Foetal Attraction (16 page)

Double-checking that the dentist’s attention was focused on his drills and pills, he clasped her hand. ‘Darling, I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I’ve
been
so worried …’ Maddy flushed ecstatically. ‘…about Moriarty.’ She sank lower into the chair. ‘I got back from Brazil and rushed home to find the flat empty. Not only did I have to call the Arms Dealer’s Daughter but, in an effort to track you down, I’ve had three parking tickets, been towed away daily and clamped twice! Car clamping.’ He dropped her hand and turned to commiserate with the dentist. ‘Jesus. Is there any worse fate that can befall a man?’

‘Spit,’ ordered the Fang Carpenter.

Maddy obeyed, rinsing the pink liquid around her mouth endlessly as she stalled for time.

‘We’re out of X-rays,’ the dentist announced to the nurse as they left the room to search for one. ‘Ms Wolfe, please remove your lipstick.’

‘I’ve missed you.’ Alex removed it for her with a kiss. ‘Nobody makes me laugh the way you do.’ He stood down on the automatic pedal and the dental chair lurched backwards. Maddy’s toes were now pointing at the ceiling. ‘Nobody makes me come as strongly as you do …’ He slid his hand under her skirt and tweaked her thigh. ‘You weren’t serious about the
News of the World
, darling, were you?’ He stabbed anxiously at the Wipe Clean Touch Pads. The lights blinked on and off, the chair cha-cha-ed up and down and the spittoon flushed contrapuntally. ‘I’m going to leave Felicity. That’s not in doubt. It’s all a matter of timing. I’m out the door … just as soon as she finishes her anthology on misogyny. It wouldn’t be fair to do
so
beforehand. But, it won’t be long … She’s done the Middle Ages,’ he concluded encouragingly. Alex expertly jacked the chair into range as the dentist reappeared.

‘Perhaps you’d better wait outside, sir,’ he advised, adjusting his facial mask. ‘We’ve got a very painful abscess on the tooth.’

Maddy nodded her eager agreement. But Alex insisted on staying, squeezing her hand surreptitiously as the dentist positioned the film in her mouth.

‘Just keep still and hold the film,’ he ordered, striding to the X-ray switch on the other side of the surgery. His latexed finger poised above the button. ‘Taking any pills?’ he asked routinely. Maddy shook her head. ‘Any allergies?’

‘No.’

‘Pregnant?’

Her throat constricted from the effort of being bright and bubbly. ‘Pardon?’

‘I need to know if you’re pregnant so that I can do the X-rays.’

Maddy’s mouth imitated a goldfish. It opened and closed. No noise came out.

‘Ms Wolfe, is there any chance that you could be pregnant?’

Maddy broke out into a sweat. It trickled down her face, eroding her foundation. So much for looking pretty and witty and wearing suspenders. She lowered her voice and muttered a reply.

‘What?’ the dentist implored irritably.

Now she knew why dentists were so loathed. Perhaps this was the time to remind him that his profession had the highest suicide rate in the world.

‘It’s a simple question. Are you or aren’t you?’

‘I, well …’ The spittoon spluttered and choked. The death-masks of dentures grinned at her from every shelf. ‘I could be.’

‘Well, we’d better err on the safe side.’ The dentist abandoned the X-rays and began, clumsily, to administer an injection.

Over his shoulder, Maddy could see Alex. His face had gone the colour of curdled milk. He articulated silently, ‘Pregnant?’

She averted her gaze. Alex manoeuvred himself into it. ‘Are you?’ he pantomimed, more urgently.

The needle pricked. The suction pump suctioned. The drill drilled. Maddy winced and flinched and flailed about in the chair. After an eternity of blinding agony, the dentist declared himself satisfied and exited. Alex seized the sides of the chair. ‘Are you pregnant?’ he demanded.

Almost imperceptibly, Maddy nodded.

Alex had the look of a man whose car had just been clamped, towed away, stripped, scrapped, and fined for obstructing the highway.

Once outside the surgery he responded with the typical concern of a Sensitive New Man. ‘Jesus fucking
Christ
. What a disaster! Why?’ he yelled. ‘Why did you go and get pregnant?’

‘I guess it was just my silly little way of trying to draw attention to myself,’ Maddy seethed facetiously. ‘I can’t help it if you can’t put on a condom.’

‘Oh, so it’s
my
fault is it?’

‘Remember, at Sonia’s when we couldn’t find it? Well, I did later.
Inside me
.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he sulked, guiltily. ‘Well, it was rather a marinated evening. Bloody Sonia and her recycling. She probably got the wretched thing from a retread outlet.’

All the way back to Mr Tongue’s in the taxi, Alex kept up his impersonation of mid-January. But by the time he’d mixed himself a glass of her employer’s Chivas Regal, his mood had somewhat thawed. It wasn’t so terrible. Like Gillian, he knew a discreet man in Harley Street who would ask no questions and take care of the business immediately.

Maddy gritted what were left of her teeth. Just when she’d wanted to look dazzlingly attractive and totally irresistible, one half of her head had swollen out to twice its size from the injection, her eyes had disappeared into puffy slits, her mouth was numb from Novocaine and her bottom lip was bleeding from where she’d unconsciously bitten it. Meet the future mother of your child.

‘And what—’ she hesitated. ‘And what if I wanted to keep it?’

The pause which followed would have bored even Harold Pinter. Shock waves of Hiroshima intensity passed over his face. ‘What about your career?!’

‘Career? What career!’

‘Oh … didn’t I tell you?’ Alex verbally groped. ‘You’re on the payroll. It’s official. We’re off to film the aeronautical sexual techniques of the African fish eagles. They interlock and then cartwheel towards the earth. They make the Kama Sutra look dull! But not if you’re pregnant. You’ll be sacked and have to go to a tribunal which you won’t have the stamina to do, of course, having just had a baby.’

‘Well …’ Maddy tucked her legs up under her on the couch. Alex sat rigid on a straight-backed chair on the other side of the room. ‘I’ll take the job after the baby.’

‘Oh yes. And how exactly are you going to do that? Britain provides fewer publicly funded child-care centres than anywhere else in Europe!’ On surer ground, his voice became strident with authority. If it had legs it would have been strutting. ‘We have the smallest proportion of mothers of under-fives in the workforce with the most occupational segregation. Women with kids are kept in lower paid, less skilled jobs … Are you really going to give up a wonderful opportunity like this, to stay at home and wipe bums?’ he concluded triumphantly.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh …’ The strut was momentarily hobbled. ‘Well, what about the population explosion?’ He was back in his stride. ‘Yes! What about that?’

‘Alex, Britain’s birth rate is dropping. Oh, I know Bryce thinks he’s made babies
the
fashion accessory for the nineties, but your generation seems to prefer pets and Porches.’

‘Well, okay. The birth rate is dropping …’ He floundered around once more. ‘Don’t you think there might be a reason? Cracked nipples, constipation, episiotomies, perineal tears, mastitis …’

Alex vaulted to his feet. Gesticulating wildly, his meticulously tucked-in shirt-tails worked themselves loose. ‘It’s irresponsible to have children in this country. Just look at our history. We shoved them up chimneys and down mines. There was more outrage over the treatment of the pit ponies! Teachers get three years’ training, vets get five. What does that say about a society?’

‘We’ll live somewhere else then.’

‘We won’t be able to afford to live
any
where. The tooth fairy, I’ll have you know, takes Visa card these days. The only book you won’t be able to put down is your cheque book … Toys, schools, nannies … That’s another thing! Do you really want to become one of the Whannies?’

‘The what?’

‘The We Have A Nannys.’ He sloshed more whisky
into
his glass. ‘Do you know how Felicity broke the news of my impending fatherhood? “Darling, we’re going to have a nanny!” ’

‘Don’t go off your nut.’ Maddy placed a hand on his arm in gentle restraint. ‘I’ll look after the baby myself.’

‘Oh, yea, sure you will. Until you get the “There But For the Grace of a Baby-sitter Go I” syndrome.’ He shrugged off her hand. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’

‘I
want
to look after it,’ Maddy rallied, glowering at him. ‘So I’ll be able to train it to do projectile vomits on
people I don’t like
.’

‘Maddy, have you any idea how many times a baby’s nappy needs to be changed? Have you?’

‘I know it’s hard yakka—’

‘Seven times a day, for three hundred and sixty-five days a year, for three years!
You
can’t even manage to change the sheets once a month. You couldn’t cope with a child.’

‘I don’t see why not. I cope with
you
.’

‘You can’t even cope with Moriarty!’

‘It’s a little different. I’ve never heard of a baby savaging anyone!’

‘He
nibbled
you. Once. What you object to is all the shit. Well, if you hate the pooper-scoopers, you’ll need a pooper-bulldozer with a baby. You think toilet humour is a Ben Elton sketch about diaphragm insertion. Well, it’s not. It’s trying to train a two-year-old with diarrhoea to poo
in
the potty.’

‘Look, if it puts the wind up you, you needn’t have anything to do with it—’

‘Oh yes? You may not have noticed, but I happen to be somewhat of a Prominent Personality. How long do you think it will take for the tabloids to track you and the kid down for a warm and moist exclusive? Early exposure to Terry Wogan or
Hello!
Magazine comes perilously close to child abuse in my book.’

‘Listen, mate.’ Maddy’s heart was now racing faster than anything ever clocked at the Grand Prix. ‘Your pick-up line was “Want to go halves on a baby?” Remember?’

Alex shifted his shoulders nonchalantly. ‘Women like to hear that sort of thing. I just wanted you to know how strongly I felt about you.’

‘WHAT?’ He’d just clutch-started her Bar-Room Brawler genes. ‘So what are you saying? You don’t want children?’

‘I’ve got two I made earlier. I’ve done.’ His voice took on a mock gangster drawl. ‘Previous. Which is why I know what I’m talking about. Babies are dis
gust
ing.’ His tie had swivelled sideways, knotting his neck in a hangman’s noose. ‘It’ll dine on slime-coated dead slugs. It’ll pick its nose and wipe it under the dinner table. One week of trying to get it to eat its organic tofu wheatgerm purée and you’ll be wanting to put your head down the waste-disposal unit. But you won’t be able to, because the baby will have stuffed the pet guinea pig down there already.’ He
drained
, then deluged his glass with more whisky. ‘Besides, you haven’t got
time
to commit suicide. Oh, no, you’ll be too busy making origami aeroplanes out of table napkins and spaceship helmets out of old loo rolls. The highlight of your day will be getting the lint out of the dryer … Counting your fillings with your tongue—’

‘Did you have to remind me?’ Maddy cupped her aching jaw in her hands.

‘Updating your eye-shadow will be a major decision.’

‘Look, I know I’ll be knackered. I know I’ll have to get up at night—’

‘It’s not the getting up at night. It’s the way they bring you down in the daytime.’ Alex had a castanet rhythm going with his fingers. ‘All that crying and feeding and please Mummying.’ Click. ‘Oh, the boredom of it all.’ Click. ‘The stroller-shopping, the avocado-mashing, the bottle-sterilizing.’ Click. ‘Do you really want to spend your entire life worrying whether or not your toilet cleaner is getting right up under the rim?’ Click. Click. ‘Do you really want to spend your life straining prunes?’ He paced up and down. ‘Do you really want to join the ranks of the Great Bores of Our Times?’ Maddy was worried that he was going to wear a bald patch in the Persian rug. ‘And when they’re not
boring
you to death, they’re turning you into Nietzsche. Nuclear scientists have it easy compared with parents.’ “If God made
us
, who
made
God
?” “Where does wind blow from?” “Where do roads end?” “How do eyebrows know when to stop growing?” Of course, they save up all the
really
embarrassing questions until you’re being interviewed live on
This is Your Life
. “Daddy, why does that lady have a moustache?” Not that you’ll be able to answer any questions. Why? ’Cos you’ll be brain dead. You’ll put the lethal household cleaners within reach and the kid under the sink. You’ll only be able to read large-print novels. Or Jeffrey Archer. The other day Felicity actually used a word with more than two syllables in it. The word was tran-quil-lizer, ’cos that’s what she needed. And the twins are eight years old, for God’s sake! Oh, how fondly you’ll remember the days when you used to curdle at the whipped cream orgy … Now, every time you go to have sex, the baby’s in the bed or—’

‘What?’ Maddy rounded on him. ‘I thought you didn’t have sex with Felicity? I thought you were never “physically attracted”?’

‘Huh?’ Alex faltered, momentarily flummoxed. ‘Well, I’m
not
. I
don’t
… But even if I
wanted
to, which I
don’t
, I couldn’t.’

With the wind taken out of his verbal sails, Maddy decided to take a tack of her own. ‘The point is, Alex, it’s not really your choice.’

Alex surveyed her coldly. ‘You really want a kid? OK. Why not practise now.’ Jerking Maddy to her feet, he piled four phone books into her arms and propelled
her
around the room. ‘OK, carry that for the next two hours. Don’t put it down, not for a second, or it’ll scream. Try singing to it. Come on. “I’m a little teapot, short and stout” … Till you go hoarse. Now—’ Ramming her into the kitchen, he splodged a dollop of rancid yoghurt down her back.

‘Alex! What in the hell are you –?’

‘You’ll be covered in baby spew at all times. You’ll be wearing food.’ He proceeded to mash left-over sardines on to her cheeks. ‘A fish facial, mmm, mmm.’ With his spare hand, he flipped open the honey jar and lurched back into the living room, dripping great globules on to the carpet and over the couch. ‘Coat all the furniture with sticky substances and proceed to scribble over everything with crayon—’