Chapter 24

My calm was studied and practised. I was in a turmoil that lifted only when I stepped into the 747.

Even being on the BA flight was like coming home, although I hoped the constant questioning from strangers would not be a foretaste of what was to come.

I discovered that travelling with triplet babies is like carrying a huge sign ‘Ask me anything you wish, no matter how intrusive, direct or personal’. We had the undivided attention of the female crew members. They were too professional to ask who the mother was and how they had been conceived. Not so the female American passengers.

‘How were they delivered?’ ‘Did you have any fertility treatment to conceive them?’

I suppose Tina and I looked an odd couple. She, large and loudly dressed in an all-American way. I, slight, jacket and tie, discreet—in preparation for my encounter with the officials at Immigration. The babies were good travellers. Mindful of the ordeal in store, I popped a sleeping pill and, with their permission, left it to the ladies to feed and swab across the Atlantic. Tina’s children were happy enough with their electronic push buttons and video screens.

I asked the BA crew if they could help me with the babies through the EU channel while the Americans went with the other aliens. In the event, BA regulations that prevented them from carrying a baby resulted in us all reaching the EU channel together.

I looked at the waiting passengers. Which were the journalists? Where were the cameras? Who had a tape recorder secreted in his coat? They just stood waiting in a line like the bored, tired travellers they were.

I had rehearsed my speech. ‘I should like to apply for settlement for my children, please.’ The EU clerk pointed like an automaton towards the aliens channel. ‘I don’t have the necessary stamps’, she advised. The seven of us presented ourselves in front of an Immigration Officer who knew he had drawn the short straw.

The response to my question was ‘Why did you not get a visa for them before arrival?’ ‘I didn’t have the time. I needed to be back on the 28th as I’m full-time carer for my father and his placement at a nursing home ends today. ‘‘I have all the papers here describing the way the children were conceived, how I can afford to look after them and what I am worth.’

He glanced towards Vivian and Tina. ‘Is one of them the mother?’

‘The surrogate mother. Yes. She has her children with her. They are all on return tickets and will be leaving on Monday.’ The officer disappeared. Now was the moment. Tina, her children and the babies could legitimately be refused entry. If I passed this point it would all become far more difficult for the authorities. But here was an alien woman with alien children who did not have to be accorded entry. It could all unravel in the next few minutes and I would have no redress. This was also the time one of the other passengers could turn out to be a journalist and splash the story across the front pages.

My throat tightened. The moment passed. It was all a welcome anticlimax. The immigration officer returned, asked for the passports and birth certificates to copy and gave the boys two month visas so I could apply to the Home Office. He wrote the address down for me. We walked out of the building. It was as simple as that. Or was it?

Bringing Tina and her sons over with Vivian may have been a practical solution and given them the ‘closure’ she wanted, but I sensed impending doom while they were in my house. Tina’s role changed suddenly.

From being the main carer for the babies, she became a mere passive onlooker as the maternity nurse, Vicky, and temporary nanny, Becky, took over. They greeted her briefly and took the babies into their charge. I made dinner for Tina’s sons mainly in an effort to get them to sit down. As if I were invisible, they slid across the polished floors, imitated the way I said ‘tomato sauce’ and made real and imaginary farting noises throughout dinner. Vivian told me that after an hour of this, Tina was in tears in her bedroom and could hardly wait to leave.

Whatever the reasoning, our two worlds were colliding and I desperately wanted to part on good terms. Without any input from me, Tina made it easy and resolved to book into a B & B near Bristol the next day to see Stonehenge. They looked into the nursery to bid farewell to the babies and left in tears. ‘They’ll be fine’ was my instinctive reaction. ‘So that’s why they cried as soon as they saw me?’ was Tina’s. Vivian assured me that the family’s tears lasted as far as half-way into the train journey and that the babies were not spoken of again. It was not difficult to envisage how my original plan of having Tina and her sons with me during the pregnancy would have fared—the stress would have been unbearable. Certainly she did me the greatest favour by staying in California. I shuddered at the thought of what results the tension might have had on the hazardous gestation.

The babies safely in their nursery, I needed to apply to the Home Office for ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’. It was a humiliating procedure. On advice, I had to supply a justification, a statement of my means and the following:

There I was with my children in my home. This was what I had dreamed of, hoped for, anticipated with such relish. I looked at their tiny, sleeping forms. How much easier it was to change and feed them than it was to do the same for my father. Yet I felt I should stand back and let Vicky and Becky care for them. They were supposed to be the ones in charge. They were the ones the authorities would ask questions of. Instead of nurturing, phoning, researching and writing dominated my first week with my babies. All the many papers were posted on 9 April 2001.

I waited.

My UK lawyers and QC’s opinion had made it clear that there had to be nannies and that they had to be female. My own role, apart from being a provider, was never a consideration. Now that there were three babies, there appeared to even more need for nannies —round the clock. For fear of having them taken away, I could not even leave an hour without cover. A night-time maternity nurse and a day-time nanny took over the children.

Nannying became a ritual performed by those who knew what was what and I could only look on.

They were good. There was no denying that. I looked and learned—about timed feeds, about sterilising bottles, mixing feeds, how to operate the nappy disposal bin, but I felt an intruder in the nursery. I had come to believe what the lawyers had been telling me—that Social Services would expect there to be competent women to feed, change and nurture. If they did not find them, disaster would strike.

As for me, so far as the authorities were concerned, I was an irrelevance. I fetched and carried, assembled baby chairs from kits, provided a water filter, cleaned the kettle and busied myself with mundane tasks. When I picked them up, kissed them, cuddled them, held their tiny hands, it was under the watchful stare of someone who may have felt she was competing with me for their affections. The babies carried on being babies and I assumed the role of a man who left almost everything to women who knew best.