Chapter Fourteen: Attempt Number Four - The Polish Mick Hucknall

Ratatouille is made, eaten and the pan is made clean. New books are released, hyped, browsed and end up in the bargain section. Fathers die, sons become fathers and daughters lie barren.

I watched transfixed as Mum chopped vegetables. Was I doomed to watch her chop eggplants all my life? I started counting the days until my next period. I almost heard a collective groan – the groan of rusty, tired eggs saying, ‘Not again!’ Fourteen days till maximum fertility. Not much time to stage a seduction. I weighed up different tactics in my head. In essence the only way to a man’s heart is to ignore him. So far I hadn’t been very successful. Besides the man needs to be in your vicinity in order to demonstrate that you aren’t interested. Unfortunately George was the other extreme. And there were plenty of opportunities to ignore him.
‘Carla won’t have any dinner, she’s not feeling too good,’ he said collapsing into a chair, ‘This fatherhood stuff is really tiring.’
He leant backwards and yawned.
Why hadn’t I fed George more fabric conditioner when I had the chance?
‘More basil?’ Mum said holding up a spoonful for me to sample. But one ratatouille was much like the next – only the misery had turned up a notch. Carla was pregnant but now I had stitches in my ankle and crusty bits of blood up my nose.
‘I’m hungry as a giraffe!’
George smiled and it took all my self-control not to grab the spoon from Mum’s hands and whack him over the head.
‘What’s wrong with Carla?’ Mum asked, now rooting around in the fridge.
He pointed a finger down his throat and made a sick face. It was always something. Didn’t Carla realise how lucky she was? Once I was pregnant, I’d never complain! I limped up the stairs leaving George and Mum to their discussion of baby names. They obviously didn’t know Carla. She’d already selected a shortlist. George would have no say in it at all.

I thought through some of my own potential names.
Deidre.
Rose?
Deidre - Rose.
Zac?

I liked old-fashioned names, everyone likes the old ones but I wanted a name that hadn’t entered into the mainstream. Deidre felt like a good bet. I practiced saying it under my breath- a good test of a name is whether you can bear to say it out loud. I practiced a bit more, rolling the name around a bit. I located the thermometer in the side pocket of my handbag. If I was only getting one opportunity, then I had to be absolutely certain I was at peak fertility. This would be signalled by a temperature rise of a couple of degrees. Two tiny degrees spelling the difference between a sad, empty womb with the door blowing off its hinge and a plump, cosy womb with a lovely half-baked baby making itself comfy inside.

Then it was just a case of getting my case across, making sure everything was out in the open where it wouldn’t make me fall off chairs and suffer spontaneous nose bleeds.

Dear Medium,
I think both times we’ve met you’ve possibly got the wrong impression of me. I am in fact a highly intelligent lady who shares your interest in Woody Allen films and the music of Serge Gainsbourg. I am not a sex predator and it’s worth flagging up that I usually have little difficulty in finding a partner. But I might as well just come out with it – I WANT A BABY. My best friend thinks we can open a bookshop. But neither of us has any business sense and we’re the kind of people that talk about stuff but never actually do it. I’m not really cut out for a long-term relationship and feel there is more to life than watching my Mum prepare vegetables whilst she sings along to Joni Mitchell. Can you help?
Yours respectfully Kate

Or…

Hey Sex Dog,
You have driven me MAD with desire - I must have you as soon as possible. If you agree to this, you will NEVER see me again (though it would be great if we could have sex more than once over a period of 3-4 days in about two weeks time).
Yours sexily Kate

Or…

I’m not interested! GET IT? FUCK OFF!
Kate

That last one was perfect. How do you persuade a man that you’re not interested? You text him with a nice, aggressive message and then sit back and wait for the phone to ring! But the problem was, he might just think I meant it and besides there had to be a glimmer of something - he had to have recognised some sort of potential - a moment when the reflected light from the sports results on Sky hit my face and he thought…maybe? Just as I was taking the thermometer out of my mouth, Carla bounded up the stairs, almost knocking me over as she dashed into the bathroom. Then a sound like a bucket of water being thrown against the door and with that the door slammed shut. You asked for it Carla! I studied the thermometer- the bird was nowhere near ready. I scribbled the reading down in my notebook– next to all the others. Soon it would be creeping up again! Peeking through the semi- transparent panel of the bathroom door, all I could see was a face blurred by a watery mess –a big wailing mouth at its centre. So I pushed the door and then my foot slid across the floor. The stitches in my legs felt fit to burst. Still Carla didn’t speak and just stared like she’d completed a painting and was trying to figure out whether it needed more orange or yellow. The skin under her eyes was rubbed raw and goo was sliding down her chin and dropping onto a T-shirt that read - ‘The Future is Uncertain’. Too bloody right it’s uncertain; you should have thought about that before you seduced my teenager brother! But then she started to cry and in all the years, I’d known Carla, it had never happened before. If your personality is constantly tuned down to a flat-line of pessimism then you don’t need to cry. The crying is constant - it’s just hidden inside.
‘I don’t want this!’ she shouted, a bubble blowing out her nose.
And for the first time I felt an unfamiliar emotion towards Carla - pity. Oh sure, I’d pitied her in the past but that emotion had been too readily subsumed by the hatred, the bitterness and resentment. You’d have to have dug quite deep to discover that little crumb of pity. But this was different. No woman likes to see another woman suffering (unless they’re more attractive). And besides, soon I’d be going through the same experience. We needed each other.
‘I mean I DO want it,’ she said as I sat her down on the rim of the bath, ‘But this is like all the life has been sucked out of me.’
I resisted the urge to say that this was nothing new- there’d NEVER been any life inside Carla in the first place but instead handed her a bit of loo roll so she could wipe the spittle off. Before I could figure what to say next, George arrived, almost doing the splits as his socks hit the pool of vomit. He landed on both knees like a guitarist about to do a solo with his head very narrowly missed the radiator. The crumb of pity had now expanded to half a loaf.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ he said and grabbed a towel and started wiping the floor.
‘Carla doesn’t want the baby,’ I said.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Carla cried, ‘Oh George, just stop cleaning and come here!’
And rather than say ‘But you’re covered in puke!’ (Which would have been typical George), he sat down and taking her face in both hands, he kissed her forehead, then each cheek and then she kissed back and they were kissing on the mouth. Somebody had now that half a loaf and thrown it out the window for the birds. I got out as quickly as possible and sat down on the landing. It was a good thing I’d taken my temperature beforehand-the sickly display I’d just witnessed would have surely sabotaged the results. I scratched at my stitches. Would I be pregnant by the time they had to come out?

Days passed.
Books were sold.
Less books than usual because there was a recession on. I counted fourteen books with MURDER in the title in one month. More and more stories of locked up children, prostitutes’ diaries, murdered children, murdered prostitutes. People needed hard evidence of lives lived much worse than their own. Soon Carla began to look healthier and the uncharacteristic glow returned. Peak fertility came and passed unmarked. No fanfare, no national holiday declared. Then the two of them started going out to lunch every day and returning with tiny knitted booties, pastel cardies and romper suits - each time Carla holding them up for all to see; the ghost of their baby mocking me, telling me my dream would never be realised. I started drinking more. I tried to lose myself in the plans for the book shop. Simon and I talked colour schemes, furniture, uniforms- anything to avoid talking about the time bomb that was ticking away inside. The eggs readying themselves and then dispatched, one or even two at time, into the watery abyss. Carla grew fatter and began to lean back slightly when she walked. The sickness stopped and she began to eat constantly- she’d eat her own packed lunch, then George’s, and then mine. She’d sit in the food section and leave post it notes on all of the recipes she wanted to try. Something was taking her over, making her unable to fill in a spreadsheet, or care when the books were put in the wrong place. Then she'd read out loud horror stories of giving birth - holding up photographs for customers, making them run from the store empty handed. Sure, they wanted murder and death but a woman in labour! Then after one more egg had come and gone I reached desperation point. There was no sign of Medium Brown. Ignoring him was getting me nowhere. Then I hit peak fertility again and it was like watching the ice cream van driving past my house and not stopping. I could take no more. Screw quality. Who cared in the great scheme of things? So I went back to the one place I knew I’d find Stonewash Balls and all the other members of his desperate tribe.

‘We'll ban any book with a cute dog on the cover,’ Simon said as I gazed lustily at a man with a red nose and pores as deep as egg cups.
I took a glug of wine and scanned the rest. The majority could no longer stand. Some had wisps of white hair and layers of newspaper rolled up underneath their jumpers to keep them warm. Others argued with themselves, then won the argument and bought themselves another pint. One sang along to ‘Uptown Girl’ and punctuated the chorus by slapping his friend round the back of the head.
‘We don't belong here,’ Simon said.
With that he disappeared to the loo to wash his brain out with soap. And the moment he’d gone, a complete outsider, someone I hadn’t even noticed before sat down, helped himself to a cigarette, then shook his hair so it fell over one eye. He smiled - he had teeth, eyes and a nose! And it was obvious, very little effort would be required on my part because he was drunk, very drunk. He was tall, had arms as thick as tree trunks and long, curly hair like Mick Hucknall (it was brown rather than red which made it alright but was still creepy but there was no time for that now). He was Polish and renting a studio flat nearby. He worked in a gastro pub as a chef but I’d tuned out already because all I was thinking was how fortuitous everything was, that I was at peak fertility (maybe two days off) and here was this lumberjack, this king Pole, this Mick Hucknall doppelganger (no cross that one out) and he was willing. Roll on Attempt Number Four.

When Simon returned he would find nothing but a half-pack of cigarettes and an empty wine glass with drooled expectations down one side.

‘You want babies!’ he said thrusting in and out, ‘No babies!’
‘Yes,’ I said wrapping my arms more tightly round his neck so he couldn’t escape.
‘Babies!’ he repeated, his voice deep and booming in my ear.
I pushed my head to the side because his hair was dangling in my mouth and I needed to be clear with my intentions.
‘Babies, babies.’
Deidre - my beloved Deidre- you’re about to come into existence - I can feel it. I floated up to the ceiling and looked down at this long-haired man/woman working away. Then returned to the bed because my head kept banging against the nasty, pink padded head-board. An old Granny bed. Deidre – Deidre - can you hear me? Can you get me a cup of tea and a rich tea biscuit? Yes Gran, right away but don’t you fancy a chocolate bourbon instead? Then I noticed there seemed to be quite a few head-shaped dents in the fabric. Evidence of other girls with other Grannies on their minds. And still he continued – hard enough that it started hurting– he’d obviously picked up this relentless technique from hardcore porn. But I wanted babies. And this part couldn't be left out of the plan. I closed my eyes and saw Deidre, all grown up and hunting in the cupboards for a biscuit for Mum- ratatouille-magician and mind reader who was sat upright with her head resting against the same pink, padded headboard. The doorbell went and Deidre walked to the door. When she opened it, Medium Brown was standing on the doorstep. This wasn’t what I wanted. Yet it was. I reached my finger into my mouth so I could extricate a particularly long hair that was working its way down my throat. It is a myth that a man can never have too much hair. But then again I’d been here before.
‘YOU,’ he said punctuating each word with a thrust, ‘WANT’, thrust, ‘BABIES!’ thrust, ‘YOU,’ thrust, head banging against board, ‘WANT,’ hair in mouth, spitting up, ‘BABIES!’ thrust, hair gone, thank god.

I was growing weary. Hopefully he’d make enough of a deposit to make this all worthwhile. Deidre would have beautiful curly hair down her back. She’d have thick arms and a deep, booming voice. She’d carry fridges on her back. Or it would be a sturdy, athletic boy called Zac. And I’d take him for tours of Poland so he could familiarise himself with his ancestry. The ‘Polish Hucknall’ groaned, his curly hair finally out of my face. He stayed frozen above me like he’d been catapulted in the back of his head, each hand firmly planted on either side, a constipated expression spreading across his face. Did he like Serge? And what about disaster fiction? And we stayed like that for at least thirty seconds, two Pompei mummies sealed in clay. I waited it out until I could get into position with pelvis flipped at a forty five degree angle. Eventually he fell to one side- the characteristic après- sex fall of the satiated homosapien. I walked with great caution towards the chair where I’d dumped my clothes and slowly dressed myself, careful not to dislodge any liquids.

Zac. My son. I will keep your hair short. I will encourage you to read the Karma Sutra so you have a more varied sexual repertoire than your father. Together we’ll attend regular Polish lessons. I will never play lip service to the country of your forefathers. Deidre – bring your Gran a bourbon biscuit and make it snappy. Forget Medium Brown- it's better to exist than not to exist. Already the Polish Hucknall was deep in sleep as I tiptoed out and made it down the stairs without anything slipping out.

The mission was finally over.