Fruitful Gynaecology

Chantal Schaul, 2003

A young woman woke up from a coma one day. A sharp pain at the back of her skull was her first conscious sensation. She saw the drip next to her hospital bed. Apart from a wide-screen TV and some fresh flowers, she was alone. How could she possibly have been able to afford all this, poor as she was? She remembered that she worked in an ice-cream parlour in a small Belgian town, dreary and grey. What was she doing here?

A nurse fluttered into the room, white and clean. She felt her pulse and smiled a pink and pearly smile

‘How are you feeling, Mrs Silverlock?’

Was she married? And what country was she in? England?

‘What happened?’ she mumbled, surprising herself with her polished accent.

‘The doctor will be here shortly.’ The nurse smiled, flashing her blinding white teeth.

Mrs Silverlock sat up and drank the water that was held out to her. It felt like a cold paw reaching down into her cramped stomach and dilating her insides. She choked.

‘It will take a few days for you to get used to food and drink again. You have been in a coma for quite some time.’

‘How long?’ She felt the cold water rising up to her throat.

The nurse hesitated. ‘Fourteen months.’

Mrs Silverlock inspected her arms. They were white and stick-thin. Her skin was almost translucent. She didn’t dare to look underneath her covers to examine her legs. She felt rather faint.

The doctor arrived, tall and muscular. The nurse whirred the head of Mrs Silverlock’s bed up to seating level and wheeled a leather chair into the room, as smoothly as buttering a scone. Then she was gone.

With a gentle shake of Mrs Silverlock’s frail hand, the doctor introduced himself as Dr Ravenscourt. He sat down in the leather chair and spoke in a warming voice.

‘Now, Mrs Silverlock, we shall have to see how much you can remember.’

‘Nothing,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t even know where I am.’

He nodded in assent.

‘You married an Englishman about a year and a half ago. Mr Sheridan Silverlock.’

She was puzzled.

‘I brought you a photo,’ he added.

The nurse reappeared instantly, as if she had been waiting outside the door for this moment, and passed a brown envelope to Dr Ravenscourt. Seconds later she had breezed out again. He passed her the envelope.

The photo made Mrs Silverlock’s heart jump. A thirty-odd dark-haired and to her mind gorgeous man looked back at her with familiar eyes. She knew that she loved him, but a strange and bitter aftertaste crept up on her. She tried to suppress it.

In a flash, Mrs Silverlock remembered that she had met him by the sea, on the Belgian coast. She’d never been able to afford a real holiday. Yes, Oostende it had been, and he’d taken her to all those expensive restaurants and bars that she had only ever previously seen from the outside. She had instantly confided in him and told him about her parents being killed in a car crash when she was little, and about her illness-ridden aunt Babette, who’d brought her up and then died on her eighteenth birthday, just like that. She’d also told him about the ice cream parlour and her poverty and hopelessness.

Sheridan had taken her by storm in the course of a single evening and proposed after three days. It was Sheridan who had brought her to England, she now recalled.

Sheridan Silverlock was so rich that he offered her a choice of London houses and flats to live in. He didn’t have to work but wrote a new kind of poetry. He called it ‘psychological poetry.’ Their wedding had taken place in a rented castle in Scotland.

Dr Ravenscourt showed her the wedding photos. And then Mrs Silverlock remembered Sheridan’s brother, Percy. Her heart jolted once again. She felt sick.

Percy was shorter and stouter than Sheridan, had raven black hair and copper brown eyes. It was a strange mix. His forehead was less lofty than Sheridan’s and bore some resemblance to a Celtic bronze shield, hammered into shape by a coarse smith. He looked fierce and, at times, menacing. But he had the heart of a lamb, really.

And yet Mrs Silverlock couldn’t explain the strange aversion that now rose up inside her. Was this the result of later events?

Percy had a proper profession; he was a high-class and well-respected gynaecologist. She saw his consulting room now. Spacious, white, and filled with glass partitions and modern electronic equipment, like a showroom. The only privacy resided in the gynaecologist’s chair.

Sheridan insisted on his wife’s monthly check-ups with his brother.

‘You might as well,’ he had said. ‘Better safe than sorry. You’ll be in good hands, I promise you that.’

But despite all the good care she was being given, she did not fall pregnant at first. The check-ups were doubled. Sheridan decided that they should move into Percy’s house, for the sake of convenience. The top floor, a self-contained and fully furnished flat, was ready to receive them.

While Mrs Silverlock grew more and more weary of her new sterile surroundings, all Sheridan did was compose poetry. He read it to her in the evenings, but even that did not cheer her up.

Bored with her new life-style already, Mrs Silverlock went shopping for hours on end. She bought mostly clothes, but also kitchenware, toiletries and fragrances, books and music. She went for facials and pedicures, haircuts and massages. The only shops she avoided were ice-cream parlours and baby-related outlets. That would be tempting fate, she thought.

Mrs Silverlock felt sorry for letting Sheridan down by not falling pregnant. She had never even thought about having babies. After all, she was only twenty-two. But now she felt almost obliged to fulfil his desires. Dutifully, she grew used to the fortnightly visits to Percy’s chair.

It was a chair like a house, complete with all the modern comforts you could wish for. She knew the chair inside out. It was wide and white, comfortable and engulfing. It boasted a little sink for personal needs, a drinks cabinet and a coffee maker, which both served you at the push of a button, a fridge filled with fresh delicacies, should you become hungry during the meticulous and often time-consuming inspection. Small, non-refrigerated snacks were also available, at the push of another button. Earphones played a wide range of music, from calming and soothing to maddeningly hyper-activating. DVD goggles offered The Sound of Music, Edward Scissorhands, Look Who’s Talking, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Men in Tights, and a few other movies that she couldn’t remember.

Of course, if the patient insisted on seeing Percy at work, she could choose to do so, too. Percy was willing to talk you through every single one of his moves and explain his verdicts, whilst, at the same time, engaging you in relaxing and diverting small talk. But if you wished to turn a blind eye to his examination, the option was there to shut yourself off from medical matters by electronically drawing a pleasantly patterned curtain across your waist.

During her first three visits, Mrs Silverlock left the curtain open, mainly out of politeness. She didn’t want Percy to feel left out. But then she realised that he didn’t mind the impersonality of just dealing with the lower half of a patient. She decided that it must be less distracting for him, too. That way, at least, he could concentrate on his job.

She focused on a piece of sushi and ignored all physical sensations that went on beyond the curtain. Ever so often, a shiver ran through her as she couldn’t help noticing a succession of cold and hard things invade the hidden maze of her insides. She swallowed a piece of raw fish whole and concentrated on its stringy, slimy texture while her womb, like a vacuum, enclosed on something coarse and grainy. A tepid fluid leaked out of her. It was impossible to hold it in. Her oesophagus quietly squeezed the sushi into her stomach and a warm puddle collected between her legs.

‘You’re a perfectly healthy young woman,’ Percy exclaimed, and pushed aside the curtain that separated them. His face peered at Mrs Silverlock. It looked over-sized.

‘If you’d like to get dressed now.’

She slowly got up and left a puddle of blood behind. Percy passed her a bundle of tissue paper. She took it and disappeared behind the screen. While she got dressed, he reassured her that there was no obstacle whatsoever to a wonderful and fulfilling pregnancy. She only had to be a little more patient.

And patient she was. Her boredom rose to devastating proportions. Shopping became dull. She took up knitting and read book after book. For a couple of weeks she indulged in cinema mania. She started to grow plants.

Then, one day as she was exploring the basement to find a dark and humid environment to grow mushrooms, she stumbled upon a locked door. This was the first bolted passage she had encountered in the whole house, and that meant something. The house was huge, a maze of rooms and corridors. The Silverlock brothers liked spacious interiors.

Mrs Silverlock turned the gilded doorknob again, but the door did not yield. Incredulous she looked at it for a minute. She heard steps approaching from the staircase. Sheridan had miraculously been resuscitated from his poetry composing.

‘Here you are, dear. What are you doing?’

He took her arm and dragged her away. She resisted.

‘What’s in here?’ she asked.

‘That’s Percy’s lab. You can’t go in. It needs to be free of germs. Don’t come down here any more.’

Disappointed, she nodded. Sheridan manoeuvred her into the lift and walked her into the flat. He suggested they try for a child once more. She didn’t object. After all, she loved him.

Mrs Silverlock never found out whether her child was conceived on this particular afternoon, but for some reason she was certain of it. She felt it the minute when Sheridan stood up to return to his desk. She cradled her flat belly and hummed a lullaby, as if a one-celled being could possibly hear her, even if it was already rapidly multiplying and expanding.

Percy confirmed her pregnancy. At last she could go shopping for baby clothes, toys and furniture. Sheridan, delirious with joy, left it all to her and concentrated on composing child-related verses, full of one-syllabled words and rhymes. It was his way of preparing for the happy event.

‘A trip to the shrink
blink think wink
jink, head in the sink
mummy I sink!’

When Mrs Silverlock had bought every baby product in existence, from mosaic patterned feeding cups to Mozart enhanced baby monitors and comfort toe ticklers, she was still only three weeks pregnant. It was then that her husband announced a short business trip with his brother.

‘I’m so sorry to leave you on your own. We’ll get you a nurse.’

She didn’t want any fuss. After all, the brothers were only going on a three-day trip to Bulgaria. She didn’t fully grasp what it was about, but vaguely knew that it concerned a uterus conference that drew a direct line between biological procreation and metrical verse structure used as a creative outlet by the male poet.

‘We have to go to this conference,’ Sheridan said. ‘It is precisely those two areas of expertise that link my brother and me together.’

Mrs Silverlock understood. And contrary to expectation, she felt relieved once they had gone. She roamed around the house with replenished energy and an urge for further exploration, while nurse Louise was safely positioned in front of the home cinema, together with a public library-sized collection of DVDs.

From the very start of her marriage, Mrs Silverlock had always had access to every room and drawer in the entire house – apart from the basement room. Sheridan had lectured her about the importance of trust and honesty many times. And he liked to live by his principles.

Emaciated in her hospital bed, Mrs Silverlock felt a pang. Those words about trust and honesty didn’t ring true any more.

‘Do you remember what came next?’ Dr Ravenscourt asked. ‘What exactly did you discover?’

Mrs Silverlock didn’t know. All of a sudden, she felt very tired. After the doctor had left, she fell into a tense sleep, riddled by nightmares and spasms of unease.

The following morning she asked Dr Ravenscourt where her husband was. He spoke slowly.

‘I am not going to lie to you. He passed away. It was suicide.’

Inexplicably, she felt relief.

‘And Percy?’

‘They died together.’

‘And my child?’

Dr Ravenscourt hesitated for the first time. ‘You gave birth while you were in the coma. The children are alive. You have triplets.’

And then it all flooded back to her, as if another portal in her memory had been torn open. She tried to scream but fainted before a single sound could pass her lips.

That afternoon, when the house was empty, Mrs Silverlock nosed through every wardrobe, cupboard and drawer. She found photos of Sheridan and Percy, backdropped by a large variety of locations. Each snapshot had the name of a country written on the back. They ranged from Thailand, to Indonesia and Vietnam, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Poland, Ukraine, Peru, Mongolia. The list continued. Each photo showed both brothers posing in front of a typical local landscape.

She knew they were well travelled, but quite how well she had been unaware of. She could not find any family pictures but it didn’t seem odd. Sheridan had told her that his parents had been swept away by a nasty virus about ten years ago. Their memory had been too painful for the brothers to preserve. They never spoke about them.

The second day of her seclusion, Mrs Silverlock watched DVDs with Nurse Louise. On the third, she overcame her inhibitions about breaking into the forbidden room. The mere thought of it egged her on beyond all endurance. She had to find the key to it or die.

Percy’s office was always unlocked. All his private affairs and those of his patients were secured by a simple password on his computer. Mrs Silverlock snooped around his practice and opened every cabinet. There was only one that didn’t contain some obstetric or uterus-related instrument. It was almost empty, apart from three types of coils for demonstration, a map of the vagina and womb, a couple of biscuit bars, a plastic replica of a foetus, also, she assumed, for demonstration, an outdated Royal Opera events guide, a no-smoking sign, and a key. It had to be the key, for the simple reason that none of the doors in the entire house had any locks on them. That went to show just how free-spirited the Silverlock brothers were.

Mrs Silverlock clutched the key in her fist and hastened downstairs. It was rather large and old-fashioned – not the usual Yale key – and dug into the palm of her hand, as if she was carrying a live set of teeth. The basement door was as firmly locked as she had first found it. She fitted the key into the lock with overwhelming ease; it seemed to almost slip from her hand into the hole, as if drawn by a magnetic force. The door smoothly moved back on its hinges, to reveal a brightly-lit downward staircase, tiled in white marble. Beneath her, in the distance, she could hear a sound of dripping, like peaceful rain.

Mrs Silverlock slowly descended the marble steps. She was prepared for a sensation of cold but instead, found herself shrouded in a disarming torpor of warmth. A double glass door marked the end of the stairs. It was so bright, it almost blinded her. She pushed it open and entered a luminescent hospital ward. The trickling she had heard from above, she now realised, stemmed from the drips that supplied several dozen pregnant women with nutrients. All of them were asleep.

Tiptoeing along the rows of beds, Mrs Silverlock read the labels attached to each one of them. But instead of names, they related countries and dates. The names of the countries corresponded with those she had read on the back of the photos only two days before.

Should she leave? She considered. The brothers need never know. The next set of double doors opened up into a gigantic laboratory, complete with test tubes, fridges, computer screens. Mrs Silverlock passed through shelves of instruments that made no sense to her. She faced a long wall plastered with photos, all aligned symmetrically and painstakingly labelled with names, dates of birth and death.

Although Mrs Silverlock focused hard on what the pictures showed, she could, at first, recognise nothing familiar. She saw blood in some of them, meat, but also other textures and surfaces, bristly, mossy, crusty, crinkled, freckled, flaky, spongy, bumpy, lardy, furry, sticky, viscous and mucous.

And then she caught sight of an eye, embedded in a growth of party popper shaped strings.

‘Ferny,’ it said, ‘born on the third of May.’

The whole truth crashed down on Mrs Silverlock for a second time. Memory after sickening memory surged through her mind.

Mrs Silverlock left the lab and moved through another corridor, at the end of which she could hear prattling, chuckling and laughter. She entered a nursery. Toys were scattered across a rainbow-coloured carpet; infant-sized plastic chairs and beanbags speckled the room. The walls were covered in children’s doodles and finger paintings.

In the middle of it all crawled horridly deformed creatures. Some of the children looked human, with only one missing eye or merely sporting a hunchback. Some were blind, or had cropped ears or lips, or were paraplegic. Others were worse afflicted. A few looked like plants or animals.

One toddler who scurried through his playmates as if in a frenzy had a rat’s tail, snout, teeth and little black rodent’s eyes. He was covered in grey fur. Another one had a face like a sunflower and was evidently short-sighted, as he or she was wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses. A genius boy was installed in front of a grand piano and played arias with six twenty-fingered hands. Unfortunately, he was cactus from the waist down and would never walk. In a corner of the nursery a group of three firtrees were swaying their branches like mad. Mrs Silverlock soon identified them as pine triplets. Each had a large number of eyes, covered in wrinkly veined lids that fluttered once in a while. In the meantime, a legion of bug-like toddlers played chess on a life-sized board.

All of the children were having the time of their lives, screeching with delight, happily slobbering, and tickling each other. Some of the older ones were peacefully playing all sorts of board games. Little ones held hands and sang nursery rhymes or gave each other piggybacks.

Mrs Silverlock was surprised by the order that reigned in this hybrid chaos. Not one of the children was causing any mischief. They were better behaved than a group of catholic choir boys in straitjackets. Their impeccable conduct was controlled by a nanny-like robot that whizzed back and forth through the room, poking and stroking the children’s napes with an oversized thumb.

Before long, Mrs Silverlock felt the effect of that thumb on her own person. The nanny detected her as an alien element and charged towards her, pressing her thumb right on Mrs Silverlock’s heart. An electric shock bolted through her system, and that was the last memory she could conjure up.

Mrs Silverlock stayed in hospital for another week before she could face asking Dr Ravenscourt what had happened to her after that fatal day. The doctor confirmed her worst fears.

She had joined the rows of comatose women, and had not Nurse Louise raised the alarm at her disappearance, the Silverlock scandal might never have come to light. Not many of the women could be saved and most of the children had been doomed to a premature death as it was. The few survivors were being taken care of under Dr Ravenscourt’s supervision.

The moment came when Mrs Silverlock had to see her triplets. And while she waited, she could only think one terrible thought: however monstrous they were as little children, what would become of them as adults?