The Calling by Neil Cross

his overcoat. Pauses halfway through putting it on.
    Benny looks at him.
    ‘Lust for power,’ Luther says. ‘Lust for money. Jealousy. All the things we do to each other. It all comes down to sex in the end. But sex comes down to babies. You look at a baby, it’s the purest thing in the world. The best thing. Totally innocent. So how do you square that? All this wickedness, in the name of creating innocence. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?’
    Benny looks at him for a long time. Then he says, ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to make myself forget what you just said.’
    ‘Good,’ says Luther. ‘Good.’
    Buttoning his coat, he walks out to meet Howie.
    The Clocktower Infertility and IVF Support Group is run from a small private hospital in North London.
    The group is led by a GP called Sandy Pope. It seems to Luther she’s a little forbidding and severe to be running a group like this. But what does he know?
    Luther and Howie sit in her surgery; it has a faint camphor smell.
    ‘The group’s run on a drop-in basis,’ she tells them. ‘So there’s no database, no list of phone numbers. Some people come for years. Some come once and find it’s not for them. Most are somewhere in between.’
    ‘But on average?’
    She’s reluctant to answer. Luther knows her type: well-educated, middle-class, left-leaning liberal. A good-hearted roundhead. Doesn’t care for the police, not least because she’s never had cause to need them.
    ‘There’s no such thing as average,’ she says. ‘But often they’ll stay for a year or two. Which doesn’t mean they come every week. It’ll be every week for three or four months. Then twice a month, then once a month. Then they just stop.’
    ‘And there’s no list of attendees?’
    ‘People don’t even have to give their real names.’
    Howie takes the baton. ‘How did Sarah Lambert’s pregnancy go down with the group?’
    ‘I’m not sure I understand where you’re heading with this.’
    ‘We’re trying to establish why the Lamberts kept attending the group, even after Sarah was pregnant. It seems unusual.’
    ‘Not really. It can be difficult; a couple comes to identify themselves as infertile, then suddenly they face this whole new challenge. They turn to a support group.’
    ‘So how did Sarah deal with her pregnancy?’
    ‘During the first trimester, her anxiety levels were very high. She had bad dreams.’
    ‘What kind of dreams?’
    ‘Of something happening to the baby.’
    ‘What kind of thing?’
    ‘She never specified. It’s actually not uncommon.’
    ‘So she wasn’t happy?’
    ‘She was non-ecstatic. That’s not the same as unhappy. She was damming up her happiness. Scared she was going to lose the child.’
    ‘And Mr Lambert?’
    ‘He was supportive. Possibly more supportive than most male partners.’
    ‘So how are most male partners?’
    She gives Howie a meaningful look and says, ‘Men who’ve come to define themselves as infertile can feel detached from a pregnancy. It’s a kind of safety mechanism. Plus, they feel the need to be strong for their wife. Just in case something goes wrong.’
    ‘So,’ Howie refers to her notes, cycles back a step or two, ‘the rest of the group. How did they take it when they learned about the pregnancy?’
    ‘I’d say the reaction was mixed. On one hand, pregnancy provides hope . . .’
    ‘And on the other?’
    ‘Well, obviously it can lead to envy.’
    ‘Did it make anyone in the group feel like that?’
    ‘It would be surprising if it didn’t. Women often find this aspect of it all, the apparent randomness of it, to be very difficult. They see it in terms of fairness – or unfairness, however you choose to look at it.’
    ‘And the men?’
    ‘Their response is often—’ She breaks off, looks at Luther. ‘The male reaction can be very primal. Potency and fertility can be central to a man’s sense of gender identity.’
    Luther thinks of the timid people in the support group: the