The Art of Unpacking Your Life (15 page)

Matt was large, but not living out in arid Savanna. Sophisticated urban women deleted any reference to his naturally male genes. First Annabel. Now Katherine. He shifted his knees, which were pressed uncomfortably into the seat in front. He looked at Katherine: beautiful, bewitching, yet reducing. He was a blokes' bloke, really. He
enjoyed nothing more than watching a rugby game with a few friends and a few more beers. Get drunk, have a laugh.

He was so desperate to be accommodating to Katherine that he was masquerading as a Zeta male. Katherine had coined the phrase first, writing a feature in her magazine about the new trend for ‘Zeta males': aka Matt, whom she described in detail, concluding he was ‘perfect husband material'. An Alpha or Beta male was a neanderthal man hiding behind romanticised, socially acceptable labels, Katherine insisted. Not the Zeta male. He never did anything because he was a man. Oh no. The Zeta didn't think like a male; he didn't act like a male.

Matt was submerged by a wave of hopelessness. To rub it in, the buffalo emerged from behind the trunk. He was looking directly at Matt, challenging him. Are you a man or an urban wimp? Come on, prove it to me. What came next surprised everyone except Matt. He knew what was going to happen, what should happen. Natural law out in the Savanna, where Darwinism ruled over Twitter.

The buffalo charged. He moved with such speed for a hefty, old man that Matt was utterly transfixed. Matt wasn't scared at all. He was relieved. Things were as they should be.

The rest of the vehicle erupted. Katherine's voice was the highest-pitched. Dan's voice staccato: ‘No, no, no.' Julian's predictably tense: ‘I would love to make it back to London, alive, please.' ‘What's going on? Gus, please talk to us,' Connie struggled to keep calm. Julian's firm retort: ‘Keep calm, troops. Gus and Ben have got it under control.'

Unemotional, Ben murmured to Gus, who jerked through his gears, lurching them diagonally forward into deep grasses to the left of the track.

Gus shouted: ‘You guys okay? As I have said, I would never take any risks eh?' He kept cracking on through the sand, whipping them away.

Who can outdrive a buffalo? Matt wondered, feeling calmer than he had all afternoon. The buffalo was charging, helmet down, feet pounding, though he was no longer moving in their direction. He veered off, thirty degrees away from them. He slowed to a gentle trot. He decided that they weren't worth the effort. Nine urbanites? No contest. Matt smiled to himself.

He had called for an update before they left for their evening drive. His call came minutes after Dawn had been rushed through for an emergency Caesarean. Fleeing an aggressive buffalo enhanced his powers of sober observation. It was too late. They could never have got to the hospital in time, even if he had had the guts to talk to Katherine at lunchtime. They were far too far away to change the course of events in Manchester. All they could do was to wait, drive it out in the Kalahari.

There was no point in Katherine doing the waiting and worrying. He had made the decision not to tell her. He had to be man enough to live with it. Dawn, their baby's survival and their future were out of his hands. He was free for the first time since they had decided to backpack solo along this bandit route of surrogacy. Whatever the outcome, he regained a sense of his own freedom.

Katherine was keen to wait until they were married before trying for a baby. She had a strong sense of what was appropriate. On their wedding night they weaved back to
their hotel, a kilometre from Katherine's parent's white clapboard house in Vermont. Two days before, Katherine had playfully thrown her last pill packet away out of the train window on the journey from New York.

As he fumbled to unhook her elaborate bodice, he said, ‘Let's make a baby.' God knows if he actually meant it.

They didn't talk about babies again for four months. Matt didn't even think about them. Or the obvious fact that Katherine wasn't pregnant. Matt was simply excited to be living with Katherine. He was focused on helping her settle into London and her new job.

One night, he was opening a bottle of red wine when Katherine came up and took it decisively out of his hands and placed it firmly on the coffee table. Her expression was stern.

‘I don't want you doing that right now.'

‘What's wrong, Katherine?'

She folded herself down on to their sofa. ‘It's four months. And I am not pregnant.'

Matt relaxed. ‘It's early days yet, darling. Don't worry. You will be soon.'

Katherine pursed her lips. ‘I'm not leaving this to fate, Matt.'

Matt nervously eyed the unopened bottle on the coffee table. ‘Of course,' he said though he was not sure what she meant.

‘We need to address our diets and our lifestyle.'

‘Sure.' Matt was eager to meet her halfway. She was anxious, which was understandable. She desperately wanted to have a baby with him.

‘No caffeine, no alcohol, no artificial sugar, no red meat,' she said. ‘Lots of oily fish and vegetables and omega-3 oil.'

‘I thought you were taking folic acid,' he countered.

‘Omega-3 oil as well as folic acid,' she insisted.

Matt sat down beside her, holding both her hands in his and kissing her gently on the lips. ‘Katherine, I know you're worried, but I don't think this is necessary. It's waffle generated by the magazines.'

‘It is vital, Matt,' she insisted. ‘Don't you see?'

Matt sensed this talk was premeditated and planned, which he felt put him at an unfair disadvantage.

She bent down to her handbag on the floor and brought out a card that looked like a cheap room temperature gauge. He waited. He already knew that if Katherine had her mind set on something, he was better letting her talk her way through it.

‘An ovulation calculator,' she solemnly pronounced.

Matt tried to regain his calm. He had to talk her down.

He gave, he hoped, a winning smile. ‘Sorry, Katherine, darling. We need to keep perspective on all this, don't we? It's only been four months.'

They made love, though Matt couldn't help wondering whether it was because Katherine had the desire or that the ovulation calculator determined it was the optimum night.

In the morning, she offered him a hot water with freshly squeezed lemon juice, instead of his habitual coffee. As he accepted it, he noted her hold over him.

He thought about the hot lemon, which had been the start of it, when he was waiting on one of the smart brown leather sofas at the London Women's Clinic in Harley Street. The reception reminded him of a successful businessman's hotel, where the decor signals stylish professionalism. The tiled flooring was only disturbed by tall potted plants, the right-angled sofas, neat cushions and unbroken lines of magazines upon a vast coffee table. The manicured interior didn't make Matt calm. Quite the opposite. He felt as if it were a disguise: making right the wrong of this highly interventionist, clinical way of making babies.

He stared at a pamphlet, entitled ‘Getting Started', which Katherine had silently passed to him. He couldn't process what he was reading:

IVF

ICSI

Intrauterine insertion (IUI)

Egg donation and egg sharing

Surgical sperm retrieval

Surrogacy in the UK

Frozen embryo transfer (FET)

Time lapse imaging

Low cost packages

Egg Freezing

Other treatments

He looked anxiously at his shoes, hoping Katherine could sense his alienation. But she was focused. She wanted them to do the ‘Three Cycle Package', she informed him on the Underground. Three IVF treatments for the price of two. She had already read everything about this clinic. It gave them the best possible chance of success against the lowering odds as she was over thirty-five. Having done extensive research, she was convinced by this service, unquestioning of the rights and wrongs of it.

Matt glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead, keen not to be diverted by his doubt. He wondered whether it was easier for her because she was American, used to paying for what she wanted. Matt was profoundly uncomfortable with it. He wanted a baby as desperately as Katherine did, but he couldn't reconcile it with the intensely uncomfortable feeling he had even being in this Harley Street waiting area.

‘Mr and Mrs Carlton?'

Katherine sprung up. She didn't turn round to check he was behind her.

Matt struggled off the sofa and stood midway between the seating and the doorway. He was holding the leaflet. He debated whether to take it with him. He flung in back on the pile on the coffee table and walked slowly up the corridor after Katherine.

Gus slowed down for a rare herd of impala, which gleefully danced in front of the vehicle. They were the most delicate of antelope. Spotless Bambis with skinny legs and catwalk faces. Lizzie was annoyed she had forgotten her species checklist. She must remember to tick them off.

‘You have seen a lot,' Gus enthused to Lizzie, as she leant over the seat behind him. ‘You should buy a lottery ticket.'

Lizzie grinned. ‘We have, haven't we?' Gus was rather attractive in a boyish kind of way. He wasn't her type, of course. She was attracted to men, not boys.

‘Do you use that line on every one of your guests?' Sara quipped from the back row without turning away from the impala.

If Sara was less fierce and more open-minded, she could probably have a fling with Gus, Lizzie thought.

‘Sara,' Gus sounded annoyed. ‘Honestly, you have seen a great deal in two days. Believe me.'

‘We have. We really have Gus,' Lizzie said in sympathy. Sara could be harsh, especially with men. ‘Now, what about your pet meerkats…'

‘Habituated meerkats,' Gus insisted, ‘They are not tame, eh.'

‘Too tame for us, Gus,' quipped Jules. He was looking straight at her. A little tame for you and me, he meant. ‘You see, Gus, Lizzie here would far rather be walking on the wild side with black rhino. Wouldn't you, Lizzie?'

‘It is too tame, isn't it,' she echoed, ‘Hardly compares with charging rhino, Jules,' she echoed.

When Lizzie first met Jules, he might as well have been a black rhino. She thought he was wildly sexy. He was a friend of her cousin's, who was two years ahead of her, and already had his own flat, off the far north end of Ladbroke Grove. His flatmate was Jules. They had been at university together, both reading PPE and determined to enter politics.

Her cousin made an overcooked pasta lunch. The two of them were both wading through a deep colourful bowl when Jules emerged in the doorway. It was the only way Lizzie could describe it. He filled the room. He was tall, broad, wearing a navy suit that made him look more imposing, even at twenty-two. He had a neat pile of rolled newspapers under one arm and a briefcase in the other hand. Lizzie didn't know any men who owned a briefcase. He had been interviewed by the Conservative constituency selection panel for a marginal seat in Yorkshire.

Despite being obviously grown up, he peeled off his jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves and sat down beside Lizzie, equally determined to make her laugh, to charm her. She flirted back. When she reluctantly left late that evening to get the last train back to Bristol, he asked for her phone number. He rang Harley Place before she was awake the next morning. Luke stumbled out of the room that he shared with Connie.

‘Lizzie. Julian someone or other on the phone.'

At the time, Lizzie loved Jules's decisiveness: he knew what he wanted and he went out to get it. Lizzie responded in kind, inviting him down for the night the following weekend.

Jules was right. Safari wasn't about turning up to a pre-designated site for a guaranteed close up of meerkats. There were two other vehicles already there. Apparently, a film crew from Wildlife TV had been filming them over several weeks. A student ranger had spent the last six weeks making them comfortable with human beings.

They walked up a track to an open stretch of land, lightly whispering with leggy grasses. There was no sign of any animal life.

A sweaty student, hot enough to have lank hair, stumbled over to them. She wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her khaki rolled-up shirt.

‘Hi, Jane. How're you doing?'

‘Hello, Gus.' Jane's vowels were pure Home Counties.

‘Are you out here on your gap year, Jane?' Jules was obviously curious.

‘Not exactly. I am training to be a ranger.'

‘Really? An English female ranger. How fantastic. My daughter Lou would love to do that.'

‘She would, wouldn't she?' repeated Lizzie to reinforce their connection. It was one of her great strengths that his children loved her and she was good with them. It would make everything easier.

Lizzie was beyond wanting her own children. She had had a crisis in her mid-thirties, about the time when she was turned down for the commissioning editor job,
when tiny feet were all that mattered. Her body craved babies. The heat of biological urgency was directly related to the probability of pregnancy, which had dwindled to nothing in her mind. White coals were warm, but not glowing. There was no real chance of relighting the fire. Best to kick away the remaining charcoal, let it blow away on the breeze.

‘So, where are these little pets?' Jules asked Jane.

Someone had to keep an eye on Jules. She knew he strayed. Not that it was his fault. She blamed it firmly on Connie. She had this amazing lifestyle: a gorgeous house in London, one in Oxfordshire, holidays and lovely clothes. But she didn't give Jules what he needed. Thankfully, Jane wasn't pretty. She was wearing a pair of wonky black classic Ray-Bans, which stood out on her blanched and spotty face. She had an unwieldy teenage body, which she held uncomfortably, hugging her arms under her breasts.

Jane was sufficiently intimidated by Jules into saying nothing. She walked away from them across an unprepossessing stretch of sand and grass strewn land. They followed her in single file. Luckily, otherwise they might have walked over him. One solitary meerkat stood high on his hind legs. He looked at Jane and then at Jules. They shushed each other.