Chapter 3 -Waiting for the Miracle-

WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE

I never stopped to think about the details surrounding my birth. I did not know what day of the week I was born or whether it was a doctor or a nurse who welcomed me into the world. Did Deila squat me out by herself or was there an invasive medical procedure involved? Where was Sandy? I never asked her. I never wanted to know. Who cares, right? Why try and imagine the hours before you pop into the world? Why decipher the circumstances of your awakening if you were not there to remember it? Especially if you don’t give two rats about astrology, mysticism, numerology or any of that hippy nonsense! Past lives my arse! How and when you come out does not matter …  does it? It’s what you do after …  right? That’s what Jez kept repeating when I told him we were working towards a natural birth because we wanted the child to kick the match off peacefully and without hospital trauma. 

‘Who gives a toss?!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s no consciousness in the sack. Only fanatical Christians believe that!’ 

I was not so sure. I was not so sure about anything since Natalie announced she was pregnant. It was a random April morning when she said. The news had altered me for good.

‘There’s something there,’ I said to Jez. ‘I know it.’ 

‘Don’t give me that shit, Mark please.’ 

I did not like admitting Jez was right, about anything – especially not about my future son. And anyways, a part of me felt the creature was alive. I felt Dante already existed. Not necessarily in the sack but somewhere inside me. Yes, I know it sounds insane but the idea of the boy was invigilating every aspect of his arrival to earth. I felt the presence: not as an intuition but as a manifestation of fear; a terror that grew in my stomach and made its birth momentous, as momentous as Woodstock or a Champions League final. As important as questions concerning the parturition of the universe. Not that I had ever given a shit about the history of the cosmos but times were changing. Times were changing fast. Before Dante I would only care about drinking, getting laid and playing guitar. But the idea of him was turning me inside out like a glove. So much worry. So much anxiety. How was I supposed to get it right? Where could I find the perfect workshop for bringing creatures into planets? How could I prepare? I was bound to mess it up. Like his name for example. Natalie and I had spent months debating what to call him. I was against ‘Dante’. I felt the name projected too much pressure on the poor child. What English boy could live up to the greatest poet of the Western canon? How could he match the achievements of a man who reinvented the afterlife? Natalie laughed. She argued that no one reads the English classics nowadays, much less 14th century Italian literature. She said ‘Dante’ sounded exotic, classy and interesting and had always liked it as a name. ‘But what if we sentence the child to a lifetime of frustration?’ I asked, close to tears. ‘What if the child grows to hate us for making him sound like a pedantic twerp?’  Natalie laughed again. 

‘It’s not about you Mark, can you see?

‘Yes, but, but….’ 

‘But nothing, Dante is a great name. What do you propose?’

‘Kevin?’ 

‘Sod you!’ I caved in eventually but there was so much more to discuss. The matter of his arrival to planet earth, for example. 

‘How do we get it right, Natalie? How? 

‘Our child is not an exam! Dante will come out like he wants,’ complained Natalie.  

She was right. She was always fucking right. 

The midwife. The delivery room. The timing. The details of the boy’s birth would stick to my brain like lice: the eyes of the midwife; the smell of iodine, and the bloody lights. The white halogen lamps; ruthless. How can you feel happiness under reflector lights? I tried to convince the nurse to dim the lights but she was implacable. The tough middle-aged modern-day Zenobia insisted light bulbs could not be changed, and even if they could, she would not change them for the world. I could basically fuck off! It was a matter of public safety and she liked them as they were and what the hell was I going to do about it? Yes, I argued but you don't have to curate a boy’s welcome party to this shithole planet, do you? The midwife ordered me to stop interfering and sit down. This is not a friggin poetry reading, she said staring at my fedora hat. I retreated to the plastic chair beside the delivery bed and moped around. Zenobia was a force of nature. Under the nurse’s uniform there was tough muscle. I would not be able to curate the lights. In fact, for all my prayers and anxieties, nothing went as planned or expected. Because it seldom does, does it? Not when it matters. When it actually matters, life and its Zenobias have the tendency of making spaghetti hoops out of your expectations. Poor Natalie! She had been pleading the universe for a natural birth, perhaps in the organic birthing pool, listening to ‘Carrie and Lowell’ by Sufjan Stevens, practising the nautical yoga positions she learnt in prenatal yoga classes, and opening up like a flower to the cosmic parade of unadulterated life. But nothing like that happened. We ended up rushing to Chelsea and Westminster and dragging her ailing body across the hospital floors. 

‘Right! ordered Zenobia. ‘10 cm dilation. It’s time to push it out!’

I felt horrible. I must have timed the contractions wrong. What if my pathetic timing (I was never good at maths) was condemning my future son to a horrific awakening. I was a piece of shit! I could hardly speak and Natalie had to console me through her harrowing pain. 

‘Breathe. Breathe. Breathe,’ insisted one of the other nurses. 

The birth of a child is like an extreme Japanese splatter movie! I hate them. They are messy and horrible. Unfortunately, you can't change the channel when it comes to human births. You have to sit there and digest the entirety of the horror. The blood carnival began on Dorian’s thirty-fifth birthday. Natalie was not due for another two weeks. She had woken up that morning with a burst of energy and excitement that made her bounce around the house like a wired butterfly. In fact, I had been amazed by the cheery nature displayed throughout the pregnancy. My married friends had warned me that pregnant women turn fickle and vicious during this journey, but the dark harbingers didn’t have a clue. They had not met Natalie. She was a rock, unmoved by morning sickness, resilient in the face of fibroids and skin rashes. She made jokes about her weight and took a liking to the overalls and loosely fitted cotton dresses. She did not even complain when her feet swelled up like fattened pigs and could not fit the hundreds of expensive shoes she amassed during twenty years of London shopping. Natalie simply started wearing trainers. When Dorian called to see if we would be there she responded immediately.

‘Certainly.’ 

I was not adverse to the idea of the party. What vexed me was that I knew Jez would be there and I could not deal with his obsession with my “Fucked-up situation” as he named it. 

‘What’re you gonna do now? What if it was a mistake?’

‘You are the mistake here, Jez!’  

Natalie stamped on my foot and stared into my eyes.

‘I know love, but it’s Jez, can you hear what he says?’ I protested. 

‘You gotta think about these things, and the music, the music,’ continued Jez ignoring my complaints. ‘Music is what matters. Do you think Hendrix came up with a life-changing guitar sound while changing nappies? Do you know how many drugs he had to take to get it right! Think of Cobain. He put the gun up his nostrils after the little toad was born. I mean, he probably thought, 'What the hell is there to write about now?’  

‘He loved the child Jez! It was the heroin!’

‘It’s the movement, the tension, that leads to masterpieces!’

‘Hombre, what masterpiece have you come up with?’ I enquired whilst trying to contain my frustration and avoid the embarrassment of a full-blown frenemy argument in front of Natalie. 

‘Mark, not today, please,’ begged Natalie. ‘Ok love but it’s Jez, I promise. 

I tried to settle my emotions and explain that I felt more connected to creativity during Natalie’s pregnancy than at any time during the eight years of pursuing poetry workshops and sordid plays at The National Theatre. Jez was not listening. He seldom did. Talking to Jez was like poking a wall with a rubber tube. He did not wish to exchange thoughts. He had already made his mind up before you opened your mouth. Nothing you said would modify his version of reality. In his eyes I saw pity and fear. He believed that bringing a kid to the world in the underground music scene without a penny to your name was like putting up the Argentina flag in a pub full of English louts moments after the 1986 Football World Cup semi-final. To be fair, I would have thought exactly the same thing only six months before. He spoke about my musical career as if it was of utmost importance to him, but I knew his main issue was his certainty that I would put an end to our boozing adventures after the child was born. The more he drank the more he questioned my relationship with Natalie and hinted at the inevitability of its collapse. I wanted to smack him in the face.

‘Jez, Natalie can hear what you are saying.’

‘Pregnant women only hear themselves,’ he assured.

We were four pints when I saw Natalie rush into the toilet. She looked radiant with the child inside her. Cheeks rosy and glossy from the wine, beautifully tall and sculpted with that protruding belly. She did not need to talk to exude confidence. She did not need to justify her place in the chessboard of existence. She walked proudly. The strength was within her. It was not Dante, the child-to-be, nor her secure and well-paid job at the RSPCA, it was not her athleticism nor her finely shaped limbs. Not her accent, nor her education. The force within her came from somewhere else. Perhaps, an acceptance. Perhaps a lack of anxiety and dread. Perhaps, it was just her fate: to walk unphased across the pubs and corridors of London, strapped to the moment and content with what everyday life offered.  

‘The waters have broken! The waters have broken! Shit! The waters have broken.’ 

I heard the words spread across the group of thirty year olds gathered in the ex-council flat in Finsbury Park but I did not react. It took me some seconds to rationalise the implications beyond the poetical image. Water breaking?! I thought. How fitting for a song but then it dawned on me. This was a trigger, a sort of ancestral code, a key to set in motion a series of actions that were to lead to the arrival of a child. The problem was that I could not recall what the actions were. I stood motionless under the archway which led into the living room thinking about the pre-natal classes and how much I detested the instructor. If I had not found her so unpleasant I would perhaps remember what I was supposed to do. Jez looked at me in disgust. 

‘Get some towels!’ He screamed. 

‘Are you in pain? I managed to ask Natalie who was sitting down on a plastic chair in the middle of the room. All the partygoers were now crowded around her.

‘I am mainly wet,’ she said calmly.

‘What shall we do?!’

Dorian called a taxi and we drove to Natalie’s fifth floor flat in Battersea where I rang the Chelsea hospital maternity unit and asked anxiously for advice. The answer was always the same. Measure the time intervals between the contractions. Measure the pain. But how does one measure pain or discomfort? How is supposed to know when the real torture commences? Natalie was in the bathtub. Dressed with her evening negligee. Hands on her womb. Screaming and howling madly. I stood overbearingly over the bathtub like an incarcerator, a torturer who was measuring the time scale for her bewildering suffering with the stopwatch on my old Nokia cell phone. Measure the pain. Always measure the pain. 

‘I am counting Natalie. I am counting. Tell me when you feel it?’

‘All the time. All the frigging time!’

Those moments you realise how far you diverted from the traditional idea of a man, a man who protects and tames the practicalities of everyday existence. I hated myself for never having learnt to drive. No car. No licence. No lift for the five floors of excruciatingly steep stairs to our  one-bedroom Battersea flat. I wondered whether to call a taxi but when was the right moment to do so? Call it early and risk being sent back home by the hospital. If I took too long Natalie might have to deliver a child in the back seat of an Uber. The intervals between contractions were getting shorter or so I thought. We had bought a huge blue birth ball which was supposed to help with the breathing in the final stages of labour. I offered Natalie the ball and she told me to stick it up my nostrils.

‘For fuck’s sake Mark! Do something!’ 

I called a taxi and directed it to our Battersea address. That much I could do. I was sweating and shivering. I encouraged Natalie down the five floors of steps and pushed her in the taxi amidst her growling and screams of despair. The taxi driver put his hands on his head and warned about the recently purchased upholstery of the cab. I told him to shut up and drive us to the Chelsea Hospital. He took the wrong turn round Fulham Broadway – I wanted to kill the guy. When we finally arrived at the Hospital, we were rushed to the maternity unit. Zenobia was waiting for us in the reception area. 

‘Take this bloody thing out of me now!’ screamed Natalie.

‘What about the welcoming music?’ I enquired.

‘Fuck off!’ 

Tiredness and blood. Blood and tiredness. That was all that was left from our clinical preparations for the accouchement. Tiredness and blood and the final extraction at 5am when the lack of sleep, hunger, the four pints and the nerves brought on and what I can only describe as a metaphysical high. Who needs class A’s when you are witnessing the blood party of a real-life child delivery! It was the new drug! It was intense. It was real. I was alive! Was I really about to cut the cord that linked the stripling to nothingness? Was I about to deliver his voice from oblivion? When he was ready, he arrived in an instant. I blinked and it was done. Zenobia confirmed Natalie was healthy and well –  exhausted and thrilled but in the end, well. The drugs made her sound intoxicated and dreamy, yet there was a certainty and clarity in her voice when she said,‘Dante.’ 

Zenobia (or was it Boudica) took back the clippers which were dangling purposelessly in my hands. I did not know how to drive, but I had cut the cord that linked the boy to life. I wanted to kiss Zenobia but she distanced herself awkwardly and carried on with her chores; she had no time for foolishness. She was busy delivering babies to the world. She was ready to pursue another triumph of vitality. I wanted to kiss Natalie, but Zenobia stopped me again. 

‘She needs rest,’ she commanded.

I fell to her feet.‘Fuck the lighting! God! Fuck the lighting and fuck Sufjan Stevens’