Inconceivable (30 page)

Dear Sam,

I
’ve now officially handed in my notice at BBC Radio. It’ll mean going into debt because the advance they’ve given me for my film is nothing like enough to keep us, but it has to be done. I’ve taken so many days off in the last couple of months that they’d even begun to notice at Broadcasting House. Normally, if you don’t push your luck they’ll let you bumble on until you retire but even they have limits so I thought I’d better go before I was pushed.

I dropped in on Charlie Stone’s studio on my last morning, to say goodbye.

‘Right, OK, nice one,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

Which is, I think, a fitting epitaph for my career in youth broadcasting.

I haven’t told Lucy about me chucking my job. How can I? She hasn’t got the faintest idea what I’m up to. Oh well, one lie more or less won’t hurt.

There was a big script conference today prior to commencement of principal photography. It was held at Above The Line in Soho because Ewan didn’t want to schlep all the way out to White City.

Therefore George and Trevor and even Nigel had to schlep into town. Interesting, that. It strikes me that Nigel’s not as tough as he’d like to think he is. The BBC are putting up most of the money but Nigel lets the Corporation get treated like junior partners to three haircuts with half a rented floor in Soho.

And why?

Film, that’s why. The whole world is bewitched by film, the inimitable glamour of the silver screen. Or at least the whole of the London media world, which is the whole world as far as we who live in it are concerned. All other narrative art forms have come to be seen as drab and joyless compared to film. Novels, theatre, TV? All right in their way, but in the final analysis boring.

Boring and old-fashioned, to be seen as a stepping stone, no more than that, a stepping stone into the only real place to be, the glorious world of film! If a novelist writes a novel the first question his first interviewer will ask is, ‘Will it be made into a movie?’ If an actor gets a part in a ten-million-pound TV mini series they’ll say to their friends, ‘Of course it’s only telly.’ The directors of subsidized art theatres sweat out their time commissioning plays which are as much like movies as four actors and a chair will allow them to be, waiting for that longed- for day when they’ll have amassed enough credibility to get out of theatre and into film. It’s Hollywood, you see. After ninety years we’re all still mesmerized. We still want to get there.

Nobody working at the BBC is going to get to Hollywood but somebody from Above The Line might and in Ewan’s case will.

Which is why we come to him.

Fortunately for me it was a very positive meeting indeed.

Everybody agreed that the current draft of the script is good.

Superb, actually, was the word being bandied about. Ewan made it clear that he was very happy.

Taking her cue from Ewan, Petra produced sheaves of faxes and declared that LA and New York are also very happy, that everyone in fact is very happy.

It was an absolute love fest.

Then of course came the inevitable caveat. This is a thing that always happens to writers in script discussions, no matter how enthusiastic those discussions might be. Somebody says ‘except for’. I’ve done it to hundreds myself; ‘Everybody is absolutely delighted, except for…’

‘The ending,’ Nigel said, and they all nodded.

It was a fair call, I had to admit.

‘Vis-a-vis the absence thereof,’ said Petra putting the unspoken doubt into words.

I knew I would have to stick to my guns. With Lucy and me so close to a conclusion for better or for worse, I just don’t feel that I have it in me yet to decide how my story ends. It turns out that Lucy was right all along. You do need to write from the heart. It does have to come from within, and at the moment I don’t have the heart to decide on the fate of my characters. I don’t know how I’ll feel when the news comes through, so I don’t know how they’ll feel. That doesn’t mean I’m going to make Colin and Rachel’s result the same as Lucy’s and mine. I might but I just don’t know yet.

‘It’s only the last page,’ I said. ‘The last few lines, in fact. I’ll hand it in when I said, in a few days.’

‘But Sam,’ Nigel protested. ‘Ewan starts filming next week.’

‘Well, he doesn’t need to start with the end, does he?’ I said, looking at Ewan, who stared into his Aqua Libra in a suitable ‘I shall pronounce my conclusions in my own time’ manner.

‘With respect,’ Petra said in fact very nearly snapped ‘it’s a bit difficult keeping the American distributors
and
their money in place when we don’t know how the story comes out.’

‘Well, I don’t know how the story comes out,’ I protested. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t.’

Ewan hauled himself from the depths of his futon and reached for an olive.

‘Look, it’s my movie, you ken?’ he said, which is directors all over for you. I’d written it. Various people were paying for it.

Hundreds of people were going to be involved in making it. But it would, of course, be ‘his’ movie, a ‘Ewan Proclaimer Film’. On another occasion I might have said something (although I doubt it), but it turned out that Ewan was on my side so I let it go.

‘As I’ve made clear before,’ he continued, ‘if Sam wants to hold back on the ending then that’s fine. It’s good motivation for the actors and it keeps us all on our toes. They’re playing two people over whom hangs a life or no-life situation. I’m very happy to help them to maintain that ambiguity. Improvisation is the life blood of creative endeavour.’

Well, that shut them up, let me tell you.

There’s a church in Hammersmith next to the flyover which I call ‘the lonely church’. I call it that because it’s been almost completely cut off by roads from the community it was built to serve. Millions of people see it every year but only at fifty miles an hour. Its spire pokes up beside the flyover as the M4 starts to turn back into the A4. It’s a beautiful church, although you wouldn’t know it until you were about ten feet away from it. I found myself there today. I’d just sort of wandered off after my appointment at the hospital and I must have walked two or three miles because suddenly there I was standing outside the lonely church of Saint Paul’s as I now know it to be called. I’d never seen the bottom two thirds of it before but I knew it by the vast elevated roads that roar and fume around it. I didn’t go in, but I sat in the grounds trying to find the faith to pray. I don’t know whether I managed it. I don’t know what it would feel like to really believe in a prayer, I don’t suppose many people do. I mean, you’d have to be pretty majorly religious. I do know that I concentrated very hard and tried to think why I deserved a child and came up with the answer that I deserved one because it was the thing that I wanted more than anything else on earth. I suppose in a way that was a prayer, whatever that means. A prayer to fate, at any rate. Not long now. A couple of weeks at most and then we’ll know.

George and Trevor took me out to lunch today. We begin shooting tomorrow and they absolutely insisted that I join them for a final conference. I was delighted to. Now that I’m no longer a BBC exec and on a budget to boot I don’t get to dine at Quark quite as regularly as I used to and I thought it would be almost like old times.

They were both already seated when I arrived and looking very serious. George didn’t even bother to stare at the waitress’s backside, which must have been a first for him, and Trevor refrained from commenting on the fact that though he did not require wine himself he had no hesitation whatsoever in encouraging us to imbibe.

All in all, it was not like old times one bit. They got straight to the point.

‘Sam,’ said George, but I could see that he spoke for both of them. ‘You’re going to have to tell Lucy about this.’

It took me completely aback. Silly, really. George and Trevor are both good friends of Lucy and it should have occurred to me that they would be worrying about the obvious autobiographical details that I was exploiting even if they were ignorant about the depths of my betrayal.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Not now. We’re just about to complete a cycle of IVF.’

‘Yes, do tell us how it turns out,’ said Trevor, slightly acidly. ‘Or perhaps we should wait to read it in the script.’

They were both genuinely concerned. It was as obvious to them as it was to me that a pseudonym would not disguise me for ever.

‘People are very excited about this project,’ George insisted.

‘What are you going to do if it’s a hit? You won’t be able to hide from the media, you know. My God! Imagine if they found out before she did and she read it in the papers, or, worse, got doorstepped by a hack?’

‘Even if it’s a flop you can’t possibly keep the fact that you’ve written a movie a secret,’ Trevor insisted. ‘She’s your wife, for heaven’s sake.’

They’re right, of course, and I certainly didn’t need a fifty-quid lunch (courtesy of the licence payer) for anybody to tell me. They meant well, of course, but in the long run it’s my business, mine and Lucy’s.

I told them that I’d tell her when I know how the story ends.

Dear Penny,

S
am gave me the last injection tonight before egg collection, which we go in for at seven a.m. the day after tomorrow. Rather dramatically, the injection had to be done at midnight. It’s now twelve fifteen but I know I shall have trouble sleeping. Sam’s been very good about the injections. Apart from that one time, they haven’t hurt at all. Talking to some of the women at the hospital, it seems that some husbands (partners, I should say) can’t bring themselves to do it at all, so the poor women have to go in at seven every morning for weeks. Imagine that. It’s boring enough just going in to keep them topped up with the endless amounts of blood they seem to require. Sam told me that he was scared at first but he’d got used to it. I know that I wouldn’t like to have had to inject him with huge needles. I think he’s been quite brave. In fact I think he’s been very good about the whole vile business which I know he would never have got into at all without my insistence. He’s given me a lot of strength. Taking such an interest and always being around when I need him. Some husbands hate it all so much that they try to pretend it isn’t happening. Sam hasn’t been like that at all. Quite the opposite. He’s been fascinated, which has made things much easier for me. I tried to thank him a bit tonight because I know he’s never really, really wanted children. I mean not really.

She’s wrong about me not really wanting children and I told her so. I told her I really do want us to have children, that I want it with all my heart, and I do. I told her I wanted it because I love her and that our children would be an extension and expression of that love. Another part of us. But if it doesn’t happen then we’ll still have us, that our love will be no less whole…and then I realized that I was quoting the bloody script! And I couldn’t remember whether I’d said it before, or written it in my book, or made it up for the film, or nicked it from Lucy’s book! I suddenly realized that I no longer knew whose emotions were whose. I thought I’ve got to tell her, right now. And I did try. I started to, but I couldn’t. Not now. She’s having her eggs collected tomorrow.

Sam was a bit distracted, actually. Probably the fact that he’s got to have another hospital wank tomorrow. He hates that so much. Oh well, maybe it’ll be for the last time. Who knows? If we could only score. Anyway, he didn’t say much. I think he wanted to but he didn’t and I didn’t press him. We just held each other. In fact it got quite heated for a minute, but I reminded him that if we made love tonight we could end up with twelve. So we stopped. I feel incredibly close to Sam tonight. I told him that I love him and that it gives me strength to know that whatever happens I’m safe in that love.

I thought he was going to cry. Then I thought he was going to tell me something. Then he didn’t say anything.

Dear Sam,

T
his morning Lucy and I went to Spannerfield for the big day of egg and sperm collection. We got there at 6.50 a.m. for 7 as instructed, to find a lengthy queue of cold, sheepish-looking people already there. Most of them were women in for injections because they don’t have husbands like me who have the sheer iron guts to do it themselves. Some of us, however, about ten couples, were in for the full business and we were duly led off to a ward with a row of curtained-off beds in it.

There was a rather nice nurse called Charles. Lucy knew him already but it was all new for us husbands (or partners).

‘All right, Lucy,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll just pop this on and hop into bo-bos and, Sam, we’ll be wanting a little deposit from you for the sperm bank, so I’ll just leave a paying-in pot here and I’ll call you when there’s a service till free.’

Another wanking pot. Great. When I was a kid blithely spanking the plank at any opportunity that arose I never would have even dreamt that I was in fact rehearsing for what would one day be perhaps the most important day of my life.

Lucy had to put on a sort of nightie-smock that was entirely open at the back. She made a comment about it that nearly made me drop the tossing instructions that I was idly perusing, as if I didn’t know them by heart by now.

‘Dignified little number,’ she said. ‘Think I’ll wear it to a première.’

For a moment I was completely thrown.

‘Première!’ I said with what could only have been incriminating alarm. ‘Première of what?’

‘Nothing, just any old première,’ she replied, looking at me rather strangely. ‘I was joking.’

Just then Charles returned and summoned me to do my duty. He did this by poking his head round the curtain and beckoning me with an ominous-looking finger.

‘Your chamber awaits,’ he said. And with grim resignation I took up my pot and went.

There are at least two rooms at the actual unit so the pressure of the queue was somewhat alleviated. In fact Charles told me that I had as much time as I liked because we were all in for the whole day anyway.

Well, that was some small comfort, but having said it you’ve said everything, because this was the most pressurized visit to Mrs Hand of them all. This, as they say, was shit or bust time and as I sat there alone, in the little room, trousers round my ankles (having duly washed my knob as instructed) I contemplated the awesome nature of my responsibilities. My wife, whom I love very very much, has just gone through six weeks of the most appallingly intrusive therapy. Drugs have been pumped into her at every hour of the day, forcing her body to shut down in a premature menopause prior to it being taken over and coerced into a grotesque fertility, over-producing eggs until her ovaries have become heavy, bloated and painful. Every other day for weeks she has traipsed across London to sit in queues with other desperate women, waiting to have various body fluids taken from her and to have her most intimate womanly self probed and manipulated. The reason for all this is of course her desperate, heart-rending longing for a child, a longing which this day may possibly heal.

Now if at this point I fail to ejaculate successfully into a pot, making absolutely sure that I catch the first spurt, this whole dreadful business will have been a total waste of time. So there I sat with all that pressure, alone in a room, attempting to coax my penis into a firm enough condition for me to masturbate successfully and fulfil the trust and the dreams of the woman I love.

Sam looked quite pale when he returned from doing his duty. He said he thought he’d got enough. I said I damn well hoped so. They only need one.

The egg extraction was a rather weird experience. Being there with Lucy while the doctors take over makes you feel like an awkward guest at your own party. When our time came they wheeled Lucy into the theatre, while I padded along behind feeling a complete prat in my green gown, raincap and plastic galoshes.

I sat up at the non-business end and Lucy was soon snoring rather fitfully, having been put out for the count. They had her legs up in stirrups and a doctor lost no time in getting down to business. There was a little television screen on which he could see what he was doing through some ultrasound technique or other and he talked me through it.

‘So the white dot on the screen is the needle. Can you see it moving? I’m lining it up with the follicle, which I pierce. Can you see it deflating?’

I didn’t answer because it was clearly more of a statement than a question. Besides, I felt too intimidated to speak. I didn’t wish to distract anybody by word or deed. Nonetheless, I could see what he was describing shadowy translucent bubbles being popped by the little white dot and then collapsing as he sucked them out.

‘Now we’re removing the fluid from inside the follicle, within which should be the eggs.’

Sure enough, they were siphoning out test tube after test tube of pale red liquid and then handing them through a little kitchen hatch into what I presumed was the lab.

It was extraordinary. The lady through the hatch kept shouting, ‘One egg…two more eggs…another egg,’ like a dinner lady. It reminded me of that scene in
101 Dalmatians
where the nurse keeps rushing out excitedly saying ‘More puppies!’ Anyway, in the end the doctor had got the lot and so he backed up the Pickford’s removal van between Lucy’s legs and started to dismantle the scaffolding rig he’d put up her.

On the way home in the car Sam told me all about it. I was feeling pretty woozy anyway and I can’t say that stories of doctors sucking eggs out of my vagina made me feel much better. Still, at least it’s over. Sam says they told him they got twelve eggs, which was about what they wanted. He said he hoped he’d managed to provide twelve sperm, but I think he was joking.

It was so strange to think that at that very moment, as we drove home, back in the hospital his sperm were being whirled round in a centrifuge prior to being shaken up in a tube with my eggs.

We both agreed that the whole experience was one that we were not anxious to repeat. I said that perhaps we wouldn’t have to. After all, twins are quite common with IVF, even triplets (my God!). Sam told me not to jinx us, but I don’t know. I just have this funny feeling that it’s going to work.

‘I feel good inside,’ I told him, and then I was sick into the glove compartment, but it’s all right, the doctors said that might happen. All right for me, that is, not Sam, who had to clear it out.