Ben Elton - Inconceivable

This was pretty strong stuff. I mean, I understood that she was upset and everything, but child prostitutes? Come on.

“You don’t understand anything!” she said. “I’m thirty-four. I’ve been trying for a child for over five years! I may well be barren, Sam!”

Well now I admit that I lost it a bit too. I mean it seems to me that Lucy has developed a habit of seeing the fertility thing as being pretty much exclusively her problem, just because I deal with it in a different way to her. I mean I’m in this marriage too, aren’t I? I have feelings and I had thought that I was under orders to get in touch with them. I mean, maybe we are infertile. I don’t know, perhaps we can’t have children. But if we can’t, what does she want me to do about it? Go into mourning? Weep and wail over the absence of a life that never even existed in the first place?

I’m afraid I put this point to Lucy and she took it as confirmation of her long-nurtured suspicion that I don’t care whether we have a baby or not. In fact I probably don’t even want one. After this I probably said too much. It’s just that I don’t think she was even trying to see it from my point of view.

“And what if I don’t?” I said. “Does that make me a criminal? Have I betrayed our love because I happen to place some value on my own existence? On my career and my work? Because I have not committed my entire emotional wellbeing to the possibility of some abstract, non-existent life which we may or may not be able to produce?”

Lucy was near to tears but like the bastard that I am I pressed my advantage.

“I mean isn’t this near deification of the next generation all a bit bloody primitive? A baby is born. Its parents devote their lives to it, sacrificing everything they might have hoped to have done themselves. Then, when that baby is finally in a position to fulfil its own destiny and also the dreams its parents had for it, that baby has its own baby and the whole thing starts again. It’s positively primeval.”

Lucy got up and went and made herself a cup of herbal, which I hoped she wasn’t planning to throw at me. When she came back she said, “It’s life, Sam! It’s what we’re here for, not… not to make bloody films.”

But that’s the point, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned I am here to make films! Or at least to fulfil and express myself in one way or another. I mean I only have one life, don’t I? And it’s the one I’m living, not the one I may have a hand in creating. I know that sounds selfish but is it actually any more selfish than seeking to replace yourself on the planet? I don’t know. Anyway, I tried to calm things down a bit, so that we could get some sleep if nothing else.

“Look, Lucy, I’m sorry… I don’t want to upset you. Of course I want us to have a baby, it’s just… it’s just…”

Lucy was not in the mood to be calmed.

“It’s just you want to write a comedy about it,” Lucy said. “Well, if you ever even so much as mention the idea of exploiting our personal misery for your profit again I’ll leave you. I will, Sam. I mean that, I’ll leave you.”

With that she turned her back on me and we lay there together in grim, wakeful silence.

Dear Penny

I had a pretty rotten night last night. Sam and I had a row. He thinks I’m a mawkish self-indulgent obsessive and I think he’s an arrogant self-obsessed emotional retard. However, I’ll write no more of that at the moment because there was dreadful news this morning which certainly puts my little worries into perspective.

Melinda rang at about nine to say that Cuthbert had been taken into hospital with suspected meningitis. He’s at the Royal Free in Hampstead and Melinda is in with him. We won’t know the full picture for a day or two, but it might be very serious indeed. Poor Melinda must be going mad. If it is meningitis then even if Cuthbert survives it’s going to mean brain damage and all sorts of complications. Of course it might not be. All we can do is wait. I can hardly bear to think about it. Sam, of course, seems completely unmoved by the news. I know that he isn’t, but that’s how he seems.

Dear Book

I don’t know what Lucy wants from me. We heard horrible, horrible news from George and Melinda today. Cuthbert has suspected meningitis. Lucy’s got herself very upset about it indeed, which I think is unhelpful. There’s no point presuming the worst, after all, and so far it’s only suspected. Of course I understand that Lucy is feeling particularly emotionally raw at the moment where babies are concerned, but I don’t see what she thinks I can do about it. When we heard I said, “Oh dear, that’s absolutely terrible. Poor George and Melinda.” I could see immediately that she did not feel that this was a sufficiently emotionally charged reaction, so I said, “Oh dear” again, but it just sounded worse. It’s frustrating. Of course I’m worried about it and terribly sorry for George and Melinda but I don’t know what else I can say. I rang George and asked if there was anything I could do but of course there isn’t. I felt an idiot even asking. What possible thing would I be able to do?

Dear Penny

No news on Cuthbert. Tests still being carried out.

I went for my interview with the private doctor today. Dr James. He seems quite nice but he won’t actually be doing the operation. All he’ll do is refer me to some clinic in Essex or somewhere else miles away. One ten-minute appointment, one letter, one hundred pounds, that will do nicely, thank you.

I was nearly late for the appointment, in fact, because the address was in Harley Street. 298AA Harley Street. Well I couldn’t believe it, this poxy little flat must have been half a mile from Harley Street! All the way along Weymouth Street. It’s absolutely ridiculous that these doctors can attach a snob value to an entirely false address. I mean, honestly, we might as well all say we live in Harley Street. Anyway, Dr James saw me promptly, which was a new experience for me, and they also offered coffee and biscuits which I did not have as I imagine that in the private sector the going rate for a custard cream is about ten quid. I told Dr James how far I’d got with investigating infertility and as expected he booked me in for a bellybutton broadcast. It makes me feel quite ill even to think about it.

Afterwards I went up to the Royal Free in Hampstead to see Melinda and Cuthbert. It was heartbreaking. All these tiny babies and little toddlers so sick and scared. It just isn’t fair. Melinda is bearing up but has had very little sleep and looks pretty grim. Cuthbert was in an isolation ward and I didn’t see him, but Melinda says he looks so vulnerable and fragile that she could hardly bear it. She says every fibre of her being wants to do something to protect him but there’s nothing she can do. So she just sits and waits, consumed with weird feelings of guilt plus fear and also terrible visions of Cuthbert in pain or dying or becoming damaged. Then she started crying and I cried too, which was absolutely ridiculous as I was supposed to be comforting her. So I told her about Sam and me shagging on top of Primrose Hill which made her laugh, but of course the story doesn’t have a funny ending because it didn’t work. Then she asked me about Lord Byron Phipps and I told her not to be silly and that that was all forgotten about. Little did I know.

Anyway, when I left the hospital I had to go and sit on a bench on the Heath for a while because I was too upset and emotional about poor little Cuthbert. I mean obviously he’s not mine but I know him pretty well and quite frankly any baby in torment has always broken my heart. I suppose it would do anyone. I rang Sam on his mobile just for a chat, but he’s in the process of tying up the loose ends of his old job and I could tell he was busy. “So no news, then?” he said, which really meant, “Why the hell are you calling me?” Sam is very practical in that respect.