The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York. Peter Godwin

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СКАЧАТЬ to go down and collect the second lot of results in person, when Dr Beth calls me.

      ‘Joanna, it’s Beth from Murray Hill, can you come in this afternoon? We need to talk. I’ve got your results back and quite frankly, Joanna, I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m baffled.’

      As I arrive, I see Donna the technician sitting on a low wall outside the surgery, smoking, a habit long since forbidden in New York offices. She gives me a thumbs up.

      ‘Your numbers have doubled,’ she says, drawing heavily on her cigarette. ‘That’s very good. That’s what we look for.’

      Buoyed up by this news, I sit patiently underneath the peaks of Yosemite waiting for Beth, who finally calls me in to tell me she is still baffled, but has booked me a sonogram. She leads me into a small white room, tells me to swap my suit for a paper robe and I lie back on a grey leather reclining chair.

      The monitor flickers into life, she squeezes a transparent gel over my belly and I see a series of dark undulating lines, which she tells me is my uterus. The electronic wand hovers and she zooms in on a tiny dark spot.

      ‘Mmn, a cyst,’ she murmurs. ‘Definitely an ovarian cyst.’

      ‘Is that serious?’ I ask, struggling to sit up.

      She gestures me down and this time zooms in on an indecipherable white speck. She pulls one of her faces.

      ‘A cyst is a symptom of pregnancy,’ she says. ‘Doctor to patient, it’s too early to say. But woman to woman, I’d say you are pregnant, Joanna. Very, very early. But I don’t think it’s anything more serious.’ She sounds disappointed. ‘Congratulations,’ she says flatly. ‘You’re going to have a baby after all.’

      I manage a weak grin and, flooding with relief, make two instant vows. I will never come back to this surgery again. And I will never wear a turquoise pregnancy smock with white seagull-wing collar.

      Tuesday, 19 May Peter

      My results are finally in. My time, it appears, is not up after all. There is nothing wrong with me. Nothing to explain the lump on my elbow. Dr Epstein sits across the desk flipping through the charts. He is bewildered.

      ‘How’s the writing going?’ he asks, knowing that I am a writer.

      I feel this is no time for small talk.

      ‘Fine,’ I reply, wanting to get back to my polyp.

      ‘Still blocked?’ he asks.

      What is he, my agent?

      ‘Well I had a bit of spurt a couple of weeks ago,’ I admit, ‘but it wasn’t very good stuff.’

      He asks to feel my polyp again and then his face lights up.

      ‘I think you may have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome,’ he says.

      ‘What’s that?’ I ask fearfully.

      ‘I think you guys call it Repetitive Stress Injury. It’s caused by too much typing.’

      I return to the apartment to break the news to Joanna.

      ‘Turns out I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not going to die after all. My test results are all negative. He thinks it’s RSI. I must be the only blocked writer who has managed to contract RSI.’

      Joanna doesn’t seem particularly engaged by my relieved chatter.

      ‘I got my test results too,’ she says and hands me a package.

      I unwrap it to find that it is a book entitled The Expectant Father.

      Wednesday, 20 May Joanna

      Like most of my friends, I have put career ahead of children. In our twenties it seemed almost embarrassing to admit they were even a possibility. Now I’m suddenly aware of the explosive change that lies ahead. But instead of being scared, I find myself fizzing with elation – as though a secret trapdoor has sprung open to reveal a future quite different to the one I had been expecting.

      I wonder, though, how my bosses in London will take the news of my pregnancy. I am currently the sole female staff foreign correspondent on the paper, and after only a few months I have fallen pregnant. This was clearly not part of their plan. I stare out of my greasy office window, trying to compose a memo breaking the news to the editor.

      The truth is I am not a real foreign correspondent at all. I have no desire to zoom across the country clutching an overnight bag and a laptop, forever on call. I took this posting simply because I’ve always loved New York. As it turns out the job is largely office based, relying heavily on rewriting the New York papers and watching cable news. My colleague in Washington, Ed Vulliamy, calls it ‘lift ’n’ view’.

      When I do try to engage in original journalism and hit the phone, no one has heard of the paper. This morning I am trying to get a comment on ‘zero tolerance’ from the NYPD press office.

      ‘Hello. It’s Joanna Coles from the Guardian,’ I say.

      ‘Where?’

      ‘The Guardian.’

      ‘La Guardia? The airport?’

      ‘No. The Guardian. It’s a British newspaper.’

      ‘Really? Never heard of it.’

      The bureau itself depresses me. Though I should not complain about the location, in midtown on 44th Street sandwiched between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, the office itself reminds me of the shabby sets invariably used in amateur productions of Death of a Salesman. The windows are so fudged with dirt that I can barely tell if it’s raining. The glass top on the desk is shattered, its loosely arranged shards an industrial accident in waiting. The chair, a concave scoop of leatherette which has long since stopped revolving, has a two-inch nail sticking out of the left arm.

      When I raise the issue with the foreign editor he is unsympathetic, assuming that I am exaggerating in the hope that he will allow me to refurbish with Philippe Starck accessories. Besides, he keeps reminding me, I am lucky to have an office at all. Most foreign correspondents are now required to work from a computer propped up in the back bedroom at home, something which would probably drive me mad.

      Wednesday, 20 May Peter

      Joanna tells me that The Expectant Father will make me more understanding of what she is going through. I flip through the book and it falls open at an early page which advises me that the correct way to announce to my friends that Joanna is expecting a child is to say, ‘We are pregnant.’ I try saying it aloud. ‘We are pregnant’ ‘We are pregnant.’ It sounds absurd. I cannot bring myself to do this in public.

      It is true however that I have been putting on some weight since the conception. John, also pregnant, has alerted me to Couvade’s Syndrome, a condition suffered by fathers-to-be. Couvade comes from the French word, to hatch, and victims of the syndrome СКАЧАТЬ