Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

His English was nearly perfect. ‘Is Madam all right? May I bring you a drink?’

‘I’m fine. I didn’t… I fell asleep.’

‘To sleep is dangerous, I think. I bring you an umbrella. Or I can show you a shadowy place…’

He was definitely slightly suggestive. Handsome, too, like many of the Hindu islanders, white teeth, clear eyes, young lips, young. He might be no more than eighteen. But a pregnant woman shouldn’t flirt with teenagers.

‘You can tell me something. Several things. Do you know about birds? Or trees?’

He was surprised. ‘Yes. My uncle study them. Studies them. He works for big American scientists when they come here. I help him sometime.’

‘I have two questions for you. Yesterday we walked a little way into the forest. There were some beautiful red birds, very high up, hovering like humming-birds, do you know humming-birds? Brilliant red. I couldn’t see a nest. But as I watched, an egg fell to the ground. The shell was so pretty. Pale green. Mauve patches. I want to know what it was I saw.’

He was nodding, brown eyes bright. ‘Yes, it’s a typical bird of Sri Lanka. Americans call it Scarlet Minivet. We call it —’

‘Never mind. Scarlet Minivet. I have another question. That wonderful palm. Higher than everything, the coconuts, everything. With the queer drooping fringe of brown and the massive pale flower, it’s practically all flower… do you know the real name, the American name?’

It was almost surreal; I gazed up at it, an explosion of cream above the dead brown leaves which hung down like a swagbag or a heavy brown scrotum, and the foaming cream poured out like sperm…

‘This is also most interesting, our hotel’s pride. You have come on the right week for this tree! Is the Talipot Palm, a curious tree. Flowers only once, and then it has died. We are very happy when Talipot Palm flowers.’

‘Perhaps it will be lucky for me.’

‘Yes, Madam.’ He hovered, perhaps waiting for money, but I turned over on my stomach and he went away, silent feet on the well-mown grass. I remembered I had forgotten to say thank you, but it was too hot to call after him. Through my fingers I saw him aim a kick at the peacock which fluttered half-heartedly back towards the trees.

When he’d gone I got up and went to look for Chris. He would have to face Isaac later that day. Nothing had happened until he was told; we were all suspended in a quivering soap bubble, clinging for a moment to the still air. Until it burst, I wanted to be happy, I wanted to tell Chris about the bird, and the Talipot Palm, more things I had collected and, best of all, our baby.

Looking back on the self of seven years ago I admit I feel a little — disconcerted. I was under tremendous strees, of course, but I didn’t always behave as I meant to. I had good intentions, but things went wrong, they somehow twisted in my hands. I remember Stuart’s valediction, a year before all this, I suppose, as he ran out into the sunlight after me, rapping on the window of the car and shouting ‘You’re a cow, aren’t you! A selfish cow! The most selfish woman I’ve ever met!’ — but then, he never met my mother.

At least I remember these things straight. I don’t try to pretend I have been a saint. I pretend less than anyone I know. When I want something, I go for it; when I can’t be bothered, I say so; I live the moment; I love the moment. I say what I think, even if it’s not pleasant. I don’t waste time, or other people’s time, though Stuart thought I had wasted his time, but if he was happy, how can that be true? Being happy is never a waste of time.

Perhaps I wasn’t always quite honest with Chris, but he never asked me if I was unfaithful. If he had asked me, I’d probably have told him, and yes, I admit that that’s not true. I am honest to the last; I admit I lied.

But back to Isaac, poor unhappy Isaac. That was only the beginning of the story, remember. Don’t judge me by the beginning. People can change, people can grow, Americans always insist they can grow, as if they all wanted to end up giants…

A mysterious change came over me as the longing for a child became more desperate, as desire was poisoned by the dread of failure, as I started to internalise (but never accept) the fact that this wasn’t working — that I’d never carry out my perfect plan. I dreaded going to the loo each month; those cruel bright red splashes of blood that meant another egg was gone. It was worst when the period was latest and heaviest, when I’d hoped most, been happiest.

I found myself staring at entrails; I know it’s pathetic, and disgusting, but I looked at the clots on the pale enamel, I looked at the clots on the cotton waste, trying to discern a tiny foetus, trying to give a form to loss, trying to think ‘That would have been mine, I could have loved it if it hadn’t died.’ But there was never anything to be sure of. I imagined them, tiny, blood-soaked, curved.

Face the facts: there was never anything. Never anything, never any more.

Not long after I decided to get pregnant, I had visited a gynaecologist, a woman who I had been told was the most expensive gynaecologist in New York. She looked mildly surprised when I told her what I wanted, and more surprised when I told her my age, but she examined me without comment, questioned me minutely about my lifestyle, arranged for a battery of physical tests. I was favourably impressed by her thoroughness. She told me to come back in a week. As a matter of fact I was sure I was healthy; I’d always been healthy, hadn’t I? What I wanted was an official rubber stamp; a blessing upon my enterprise. Since I could pay for it, I would have it.

Except that she wouldn’t give it me. On that second visit I realised; she must have hated me on sight; I was prettier than her, younger than her, she was grim and plain and the envious type. She took pleasure in making me feel bad. Not that I felt bad, but I didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel the way I had paid to feel when I came down the stairs from her lofty office — in fact, let’s be honest, I felt terrible. Humble, old and small.

She confirmed there was nothing physically wrong with me so far as the tests could show. ‘But fertility’s a subtle, complex thing. There’s only one thing proves whether or not you’re fertile, and that’s getting pregnant. Which you’re not. And age is heavily against you.’ She was against me, I could hear that now. She spoke of the high risk of miscarriage, the high risk of certain genetic problems, problems in pregnancy, problems with delivery. I didn’t discuss it, I just asked questions, pointed, specific, scientific questions based on hard reading of pregnancy books. To my disappointment she answered them all. I asked her finally if she could confirm that pregnancy was technically possible. There was an overlong pause; she steepled her fingers. ‘Technically not impossible, no.’ ‘Thank you very much.’ I had forced her to say it. That would have to serve as my blessing, then. But she fired a parting shot across my bows as I got up to leave in precarious triumph: ‘Do you come from a long-lived family?’ I told her no, not particularly (most Stoddys are fat, and die of heart attacks or strokes, but I am in no way a typical Stoddy). She said she ‘hoped I had considered that aspect.’

The cheek of the woman. I was paying her, too. They like to interfere in other people’s lives. It’s a mistake to ask anyone for advice.

But her voice sounded horribly like the truth. It humbled me because I was afraid. Wanting something makes you humble.

It was all confused with what was happening to Isaac. My failure somehow made me… softer. Not that I’ve ever been unkind, but it made me more able to identify with weakness… Alexandra Court, a sterile woman…