CLONER : a Sci-Fi Novel about Human Cloning (A Captivating Story about Reproduction Outside the Womb and Identical Humans) (4 page)

‘Come back in a year,’ they’d told her, brusquely and dismissively. ‘That’s the time we allow for infertility. If you’re still worried then we’ll run some tests.’

‘I’m worried now,’ she’d told them, keeping her voice steady and flat. ‘We’ve been trying to have a baby for two years.’

Obviously they hadn’t heard her. ‘You’ve taken the contraceptive pill for a long time,’ the specialist had told her judgmentally. ‘Twelve years altogether, I think you said.’

Practised birth control - of course, she only had herself to blame!

‘It would have been different if you’d had a baby right away, when you first married.’ A shrug. ‘You need to give your body time to adjust before assuming you’re infertile,’ the Hammersmith consultant had insisted.

Lisa was then thirty-six and worried that time for having babies was running out for her. Many agencies set a time limit as low as thirty-five.

She’d had no option but to play along with the doctors. No other fertility clinic would look at her if her notes told them she’d already been to the Hammersmith.

Lisa settled back on to her pillows. They
had
eventually given her the fertility drugs, but she still hadn’t conceived - until they’d moved to Somerset. In the end that’s all it took. Not their stupid pills, but good country air and wholesome food. That’s what had done the trick. The doctors could keep their dangerous chemicals. Lisa intended to live a purely natural life.

‘Let’s not worry about all that history now. Just leads to nightmares,’ Alec insisted. He put his arms back around her shoulders, drawing her to him, nuzzling her neck. ‘You’re pregnant again, and everything is fine. I’ll soon relax you!’

An almost irresistible feeling of aversion came over Lisa. She held her breath, at first allowing her husband to fondle her without withdrawing, just holding herself back, unresponsive, but forcing her body out of rigidity. In some way she could not quite understand she felt Alec would be threatening her unborn child - children - if she allowed him to go inside her. She’d discussed this point at length with the medical profession at the time she’d finally conceived Seb. According to them intercourse caused no danger to a foetus.

According to them. For this second pregnancy Lisa preferred not to take any chances. She’d decided to sound Meg out as well, as delicately as she could. ‘Any special problems about carrying more than the one?’ she’d asked her, diffident, insisting on carting the tea things out to the scullery after Seb’s party.

‘Problems? Before the birth? Not then. Didn’t even know I be carrying twins until the seventh month!’ Meg had said, her voice unusually high.

‘You mean there were problems later?’

Meg’s eyes had slid away. ‘Susan did notice I be bigger than afore. Her be the midwife in charge, so her organised a scan. That did show they, right enough.’

‘That’s when it became harder? In the last few weeks?’

‘Not as yer’d notice.’ Meg’s dishes had been clattered into her cupboards, the doors shut tight.

‘And what about - well, you know. Frank.’

Meg had looked at her shrewdly, face to face. ‘Frank be just like any other man,’ she’d said, shrugging. ‘But him never did cause me no trouble.’

That hadn’t been what had worried Meg, then. Presumably she focused her worries on Phyllis’s foot. She did seem oddly anxious about that.

Alec’s lips were on Lisa’s, eager and pressing. ‘You’re choking me,’ she spluttered, gasps of coughing successfully wrenching her out of his arms. ‘I think I must be getting a cold.’

Startled, annoyed, he lifted his head away from his wife’s explosive hacking without, however, releasing her.

‘It’s all that ridiculous composting you’ve decided to go in for,’ his voice hissed in her ear. ‘You overdo it, and then you complain you’re tired or not feeling well.’

The coughing eased and he reached towards his groin, his lips flirting now, caressing her ears, her hair, her eyelids. She struggled, heaved against him, began to cough in earnest.

He let her go, climbed over her to his side of the bed, reached his hand out to turn off the light, and pulled the duvet away from her to spread over himself. Lisa lay back, recovering her breath.

‘You really are becoming tricky, Lisa. I never know where I am with you.’

‘It’s just a cold,’ she murmured, putting out her hand. ‘It’s brought on by a virus. Nothing to do with making compost.’

Her husband turned away from her. The silence from the other side of the bed made her uncomfortable. It stirred her imagination yet again. Alec, she knew, could have lived quite happily without any children. Now that he had a son she sensed he felt that was all
he
needed. He was prepared to tolerate one sibling for Seb. She was clear he wouldn’t put up with more than that.

‘’Night,’ she purred. ‘I expect it was just the nightmare. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’

‘I’ll get Saunders in to stack the compost for you, if you insist on making it,’ Alec announced. ‘You’d think Doubler would be good enough for you. You can even have a go at Multiplier, if you want.’ He heaved the duvet up and down. ‘You’re not Meg Graftley, you know. She’s got the muscles for all that. You haven’t. I wish you’d bear that in mind.’

Listening to her husband’s deep breaths of sleep Lisa felt isolated, unsure. What was wrong with her? Why was she causing trouble? She now had everything she’d always dreamed of. A healthy son, a comfortable country house set in idyllic surroundings, another baby on the way, a perfectly good husband doing well in his profession. What else could she possibly want?

A large family. Lisa wanted a family like Meg’s - half a dozen children, company for each other, tumbling over the house. She wanted nothing more than to be an earth mother.

The four-leaf clover appeared in her mind again. Four leaves erupting from a single stem. One for hope, one for faith, one for love - and the last one for luck, as the saying went.

‘It’ll bring me luck,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I know it will bring me luck.’

CHAPTER 4

Ian Parslow, the obstetrician at the Bristol Infirmary, was no less condescending than the one Lisa had consulted at the Hammersmith. She wondered vaguely why he had such a good reputation in the Bristol area.

‘We’re actually looking at the ultrasound, Mrs Wildmore,’ he was telling her, an edge of irritability creeping through the bedside manner. ‘You can see for yourself - one baby!’

He showed them both how they could tell it was a boy. Lisa, used to graphic representation, immediately caught on. Parslow smiled knowingly at Alec who was doing his best to decipher the vague blurred impressions. ‘You can’t always see, but he is lying exactly right.’

Was she imagining it, or was Parslow looking rather intently at the monitor? It was impossible to say, but Lisa sensed the man holding back. Her instincts told her that her new pregnancy was different from her first. She tried to imprint the pictures on her brain, intending to do her own research on the internet later. Had this bland specialist detected an intriguing irregularity? An unusual slant, perhaps, which might be worth discussing with a colleague but best kept a secret from the parents? It made her uneasy to see the doctor’s eyes flit busily from blob to blob, then write a note down on his pad.

‘Is there a problem, Mr Parslow?’

The obstetrician’s head jerked to a sudden stop. The jowls firmed into determined optimism as he shifted his eyes rapidly away from hers and looked at Alec. Something wasn’t quite normal, Lisa was sure; but this man wasn’t about to admit it.

‘A well-formed foetus, Mrs Wildmore. Nothing at all to worry about.’

If anyone was worrying, it wasn’t Lisa. It was simply that she’d no means of knowing what the scan actually told them. Her dream came back to her: was there a small blob within a bigger one? Is that what Parslow had noted down? She’d read about such cases. Perhaps that was why she’d dreamed of one. She watched as the doctor traced out the shapes to Alec, outlining a human in the making. Ultrasounds were not really of interest to Lisa, though Alec was insisting on the whole battery of medical tests.

‘You’re almost forty, pet,’ he constantly reminded her, as though she were trying to deny it. At least this test wasn’t intrusive; as far as she knew, at any rate.

Lisa was beginning to find the repetitious references to her chronological age threatening. Was Alec tiring of her, looking for someone younger? She had begun to age. Careful observation of young men’s reactions told her that. She wasn’t quite as girlish, maybe; more womanly. But not completely past it, either! Glances still followed her when she deliberately passed close by to men using pneumatic drills, or cleaning shop windows. They still whistled - most of the time. And last month, when Trevor had come to stay, he’d congratulated her on her appearance.

‘I don’t know how you do it, sweet, I really don’t,’ he’d said. ‘All the other mums I know are so
frumpy
.’ Her agent had thrown his expressive hands into the air and gazed, apparently delighted, at her clothes. ‘And ethnic is so clever for the country. You look wonderful, darling; brimming with health.’

Dear Trevor; he’d kept her spirits up all the long months when she was carrying Seb. He’d told her how trim she was, encouraged her to continue with her painting. He’d even praised her Somerset landscapes. Though prettier - just kitsch, if she was honest with herself - than her London work he’d managed to find the right outlet. Not at the usual gallery.

‘There’s this new chap on my list now,’ he’d told her. ‘Tiny place off New Bond Street. Marvellous for country scenes. Leo’s expanding by leaps and bounds. Moving to Albemarle Street in a couple of months.’

Alec, by contrast, was continually harping on possible misfortunes. ‘Things can go wrong, you know. We wouldn’t want a Down’s syndrome child, or one handicapped by any other congenital disease, now would we?’

Lisa wasn’t at all sure about terminating the life within her even if the doctors pronounced it inadequate. The summary execution of an unborn baby just because the medics had decided it might not be perfect wasn’t something she’d consider.

But she was feeling calmer, happier, than she’d ever felt before, and she had no intention of upsetting this blissful state for the sake of arguing a point which might never come up. Perhaps the cows around her exuded something catching to make her feel so tranquil. She had become, she felt, positively bovine.

Composed, she smiled at Ian Parslow. A slow unhurried knowing smile; mirroring Meg. If the baby could lie in such a way that one might not see its gender, perhaps he was lying in such a way as to obscure a second one, she reasoned to herself, serene.

Lisa watched her husband as he examined the scan carefully. ‘That’s really extraordinary,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea one could see the foetus so clearly.’

‘A perfectly normal pregnancy.’ Parslow turned affably towards Alec, then rapidly back to the machine. Had Alec noticed how the man hid behind platitudes? Lisa again had the odd feeling that he wasn’t being entirely candid, that the image contained something the consultant wasn’t entirely happy with. ‘An unusually clear picture,’ he insisted. ‘Your wife is doing very well.’

Lisa felt the blood begin to spurt at the deprecating tone, the oblique method of communicating with her. What was ‘an unusually clear picture’ supposed to convey? Something exceptional, clear to him, but which he’d no intention of discussing with them? And she was doing well to cope with it in her body?

‘In that case there won’t be any difficulty about my having the baby at home,’ she said sweetly, automatically smiling though the doctor’s back was turned to her. Only the throbbing pulse in her neck showed that calm had deserted her.

Mr Parslow seemed to freeze, then he turned from the scan to look at Alec again. ‘We do like to have our older mothers in.’

‘I don’t think, pet  – ’

‘You just said all is well, Mr Parslow,’ Lisa interrupted, her smile disarming. ‘“A perfectly normal pregnancy” I think you said.’

The doctor turned to glance at her, his hooded eyes sweeping almost immediately back to the flickering images on the monitor.

‘There’s no suggestion of a possible - abnormality, is there?’ she asked softly, forcing her voice low and self-effacing.

He was, apparently, still examining the scan. ‘I do assure you, Mrs Wildmore, none at all. There’s no reason for anxiety. If you’re at all worried, I can prescribe something to calm you down.’ He pulled a prescription pad towards himself as he nodded reassuringly at Alec. ‘It’s just a matter, as I said, of preferring – ’

‘I prefer not to take any medication, thank you,’ Lisa said as amiably as she could. She’d promised herself to be particularly careful during her pregnancies. She’d even thrown out some of her favourite pigments - chrome yellow and cobalt violet - aware that her habit of licking her paintbrush could leach poison to her foetus. All she was suggesting to Parslow was to have her baby in as natural a way as possible. She smiled determinedly again. ‘And if everything is fine, I’ll go for a home birth.’

‘But, pet – ‘

‘Dr Gilmore is perfectly willing to take it on, and I’ve already seen the midwife. Of course, if the scan had shown anything unusual, however trivial, I know you’d feel happier if I came in.’

‘There would be no question about it then.’ Parslow actually turned to look at Lisa fully before returning to the machine. ‘As you can see, there’s clearly just one baby. He’s not even particularly large.’

The barely concealed exasperation, the put-down, made Lisa even more determined. She flicked her eyes over the screen. The vague shadowy forms it displayed were not what she was concerned about. Her body was reacting in a different way this time; she was as certain of that as she’d ever been of anything. Apart from that first attack of nausea - mercifully not repeated - she’d felt movement in the very first six weeks. Definite movement. Gilmore had, naturally, dismissed that as gas. But she’d still felt it. The images in her dream came back in force. She was convinced that, somehow, this baby would turn into more than one, even if he hadn’t done so at this stage.

‘My wife goes in for small babies,’ Alec said. For some reason he found this fact threatening to his virility. ‘Our firstborn weighed in at only six pounds.’

Lisa and Seb, visiting Crinsley Farm, found Meg and her twins in the converted barn she used as a dairy. Meg was making butter.

‘Was it exhausting, Meg? And did you get much bigger right from the start?’ Lisa pestered.

Meg didn’t answer immediately. ‘Said it afore,’ she finally brought out. ‘Didn’t notice nothing special. Susan were the one as said about me being bigger - quite late on, mind.’

Lisa took in the evasion and waited.

‘Well, I were bulkier, somehow. Thought I’d put on a bit of weight.’

‘But before you actually knew? Did you notice anything special early on?’

‘Felt like being a football ground towards the end,’ Meg sidestepped that, rather peremptorily. ‘Them seemed to be having a game between ’em.’

It wasn’t that Meg wasn’t being sympathetic, or supportive. But Lisa realised that her friend not only didn’t share her enthusiasm for the possibility of a multiple birth, she was positively against it. Lisa could see no reason for this attitude. Phyllis and Paul were enchanting little toddlers: pretty, bright and always on the go. Phyllis was the ringleader, the stronger one.