Five Unforgivable Things

by Vivien Brown

  We went to Italy.

  Venice in June, and the sun was out, glinting on the water, highlighting the old buildings as the tourists queued to go inside, the pigeons flapping overhead and pecking hungrily at whatever scraps they could find on the ground around our feet. We strolled about, hand in hand, through narrow alleys and over tiny bridges, discovering hidden churches and cafés, and each other. We ate cheaply, filling up on pizza, and slept cheaply in a small hotel a water bus away, and resisted the romantic urge to climb into a gondola and pay the earth for the privilege, still mindful of the budget we’d set ourselves, the things we knew to be important and the things we knew were not. Dan’s nose reddened and peeled, and my arms and legs, free of their usual bank clerk clothes, took on a warm lightly bronzed glow that just about passed as a tan.

  On the plane home, late at night, leaning snugly against each other, both tired but feeling closer than we’d been for ages, Dan told me we had the money. He’d known for a while but he’d wanted this time together first. He gripped my hand and squeezed it tightly. I asked where the money had come from, but he wouldn’t say, raising his free hand and touching his sore pink nose in a ‘you don’t need to know’ way. Had he borrowed it? Won it? Stolen it? Unlikely. His parents. It had to be, but I didn’t really care. Let them keep their secrets.

  Now Round Three could begin.

  ***

  Eleven! I had made eleven eggs. I lifted my head from the pillow, still groggy from the anaesthetic, and smiled into my husband’s eyes. ‘It’s going to work,’ I said. ‘I just know it. We only had two last time, didn’t we? But eleven. Wow!’

  ‘The holiday must have done you good. You look like a happy little hen,’ Dan said, laughing. ‘Snuggled down in your straw, laying away, churning them out to order.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’re good ones. The free range kind!’ I closed my eyes again, trying not to let the nausea get the better of me. ‘Have you … you know, done your bit?’

  ‘Yes.’ He put his hand over mine and whispered in my ear. I still found it amusing how embarrassing he found the whole sperm production thing. ‘Package safely delivered, and on its way to meet the eggs as we speak. And a fine sample it was, though I say so myself.’

  ‘Ugh!’ I pulled my hand back and giggled. ‘I hope you’ve washed that hand. I know where it’s been!’

  ‘Are you complaining? Really? Cos I can always go and ask for it back, you know. My little bottle of baby juice …’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’

  I must have nodded off for a while, but I woke up to find a nurse standing over me, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around my arm and waiting to check my temperature. The clock on the wall on the far side of the small ward told me it was two-thirty, so I’d been out of it for about three hours. Dan was nowhere to be seen. Probably out grabbing some lunch somewhere.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Okay, I think. A bit sore.’

  ‘Not sick?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so. That sleep’s helped a lot. But, tell me, I didn’t dream it, did I? Eleven eggs?’

  ‘That’s right, Kate. Well done. Hardest bit’s out of the way now.’

  She nodded and patted my hand, like I was a schoolgirl who’d just passed a spelling test, and soon had me sitting up with a cup of tea and two slices of lukewarm toast.

  ‘Okay.’ She took another look at my charts and took my plate away. ‘You can go home now, as soon as you’re ready, and when your husband comes back to escort you, of course. And, if all goes well, we’ll see you back in a couple of days for the embryo transfer.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’

  ‘Fingers crossed, eh?’

  ‘And legs! They’re staying in this time, if I have to use super glue to seal myself up.’

  ‘Not a good idea. In nine months’ time, they just might need a way out again!’

  ‘Thank you.’ I could feel the tears welling up and brushed them away.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For saying exactly the right thing. In nine months’ time, I really could have a baby, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Let’s hope so. But not eleven of them, eh? Just imagine it. Your very own football team!’

  ***

  Infertility hurts. Believe me, it hurts like hell. Oops, sorry! Mustn’t swear. So when a chance comes along, you grab it, don’t you? With both hands. You trust the doctors, the scientists, God, to do what your own body can’t. To take the pain away, and give you what you’ve always wanted. A baby – or, if you’re lucky, maybe two. But, more? Nowadays it couldn’t happen, wouldn’t be allowed to happen. But things were different then …

  Should I have worried more, about the risks? Probably, but who wants to hear about those? I know I didn’t. After all that trying and hoping and trying again, living in dread of every tell-tale drop of blood, behaving like performing seals whenever the temperature charts said we must, being pricked with needles and pumped full of drugs, who wouldn’t feel bad enough already, pretty much all the time, without needing to know, or think, or care, about the risks? Sometimes it’s easier to just stop listening. It’s like reading the small print, or ticking a box to say you’ve understood all the terms and conditions. Well, you don’t, do you? Read them, let alone understand.

  And Dan? The truth is that I didn’t even stop to check if he was still there beside me, wanting it, willing it to happen as much as I was. Oh, he was there in body all right, sitting up straight, almost rigid, his hand just slightly shaking on top of mine, but in spirit? Well, you try asking a man a shall-we, shan’t-we question like that, even a man who really wants a child, and you’ll see that flicker of hesitation, that almost imperceptible moment of uncertainty. But only if you choose to look.

  ***

  ‘Well, Mrs Campbell, you’ll be pleased to know that nine of your eggs have successfully fertilised.’ The doctor beamed at us across his desk.

  ‘Nine! But that’s fantastic. So, what happens now?’

  ‘We can’t use them all, obviously, and the embryologist has been assessing their quality this morning. There are three that we can safely say aren’t dividing as well as we’d like, so we’ll be discarding those, I’m afraid. But the other six are all looking viable.’

  ‘Viable?’ Dan was doing that jaw-clenching thing he always did when he was feeling tense. ‘You mean we could actually use all six?’

  ‘I know you’ve not had this decision to make before, but this time it’s a possibility, yes. I wouldn’t normally recommend transferring more than three, but …’

  ‘But what?’ Dan’s elbows were on the desk now, his knuckles supporting his head as he leaned forward, lines of concentration etched across his forehead.

  ‘But because of Mrs Campbell’s age, and the fact that you’ve tried unsuccessfully …’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Twice before …’

  ‘We can have all six?’ That was me, not Dan, my voice rising in that shrill, over-excited way I sometimes can’t hold back.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Kate.’ Dan again. The voice of reason. ‘Six is too big a risk. What if all of them …?’

  ‘That won’t happen. Look at the first time. Three. And last time. Just two. But they didn’t make it, did they? None of them, even though we did everything right. Six are hardly going to all survive, are they? One, or even two, if we’re lucky. But at least with six …’

  ‘Think carefully, Mrs Campbell.’ The doctor’s voice was suddenly grave. ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and with six, yes, you would have a significantly higher chance of achieving a pregnancy, but also, I have to remind you, a significantly higher chance that it could be a multiple pregnancy.’

  ‘Not all of them, though?’ Dan had his accountant’s head on again. ‘Not all six? I mean, twins might actually be quite nice. It would save us having to come back here again in a couple of years’ time to try for baby number two, wouldn’t it? But we’re not going to end up with sextuplets here, are we?’

  I expected the doct
or to laugh, but he didn’t. ‘There are no guarantees, Mr Campbell. I’ve always tried to make that clear to you, to all my patients. As outcomes go, it’s highly unlikely, but it is still a risk. A small one, in my view. But, if you want to take it, then yes, I am prepared to transfer all of them.’

  ‘Today?’ I could feel my heart pounding hard, my pulse rate rising, with the sort of adrenalin rush that comes with wanting to dive straight into something exciting and exhilarating and dangerous, or to run away from it. Which was it now? I wish I knew.

  ‘Yes, of course. But, it’s a big decision. Take your time. I will get someone to sit with you, to talk it all through. We’re ready to go ahead, as soon as you are. But I do recommend caution. We could replace two or three embryos, as we have before, and freeze any you decide not to use today. That would give you a much easier – and safer – attempt next time. No stimulation drugs, no anaesthetic, no egg recovery. Quite a bit cheaper too, in those circumstances.’

  ‘Go through it all again, just to use embryos we already have? And money we don’t? When the embryos are here now, ready and waiting? They could die in the freezer before we even get that far.’

  ‘Die is an emotive word. Mrs Campbell. These are not babies we’re talking about. Embryos, or pre-embryos, as I prefer to call them at this early stage, are nothing more than a few cells, quite incapable of independent life.’

  ‘They’re babies to me. Or they could be, couldn’t they, once they’re back inside me, growing, where they’re supposed to be? I don’t want to put any of them into the freezer, or come back later. I want to give them their chance of an independent life. Any kind of life. All of them. And I want to do it now.’ I looked at Dan, not at all sure what was going through his mind, not really wanting to know. ‘Please.’

  They were babies. My babies. And, yes, I would go through the motions, listen to the advice, consider the risks, to me and to them, talk it through for as long as they made me. But I already knew what I was going to do. Cross my fingers, close my eyes, hope and pray and wish and wonder. I was going to take my chances, throw an invisible dice in the air. The dice with exactly the right numbers on it, the numbers one to six.

  God only knew on which number it might fall, how many babies I might have, but there isn’t a zero on a dice, is there? It was a sign. It had to be. A reassurance, in a world that had had so little of it lately. The end was in sight, and this time I really believed we couldn’t fail.

  ***

  They don’t feel it like we do. Men. Not in the same way. The emptiness, the longing, the guilt. Well, they can’t, can they? It’s not their womb waiting to be filled. No, men worry about different things. Dan did, anyway. Still does, thirty years later. It’s not the will-its or won’t-its that bother him, but the what-happens-when? Best-case scenario. Or worst, depending on how you look at it. Because it could have happened, couldn’t it? All of them hanging on, developing, surviving. It was thousands-to-one improbable, but …

  Think of the cost, said Dan. Mister Accountant. Mister Careful. The cost of prams and cots, and toys and clothes, and mounds of nappies as high as the ceiling. Think of a lifetime of school uniforms, and massive food bills, and teaching them all to drive. The weddings we’d have to save for, if they’re girls. Or boys, for that matter. Think of the lack of sleep and the drop in income, and saying goodbye to any kind of freedom for years and years to come. Think about the house, and whether it will be big enough. And the same for the car. The price there is to pay. A price that isn’t only measured in cash.

  He was right, of course, but I didn’t listen. Not then. I didn’t care. I didn’t even want to consider what that price might be. I was thirty-five, my biological clock was ticking, time trickling away like sand through an hourglass. My egg supply wasn’t going to last for ever, and neither was our bank balance. It couldn’t go on. We both knew that, although neither of us said it out loud. If we didn’t do it then, take that giant leap of faith, take that chance, then that could be it. You do understand that, don’t you? Why I had to do it? It was the end of the road. Or, with just a sprinkling of luck on our side, maybe the beginning …

  Chapter 20

  Ollie, 2017

  A queue had started forming outside the door to the school hall and was snaking its way down the corridor almost as far as the library when Ollie arrived to start auditioning for the nativity play. Word had got out that this year was going to be different, some kind of cross between Jesus Christ Superstar and The X Factor, and it was soon evident that a good eighty per cent of the kids waiting in line were not only girls but that just about all of them were desperate to play the part of Mary. What was wrong with just being a shepherd or even a sheep, Ollie wondered? Everybody wanted to be a star these days.

  There were so many candidates, he only gave them a couple of quick lines to say: ‘Oh, Joseph, I am so weary. When can we find a place to sleep?’ It was amazing how hearing those words spoken over and over again, in voices ranging from the timid and virtually inaudible to the kind of strident yelling they’d probably be able to hear as far away as Bethlehem, had the power to send him to the very brink of sleep. Feet stomping across the dusty boards, they came and went, lugging baby dolls and draping scraps of cloth over their heads, repeating their lines like parrots. Yawning into his hand, Ollie was finding it harder and harder to remember who was who, let alone pick one out from among the rest. And then Victoria Bennett stepped onto the stage.

  She wore her light-brown hair in uneven bunches and the hem of her second-hand uniform was starting to come undone, but she had a presence about her. From the moment she stood there in front of him, utterly still, with no props but a hand held protectively across her tummy, and gazed out unblinkingly into the hall, he knew he had found his Mary. Even without a javelin in her hand, Victoria, it would seem, had more hidden talents than he’d given her credit for.

  The other roles were easy enough to cast, and soon he had a whole list of willing and excited volunteers. The hardest part was breaking it to those who were left, and dealing with the inevitable tantrums and tears of the would-be stars who had failed to make their mark. They could always help with some of the other important jobs, he told them, like being ushers or managing the props backstage, but very few seemed convinced.

  ‘I won’t have to … kiss anybody, will I, sir?’ Victoria said, coming to find him at the end, lugging her school bag up and over her shoulder, ready to leave. ‘Like Joseph, I mean?’

  ‘No, Victoria. You definitely won’t have to kiss anybody.’

  ‘Not even the baby?’

  ‘The baby?’ His mind had gone blank for a moment and he couldn’t for the life of him think what she meant.

  ‘The baby Jesus, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see. Yes, I suppose it would be all right to kiss the baby. It’s only a doll, after all.’

  ‘My brother Benny could be it, if you want.’

  Ollie laughed. ‘That’s a lovely idea, but I think we’ll use a doll. That’s what usually happens.’

  ‘But it’s different this year, isn’t it, sir? Not like the plays we’ve had before.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Everybody says that, sir. That you’re going to make it like a real show this year. With lights and fireworks, and dancers and everything. I think that’ll be really good. Can I be a dancer too?’

  ‘I’m not sure about the fireworks, Victoria! A bit too dangerous in a school hall, I think. And I’m not sure Mary actually gets to dance, either. Remember she’s having a baby.’

  ‘My mum still danced when she had Benny in her tummy. All round the kitchen, waving a tea towel in the air, and singing too. And she danced with Dad sometimes, in our living room, when they were watching Strictly, although she did bump into things a lot. Having babies doesn’t have to stop you doing the things you love to do, sir. I think Mary might have wanted to dance, don’t you? Because she was so happy she was having a baby. God’s baby.’

  ‘You may be right t
here! Now, go on, off home with you.’ Ollie waved his hand towards the door, surprised to realise that everybody else had already gone. ‘And I’ll think about the dancing. I promise.’

  He sat for a while after she’d gone, turning the cast list over and over in his hand. She was right, of course. He had been asked to make this show different, and here he was still lining up all the usual characters, ready to act out the same old story. Where was the creativity, the energy, the imagination the head teacher had expected from him?

  He’d let so many children down, those who’d taken the time and trouble to come along after school and line up in the hope of being picked and had no doubt gone off now, feeling unwanted and not good enough. How had he let that happen? That wasn’t the sort of teacher he wanted to be. No, if he was going to do something exciting with this show, then he should start with including everyone who wanted to be in it. So, they couldn’t all deliver a line clearly enough to be heard. Some would probably have trouble remembering their lines at all, but everyone was good at something, weren’t they? Even if they didn’t know it yet. Like little Victoria with that first throw of the javelin.

  What was it she’d said? That having babies didn’t have to stop you doing what you loved doing? And doesn’t everyone dance when they’re happy? Such wisdom from one so young. She could certainly teach him a thing or two. All of those children wanted to be in his show. They’d set their hearts on it. Who was he to dash their hopes and tell them they couldn’t? It was time to take down the barriers and find out just what these kids were capable of when they were allowed to do the things they loved doing, and when they were happy.

  He took a last look at the list in his hand, then carefully ripped it into tiny pieces. It was time to start all over again and he knew just the person to help him.