Страница 1 из 69
Ben Elton
Inconceivable
For Mum and Dad
and
Bob and Kate
Dear…?
Dear.
Dear Book?
Dear Self? Dear Sam.
Good. Got that sorted out. What next?
Lucy is making me write this diary. Except it’s not a diary. It’s a “book of thoughts”. “Letters to myself” is how she put it, hence the “Dear Sam” business, which of course is me. Lucy says that her friend, whose name escapes me, has a theory that conducting this internal correspondence will help Lucy and me to relax about things. The idea is that if Lucy and I periodically privately assemble our thoughts and feelings then we’ll feel less like corks bobbing about on the sea of fate. Personally, I find it extraordinary that Lucy can be persuaded that she’ll become less obsessed about something if she spends half an hour every day writing about it, but there you go. Lucy thinks that things might be a whole lot better if I stopped trying to be clever and started trying to be supportive.
It’s now five minutes later and I find I have no thoughts and feelings to assemble. Lucy has been right all along. I’m a sad, cold, sensitivity-exclusion zone who would rather read the newspaper than have an emotion. I always thought she was exaggerating.
Dear Pe
I’m writing to you, Pe
Sometimes I feel quite desperate about it and really have to struggle not to be jealous of women who have babies, which I loath myself for. Occasionally, and I hate to write this, I’m even jealous of women who’ve had miscarriages. I know that sounds awful and I’m quite certain I wouldn’t say it if I’d had one myself, but at least I’d know I could conceive. I don’t know anything. My wretched body simply refuses to react at all.
However, and let me say this very firmly, Pe
I will also desist from writing letters to imaginary friends. I hope that doesn’t sound hurtful to you, Pe
What does she find to write about? I’ve been sitting watching her for ten minutes and she hasn’t paused once. What can she possibly be saying?
The most important thing to remember, Pe
However, as I say, despite remaining resolutely unobsessed, I do not intend to give up without a fight. Five years is too long and I have decided that after two more periods I’ll seek medical help. Sam doesn’t like this idea much. He says that it’s a matter of psychology, claiming that whilst at the moment we can still see ourselves as simply unlucky, if we go to a doctor we’ll be admitting that we are actually infertile and from that point on we’ll be forever sad. Of course the real reason that Sam doesn’t want to go to a doctor is because it’s the first step on a road that will almost certainly lead to him having to masturbate in National Health Service semen collection rooms. However, we’re going to do it, so T-F-B, mate, too flipping bad.
This really is very depressing.
And to think that I had dreams of being a writer. Oh well, at least this sorry exercise serves the purpose of shattering for all time any remaining illusions I might have had about possessing even a modicum of creative talent. If I can’t even write a letter to myself, then scintillating screenplays and brilliantly i
Oh good, she’s finally stopped.
So what I’ll do is I’ll just carry on writing this sentence I’m writing now for a moment or two longer… so that it doesn’t look like I stopped just because she did… Ho hum, dumdy dum… What can I say? Saturday tomorrow, going to see George and Melinda plus offspring.
Brilliant, Sam. Give the boy a Pulitzer Prize. That’s it, finito.
Dear Pe
I must admit that going to see Melinda and George with their new baby today was a bit difficult. I hate being envious, but I was. It was so sweet, a little boy and absolutely beautiful. He’s got quite a bit of dark hair and is very fat in a tiny sort of way. Couldn’t get over his little fingers, I never can with brand new babs. Just gorgeous.
Dear Book
I’m very worried about George and Melinda’s new sprog. Ugly as a monkey’s arse. Couldn’t say so, of course, but I could see that poor old George was dubious. He calls it Prune which I think is fair, although “old man’s scrotum” would probably be closer to the mark; what with that strange black hair and so much skin one could easily imagine him swinging between the legs of some prolaptic octogenarian.
I had hoped that the sight of young Prune (or Cuthbert as he is called) might put Lucy off a bit, make her see that there are enormous risks involved with propagation. Remind her that for every Shirley Temple there’s a Cuthbert. The thought of having to face those chasmic, gaping, bawling toothless gums five times a night would, I imagine, make any woman reach for the condoms. Quite the opposite, though. She thinks he’s utterly adorable. Amazing. It’s like we’re looking at different babies. I mean I know he’ll probably turn out all right. All babies start off looking like the last tomato in the fridge, but “cute”, “gorgeous” and “adorable”, which were the adjectives Lucy was throwing about the place with gay abandon, struck me as the ravings of an insane and blind woman.
Quite frankly, I began to see King Herod in a wholly different light.
I got home feeling all clucky and sad but I am determined to resist maudlin “I’m barren” mawkishness. The truth is, though, I fear that I am barren and if that isn’t enough to make me mawkish I don’t know what is. I mean, some girls are up the duff straight off. Lucky bitches. Their eggs just seem to be genetically programmed sperm magnets. My friend Roz from college could get pregnant just by phoning her husband at work and if you believe what you read in the papers half the schoolgirls in the country are teenage mums. But some women, I’m afraid, women like me, well forget it. I’m about as fertile as the Lord Chief Eunuch at the Court of the Manchurian Emperor. I couldn’t even grow cress at school. All I ended up with was a mouldy fla