Three Wise Men, page 19
Kate’s taking sides. The wrong side, as far as Gloria’s concerned. She’s on the verge of tears as Kate continues.
‘Mick didn’t mean it, he has a temper on him like a fire-rocket and he’s been under a lot of stress, he probably regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.’
‘But what if he does mean it?’ Gloria barely holds her tears in check. ‘What if I arrive at the hospital for my extraction and there’s no sign of him? The eggs are almost ready – they have to come out now, they can’t stay inside me indefinitely.’
‘Gloria, Jack O’Brien is probably the last man living you should consider to father your child. You want a decent fellow like Mick, not a rampant womaniser.’
‘But my baby wouldn’t be like Jack, it would be like me,’ wails Gloria.
‘How do you know?’ demands Kate.
‘Because I’d raise it to be like me,’ she sniffles.
‘There’s no accounting for genes.’
Gloria pretends to abandon the idea, Kate’s opposition is wearing her out. And she has to concede that her friend is making sense – except sensible behaviour doesn’t attract her right now.
‘You win, this was a mad stratagem but you know how I’m fixed, it’s the –’
‘Hormones,’ says Kate.
Gloria shrugs theatrically. ‘I’ll apologise to Mick, I’m not sure for what but I’ll do it anyway.’
‘Sensible child,’ nods Kate – that well-known beacon of decorum, fumes Gloria.
‘Off you go.’ Kate looks encouraging. ‘No dawdling, the quarrel is already a day old, you know you’re not supposed to let the sun go down on a fight.’
Gloria levels the sort of glance at her your mother would call old-fashioned and Kate has the grace to blush. God in heaven, how she condescends to her.
Gloria delays going indoors when she finds herself back in Ranelagh: she collects a soft drink can from the pavement in front of the house and gathers some nasturtium seeds spilling on to the path. She has nowhere to put them so she makes a little pile by the step, meaning to collect them later, and then she can procrastinate no longer – she opens the door. The house is empty. No sign of Mick in the living room, no vestiges of him in the kitchen, she tries upstairs for some indication of his whereabouts.
There’s a note on her pillow: ‘Gloria, gone home for a few days, it’s the only way I can stop you pressing ahead with this treatment. Mick.’
Not even ‘Love, Mick’ or ‘Good luck, Mick.’ She screws the note into a ball and bounces it off the wall. It flops on to the bed and she picks it up and flings it again. This time it’s trapped in the radiator and she can no longer see it, treacherous piece of paper.
‘He knows I’m having my eggs extracted in two days’ time, how can he walk away from this?’ Gloria yells at the pillow the note rested on.
The pillow doesn’t look particularly sympathetic – then again, it doesn’t look unsympathetic either. Having it both ways, aren’t you, you piece of feathery fluff.
‘That’s it then, he’s lost his chance. I’m ringing Jack O’Brien and if he won’t help me I’m approaching Paul at work and if he won’t help me I’ll fly Marlene’s boyfriend home and if he won’t help me I’ll call on creepy Pearse and if he won’t help me I’m starting at A in the telephone directory and I won’t stop until I reach Z.’
Jack answers on the first ring.
‘You’re quick off the mark,’ Gloria gasps, ‘I haven’t even rehearsed what I’m going to say yet.’
‘Gloria?’ He sounds amused.
‘That’s me. Hope I’m not disturbing you. Jack.’
‘Not in the slightest. I’m starkers but if it doesn’t bother you it doesn’t bother me.’
She’s flummoxed, he’s never flirted so ostentatiously with her before, though she’s seen him in action often enough.
‘You mean you’re naked?’ she checks she hasn’t misunderstood him.
‘As the day I was born.’
‘Are you just about to take a bath?’ Gloria tries to ignore the nervous fluttering in her stomach.
‘No, I like to wander around in the altogether, it helps the creative juices to flow.’ His voice booms confidently down the phone line. ‘It’s a new technique I’ve discovered and I’m writing some really promising material this way. Abandoning clothes is a way of stripping yourself of artifice, checking out of the twenty-first century, clearing your mind of trivia so you can concentrate on essentials.’
‘That’s – er – great.’
The man is obviously deranged, she doesn’t want his sperm after all.
‘What can I do for you, baby girl?’
Drat, that voice gets to you, it’s so seductive, it’s like chocolate fudge cake with whipped cream on top. Gloria relents.
‘Well …’ Just because he’s mad doesn’t mean he’d have loopy children.
‘Yes, Gloria?’ he prompts.
‘I have something to ask you, something a little bizarre, it’s a favour really, but I can’t mention it over the phone. Could we meet?’
‘Come right over,’ he invites.
‘Now?’
‘Seize the day, little Gloria, jump straight into your shiny yellow Corsa and come to Trinity. I’ll be waiting in my lair, ready to pounce.’ He laughs softly.
She’s unsure if he’s joking but doesn’t stop to check. ‘I’m on my way then, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
She’s relieved, but disappointed too, when Jack answers the door in a black polo-neck and black jeans. Tight black jeans, the sort younger men tend to wear, but they work on Jack. He’s barefoot and his naked brown feet lend him a predatory air. Maybe this isn’t such a clever idea.
He kisses her cheek, just as he always does when they meet, but this time he cups her chin in a lingering gesture that reinforces her qualms.
‘Sit down, Gloria,’ he murmurs, ‘you look ill at ease.’
It’s early evening and still bright out but he’s drawn the curtains and lit scented candles.
‘They help me concentrate,’ he explains. ‘Electric light is so unconducive to poetry, I want to chase shadowy themes along the dimly lit corridors of my mind.’
Poetry books will be banned in her house if she has this baby, pledges Gloria, choosing a hardback chair as far from Jack as possible. He pulls up another alongside her, straddles it back-to-front and tips forward, regarding her minutely. She can feel her nose glow, it always turns scarlet when she’s under pressure. If he doesn’t stop looking at her like that her neck and ears will soon be mottled too.
‘Jack, there’s no other way to ask this than by coming straight out with it.’
She looks around to see what eejit said that. Dear God, it was her. He lays a finger against her lips.
‘Where’s your rush, Gloria?’ he lulls her. ‘I haven’t seen you in such a long time, let’s become reacquainted first. Has life been kind to you? Your sweet, small face looks troubled, a wan Ophelia approaching the riverbank. Will Hamlet spring forth from the reeds and effect a rescue?’
What gibberish he talks, she thinks later, but he manages to make it sound compelling at the time. He leans forward attentively and she longs to throw herself against his shoulder and pour out her woes. God this man is good, I mean bad, I mean good at being bad. But an image of Eimear floats into her mind and she hesitates. It’s his fault for rambling on about Ophelia.
Get thee behind me, Satan, she cries (but not aloud, she’s not that dense). Get thee behind me, Satan, I’m not interested in men, just babies.
‘You said carpe diem, Jack, so we’ll get cracking.’ Gloria adopts a businesslike tone. ‘Here’s the situation: I need some sperm the day after tomorrow and I was wondering if you’d oblige.’
Jack looks dazed. ‘Some …?’
‘Sperm,’ she supplies the missing word helpfully. ‘I’m up to my oxters in IVF treatment and Mick is sulking in Omagh. Talk about choosing his moment. Anyway, I’m in a bind because the eggs are nearly ready to pop and I have to find a donor. It’s a nuisance because if I lived in England, I could just pay the hospital and they’d sort me out with something from a medical student but obviously Ireland won’t be party to licentiousness like that so I have to find my own donor. Not to mention pulling a fast one on the hospital staff but it’s worth a try.’
Gloria waits for Jack to speak but he looks stupefied.
‘You don’t have to do anything other than empty your sperm into a hospital container,’ she explains. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, I’ll arrange for a taxi to take you to and from the Rotunda if you like. Then your sperm will be introduced to my eggs and with any luck a match will come of it. Maybe even a baby or two.’
Again she waits, still he looks baffled.
‘Obviously I wouldn’t regard you as the child’s father, there’d be no liability, you’d simply be doing me a massive favour. So will you? Will you help me out here, Jack? I’m desperate.’
‘I guess so,’ speaks Jack slowly. ‘The girl wants sperm and I’ve plenty of sperm, I can lend you a few million and not even miss them.’
‘I really only need one but I’ll take as many as you can spare. Oh, Jack, I’m so grateful, I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.’
Relief saturates Gloria and she reaches for him spontaneously – but his seductive mood seems to have evaporated and he hangs in her arms. Rather slackly, she notes.
‘Well, I mustn’t keep you back from your poetry any longer, you never know what shadowy ideas are flitting about in alleyways waiting for you to pounce on them. I’ll ring tomorrow to finalise the arrangements. You won’t’ – doubt catches her by the throat momentarily – ‘you won’t change your mind, will you, Jack? Once you’ve had a chance to collect your thoughts? I know I should’ve offered you time to sleep on it but time is something I don’t have.’
A ghost of a smile flits across Jack’s still stunned face, ‘You want my sperm. Not my body, not my brain – my sperm. There’s a first time for everything, I hope this doesn’t indicate I’m on a slippery slope. But it took courage to ask me, it’ll take even more courage to face Eimear when she hears about it. She’ll be incandescent.’
A speculative note enters his voice. ‘Incandescent doesn’t begin to describe how she’ll react.’ He beams. ‘Gloria, my sperm are yours, do with them what you will.’
She glows back at him. ‘I’m going to try and get pregnant with them, that’s what I’m going to do with your sperm, Jack O’Brien.’
CHAPTER 24
‘Who would you prefer to run away with, Antonio Banderas or Ronan Keating?’
Kate is playing one of her let’s pretend games.
‘I don’t want to run away with anyone,’ Eimear objects.
‘I know but just say both asked you to decamp with them, which one would it be?’
She considers the options. ‘Ronan makes sense because he lives in Dublin so you wouldn’t have to run too far, but then again Antonio is very tempting – he has those flashing eyes and that accent.’
Both mime shuddering with desire.
Eimear carries on weighing up the pros and cons. ‘Mind you, Antonio Should-Be-Banned-Eras might be a bit of a handful, all that Latin temperament to contend with, I’d say he’d be sulky if you didn’t pander to him 100 per cent.’
‘You’d have a problem pandering to Antonio Should-Be-Banned-Eras 100 per cent?’ Kate’s face radiates disbelief.
‘Maybe not,’ admits Eimear. ‘But Ronan gives you the impression he’d be plenty of fun. The sort to spoil you to death too. There’s a lot to be said for the boy next door, especially when he’s drop-dead gorgeous, rich as Croesus and a famous pop star.’
‘You’re only choosing Ro-Ro from Boyzone because he’s a local lad,’ objects Kate.
‘It’s true that familiarity breeds content,’ concedes Eimear. ‘But I think he’s more my type anyway – well-mannered on The Late Late Show, combs his hair, looks like he washes regularly.’
‘Is that what you want in a man? Someone who showers daily and says please and thank you? Jaysus, Mulligan, you’ve lowered your sights.’ She sounds incredulous.
‘I just think El Banderas might be more trouble than he’s worth.’ Eimear is defensive. ‘There’d be women crawling out of the woodwork offering themselves to him on a plate – even Madonna was at it – no matter how much he loves you, he’s bound to be tempted. How could he help himself with all that Spanish blood pumping through his veins?’
‘Stereotyping, Mulligan,’ reprimands Kate. ‘You see you have to pose the crucial question: would I like six days of paradise with one man or six years of earthly pleasures with another?’
‘That’s enough of your let’s pretend games,’ says Eimear. ‘It’s your turn to go to the coffee machine.’
They’re sitting in the room they’ve christened Harry’s waiting room, ready to collect Gloria after her egg replacement. It’s actually the HARI unit waiting room, as in Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland. Mick is elsewhere – surprise, surprise, they should be grateful he turned up to ejaculate two days ago. Gloria told her he went straight off to Omagh afterwards, Eimear is appalled that he wouldn’t stay and see it through with her.
If she were Glo she’d be calling Mick McDermott every name under the sun but his determined little wife doesn’t even want to mention him – she says all her energies are concentrated on nurturing her embryos.
‘They’re mine, I’ve earned them,’ she insists.
Gloria was upset that she only produced nine eggs this time, convinced her ovaries were starting to give up on her as well as her fallopian tubes, but Kate and Eimear reassured her she only needed three embryos.
Imagine having your husband’s embryos whooshed up inside you and he’s not even there to hold your hand, thinks Eimear. No wonder Gloria’s on the edge. She and Kate are there to take Mick’s place but can anyone really deputise for a husband?
‘It’s incredible that Mick isn’t here,’ Eimear complains as Kate returns with the coffees. ‘I’ve a good mind to ring him up and let rip.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Eimear, this is between Mick and Gloria, we can only be here for them.’
‘I’m not here for Mick McDermott, I’m here for Glo and no one else,’ fumes Eimear.
‘There’s just one problem about your choice of Ronan Keating.’ Kate changes the subject with the finesse of a hatchetman. ‘Are you not bothered that he might be too young for you?’
‘Of course he’s fa-ar too young for me. I was only going to run away with him in theory. In practice I’d have to organise someone to write him a sick-note for school.’
‘You could be on to something all the same,’ remarks Kate. ‘It strikes me we’re wasting our time on men our own age, we should be concentrating on fresh-faced, malleable ones, not cynical old scuts who’ve cantered around the block once too often.’
‘Like us.’
‘Like us,’ she nods.
‘Kate,’ announces Eimear in her firmest voice. ‘Stop wasting your energies thinking about men. Here comes Gloria.’
And they rush to her side.
They drive home in Eimear’s pink Beetle, since three don’t fit easily into Kate’s Hurtle Turtle, and ease Gloria out with infinite tenderness.
‘Stop treating me like a piece of Belleek china,’ she snaps, irritated by their tender, loving care.
If this is motherhood, it obviously disagrees with her, thinks Eimear. ‘You were always criticising Mick’s lack of attention,’ she replies, stung.
Kate nudges her. ‘Let’s just get the soldier home from the wars. In we go, Glo, shall we piggyback you up the stairs or would you rather play leapfrog up them?’
Gloria elects to walk, holding on to the banister, her fingers disturbing a layer of dust. Surreptitiously Eimear checks the wooden trim on either side of the stairs where the carpet ends – dusty too. She doesn’t understand why Gloria refuses to employ a cleaning lady if she can’t be bothered polishing – she’s always recommending her own Mrs Ahern.
‘Shall I put the kettle on while you settle her into bed?’ Eimear enquires of Kate.
‘Ask her do I take sugar while you’re at it,’ snarls Gloria.
Eimear hesitates, Kate inclines her head towards the kitchen and she scurries off. Hormones are demons, no two ways about it.
In the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, Eimear’s attention is drawn to the worktops. They look like they haven’t had a decent scrub in weeks. She roots around in the cupboard under the sink for a cleaning agent, finds a nearly empty one and squirts and swabs thoroughly. Then she throws her dishcloth into the bin. Eimear inspects the inside of Gloria’s teapot, it fails to pass muster so she dunks teabags in mugs, lips quivering with distaste, while she steeps the pot in the sink. She’s not going home until it’s sterilised, she promises herself, and sets off bathed in a virtuous glow carrying Gloria’s poppy-patterned tray. Which could do with a wipe but she doesn’t notice until she’s halfway up the stairs.
Kate is expounding her theory on younger men to Gloria, who looks thoroughly disinterested.
‘We don’t need men, we need Beautiful Boys. We can boss them around and instruct them in the art of pleasuring us. They’ll be grateful and devoted and they’ll always remember us, like in the Bobby Goldsboro song where your one who’s our age picks up with a wee lad of seventeen and takes his education in hand, so to speak.’
‘I’d be embarrassed to admit I knew the words to a Bobby Goldsboro song,’ says Eimear, setting the tray at the end of the bed.
Kate is unrepentant. ‘Some lyrics sneak into your brain and won’t be dislodged. Anyway that song has one of the best pay-off lines in history –’ she warbles at the top of her lungs, hands on her heart – ‘“And I saw the sun rise as a man.’”
‘If you don’t stop massacring Bobby Goldsboro songs I’ll ring the guards, Kate McGlade. I’m sure there’s a by-law against it,’ objects Gloria.
‘OK,’ she agrees. ‘But back to our Beautiful Boys. We don’t want seventeen-year-olds like Bobby’s fellow, that’s vaguely pornographic. They have to be at least twenty and not living with their mammies. We want ready, willing Abels to run errands for us, like ordering rounds of drinks at the bar. We’ll give them the money so they know who’s boss, we don’t want to be drunk in charge of minors, there’s probably a by-law against that too. Mulligan has the right idea with her little Ronan.’
