“Ah, plans. Never mind.”
“But any time I can return the favour, I will,” enthused Arnold. “Just ask.”
“Of course.”
The two men shook hands again, and Bellini embraced Tracy like a long-lost cousin. The Montgomerys saw that he was smiling a smile of deep satisfaction.
“I’m glad this matter is resolved,” he said.
“Yes, it’s good that we can forgive and forget,” said Arnold, choked with sympathy.
“There is nothing that I have forgiven,” said the signor as he stood in the doorway.
“Surely you mean there’s nothing to forgive, don’t you?” suggested Tracy.
“Yes, that is what I mean. My English is not very good. The grammar is so hard. Buona notte.”
At a quarter to midnight, the brass section tramped into the Bellinis’ cabin, lured by the promise of another voluble rehearsal and the offer of a small consideration of money from the signor’s own pocket. All in all, it had been a profitable week for the members of the Bellini Orchestra. On this occasion Maria put up a protest of wild-eyed and stony silence, which was somehow more terrifying than her previous verbal outpouring of fury. Bellini doubted he would get a civil word out of her for a week or be allowed to return to the bedroom for another month, but he considered it a small price to pay.
The brass section sat in readiness, puffing into their instruments to warm them up and waiting for their great conductor to give the signal. The signor’s neighbours, they decided, were tolerant people who clearly loved music, and so they resolved to give an especially rousing display tonight.
Bellini cocked his head, listening out intently for something. The trombonist’s knee quivered in anticipation.
Suddenly, Bellini raised his baton.
“Two, three…”
In the cabin above, a few seconds before the Bellini Orchestra brass section began their attempt to outdo Joshua and his trumpeters at the walls of Jericho, Arnold and Tracy Montgomery tumbled loudly on to the newly repaired bed in a tangle of arms, legs and clothing, only to discover that the mattress was no longer attached to the bed-frame. As they crashed through the floor, Arnold was thinking that the signor had not been as much of a handyman as he claimed. But this was not the case. The true ingenuity of the signor’s craftsmanship was evident in his introduction of three wickedly sharp wooden spikes, each over two foot long, the end product of an afternoon’s energetic whittling on pieces of wood bought from Bart’s. These were fixed pointing into the underside of the bed in such a way that they were pushed upward by the force of the mattress as it descended beneath the weight of two bodies. The spikes pierced the mattress and impaled first Tracy, then Arnold.
Arnold could not understand why his wife was screaming and why he himself could not move and why they were wriggling like baited worms. He found it hard to think, what with Tracy screaming and the trumpets blaring away down below and this peculiar feeling in his chest and stomach… It felt very wrong there; was it something he had eaten? Things were growing dim around him. He could see Tracy’s contorted face in blurred close-up. Was that blood?
The brass section noticed how beneath Bellini’s moustache a great I’m-in-control grin had formed, and they redoubled their efforts in order to afford him the greatest possible pleasure for his money. They were deaf to anything except their noise, as were the inhabitants of the surrounding deck area.
Maria thought the trumpets sounded like human screams.
FRIEND SHIP
Pratt had chosen to be sexless because having a sex caused endless confusions and complications. For example, it limited your choice of friends. Being sexless, you could have both men friends and women friends and not feel awkward in the company of either, scared neither to roar heartily or smile secretly depending on the sex of the company. A further compensation was that no one could criticise your choice of friends. A woman who associates mainly with men is a slut; a man who associates mainly with women is a pansy. Pratt was neither a slut nor a pansy, but poised elegantly somewhere in between.
Pratt thought that Pratt might have had a sex once. Pratt’s first name might have been James or Jane, George or Georgina, Paul or Paula, but that was a matter of the past, immaterial. Only the nameless, sexless present mattered.
In the nameless, sexless present, Pratt was watching a performance by a troupe of clowns – cavorting and leaping shapes in red-spotted costumes and gills of ruff around their necks, each with a cherry for a nose. They back-flipped and forward-flipped, leap-frogged and prat-fell, banged each other on the head, pulled each other’s ginger wigs, sat on their baggy bottoms rubbing their bruised egos before jumping to their feet again and rejoining the fray. There was circus music coming from somewhere; Pratt was unsure of its source but nevertheless clapped joyously in time. Pratt punctuated the clowns’ performance with whoops like commas and laughter like a full stop at the end of every gag.
When Pratt gave three big laughs, the clowns stopped their antics and looked up as if they had just heard thunder. The music was amputated in mid-note. The clowns scurried away into the walls, which parted for them like curtains, dragging their paraphernalia of ladders and squirty flowers and hoops. Pratt begged them to return, crying, “Encore! Encore!” and clapping until Pratt’s palms ached, but nothing happened.
The cabin was empty and chilly without the clowns.
Pratt drew consolation from the fact that loneliness was all in the mind. Being on your own did not make you lonely. Not seeing your neighbours did not make you lonely. Not going out for dinner did not make you lonely. It was so easy to have friends, friends of either sex, if you were on your own. The Hope sent you friends, and friends filled your time, whiling away the hours of the present until the present became the past and the future became the present.
Pratt had a dachshund called Dotty. Pratt could not remember where Dotty had come from, nor how Pratt knew what breed of dog Dotty was, nor how Pratt knew what a dog was at all. There were no dogs on the Hope. Pratt had no memories of dogs. All the same, Pratt shared the cabin with Dotty, and Dotty, although she possessed the most affectionate of characters, also possessed the most incontinent of bladders. She had been sitting on the lower bunk watching the clowns’ display and in the excitement a spray of piss jetted from her rear over the bedclothes. Dotty took one look behind her, crawled off the bed and slithered underneath, from where she poked out her nose and two mournful eyes.
“Don’t worry, Dotty,” said Pratt. “I’ll wash it in the basin, using some of Mr Sellar’s soap powder.”
As soon as his name was mentioned Mr Sellar popped out from behind the table. He wore a grey suit, grey shirt, grey tie, grey shoes and a hat (black), and he was clutching a great big box of Sudso washing powder. He sang a jingle:
“Sudso, oh Sudso
It’ll clean off your mud so
It’ll clean up that blood so
It’ll sort out that piss so
So get Sudso
If you know-ow
That stains are no-go.
“Sudso!” he cried. “The newest, the latest, the bestest of all the new, late, best cleaning cleaner washing powders ever invented! It makes blacks grey and greys white and whites black. You won’t know who you are! You won’t know why you are! You won’t know what you are! No mess, no fuss, no bother, no lather. Sudso!” Then he sang the jingle again so that no one could forget the name Sudso, and ducked back under the table.
Pratt stared agog at the space in the air that had just held Mr Sellar. Pratt had no great fondness for Mr Sellar because friends should never sell to or steal from one another and Mr Sellar seemed to be doing both, but Pratt also knew it was uncharitable to dwell on a friend’s shortcomings. Friendship was about forgiving friends’ failings and loving their virtues.
Pratt was proud of Pratt’s friends. Pratt had chosen them from all the thousands of possible friends on the Hope, and their company made each passing day passable, made living livable, from the moment when Pratt came down from
the bunk in the morning, stretching and yawning (as Pratt had done barely quarter of an hour ago), to the time in the evening when Pratt would glide wearily back to bed wearing pink bedsocks, nightshirt and nightcap (as Pratt was wearing now). Not all the friends were friendly – Mr Sellar, for example, or Mrs Shame – but it would be pointless to have friends who agreed with you all the time.
Before Pratt had a chance to see to the soiled sheets, Pratt felt Pratt’s belly grumbling and an urge coming on, so Pratt took out the slop bucket from the cupboard. The bucket was nearly full to the brim. Doris the cleaning-lady (and friend) would have to empty it out soon. Pratt hitched up Pratt’s nightshirt and squatted. If Pratt either stood or squatted purely for the purpose of urinating, it would be making a statement of sex, so as a rule Pratt had to wait until Pratt’s bowels caught up with Pratt’s bladder and then deal with both urges at the same time, as did men and women alike.
While Pratt was squatting there, up popped Mr Sellar again. This time he was advertising toilet paper. He hustled around on all fours for a minute in a passable impression of a puppy-dog (or was it a kitten?). Then he sang:
“Boggo, try Boggo
When you drop a loggo
It will oil the coggo
That’s Boggo, oh Boggo, oh Boggo!
“Boggo! Quick, clean, fast, efficient, better than any other product ever, neater, smarter, clever, faster, the best toilet roll since the last one, silent, keen, peaches, cream, you’ve never felt a softer paper against your bum.”
With that, Mr Sellar vanished in a puff of white feathers, leaving behind eight neatly folded sheets of Boggo in a special sample freebie presentation pack.
Pratt’s concentration had been distracted completely by these antics and Pratt had to start all over again, thinking hard about bowels and bladder until the desired effect was achieved. Relieved, Pratt inspected the consequences of the urges, although it was not that easy distinguishing them from earlier urges. They seemed healthy enough. Pratt used Mr Sellar’s freebie offering gratefully and then put away the bucket, tying a mental knot in a mental handkerchief to remember to ask Doris to throw it out.
Pratt drifted about the cabin for a while, curling a strand of fine hair around an index finger, having forgotten totally about Dotty’s little miscalculation. Pratt walked by the packet of Sudso several times and was not reminded. Pratt’s cabin was hushed and darkened like a cinema, curtains drawn to create twilight lasting all day. In the real cinema, before they closed it down, the pictures used to be invisible if the light was bright. The same was true of Pratt’s cabin. In broad daylight the friends did not exist, or at least if they existed they were invisible. They might still be heard but only as whispers melted into the rumbled mutterings of the Hope. Here and there Pratt might be able to snatch out a phrase or two, but without the lights off it was generally incoherent babble. In the perpetual twilight and especially in the half-sleep minutes before sleeping and before waking, the friends were visible and strong and as good as real.
Underneath the bunk Dotty whined. This meant someone was coming, and Pratt suspected who.
Mr Panic and Mrs Shame wafted into the cabin and Pratt whined just as Dotty had done, but quietly so that the new arrivals would not hear. It was a mystery to Pratt why Panic and Shame could never get on. They were a peculiar couple and symptomatic of the great problem with having a sex: Having To Get On With The Opposite Sex. If you could not hope to understand each other by virtue of the spectacular physical and mental differences between you, what was the point in attempting to spend the rest of your lives together? Superficially, Panic and Shame were not dissimilar. They were both fattish and tan-skinned and dark-haired. But apart from these features, they had nothing in common. Where had the Hope got them from?
“Shocking!” cried Shame. “Look at the state of this place. And that smell. Appalling!”
“I don’t think it’s that bad, darling,” replied Panic.
“And you, Pratt, you snivelling, skinny, wretched, moronic thing…” Naturally Pratt did not enjoy being called insulting names, but you did not argue with her when she was in this kind of mood. It merely brought Shame down on your head. “What have you done this fine day?”
“Well, I’ve only just got up,” explained Pratt meekly.
“Liar! You’ve been up sixteen minutes.”
“Pratt’s only just got up darling,” echoed Panic.
“I heard Pratt perfectly well the first time! Do you think my ears don’t work? And if they didn’t work, do you think I wouldn’t have learned to lip-read? Honestly! You take me for an idiot but it’s me that has to treat you like a simpleton –”
“Darling – ”
“Me that has to tell you what to eat and what to wear –”
“Darling –”
“Me that has to blow your nose and clean your bottom and wipe up after your –”
“Darling! These are matters between ourselves. Pratt does not need to know.”
“But I like to know,” Pratt piped up, “because friends know everything about each other.” There was an itch at the back of Pratt’s head and Pratt scratched it.
“Do you think we’re your friends, miserable creature?”
“The Hope sent you, so you must be.”
“And where are these other friends that you pretend to have?”
“Some are here and some aren’t. The Rain Man was my friend, but he ran away to seek his fame and fortune in the wide world. So did Lonely the Rat. I was sad when they ran away. The Rain Man was a good friend and poor Lonely was just unhappy. He thought he knew so much, thought he had the solution to all the problems.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Shame, as if she had discovered an important scientific theorem. “Ha!” she repeated.
“Ha,” echoed Panic quietly.
A turtle scuttled across the cabin floor, too fast for anyone but Pratt to notice. Pratt decided to call it Wilbur.
“Moreover,” announced Shame, “what gives you the temerity to think that the Hope is your friend?”
“What’s ‘temerity’?” Pratt asked.
“Don’t avoid the question. Pratt’s avoiding the question, Panic.”
“Perhaps not, darling. Perhaps Pratt really doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘temerity’. You do use some awfully complicated words, light of my life. Sometimes even I find it hard to understand you. For my benefit, then, unbearable being of lightness, tell us, what does ‘temerity’ mean?”
Shame drew breath, “There is no reason why I should tell you – either of you pathetic individuals.”
“Probably doesn’t know,” muttered Panic under his breath.
“What? What did you say?”
“Nothing, dear.”
“You said something. There’s nothing worse than when someone says something and pretends they said nothing. And anyway, I heard what you said.”
“What did I say, lamp of love?”
“You know perfectly well. You said, ‘Profit is driven snow.’ I heard! I heard!”
“What does ‘Profit is driven snow’ mean exactly?” asked Pratt.
“You mean you don’t know?” rejoined Shame.
“Tsk! Idiot! Fool! It’s a very famous old proverb, like ‘Never look at a gift-horse,’ or ‘Too many cooks spoil the fish.’”
“Oh,” said Pratt, very little enlightened, and itched again at the itch, which would not go away.
Wilbur the Turtle clambered on to the tabletop, girded up his loins (proverbially, of course) and took a flying leap off the edge. He withdrew his head and limbs as he fell, and landed on his shell with a clunk, unharmed. The shell rocked on the floor for a moment. Then Wilbur put out his leathery head, smiled, bowed, flipped himself over, stuck out his limbs and raced off through the wall. Pratt wanted to applaud but Shame would almost definitely chastise such behaviour, so Pratt refrained.
“Are you ever going to have this place cleaned up?” said Shame, returning to her first plan of attack.
&nbs
p; “Doris, my friend” – Pratt laid great stress on the last word – “is coming in soon.”
“Good. There is nothing worse than filth.”
“Or rubbish,” chimed in Panic.
“Filth,” pronounced Shame, “is far, far worse than rubbish.”
“But there’s a lot more rubbish on the Hope. Too much. The ship’s filling up with rubbish.”
“She’s filling up with more filth than rubbish.”
“She? Do you think the Hope is a she?” said Pratt incredulously.
“Of course she’s a she. All ships are shes. It’s common knowledge.”
Dotty whined. Pratt spoke as loudly as possible to cover up her whining: “But the Hope’s a he. He’s as big and strong as iron and as powerful as steel. A she wouldn’t let men run her life the way the Captain and the crew run the Hope, would she, Mrs Shame? A she wouldn’t let men take all the credit. Listen. He has a he voice.”
They all three listened to the familiar bass rumble of the turbines.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Shame.
“But you did say you weren’t deaf, dear,” said Panic with as much glee as he dared.
“Well, what am I supposed to hear?”
“The voice of the engines,” Pratt said, letting impatience fracture the phrase a tiny bit.
“It is a low voice,” admitted Panic.
“Nonsense!” said Shame. “It’s a low high voice. It’s not unusual for women to have low voices. Actually, some men find it very attractive. Women can have beards too, you know.”
Clearly this argument had clinched it for Shame because she folded her arms and looked at the ceiling. Pratt had not been aware women could have beards but was glad to learn the fact. It reinforced Pratt’s case against having a sex. Pratt scratched Pratt’s head and tried to re-open the conversation as tactfully as possible.
“I still think the Hope is a he.”
“She’s a she,” insisted Shame.
The Hope Page 17