Surrogate

By Alan Jones

The calm, comfortable lives of middle-class professionals in a prosperous cathedral city are about to be disrupted by powerful passions, the revelation of secrets and the abduction of a child.  
Louise Bryant is a devout Catholic who works as a charity shop manager. She is married to Edward, a teacher, and is desperate for a baby. Edward’s infertility leads her, against the wishes of her priest, to ask Edward’s brother, Ben, a boyishly handsome young lawyer, to be a sperm donor. Their attempts to bring about Louise’s pregnancy lead them into a full affair. When a child, Sammy is born Louise and Edward raise him as their own. But dark, bitter secrets fester amongst their family, colleagues and friends, and when Sammy is taken from Louise in a public park, the story lurches into nightmare, a nightmare that can only be resolved by a young, ambitious, risk-taking police detective sergeant, Tim Laughland. Unimpressed by his superior, Laughland sets out to explore the tensions amongst the Bryant family on his own. 
In a pacey gripping series of successful and unsuccessful suicide attempts, shocking revelations and accusations, the complex confusion of lies and secrets is laid bare, bringing the story to a sudden dramatic conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838596262

Alan Jones

Alan Jones was born in 1943 and grew up in Liverpool during the post-war years. He trained as a teacher at Chester College and pursued a career in Primary Education as a class teacher, headteacher, and university tutor. He is a Church of England Lay Reader Emeritus. Alan has published two other books, both of which are in the adult social history genre. They are, Don’t Wake Up George Brown! and Parishioners at War.

Book preview

Sixteen

Part One

Louise

One

If she could trace the thought back, she felt, she could see it more clearly for what it was. Whether it was the outrageous fantasy she knew it to be at certain times, or the bold, assertive idea she knew it to be at others, usually when she was by herself, like this, in the quiet café opposite the church, or over a glass of wine with Jennifer; funny, passionate, glass-half-full Jennifer, her oldest, most intimate friend.

Trying again, she remembered being alone, and in that dream-like state when everything is paradoxically, suddenly clear. She squeezed the handle of the mug of filter black coffee harder and tried to associate it with the thought, but nothing came. Then, sudden and unbidden, the memory was there fully formed – it was the bath, of course. Mid-morning on a Sunday. She was reaching down her body, and then the thought had come. She was conscious of reddening at the memory and, absurdly, looked around at the other tables to see if anyone had noticed.

Now the time and place were attached to the thought, it seemed to make it both more real and more questionable. The idea was alive, but also less abstract and safe. She had had her hand on her womb and the thought had come. She took a sip of the still hot black liquid as if this could suppress the slightly quickened breath, the renewed sense of a wild and impossible plan. If only Jennifer were here, to tell her not to panic, to tell her that it was just what she should be planning, at her age and in her circumstances, that she should tell the world to go screw itself. The phrase jolted her again, and even she had to smile at its unfortunate irony.

And then there was Edward. It was one thing to accept the idea herself and quite another to choose the right moment to discuss it with Edward. Discuss it. This was an interesting phrase. She spoke it aloud, in a half-whisper, letting it spread out in her mind and attempting to attach its nuances to her relationship with Edward. It was not working.

They had been married for six years and their narrow circle of friends looked upon them as the ideal couple. You could tell this by the way they smiled at the two of them and slightly tilted their heads on the rare occasions when they were together. Louise and Edward – solid as a rock. Meant for each other. And, yes, it was in many ways true. When they had first started going out, her Catholic friends found it hard to accept that she could feel so happy with a man who was not only not a Catholic but who seemed so uninterested in anything remotely religious. Eventually, they had to accept that she and Edward were in love and happy when Edward agreed to marry in the church she had attended since childhood, a place as familiar to her as her own home.

Yes, they were solid. As solid, she supposed, as most couples who had lapsed into a cosy acceptance of one another. She supposed, too, that all couples had their empty moments – the look across the table that failed to catch the eye, the silence that needed filling but which remained a silence – and she accepted these in their relationship, partly through her own essentially phlegmatic nature and partly through the acquiescence of her belief. But still, there were the dark feelings. The feeling of stasis, of something left out, of a pretty box with nothing inside. If there was something left out, it was all too obvious what that was, even if it was the last thing they could ever discuss, the subject that lay like something beneath a frozen lake, its dark form glimpsed now and then, but never brought up through the ice.

It was ironic – irony seemed to be the favourite pattern of her thoughts today – that they had fought so much over what the priest had called their ‘bedroom arrangements’ during the first two years of their marriage. Edward had wanted her to go on the pill, but she knew it was something she could never do. It was not a rational decision; this annoyed Edward more than anything else, the fact that, as she admitted herself, it was something she felt rather than something she believed. She had had it all her own way. They had married in her church and now their love-making was to be constrained by some primitive response in her that was not even tethered to a moral choice.

Once, he had cried after withdrawing from her. It was in the dark of the early morning, close to their second anniversary. They had lain there in a deep, cold silence until she had said to him out of her pity that they should try for a child and he had turned to her with an expression that was half tenderness and half puzzlement. She knew what the puzzlement was; they had discussed so often the best time to have their first child and seemed to have agreed that it would not be until they had a mortgage and a home of their own. But the tenderness seemed so much more powerful then, as he brought his hand to rest between her breasts and she could feel her heart hammer against it. There was never a good time, he had said, somehow transforming that well-worn cliché into something freshly meant. They had briefly returned to sleep and then, in the pale light of six o’clock, they had made love again, and this time he had held himself inside her, and she had made no move to stop him.

They had not known then how pointless their two years of constraint had been. One year later, and she had still not conceived. It was six months after that that Edward had surprised her by suggesting the doctor, and finding out the truth.

The first visit to the surgery had been actually quite reassuring, in the end. Yes, only in the end because at first, when they were told they could not see their own doctor, a tall, avuncular man in his fifties with a broad if slightly forced smile, she was not sure they should proceed. They could see the new doctor, Dr Spencer, without delay, the receptionist had said, or did they want to wait? It was Edward who persuaded her, saying that, if they did not do this now, they would probably find excuse after excuse not to do it at all.

Dr Spencer spoke to them straightforwardly about what they would have to do; the fact that he was not their own doctor made it a little easier, if anything. Whilst he was speaking, Edward reached out for her hand awkwardly and caught hold of a single finger, gripping on like a baby. It was a tender gesture, and she suddenly felt even more at ease.

It was only later that the reality of what they had been asked to do distressed her. There were urine samples to take, with their sordid messiness, and the blood samples with the hospital nurse who looked at her with cold, abstract eyes – another arm, another ‘little scratch’ to warn about. Then, of course, there was Edward’s lonely performance in the bathroom. She could not help giggling when he would re-emerge with his sample, until she realised that this made each subsequent sample that much more difficult for him. She had finished her coffee now, and was staring at the scattering of dregs in the bottom of the cup. She remembered that period as a time of anxiety on her part, where Edward seemed better prepared to accept it as a series of events to be gone through. Clearly it was her fault, and there could be no question of his own infertility. How ironic, then, that it was Edward’s problem, not hers; Edward’s sperm count was low, whilst her irregularity was put down simply to her anxiety.

This affected Edward profoundly, perhaps more than she had anticipated, and in a different way. She had braced herself for outbursts of anger towards her, like thunderstorms in a hot August, but instead he fell silent for days at a time and barely spoke to her at all. She would catch him staring out of the window, hands in pockets, as though mesmerised by something on the other side of the street. Sometimes he would push away the meal she had prepared for him and leave the table without eating and without apology, leaving her alone to suppress her hurt.

As she got up from the chic plastic café chair, she glanced at the front page of a newspaper left by someone on the table to her left. It was the picture of a child on the front page that drew her attention – a little boy caught by the camera on the upward flight of a swing, his face beaming with delight. She could not help imagining him as her own child, she with the camera, Edward pushing, and felt the ache of childlessness again, yes, but also the bright hope of her new idea.

Then she looked below the picture, at the large, blocked letters of the headline:

MISSING CHILD FOUND UNHARMED.

The realisation of the purpose of the photograph shook her momentarily. What extraordinary pain must it cause the parents, to go through the pregnancy, to feed and clothe the child, to love it and cherish it, and then to lose it again. A frisson brushed across her back like a sudden cold breeze, but it did not take long for the warm glow of her newly conceived plan to push the dark thoughts into remoteness; after all, these things happened rarely, didn’t they? Wasn’t there at least that reassurance? And, in any case, the child had been found, hadn’t it?

She paid at the till with as much transactional coolness as she could muster, and began her walk home, away from the small church set back from the street, through the crowds of tourists outside the restaurants, boutiques and heritage shops towards the Cathedral square.

As she walked on, it was the next stage of things at home she remembered. About six months ago, Edward had told her she must sit down at the breakfast table and listen to what he had to say. When he began speaking it was with a very controlled tone, as though he had thought through, sentence by sentence, what he was going to say. He reached out and laid a hand on her wrist, pressing very slightly with his thumb.

‘I’ve been thinking about what the doctor said. About us, and about what we should do.’ Each phrase was punctuated with a very careful pause, as though he were placing pieces on a board. ‘I don’t want….anyone else, Louise. You are still the person I want to be with.’

The tears had come instantly to her eyes at this. He reached across the table with his other hand and stroked her cheek with surprising tenderness, but also with the unspoken desire that he wanted her to listen to him and not become swamped by her own suffering.

‘But we both know that we can’t go on like this. We have to try….something. We have to try….for a child.’

It was spoken. The shadowy thing that had separated them but could not be said lay now on the table in front of them, stark and terrifying. Her first instinct was avoidance, as always.

‘I need to think about what that means, Edward. I can’t just sit here, like this, right now, and talk about it as though it’s no more important than what meal we’re having tonight or whether we can afford to go to the theatre.’

She had been looking down as she said this, but now looked up at his face to gauge the reaction. She knew instantly from the calmness with which he continued to look at her and hold her wrist that he had anticipated her reply.

‘What that means, Louise, is that you’ll push it into the background and hope that the subject is never raised again. Isn’t that it?’ She was silent, tacitly accepting this as the truth. ‘So you must tell me now what you think.’

‘But think about what?’

‘About IVF. About using a donor.’

As though her hand was touching some vile object, she pulled it back from his grasp. The doctor, their own doctor, had mentioned the treatment on their third visit – in vitro fertilisation using donor sperm – and she knew instinctively as he used the words that she could never go through with it. To be carrying a stranger’s child and to keep it as though it were theirs; she could not imagine allowing this to happen to her.

‘Edward, you know I can’t even think of….doing that.’ Again, she looked at his eyes and saw only cold anticipation. ‘It’s not my religion, at least, mostly not. It’s the thought of the child of a total stranger growing inside me, of that child growing up as though it were ours. Of the protracted lie that would be.’

A silence froze into ice between them. They had pulled back from the table, and Edward had folded his arms. He had prepared for this, but it was beginning to trigger his anger anyway.

‘Look, Louise, it’s my problem. I’m the one who can’t give us what we want. I thought you would see that this was me reaching out towards you, making you, making us, happy again.’

‘I’m sorry, Edward. It’s how I feel. I think it’s how I will always feel.’ She leant forward and touched him on one arm. It did not unfold itself; she could feel the hard rope of muscle under his shirt. ‘We can only try to get over this together, try to find our joy in one another.’

This quasi-religious language, as though it was her priest speaking, made her close her eyes and tighten her forehead into lines of embarrassment. Yet the words were out before she could pull them back. Edward stood up abruptly and brought a clenched fist down hard on the work surface. The control had vanished now. He was angry, and it was to be a long while before they could speak to each other again.

Two

As she pushed the key slowly into the front door, she allowed herself the merest suggestion of a smile. It was an idea, as it were, still wet with the bath water. How would she feel when it was dried off and laid before Edward in all its daring simplicity? More to the point, how would Edward feel?

She had picked up a few things from the grocer’s on her way home, and now laid them carefully on the very place in the kitchen where Edward had brought down his fist that day, the last day they had both acknowledged together the thing beneath the ice. She sat at the kitchen table and remembered again the hand holding her fist, the measured Edward-like words. Perhaps it would be better after all simply to follow the doctor’s suggestion and seek IVF. Perhaps. But still, at the thought, something cold inside her gripped her chest. It was the strangeness of it, the fact of not knowing, the lie. It was what she would say to him when she talked to him about her idea.

It would be tonight, after they had eaten. She would cook one of their favourite meals, the lamb dhansak Jennifer had shown her how to make, and Edward would have his gassy sweet Indian beer, whilst she poured herself a glass of Chardonnay. She would wear her green dress that rode up to reveal her thighs, perhaps with nothing underneath, she had not decided yet. Even Edward, yes, even Edward might spot that as a manipulative gesture. The black underwear with the grey tights, then, but perhaps with no bra, she would see how it looked later. It would be best not to say anything during the meal. Best to let the food and alcohol do its work before casually coming to the subject over the washing-up, or over coffee. Yes, over coffee. The Guatemalan filter they didn’t usually bother with. If he saw that as a signal of something, then so be it.

It was a Saturday, and Edward had gone to London to watch the rugby with Geoff from the school. Geoff the blustering rugger-bugger, the complacent, philandering oaf. It still defied all belief to think of the two of them together, Geoff and Ed, Ed and Geoff. Whichever way round you put it, it still didn’t sound right. Perhaps Geoff made up for all that lack of spark in Edward, that virtually complete lack of risk-taking that had seemed so dependable in him and which brought out the softness of her love for him.

Edward returned at six thirty. Had it been a good game? Yes, a bit one-sided, but still. Had Geoff been in good form? Oh, yes, Geoff was never any different. What was it she was cooking? The dhansak? Good. Was there any beer? That was also good. Was there any tea? Yes, she could make some lapsang if he would like. Yes, good. It was a mundane conversation, but it ended with him patting her bum as she stood by the hob. He had been with Geoff alright, but still, it was a positive start, and she hadn’t even put on the green dress yet.

The meal went well. The lamb was tender, the curry hotter than she liked it but to his taste and the beer and wine cold and sweetish. She caught him looking at her breasts as she leant forward over her plate and she smiled, tilting her head to one side and touching him briefly on the hand. He began to talk about the game; it was a foreign language to her, but she liked to see him absorbed in it. She told him about her day, too, her visit to the church, the coffee shop and the spices for the meal. He was not really listening, but something in the music of her lowish female voice seemed to please him. She knew she could do this. She had done it many times before.

They washed up together after the meal, she washing, he moving around her, clearing the table, wiping, putting away. When she had placed the last item on the rack, he ceased his waggle-dance and pressed his body gently against her from behind, his arms encircling her, the hands coming up to her breasts. They stood there in this position for twenty seconds or so. It had been a long while since they had been intimate like this outside the bedroom and part of her wanted to hold the moment there for as long as possible. Yet she knew that she must not be aroused too much; the seduction had been planned for a purpose and the conversation was the endgame.

She swivelled round and put her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. Now, or it would be too late. She moved her hands up to his arms that felt tense with desire and pushed him, gently, a little away from her, enough for her to look at his face. She would allow her eyes to open to his gaze before she spoke.

‘Edward – can we talk?’

‘I rather thought we could do something else….’

‘I know. I want to too, but can we talk first. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘It’s just that….I’ve been thinking again about us having a child.’

‘Right.’ She could see the surprise on his face, the shock of the taboo broken, but also the relief.

‘I’ve been thinking about what I said, about not wanting IVF.’

He moved forward and took her by the arms, then let his hands slide up to her shoulders, her neck. He bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Wait, it’s not quite what you think. I’m afraid I haven’t changed my mind, not quite anyway.’

‘Then….?’ One hand fell away from her neck whilst the other stayed in place.

‘It’s not knowing, Edward; it’s the….abstraction of it. I still couldn’t carry another man’s child without knowing who he is, even if….’

‘Yes, even if….?’

‘Even if that would give us the child we want, the child we need. Even if it would make us so much happier.’

Her eyes had filled with tears. She squeezed them shut, and a trickle of salt water ran down her right cheek and into her mouth. Instinctively, whether it was the right thing to do or not, she laid her head on him once more as his hand came round behind her head and caressed her neck. When he spoke, his voice was soft but remote.

‘I don’t understand.’

How could she come at this? Why had she not thought it all through? She had worked out very carefully how to prepare the ground, how to seduce him into listening to her, but, now she came to the words, she realised what a gulf there was still to bridge.

‘I was wondering, that’s all, whether it’s necessary for us to involve the doctor, the hospital – all that.’

‘Now I’m really confused.’

‘Well, I’ve been looking on the internet. There are ways of ….impregnating yourself without going through all that medical process, apparently.’

His hand first stopped caressing her neck, then fell from it altogether. He moved away from her to stand leaning against the opposite work surface, hands in pockets in an attitude of relaxed irony, as though about to pour scorn on her ill-considered thoughts. She wished she had not mentioned the internet.

‘I’m sure there are, Louise, but DIY methods will obviously not miraculously improve my sperm count.’ The mild amusement on his face suddenly dropped away. ‘Or were you thinking of buying the sperm on the internet – is that what you meant? I don’t see how that solves the problem of the anonymity of the donor, what you just called the abstraction of the process.’

‘No, I wasn’t thinking of that, of course I wasn’t.’

She watched him closely. She knew his every look, of course, and now she could see the idea form in his thoughts, the shock of the first realisation followed by the aftershocks of each of the implications that followed. She would not have to tell him at all. He had worked it out.

‘You….you’re not thinking of Ben?’

Rather than speak, she left a silence hanging between them.

‘Christ.’

The word bit into her, as it always did, but she tried not to show any sign of it.

‘If you’re not happy with the idea, we need never mention it again. It was only a thought, nothing more than that.’

‘It’s a bit more than just a thought, wouldn’t you say?’ He paused, a hundred possible responses passing through his head. ‘Have you asked Ben about this?’

‘Of course not.’

She was outraged at the very suggestion. It was a man’s question. He got up and leaned on the table, both hands outstretched.

‘I need to think about this, Louise. And please don’t mention it to anyone else, least of all Ben, until I’ve had a chance to think.’ He walked towards the door. ‘Please don’t mention the idea again until tomorrow. We’ll talk about it then.’

He went out through the kitchen door and she could hear him mount the stairs, angrily, two at a time.

Nevertheless, she had done it, she had told him her idea.

Ben was three years younger than Edward and, to those who did not know both brothers intimately, seemed utterly different. An inch taller than his brother and with a rounder, more open face, Ben moved slowly and easily in everything he did, where Edward appeared always to pass nervously from one thought, one action, to another as if in dread of facing the truth of things. Both brothers were good looking, Edward with a strong but suppressed male energy that had attracted Louise from the first, Ben with a kind of easy, puppyish vitality that seemed to appeal to more glamorous women, some several years older than him. This attention puzzled Ben. At parties, tall, gaudily dressed, perfumed creatures would drape themselves over him, often two or three at a time, sometimes playfully, sometimes more competitively, leaving him more discomforted than aroused.

Yet, to those who knew the two brothers better, they were really only superficially dissimilar. Louise would smile sometimes to catch the Edward-like intensity that very occasionally darkened Ben’s features like a cloud passing, and to find a Ben-like insouciance in Edward when he was at his most relaxed. Yes, they were brothers alright.

It was Sunday, and possibly the most important day of their married lives together, or was that exaggerating things too much? It was ten thirty in the morning and they had not spoken to one another. After a silent breakfast, taken with the Sunday papers at the kitchen table, Edward had retreated to the study to mark Maths papers whilst Louise went about her Sunday morning jobs as she always did. At eleven, she made coffee for herself and, as always, for Edward. She guessed that he would not come down to drink it, and that she would have to take it up to him, but, just as she was lifting herself off the chair and reaching for the mug, Edward appeared in the doorway and leaned against the wall with a curious mixture of casual ease and profound tension.

‘I suppose we need to talk about this.’

‘Yes.’

He stood there for a while, perhaps to persuade himself that he was more in control of the situation than was actually the case, then came over to the table and sat down. She wanted him to make the first move, to say the first words, but she could not prevent herself from instinctively reaching across the table, laying her hand on his and running her thumb rhythmically across it. This tenderness made him look up at her and allow himself an awkward half-smile, which collapsed into seriousness the next moment.

‘You know, Ben and I are close. It may not seem like it sometimes, but that’s just the way we’ve learned to be with each other.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I’m not sure if that makes it easier or more difficult.’

There was a pause of hard stillness.

‘Tell me what you mean.’

‘I mean it’s not the sort of thing that brothers ever think they will have to discuss, for Christ’s sake. It’s not….rugby or drinking beer or looking after mum, is it?’

‘No, it’s not like any of those things.’

Edward leaned back in the chair, but kept his hand under hers, acknowledging her closeness.

‘How much does this mean to you, Louise?’ It was a pointless question; he knew perfectly well. It also seemed to her to deliberately shut his own feelings out of the argument.

‘Shouldn’t it be how much it means to both of us?’

‘Yes, of course. But it’s you who would be carrying the baby. You who would have to go through the pain of it. It would be you it would need most; it’s always the mother, whatever anyone says.’

She decided to disregard this welling-up of bitterness. What he had said seemed almost irrelevant, abstract, but it showed he had at least thought about it.

‘Then I’ll tell you what you already know, that I want it more than anything else in my life. That I want it because it would be good for us, because we would both be good parents, because we would give it love and it would love us in return.’

She said this with closed eyes and a cold straightforwardness that came from wanting to get her feelings across clearly and unambiguously. This was not a moment for him to misunderstand or dismiss what she was saying as too vague and emotional. She opened her eyes again as she felt the pressure of his left hand on hers.

‘It’s not easy for me to say this, Louise, and it’s going to be bloody hard from here on in, but if it means that much to you, then we’ll ask Ben to do