The House of Hidden Mothers (2 page)

But it wouldn't be like that, Shyama realized now, the phone still to her ear, humming with electronic silence. It would rain, someone would tread in dog poo, they would have to fight for a spot amongst the cottagers and illicit couplings, and after two minutes of embarrassed mumbling, Lydia would suggest they repair to a nearby wine bar where they would crack self-deprecating jokes about their changing bodies over a shared bag of low-fat crisps. Besides, nowadays no one had to have a real menopause. You could just ignore it, take the drugs which keep a woman's body in a permanent state of faux fertility and parade around in hot chick's clothing, long after the eggs had left the building. A whole phase of life wiped away, glossed over, hushed up, for as long as you could get away with it. And given how society treated older women, why the hell not?

‘Shyams? Still there?'

‘Lyd – I think I'm next …'

Shyama stood aside as Mrs Bindman exited the consulting room. Shyama noticed that her skirt was slightly askew, a childlike muss of hair at the back of her head confirming a session on Mr Lalani's examination couch. Oh, but the smile she carried, softening every angle and crisp crease of her. It must have been a good-news day.

‘Got clients up until five, then I'm all yours,' Lydia got in quickly.

Shyama muttered a brief goodbye and returned to the desk, where she waited until the receptionist looked up brightly.

‘Do go in, Mrs Shaw, and so sorry for the wait.' And then more softly, ‘It was a bit of an emergency appointment, thank you for being so patient.'

Shyama forgave most things when accompanied by impeccable manners. She hesitated, then said, ‘I always thought hell would turn out to be some kind of waiting room. Sort of weird that this is in here.'

The receptionist looked confused.

‘Your sticker?'

‘Oh, that!' The receptionist laughed, and it really did sound as if Tinkerbell had fallen down a small flight of steps. ‘That's not mine. I'm just filling in for Joyce. She's off sick.'

Shyama had never known Joyce's name but remembered the middle-aged, comfy woman who usually greeted her with a doleful smile.

‘I just thought … your earrings.'

‘Oh, these!' The receptionist briefly touched one of the engraved silver discs. ‘My boyfriend got them in Camden. Pretty pattern, isn't it?'

‘Mmm. Anyway, sorry to hear Joyce's off. I'll discuss my spooky-sticker theory with her when she's back.'

The receptionist hesitated, then lowered her voice. ‘I don't think she'll be coming back. Poor Joyce. Who'd have thought it?'

Shyama battled with an image of matronly, sad-eyed Joyce standing on a pile of self-help books whilst looping a dressing-gown cord around her neck, all the way down the corridor and into the hushed beige of Mr Lalani's private consulting room.

‘I wish I could give you more encouraging news, but I want to be completely honest with you, Mrs Shaw.'

Mr Lalani held her gaze; he really was absurdly good-looking with his mane of salt-and-pepper hair and limpid brown eyes – Omar Sharif in
Doctor Zhivago
but with better teeth.

‘No. I mean, yes, I appreciate that.'

She always put on nice underwear for her visits here, pathetic as that was. Like the old joke about the busy mum who gives herself a quick wipe with a flannel before her gynae appointment; once she's on the couch, her doctor clears his throat (why are they usually men?) and tells her, ‘You really didn't need to go to so much effort.' She has used the very flannel her four-year-old employed to wash her doll that morning with glitter soap. It was amusing the first time Shyama heard it. She had heard it several times now, attributed to different people, some of them famous. One of the urban myths that she and her fellow travellers shared in their many waiting rooms. Except she wasn't one of them any more.

‘Mrs Shaw? Can I get you some water, perhaps?'

‘No. Really, I'm fine. I'm just … surprised. Because, well, I've managed one before, haven't I? A child, I mean.'

‘Yes, of course. And I hope that's some comfort, though I know this isn't what you wanted to hear. But you had your daughter nineteen years ago. Your body was very different then. And, of course, I am pretty certain at that point you did not have the problems that …'

Mr Lalani became pleasant background noise, though Shyama remembered to nod knowingly as she caught the odd word drifting by – ‘Laparoscopy … endometriosis … ICSI … IUI … IVF …' – soothing as a mantra in their familiarity. She had a strange and not unpleasant sensation of floating above her body, looking down at the smartish, attractive-ish woman in her casual yet edgy outfit, looking rather good for forty-eight (because of her Asian genes, you know – black don't crack, brown don't frown) and feeling surprisingly calm. Ridiculous to expect there wouldn't be some issues at her age; women half her age had issues. There were plenty of other options, surely?

‘… very few other options available, I'm afraid.'

Shyama blinked, came back to earth with an uncomfortable lurch. ‘What? Sorry, I missed that last … paragraph, actually.'

Mr Lalani's eyes softened. Only on men could wrinkles look empathetic. ‘I'm sorry if I'm not being clear. Let me discard the jargon for a moment.'

His archaic use of language and impeccable grammar hinted at expensive foreign schooling. She had been seeing him for over a year, the third expert during two years of trying, and still knew nothing about his life. The discreet gold band confirmed a wife, presumably a family. How many children had he fathered, or helped create? How many women had sat here in this chair and received his judgement like a benediction or a curse?

‘… very little point in pursuing IVF or any other kind of assisted reproduction. Even seeking donor eggs would not solve the issue of your inhospitable womb and the dangers of attempting to carry a child yourself.'

An inhospitable womb! There, she had been looking for a title for her autobiography. It was a game she played with her girlfriends; every so often, usually when one of them was going through a particularly challenging life phase – rebellious children, a recalcitrant partner, money slipping through their fingers like mercury. So far her favourite title had come from Priya, who had proffered
In These Shoes?
Later on, Shyama found out that ‘In These Shoes' was the title of a song, but still, coming from Priya at that moment, it had seemed like poetry.

‘Of course, it is always your choice. You can get a second opinion, many women do. But the medical facts remain as they are. I am sorry.'

‘So it's me, then?' Shyama exhaled. ‘I mean, I know Toby has passed all his tests with flying colours. Well, he would, wouldn't he? Thirty-four-year-old men, that's their prime, isn't it? And he loves red meat, though we try and limit the lamb chops to once a week. Or is it zinc you have to eat? Is that in eggs? Eggs have good cholesterol now, don't they? And after all the warnings they gave us … so doctors can be wrong. You just find out way after the event, usually.'

Mr Lalani let the silence settle, mote by mote, like fine dust. He had been here many times before. He knew not to argue or over-sympathize. He knew it is always best to let the woman – and it is almost invariably the woman – talk and cry and vent her rage at the world, at Nature who has betrayed her. At forty-eight, the betrayal was almost inevitable. Not that he would ever say that out loud.

‘As I said, Mrs Shaw, please feel free to seek a second opinion, I assure you I won't be offended. I just don't want to raise your hopes and see you spend even more money.'

‘Well, there's not much more of it to be spent, I'm afraid!' Shyama attempted a breezy chuckle, which sounded more like a ragged, repressed sob. ‘Toby's got some temporary work, but he's looking for something better …'

She knew how this sounded. It sounded exactly as her mother and some others presumed it was. Silly older woman of modest means falls for predictably handsome younger man without a steady career. She gets an ego boost and unbounded energy in bed; he gets use of the house and the car, and the soft-mattress landing of her unspoken gratitude. He kisses the scars left from a disastrous marriage – there's not much that youthful tenderness cannot mend. He says he loves her, he wants a life with her. Above all, he would love a child with her. He is kind towards her daughter – he treads that fine line between friend and guardian, but never tries to be her father. (She has one of those, occasional as he is.) There are only fifteen years between Toby and Tara – why on earth would she want to call him Daddy? Tara didn't call her own father that.

‘Mrs Shaw? Maybe you want to discuss this further with your husband before making any decisions? Perhaps you and Mr Shaw would like to make an appointment to come and see me together?'

Shyama ought to tell him now – this gentle man who had navigated his way around her reproductive system like a zealous plumber, undaunted by the leaks, blockages and unexpected U-bends that confronted him – that she was not, in fact, Mrs Shaw. Never had been. That in a fit of misplaced modesty she had assumed Toby's surname when they had begun this whole process four years ago. She had hurriedly reassured Toby that this was not some devious feminine wile to trap him into marriage, as she was pretty sure she never wanted to marry again – nothing personal. But she had to admit that some part of her felt, well, embarrassed to be publicly declaring their fertility issues as a co-habiting couple. She knew it was one of the few traditional tics she had left, stemming from the part of her which she always imagined to be a middle-aged Indian woman in an overtight sari blouse and bad perm, standing at her shoulder clucking, ‘Chi chi chi! Sex and babies and no wedding ring? And none of your clever-schever arguments about Indians doing it all the time and everywhere and look at population and old naughty statues. Kama Sutra was always meant for married peoples only!'

Shyama often wished her Punjabi Jiminy Cricket wasn't so lippy. And spoke better English. Besides, Toby had pointed out several times that declaring themselves to be a married couple wouldn't guarantee them a faster or better result.

‘I mean, look at who gets knocked up the quickest. Pissed teenagers under a pile of coats at a party. I'm pretty sure marriage is the last thing on their minds …'

‘That's because they're teenagers, Toby. Youth is the one thing we can't put on the overdraft.'

The elephant in the room had woken up and scratched itself, sending a few ornaments crashing to the floor. There, she had said it out loud. They both knew that it didn't matter how many sit-ups and seaweed wraps and nips and tucks a woman went through to pass herself off as a decade younger. In an age where you could cougar your way around town with a wrinkle-free smile, inside you were not as old as you felt, but as old as you actually were.

‘Mrs Shaw?'

Shyama rose unsteadily, the room swimming into focus. She gathered herself, layer by layer, each one hardening into a protective skin. She and her inhospitable womb left the building.

Outside the world still turned, the sky a torn grey rag pulled apart by a restless wind, behind each jagged seam a glimpse of blue so bright that Shyama had to look away. She walked blindly past the gracious four-storey mansions, like rows of faded wedding cakes with their tiered creamy façades and stucco doorways flanked with pillars, once rich family homes with servants in the basement and attic. Now the airy drawing rooms welcomed international medical tourists and the locals who could afford to pay, the basement kitchens where floury-armed women used to dice carrots and stuff chickens now given over to hi-tech equipment and strobing green screens, where bodies were tested and assessed.

The wind buffeted Shyama across the A40, the main arterial road running east to west, always pulsing with traffic, the steady drum and bass of London throbbing in time to her own heartbeat. She found herself in Regent's Park as a weak sun finally broke through, starkly yellow against the heavy clouds, the light so fluid in the breeze she wanted to open her mouth and take great gulps of it, willing it deep into her body, the body that had let her down.

Shyama found a space on a bench, next to a mother trying to persuade her apple-cheeked toddler to take a sip from a fluorescent plastic beaker. The child, almost rigid in her quilted snowsuit, all four limbs starfish-spread, shook her head slowly and gravely from side to side, as if she was frankly disappointed with her mother for even trying this on. Everywhere there were children swaddled in warm layers, being wheeled in buggies, trotted after on tricycles and scooters or waddling along like demented ducklings, giddy with freedom, entranced by their own feet and shadows, squealing with joy, all the pre-schoolers whose carers needed to exercise them like puppies to avoid tantrums at bedtime. Shyama could just about remember Tara at this age, sensory memories mostly: the smell of her after a bath, nectar-sweet and kiss-curled; sitting in her stripy booster seat at the table, mashing spaghetti between her fingers with fascinated concentration; her laugh, which sounded unnervingly like her crying. There were so many occasions when Shyama had rushed upstairs expecting to find her trapped under the wardrobe or missing a digit, only to discover her sitting in a circle of her soft toys, serving up tea in plastic cups and chuckling loudly like an over-eager dinner host. Tara's own favourite memory – and she claims it is her first – is when she was about fourteen months old. She had cut her two bottom teeth and Shyama suspected the top two were also trying to push their way out, so she told Tara to open wide so Mummy could have a quick feel of her gums. And as soon as her finger was in, Tara clamped her mouth shut.

‘It was like being savaged by a piranha, honestly!' Shyama said, dressing it up a little just to see Tara's delight in the retelling. ‘I mean, whoever thinks babies aren't strong … the power in those little jaws – I couldn't get it out. And the worst thing was you thought it was a game. The more I yelled and said let go, the more you laughed and laughed. But without letting go. You laughed through clenched teeth like some mad little goblin. That was the disturbing bit.'