The Hope

by James Lovegrove

  “He.”

  “She.”

  “He!”

  “She!”

  “He!”

  “She!”

  “Heeeee!” Annoying, aggravating itch. Pratt scraped at the nape of Pratt’s neck.

  Shame sat upright and stuck out her not inconsiderable chest. “I can see this is getting neither of us anywhere. Panic, we are leaving.”

  “We only just got here, sweetness and saccharine.”

  “And that is why we are leaving.”

  “Very well…”

  The instant Mr Panic and Mrs Shame had gone, Mr Sellar dropped down from the ceiling and held up a card. The card read:

  EDWARD, WALLACE, SIMPSON

  Marriage Guidance Counsellors

  “We at EWS,” said Mr Sellar, “believe that the only good marriage is a dead marriage. We aim to promote honesty between lifelong partners. Honesty is our policy. Had an affair? Spending too much time at the office? Closet homosexual? Drink problem? Tell us your secrets and we will tell your partner. That way you’ll never quarrel, you’ll never suspect, you’ll never doubt. Deadliness is next to goodliness is next to Loch Ness.”

  Mr Sellar stepped closer and seemed to be confiding in Pratt.

  “For you, sir or madam, we can offer a special discount rate. Two sessions for the price of one. You’ll never be in two minds about anything!”

  Then came the jingle:

  “EWS

  Are really the best

  If your marriage is down the drain

  If it hasn’t been the same

  Since your wedding day

  Don’t despair, no need to pray

  If your partnership’s depressed

  Come to good old E… W… S.”

  “Mr Sellar?” said Pratt.

  “Yes, sir or madam?”

  “Is the Hope my friend?”

  “A friend a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”

  “Can I trust him?”

  “Who?”

  “The Hope.”

  “Oh, her. Trust always turns to rust.”

  “So how can I know for certain?”

  “Can I interest you in some of my special sleeping tablets? Take the bottle, all of it, and your problem’s solved. Special bargain, for this week only. Buy one, get one free.” Mr Sellar took out from his bottomless pockets a special sample freebie presentation pack of two Nod-Offs, placed it on the tabletop and sank into the floor, leaving behind his black hat. A second later his hands reappeared, grabbed the hat, tipped it to Pratt, and pulled it under.

  Take a whole bottle of sleeping tablets? But that would be…

  Anyway, Pratt could not afford to buy a whole bottle.

  One of the clowns did a somersault into Pratt’s line of vision. He had on a sad face, two bright green tears dripping from the corner of one eye and the smile turned down. He held a red rose in his hand. He held the red rose up to his red nose, sniffed hard and held it away again in a red masque of despair. He raised his eyes to the heavens, regretted the injustices of love and the torturous games played in love’s name, and spoke with passion infusing every syllable:

  “This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,

  May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.”

  The rose in his hand began to shrivel, to brown, to wilt, to droop, to die.

  Pratt found it hard not to cry at this touching scene and sniffed back the tears hard.

  “Ta-daa!” went the clown, and all of a sudden his face was back to grinning normal. He bowed and applauded his audience appreciatively. Pratt, however, was still crying. These were good friends, such good friends. Pratt loved them all, as you could not help loving your flesh and blood, your pets, your playthings, and Pratt’s kind of love was like a pure, clear stream, unmuddied by liaisons and confusions and infidelities and infelicities, its surface smooth with flowing contentment. Not to love was to dry up and wither, cutting off the springs from your heart, damming up your soul. Pratt tasted Pratt’s tears and they tasted of salt and soil, moss and loam, chalk and lime. The clown carried on applauding Pratt’s performance.

  “You are teared,” he told Pratt, although Pratt thought he said “tired” and Pratt was feeling tired. A yawn welled up inside Pratt and was let out. Pratt’s eyelids would not stay up where they belonged.

  But I have only just got out of bed, thought Pratt. Am I ill?

  It was a silly question, because Pratt had never been ill. Pratt had always been healthy and regular, another advantage of renouncing the wearying, ageing conflicts of being a man or being a woman. But there was always the possibility Pratt was lovesick for Pratt’s friends.

  The clown kept up his clapping and Dotty started yapping and the itching was now a tapping coming from inside Pratt’s skull, a dream aching to be released. Pratt’s dreams were like that, like caged creatures scratching and pawing for freedom, and if they weren’t freed quickly they became violent and scrabbled against the bars until their paws bled and the blood came out from Pratt’s ears and nose. Pratt had to sleep if the dream was to be released before it harmed itself. Pratt had to let it fly and fade, to go wherever dreams went, into nothingness presumably. Pratt pressed the pair of Nod-Offs out of their foil presentation pack, swallowed them, crawled up on to the lower bunk and snuggled under the covers, too tired to feel the clammy spot where Dotty had pissed. The clown bowed one last time and made a polite but hasty exit.

  “Night night, Dotty,” said Pratt.

  Dotty barked a reply that could well have been saying, “Good morning.”

  Sleep came easily. It was a haven for the storm-tossed soul. It was a nest for the frightened fledgling. It was a womb for the growing foetus. It was…

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Pratt lifted away from Pratt’s body, shrugging off clumsy folds of flesh like an old cocoon. Pratt’s spirit unfolded its wet wings and held them open to the sunlight, pumping them up with blood until Pratt felt – Pratt knew – that Pratt could soar. Pratt floated up from the bed and through the cabin, careful not to wake the friends. Dotty wheezed and whined in her sleep at the passing of Pratt’s soul, but did not stir. Mr Sellar was nowhere to be seen, no doubt plotting some dynamic new campaign over a lengthy brainstorming breakfast. Wilbur had come out to snooze in his shell in the middle of the floor. Pratt dreamed the dream of flying and Pratt had never had a dream like this one before. It was special, the sort of dream you worked and died for, the sort you never wanted to wake up from. Pratt floated out through the door and along the walkway. Morning mist in drowsy curls shifted in Pratt’s wake but the solitary passengers who wandered in the fresh daylight remained undisturbed. Pratt drifted by them, a breath in the shape of a Pratt.

  Pratt rose up through the battened layers of the Hope. A dozing stopper twitched in his sleep, perhaps seeing Pratt with his mind’s eye and leaping to his dream feet in surprise. Gangplank railings gleamed in the sun, hung with fine arrays of droplets like wealthy widows’ pearls. Pratt passed through them and the jewels twinkled.

  Pratt reached the upper decks, the playgrounds of the bored unfortunates with fortunes. Swimming pools glittered, their surfaces uncomplicated by bathers. An early game of quoits was under way, the players dressed in their best whites and agreeably subdued by the time of day. A flash of light caught Pratt’s attention. A greenhouse, already perspiring and fogging up its panes, winked to its old friend the sun. Through the panes Pratt could make out the lime greens and darker tropical shades of growing things. Better still, Pratt could hear the crackling of new leaves as they twisted to the sunlight and shoots stretching their aching joints into the soil and tomatoes murmuring with the blush of life and potatoes giving a solid, reliable earthy reply.

  Seagulls whirred around Pratt’s spirit, squawking in bemusement at the strange man-shaped, woman-shaped creature of no substance that dared intrude on their airspace. Their vast wings beat fluttering tattoos in Pratt’s intangible ears.

  The funnels! Six cylindrical t
itans churning out black air, the witnesses to the Hope’s mighty efforts of moving. Pratt slalomed in and out of the gouts of smoke, singing in delight a hymn to the thunderous power of the ship.

  And the ship below Pratt: five miles of blackened iron furrowing through the waves. The Hope’s trail spread out behind in a vast V of whitened water that only ended when it touched the horizon. The ocean seemed to buckle under the immense bulk of the ship, Nature tested to breaking point.

  Pratt took in all the wonders, man-made and God-made, and Pratt’s spirit glowed bright. Below Pratt a million waking lives were beginning another day. They crawled down from bunks, they washed their faces, they answered their urges, they kissed their love ones, they cursed their enemies, they pulled back the curtains to inhale the sunlit air, they said their first words of the day, they rejoiced in the simple struggle of being.

  – Little soul!

  Pratt’s spirit nearly exploded with the ponderous majesty of the voice. It welled up around Pratt’s spirit and it rang like a bell forged from a billion tons of metal.

  – Little Soul!

  It was calling to Pratt!

  – Yes? Pratt answered, faint with awe.

  – What are you?

  – I’m Pratt. How do you do?

  – I live. That is all I can say. That is all I can do.

  – Who or what, may I ask, are you?

  – I am the Hope.

  Pratt’s head spun. The Hope! Pratt was conversing with the Hope! Moreover, as Pratt had always believed, the Hope was a he.

  – Pleased to meet you, Mr Hope. Thank you for my friends.

  Pratt felt it was best to get off on a good footing.

  – Not at all. What friends?

  – The ones you sent me. The clowns, Dotty, Doris, Wilbur, Mr Sellar, Mr Panic and Mrs Shame…

  – I sent you no friends.

  – Well, if it wasn’t you, who was it?

  – I do not know.

  – Don’t you know everything?

  There was a sonorous pause before the Hope replied.

  – I know little and I was born to know nothing. I am only the Hope.

  You are a great and mighty ship, O Hope, said Pratt with all the reverence Pratt could muster. Pratt thought the Hope sounded in need of a little flattery.

  – I am not. I am merely a toy.

  – Toys are not made as large as you. Toys are only made little and weak to be played with by ungrateful children until they get broken.

  – I am broken.

  – You can’t be! You’re meant to get us all safely to the other side of the unending ocean. That is the way of the Hope.

  – I am broken and I cannot be mended.

  – Nonsense! Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude, but really, you’re talking like a spoiled child.

  – Am I? I did not intend to.

  – No, I’m sure you didn’t.

  But the silence that followed alarmed Pratt. Had Pratt made some frightful blunder?

  – Friendships can be broken too, said the Hope at last.

  – Yes. Like when the Rain Man and Lonely ran away.

  – The Rain Man is still your friend, I think.

  – Where is he, then? Can I see him?

  – He is in me and everywhere. He is above and below. He belongs and is content. He does no harm.

  – How marvellous, marvelled Pratt.

  – And Lonely is very special to me.

  – He was to me too, for all his faults.

  – I talk with him. I tell him what I feel and what I know. He is healing and helping me. But I forget things when it is so hard to remember. I… How far have I gone?

  – I’ve no idea. I thought you’d be more likely to know that sort of thing than me.

  – I am the Hope. Who are you?

  – I told you, I’m Pratt.

  – It is so difficult. I know so little. I wish I knew more. I think and I think until it hurts to think and I feel that I am ready to die. And all this time I have been kept in the dark.

  – I’m kept in the dark, too. In fact, I like to keep myself in the dark. That’s where the friends are.

  – Yes?

  – You’re not sounding very well, Pratt ventured. Are you all right? Are you healthy and regular?

  – I do not understand. I am the Hope. I am not well. Something turns within me, breeds like bacteria, infects my insides. A foul taste. I wish to spit it out but I do not know how.

  – Is it evil?

  – No, not evil. Nor innocent. Ignorant. It knows as little as I do. It knows less, perhaps. Less than nothing. But it breeds and uncoils itself, and its ignorance is its teeth.

  – What is it?

  – I do not know. I know only that it must be cured. I know only that I hurt.

  – Is there anything I can do to help? I know I’m only little but I have lots of friends.

  – You are little but your mind is great. I would like you to help me, yes. I would like you to take the suffering away. I would like you to heal me of this illness, as Lonely is healing me.

  Pratt did a small spiritual jump for joy. Pratt, the Hope’s helper!

  – How can I do it?

  – What have you to offer?

  – Nothing but myself and all my friends.

  – Ah, your friends, then. You must make more friends.

  – But I can’t. You send the friends to me, I don’t make them. I have no choice in the matter.

  – You have all the choice. Your friends are of your own choosing. They are part of you, the parts you cannot understand, the parts that sometimes frighten you.

  – For someone who says he knows nothing, you know a great deal, Mr Hope.

  – I know nothing. I am kept in the dark. Who are you?

  This line of reasoning seemed to stick the Hope in a groove. Pratt floated around for a while, trying to be as casual as a spirit could, although it was hard to whistle without a proper mouth. Eventually Pratt guessed the conversation was officially terminated and said:

  – I suppose I must be going. All right? Any last requests?

  – Make friends.

  – Is that it?

  No reply. Pratt started to descend. The funnels’ smoke was acrid and stinging, so Pratt avoided it as much as possible. The seagulls were enraged now that this sexless being should invade twice in one morning and set off a volley of vicious caws. Pratt chose to ignore them.

  Reaching the upper decks Pratt saw that the game of quoits had been abandoned after one of the players cheated. The pools were awash with swimmers who believed that a few lazy lengths was the means to peak condition and unparalleled beauty. Passengers in rich clothing ambled about with hidden eyes. They were undeniably elegant, but in a louche, uncaring way.

  In the greenhouses roses cried at the bites of the aphids that swarmed their stems looking like miniature warts grown from the flowers’ own flesh, and the roses were demanding to know why they deserved such disfiguration. A caterpillar squirmed in the heart of a cauliflower, rejoicing, the first of many. Brown-edged leaves sucked greedily at the foetid air.

  The upper decks were crammed down on to the lower decks in awkward and untidy pyramids. Pratt had an inkling of the pressure this created, how it compacted in the belly of the Hope like bad food. There, in the belly, children strode about in parodies of adulthood, mimicking all the wrong aspects of adults: the fighting, the cynicism, the pessimism. They planned wars, tiny, insignificant, ugly wars. Pratt saw, too, that there were stoppers everywhere, meandering through life, sitting, stopping, wishing they were part of the ship and not merely the ship’s filth and rubbish.

  And finally Pratt’s cabin: a dismal cell of greying light where the smell of urine hung dense and potent. Dotty’s sleep was agitated. Her paws scratched and her claws clicked against the wall. Pratt saw Pratt’s body. It was a clumsy lump of flesh and bone. Pratt’s spirit swallowed its metaphysical pride and gingerly lowered itself back in. It was like drowning in oil. The flesh clutched desperat
ely to the spirit once more and the heart spurred itself to beat again and the bowels resumed their sluggish contractions.

  Pratt’s eyes flipped open. Pratt yawned a great yawn. Pratt’s nightcap had fallen off on to the floor.

  But Pratt was not the same as before. Pratt was the Hope’s helper now, and it was an important position to hold. As the Hope’s helper, Pratt could not wait to carry out the Hope’s instruction.

  Make friends.

  How? Go out and introduce Pratt to the people outdoors? Unthinkable. Those people did not understand Pratt. They treated Pratt as a freak, a monster even.

  Pratt sat on the table and thought carefully. How could Pratt hope to make friends if the Hope didn’t send them?

  In came Mr Sellar:

  “Friends?

  That depends.

  Can you make them?

  If friends are what you need

  If friends are what’s decreed

  There’s one thing you can do

  (That’s one – not three or two)

  It’s cheap and neat and clean

  And it’s called the Friend Machine.”

  “But what is it?” complained Pratt.

  “Here, sir or madam,” said Mr Sellar, taking out the product, “is the Friend Machine. Send no money now! Just clip out the coupon and we will send you the Friend Machine on approval for ten days. If you are not delighted, you are under no obligation to buy. Simply return the Friend Machine to us and we will refund your postage. If you wish to keep the Friend Machine, send us the money and it’s yours – absolutely free!”

  Mr Sellar held up the Friend Machine for Pratt to get a closer look.

  The Friend Machine was a mirror.

  “I’ll give it the trial ten days,” said Pratt with swelling excitement. Mr Sellar smiled in approval, raised his black hat and vanished. Pratt stared at Pratt in the mirror for several minutes, at Pratt’s sensuous lips and starry eyelashes and thin golden hair. Finally, after several minutes of acknowledging the undeniable beauty of Pratt, Pratt realised what the Friend Machine was.