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  ‘Is busking legal?’ Eric asks.

  ‘I’m not sure now. I’ll phone the police and find out.’

  Ten minutes later, after an interesting telephone conversation with someone official at the police station, I have discovered that busking comes under the Vagrancy Act of 1824.

  ‘Very old-fashioned. Like being hanged for sheep-stealing,’ I tell Eric (Silas is still preoccupied with his squirrel).

  ‘Does that mean you can’t do it?’

  ‘Apparently I might get by on the grounds of providing “street entertainment”.’

  ‘Does that mean you have to have an audition?’

  ‘Heavens, no. But I might be inspected by someone from the Town Centre Management Team, whatever that is. I could take Mr. Darcy with me, if you’ll let me. People might be able to resist me, but they’ll melt when Mr. Darcy does that reproachful thing with his eyebrows.’

  ‘Are you fit to hang around street corners with your violin?’

  ‘Perfectly fit,’ I assure him. ‘It’ll do me good.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘It’ll do him good, too. It’s never too early to start enjoying music.’

  And while I’ve no idea whether the seahorse/rabbit has developed anything in the way of ears yet, I’m sure that I’m right. Bring on the council official and the generous, music-loving punters. I can’t wait to begin.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But before I can commence my busking career, there are medical matters to attend to.

  Now I have to admit that I had entirely forgotten that pregnancy is regarded not so much as a natural event as a medical condition fraught with hazards, and that a variety of investigations is required to ensure that nothing awful is happening either to me or to the baby. It was Silas who pointed this out, and Silas who took me down to his GP in his muddy Land Rover. All was apparently well, as far as the GP could tell, but I am apparently due for my twelve-week scan.

  ‘Yes. It’s important to check up on things after the first trimester,’ says Silas, who has been looking things up in his book.

  ‘Trimester?’ I ask him.

  ‘Three months. It comes from the Latin,’ he informs me kindly. ‘Pregnancy is divided into three trimesters, and each one —’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Silas, I think I get the message. And the doctor gave me this booklet. I can read up all about it.’

  ‘My book has diagrams.’

  ‘So has the booklet.’ I pat his hand. ‘Don’t worry. From now on, I promise to keep myself fully informed.’

  I have never had a scan before, and envisage myself being posted into one of those long dark tubes for a lonely and claustrophobic half-hour or so, but apparently this scan is quite a simple procedure, and I will be able to see what’s going on. Now I come to think of it, I have seen friends coming hot foot from their scans, proudly sporting grainy and (to me) completely unrecognisable photos of their unborn offspring. Hitherto, I haven’t paid much attention to scans, but now that it’s time for mine, I’m rather looking forward to it.

  So, it would seem, are my uncles.

  ‘I think I should go with her,’ Silas says.

  ‘What, you mean come in and watch?’ I’m not at all sure about this.

  ‘Why not? I believe people are allowed to bring their partners, and you don’t seem to have one, so I can come instead. To support you,’ he adds, although even I can see that he is desperate to see what goes on (Silas is a terrible hypochondriac, and has a hypochondriac’s fascination for all things medical).

  ‘What about me?’ Eric says. ‘I think I should come too.’

  ‘Of course you can come too,’ Silas says. ‘We’ll all go. And we can go to the pub for lunch afterwards.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I say, with the uncomfortable feeling that my life is being taken over. ‘This is my scan. I think I should be the one to decide.’

  ‘You need us to drive you there,’ Silas reminds me.

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘No. Of course it’s not. All right then. We’ll take you and wait in the car while you have it.’

  ‘With nothing to do,’ says Eric.

  ‘And these things always take hours.’

  They both look at me, their expressions so ridiculously alike that I can’t help laughing.

  ‘Okay. You can both come. But don’t blame me if you’re not allowed in. And please don’t do anything embarrassing.’

  ‘Would we!’

  ‘I don’t know, but I have a feeling you might.’

  But while it has occurred to me that one or other of my uncles might well do or say something inappropriate, I never considered the affect that two identical elderly men would have on a waiting-room full of pregnant women and their partners. There are the double-takes, the whispers, the covert and then not-so-covert glances, and the outright stares. I wish with all my heart that Eric and Silas could have worn different clothes, or brushed their hair in different ways, or at the very least, sat at opposite ends of the room. But no. Here they sit, side by side, reading old copies of Woman’s Own and pausing occasionally to beam at their audience.

  ‘Do you have to do this?’ I whisper to Eric, who is sitting beside me.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Play to the gallery.’

  ‘I can’t think what you mean.’ He turns to the problem page (“Is my partner two-timing me?” screams one of the by-lines. More than likely, I think sourly).

  ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

  ‘My dear Ruth, if you’re born with a handicap, you might as well make the most of it.’

  ‘It’s not a handicap!’

  ‘No, but it might as well be, the way people behave.’

  ‘I believe you’re enjoying this.’

  ‘And why not? You must admit, it’s quite fun.’

  ‘I would have thought you’d have tired of this kind of fun by now.’

  ‘That’s what our mother used to say. But you don’t have to sit next to us if you don’t want to.’

  ‘You’re behaving like children!’

  ‘She said that, too.’

  Fortunately, at this stage a white-coated young woman calls out my name.

  ‘Miss Robinson? Come this way, please.’

  Eric and Silas put down their magazines and get up to follow me (more stares and whispers. Maybe everyone thinks I have twin sugar daddies).

  ‘Are you coming with her?’ The young woman looks dubious. ‘Both of you?’

  ‘We’ll explain when we get inside,’ says Silas. ‘You see,’ he continues, once the door is closed behind us, ‘we’re her next of kin.’

  ‘What, both of you?’ she says again.

  ‘Oh yes. Can’t you see the family likeness?’ (There is no family likeness.)

  ‘Well, maybe just one of you, if that’s all right with Miss Robinson.’

  I open my mouth to say something, but Eric gets in first.

  ‘It’s a bit delicate,’ he says. ‘You see, until six months ago, we were conjoined twins. Up until then, obviously we’d never been apart at all. And we — well, we still find it hard.’ I swear I can see tears in his eyes.

  ‘You were operated on that recently? Surely it would have been in the papers. That sort of thing is always on the news.’ Apparently my white-coated friend isn’t as gullible as Eric had hoped. She looks them both up and down, as though searching for a missing leg or the remains of a shared arm.

  ‘Oh, no newspapers.’ Eric looks shocked. ‘Patient confidentiality,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose. ‘We managed to keep it out of the papers. We still walk with a limp,’ he adds.

  The technician is obviously baffled. As for me, I’m furious. They have obviously done this before. This routine is well-rehearsed, and they’ve got it off so pat and their delivery is so convincing that in the end they are both given permission to stay. Eric winks at me, but I ignore him. They may be able to get round officialdom, but it’s going to take a lot more to get round me. I consider send
ing them both out, but I feel suddenly vulnerable, and would appreciate their company even if I haven’t yet forgiven them.

  But all our differences — if that’s what they were — are forgotten when the scan begins and we see the monitor.

  ‘Look.’ The technician points to the screen. ‘There’s its heart beating, and there’s an arm ... and another. See there. It’s kicking.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ Silas appears lost for words. He and Eric exclaim and coo over this tiny apparition as though they alone are responsible for its existence, while I am totally bemused. True, there is something swimming about on the screen, bobbing gently in its warm watery world, and I can just about see a beating heart and something which might be a limb. But they are the heart and the limb of a seahorse/rabbit, not anything which resembles a human being, and I feel cheated and disappointed. It is like showing people round one’s own haunted house, and being the only one who can’t see the ghost.

  ‘Oh, Ruth! You are so clever! Look what you’ve made!’ Eric says, and this time there are real tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so wonderful.’

  ‘Is it all right? There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Everything looks fine, although of course she’ll have another scan at twenty weeks.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I hear myself say, ‘but this is my baby.’

  ‘Of course.’ The technician smiles at me. ‘I’m so sorry. But your friends —’

  ‘Uncles,’ says Silas.

  ‘Uncles, then. Well they like to talk, don’t they?’

  ‘They certainly do,’ I say with feeling. But of course, now that I have her attention, I can’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ Silas ventures.

  ‘Boy of course,’ Eric says.

  ‘Would you both please shut up,’ I say, and turn back to the technician. ‘Can you tell the sex yet?’

  ‘Blossom’s never wrong —’

  ‘Please, Eric. Can you tell?’

  ‘Too early, I’m afraid. But of course your Blossom has a fifty percent chance of being right.’

  ‘She wouldn’t like to hear you say that,’ mutters Silas.

  Just for a moment, lying on this couch with my tummy exposed and these two mad people having their discussions across my body, I think of Amos; big, generous Amos, with his beard and his smile and his kind brown eyes, and for a moment, wish that he was sitting here beside me, holding my hand. But he doesn’t even know about the baby. What kind of a father would he have made? I wish I had been able to tell him about it, for now I know that we really have managed to create a new life, even if to me at least it bears little resemblance to a human being, I feel as though I have stolen something from him, albeit unwittingly. His genes, his input, are alive and apparently well inside my body. All those weeks ago, I exercised my “right to choose” when I decided to go ahead with my pregnancy, but Amos was never given any choice at all.

  In the pub over a ploughman’s and best bitter (Eric and Silas) and a cheese and tomato sandwich and orange juice (me) my uncles get out their grainy photos (they managed to persuade the technician to give them one each) and coo over them together, pointing out to each other features which even I know to be invisible at this early stage. But they apologise to me very charmingly for their behaviour in the hospital, and of course, I forgive them.

  For quite apart from anything else, where on earth would I be without them?

  PART II: AUTUMN

  By the end of the second trimester, the foetus weighs between one and a half and two pounds. The skin has thickened, the lungs are developing well and hearing and taste have developed. Eyebrows and eyelashes are present, although the eyes themselves may still be closed. A pattern of sleeping and waking may be detected, and there are periods of intense activity. At this stage, the baby has an 85% chance of survival outside the womb.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It is decided that my day for busking should be Wednesday.

  Wednesday is the day for the farmers’ market in town, and Eric and Silas have a small stall. They sell goats’ milk, eggs, honey and rich Jersey cream, plus such vegetables as have managed to fight their way to maturity through the forests of weeds (there are always many more than I would have thought possible, but Eric and Silas claim to have green fingers). I am quite sure that the cream and the milk are illegal, since the sale of such things is controlled by a raft of agricultural legislation, but Eric and Silas have little regard for rules and regulations, and they have loyal customers who can be depended upon to keep their mouths shut. Their ‘dairy produce’ is kept, literally, under the counter, the surface of which is spread with respectably legitimate vegetables and flowers. Legal considerations apart, their stall is always popular, although I suspect that this owes as much to the novelty of their twinned state as the quality of their produce.

  Wednesday, say Eric and Silas, is the best day for me to start as they can give me a lift, and also keep an eye on me. I think this seems a very sensible idea. Blossom, however, does not.

  ‘What do you need looking after for? Big girl like you.’ This is a long sentence by Blossom’s standards and I detect more than a hint of jealousy.

  ‘Well, I think it’s very kind of them,’ I tell her.

  ‘No better than begging,’ she sniffs, wielding her broom as it ploughs its familiar route through the week’s clutter to the bottom of the staircase.

  ‘I’m not begging, Blossom. I’m earning money. I’m playing for people. And if they like it, they’ll pay. If not, they don’t have to. It’s perfectly straightforward.’

  ‘My Kaz wouldn’t.’ Kaz is the errant daughter.

  ‘Well, Kaz probably can’t play the violin.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want to. Nasty scratchy thing.’ Blossom takes a swipe at a spider’s web.

  ‘Well, thanks, Blossom.’

  Blossom’s bony backside quivers with disapproval as she stops to pick up some piece of debris.

  ‘Don’t you like music, Blossom?’ I ask her.

  ‘Nope.’ She drops her findings into her dustpan.

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Make me own.’ She squashes a spider and sweeps up the remains.

  ‘You do that.’

  Trying to talk to Blossom when she’s in this kind of mood is pretty well impossible, but I refuse to let her dampen my spirits. I feel cheerful, and for the first time in three months, I feel well. Gone is the nausea and the exhaustion, and my tummy is still relatively flat, even if there is someone living inside it. Besides, I am looking forward to playing to an audience again, even if it’s only an audience of short-tempered shoppers, and I have my music planned. There will be some Bach, for the more discerning, and some jolly Irish pieces I once played with a dance band, and a virtuoso little number by Paganini (almost impossible, but will anyone notice the mistakes?).

  It is the day before my street début, and I am playing through my programme in the kitchen, where Eric is measuring out the plans for the Ark on huge sheets of graph paper, and Silas is finishing off his squirrel. The squirrel, once so squirrel-looking, now looks very dead and rather shapeless, and its tail refuses to stand up in the usual perky squirrel way.

  ‘That sounds great,’ says Silas, half-way through a piece, but I can tell he’s not listening properly. He whistles through his teeth as he withdraws the stuffing from the squirrel’s tail (wire wrapped in some kind of cotton) and unravels it. ‘I shall have to start again,’ he says. ‘And squirrels are supposed to be easy.’

  I decide not to say anything. I have never understood the point of taxidermy; of killing a perfect, beautiful animal and then taking hours and hours trying to make it look perfect and beautiful (and alive) again. Admittedly Silas doesn’t do any killing — most of his specimens are found by the roadside, and only a minority of those are suitable, the remainder being squashed beyond recognition — but it still seem
s a pointless occupation. No doubt in the hands of an experienced taxidermist, the finished article might be considered very fine, but nothing dead, however well stuffed, can look as beautiful as it did when it was a living breathing creature.

  And it’s all such a palaver. There are the tools and the chemicals and the stuffing materials, not to mention the copious notes which Silas has made on his several visits to Nigel, the local expert, and which are now strewn around the kitchen. Silas’s manual tells him that he should be able to do a squirrel from start to finish in a couple of days; Nigel, being kinder, says give it a week. So far, it’s taken him nearly ten days, and all this work to produce something which looks like a cross between a guinea pig and a monkey.

  I put down my violin.

  ‘It looks very — fat,’ I say, eyeing Silas’s hapless victim.

  The squirrel squints defiantly back at me through its new shiny glass eyes, its empty tail hanging limply at its side.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Silas pauses. ‘It doesn’t really look like a squirrel any more, does it?’ he adds forlornly.

  ‘Well...’

  ‘It’s a good effort,’ Eric says, but even to me, his tone is ever so slightly patronising.

  ‘Oh dear. Nigel said to beware of over-stuffing. He said that was the commonest beginner’s mistake. But I thought a squirrel ought to be nice and plump. Bugger.’ Silas runs his hands through his hair, and the nice plump squirrel/guinea pig/monkey topples over onto its side. ‘Perhaps I should concentrate on the badger.’

  Eric and I agree that this is an excellent idea, not least because the hide of the said badger has spent the last two days floating in a mixture of noxious chemicals in the only bathtub. Both Eric and I are longing to be able to use the bath (although I suspect that like me, Eric’s not sure about using a receptacle which has recently played host to such a grisly occupant).

  ‘The badger might be easier,’ Silas says, cheering up a bit. ‘A bit more to get hold of. The squirrel was very fiddly.’