So she bounced into work with relief, confident in the mustard yellow jacket she’d chosen to wear over a simple, sleeveless, sunflower yellow Karen Millen with yellow Adidas pumps.
‘Someone’s looking ready for the week,’ said Jan, her smile welcoming. ‘Wait a minute… you’re not… are you? Is it—’
With that, Ana’s face collapsed in tears. She scuttled behind the reception desk and into Jan’s maternal embrace. Jan consoled her, stroked her hair. ‘There, there. I’m sorry. You just looked so happy…’
‘It’s just I was so happy not to have to see Rex for a few hours. I’m so tired of this. We both are. We can’t stand the sight of each other.’
‘There, there.’
‘Oh Jan, the hours I’ve spent trying to coax that flaccid little prick into life. I’m sick of the sight of it. I’m sick of him. The whole thing is just dreadful.’ She looked up at Jan. ‘They’re so pathetic when they’re soft. Honestly, it’s like an… an oyster. It can’t do anything. It just hangs there.’
And she mimed with her hand hanging and her face unhappy and they both laughed.
‘Poor Rex,’ said Jan with compassion, then struggled not to laugh, and failed, so resorted to clamping her hand over her mouth.
‘I know, I know,’ said Ana. ‘For years we had sex, good sex, pretty good sex, but now. Honestly the last six weeks… OK, we started well. It was fun having organised, diarised sex. We really got to experience some new places. We did it on a Virgin train one weekend. In those big cubicles, it was terrifying. Lots of hotel restrooms. A pub. A Starbucks. We did it on a night bus. At first it was fun. We were experimenting. We were trying to create a new life, our own little baby. After the cat left, I was so excited about a new life. But then it became, I don’t know, a chore. In the end it was formulaic. I haven’t had an orgasm in weeks. It’s not normal. I’m losing my mind. I just want to go upstairs and stay at work for the rest of my life. Last night we did it in a public toilet in Sloane Square. We were at the theatre. It was the only place we could find. It was disgusting.’
They collapsed giggling again.
‘Maybe you need to go back to the gynaecologist? You know… get things checked again. Get some advice. There are options.’
Ana pulled herself together.
‘Yes, it’s the options that terrify me.’ She realised then that she hadn’t thought about Joel since she’d seen his photo on the side of the 19 bus to Piccadilly on her way to work.
Ana was late home from the office. Worse than that, she’d ‘forgotten’ they were scheduled for a 7.15 p.m. fornication. This was the day of her peak fertility. Now she was rolling her tired and bored tongue around the lifeless remnants of Rex’s penis. Basically it was little more than an extended foreskin. Anything resembling a vertebra, a muscle, had wasted or withdrawn into his body. Cupping him encouragingly, Ana even surmised that his balls had diminished significantly. Were they drained dry? Had she been to the well too often and the well had run dry?
‘Stop! Stop! Ana, please. This is… I don’t know. This is humiliating. I just can’t do it any more. Really.’
She stood, wiping her mouth dry with the back of her arm. She felt like she towered over him and she didn’t like it. His blue eyes were rimmed with tears and he scrabbled to cover himself. Her heart burst with regret and sympathy. She threw her arms around him, held him close.
‘I’m so sorry, Rex. It’s not supposed to be this hard.’ She regretted her word choice immediately. ‘I mean there are options. We can’t go on like this. We’re getting nowhere.’ She was aware that Rex was struggling and it seemed that whatever she said was open to an uncharitable interpretation.
‘Not now, Ana. Maybe later.’
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She shook him. ‘Rex, please. Let’s forget this. We’ve tried this. We need to explore other options.’
Jan had been such a solace throughout the day. She and her husband had struggled with fertility and ultimately failed, so Jan had a first-hand and informed perspective. Male pride is a fragile edifice. Traditional social expectations about manhood and providing an heir pervaded TV and film. Henry VIII towered over them all as a cultural role model for all those who succeeded him.
‘How many women had to die,’ laughed Jan, ‘just because he’d been short-seeded?’
‘But Rex is a kind man,’ retorted Ana.
‘Then if he really cares about you, he’ll see a specialist. You’ve been assuming you’re the problem, but he’s 45 years old. He owes it to you.’
Beyond assessing Rex’s fertility, there were options (not Joel, Ana had to remind herself): IVF, surrogacy, adoption, fostering. If someone really wants a child to love unconditionally, then modern science and social supports were all there.
Later, Rex agreed reluctantly to arrange a sperm assessment at a private clinic. Perhaps Ana shouldn’t have pulled out the leaflet she’d downloaded from Mumsnet. Rex’s look as he took it told her that he knew she’d had this in her bag while she’d been blowing his burst balloon. He was hurt. He looked cowed by the whole process. Cowed when what he needed was a bit more bull, thought Ana, successfully, this time thinking without speaking. Some progress, she thought.
The leaflet provided information on the process, extolled the hygienic and comfortable environment. A private space where time is not an issue, with relevant, quality materials to support the production of a sample.
Rex’s eyes rolled as he scanned down the featureless blue cartoon of a nondescript male in a jacket with a sample pot, disappearing into a cubicle with an array of magazines on a low table, a TV and a comfortable chair.
‘I have to go into one of these rooms and jizz in a cup. How does that even work? My penis when it’s ready… well, it fires upwards, not down into a cup? What do I do, try to catch it before it lands in my hair?’
Because he was trying to smile, Ana tried a joke, ‘That’s hardly likely, now, is it?’
Rex didn’t laugh.
‘Can you come and help?’
No! was her first thought, and now, after this flaccid fiasco?
‘You’ll be fine. They’re all so nice. Dr du Toit is very gentle.’
‘I am not discussing this with some testosterone-fuelled South African, however soft his hands are.’
‘I’m sure the nurse will be able to sort you out.’
She couldn’t help laughing. Rex smiled for the first time that evening.
‘Is she beautiful? Is she as beautiful as you?’
Ana nearly cried at his earnestness, and felt terribly guilty about Joel’s frequent intrusions into her thoughts.
In the end she’d agreed to go with him. For moral support and to try to provide some romantic decorations for what amounted, as Rex put it, as she stroked his inner thigh in the taxi en route, to ‘wanking in a cup to prove your virility’.
‘What if I can’t?’
‘Does this help?’ she said, as her fingernails scratched over his crotch. He fidgeted, looked out of the window into some middle distance. He was flushed, beads of sweat had formed on his cleanly shaven lip. He smelled strongly of a citrusy aftershave. It was not, she thought, her favourite.