced a pas de deux with had stuck the quote on a Post-it note to the mirror of her dressing table. It was hammered into her mind as well as her chiselled body, marble-like and steadfast, like the column of a Greek temple.
At 26 her career as a ballet dancer had peaked; she had danced all the big choreographs, the Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
However, although her bone structure was fine and elfin, she struggled to keep her weight down. More than once she was told to watch her weight and lose a pound or two, and with the years she found it increasingly difficult to stay within the limits.
Once a year she went on tour with the company, dancing in Japan, Russia and all over Europe. Although what had been exciting at first became exhausting and repetitive. After more then ten years of daily training, the evening shows left her more washed out than they used to. But what got to her most was the sudden, overwhelming loneliness after the applause. Sometimes she crashed into bed, sore all over, thinking of the many strained ankles and broken bones of the past years, the discipline and sacrifice, all the sweat, the travelling and failed relationships.
There had been dancers, choreographers and musicians, all men she had met through work. They were ambitious and full of energy just as she was, and it always followed the same pattern: after the physical attraction came the power game, and even when she tried to make it work it always failed, because ultimately their careers were more important. Too much hard work had been put in to give it up for so mediocre a thing as a domestic life.
Then, of course, there was the exhilaration, the passion of being on stage, performing in front of hundreds of people, the attention, the limelight; although the light was cold and harsh. That’s what the dancers universally agreed upon – performing was better then sex, better then an orgasm and better then anything they had experienced. It was the one thing Claire missed most and found the hardest to accept, the fact that she would never be able to perform again.
