Ark Baby

by Liz Jensen

  For there is only one thing to do when you are in this sort of mood, in Dr Scrapie’s experience. Impose the needs of your reproductive organ upon your wife, Charlotte Scrapie, affectionately – and sometimes not so affectionately – known as the Laudanum Empress. Whether or not she is drugged.

  And there is only one way to respond to such a mood on the part of Dr Scrapie, if you are his wife, and in a laudanum daze: succumb.

  There is nothing shameful in a little voyeurism. So adjust your balloon until the basket is level with this sash window here, and peer through the curtains of the drawing room. And witness the following things: a chaise-longue, a tumbler of whisky, a glimpse of curved breast, and a stiffened male object. Catch sight of a whalebone corset being cast to the ground like the chrysalis of a metamorphosing grub. See what might or might not be two semi-clad human bodies groping for balance upon the chaise-longue. The windowpane having now – infuriatingly – steamed up, press your ear to the glass and hear instead a series of noises: a whispered cajoling, a languid rejection, a thick-voiced insistence, an acquiescent sigh, a jostle of petticoats, an unclipping of braces, a fumbling and a slapping, a grunting and panting, a squeaking and a moaning, an increasingly rapid rhythmic thudding, a lion’s roar, a little moan, a big, heavy sigh.

  A quiet couple of minutes. After which, the mission of his male object accomplished, Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie returns to his workshop, to do battle with a Highland stork, while his wife, surrounded by a cloud of psychic particles which shape and re-shape ghostly images of the Great Beyond, sinks back into the shadowy dreamland of her addiction.

  Then, as your balloon floats upwards into the night, imagine, in the light of the full moon that is emerging through the London clouds, a period of hormonal risk beneath the Scrapie corsetry. A meeting of sperm and egg deep inside the Scrapie anatomy. A fertilisation within the confines of a Scrapie fallopian tube. And then –

  Abracadabra! An embryo! An embryo which –

  But no! Quick, let loose more hot air, I beg you, into your Montgolfier, and chuck out a sandbag! Let us leave the embryo Violet Scrapie there, going about her homunculoid business, and fly rapidly to London docks, where her future guru, the man who is to shape her – quite literally – into the majestic woman she will become – awaits us on board a ship named HMS Beagle.

  A beagle, as we all know, is a breed of hunting dog. An odd name for a ship.

  You’ll need binoculars at this point. The docks are far, far below; night has given way to morning and the bevy of vessels crammed into the dockside is tinged with an orange glow – among them Captain FitzRoy’s ten-gunned three-masted Beagle. She is berthed there next to the Paradigm (cargo: linen, peacock feathers, liquorice, candle-wax, nuts, bolts, and Brazil nuts). The Beagle is a serious, non-profit-making vessel, a vessel that, until several years ago, contained a small group of respectable scientists doing a difficult and painstaking job, but more recently, has housed only the melancholic captain and his brooding whims. Yes; all the scientists, Mr Darwin included, have long since departed to their personal residences and taken their bulky microscopes and notebooks with them. The heyday of the Beagle is past, and she has set sail only a few times since then, for survey work in the North Sea. Now, today, Captain FitzRoy has wandered off, mad and alone, leaving only his crew on board. The sea was rough during their most recent trip, and the seamen are laid low from sickness, bad food and exhaustion. The Beagle has a mixed crew, mostly English, but with a few Spaniards. And a Belgian. Let the English and the Spaniards stew in their own juice: it’s the Belgian who’s our man. Land your balloon on the dockside, alight from the basket, and meet Monsieur Jacques-Yves Cabillaud, a seasickness-sufferer who this morning, having cooked breakfast porridge for twenty men and received no thanks for his pains, has thrown down his oat-choked ladle and declared, ‘Ça suffit.’

  A proud man. An ambitious man. A man about to do a bunk.

  These are the facts that are known about Jacques-Yves Cabillaud’s past:

  1. That his father sent him to sea during the Belgian potato blight, forcing him to leave behind a sweetheart named Saskia whom he feared he would not see again. (He was right there; she married his cousin Gustave, a baker, whose croissants won prizes).

  2. That the young Jacques-Yves became first a cabin-boy on a whaler in the North Sea, and then a cook on board a French merchant ship.

  3. That in Cape Town, he answered an advertisement for a chef on a zoological research vessel, the Beagle, and was taken on.

  4. That when the Beagle sailed all the way to the Galápagos and then to Tahiti, Cabillaud was both so seasick and so lovesick that he never even bothered to look out of a porthole.

  5. That the only thing that relieved his physical and mental torment was the occasional request, from Mr Charles Darwin, to concoct recipes for the various exotic meats the scientist brought on board from his shore visits.

  6. That this made a change from the usual seaweed-and-biscuit diet Cabillaud was forced to serve up, and once the seas were calm, despite his melancholy state he became increasingly excited by the possibilities of what he termed ‘Cuisine Zoologique’. Emu, iguana, finch, snake – some of the ugliest and humblest of God’s creatures, he realised, could, with the appropriate garnishes, be a culinary delight.

  7. That this was a hypothesis that he went on to prove with great aplomb, to the delight of the not-yet-famous Mr Charles Darwin, who personally gave his compliments to the chef on several occasions.

  8. That as a result of his experimentation, and the compliments he has received, Jacques-Yves Cabillaud discovered within his bosom the seed of a great ambition.

  Now, finally, staring out at London docks, bereft of his beloved Darwin these six years, and left only with the crazed FitzRoy, he is grimly considering his future. Surely the knowledge he has gained of the skinning of lizards, the grilling of ostrich meat, the handling of rodent liver and the braising technique required for giant turtle cannot – must not – be wasted?

  Certainement pas! With this in mind, he shoulders his knapsack and heads for the Zoological Gardens. So let us land our imaginary Montgolfier, tether it to this handily situated monkey-puzzle tree, don our walking shoes, and follow him on foot.

  The city into which the absconding Cabillaud queasily stumbled from aboard the Beagle was a metropolis reeking of parsnips, cabbages, coffee-stalls, the putrefying flesh of poisoned rats, freshly cut flowers, rotten herrings, oysters, and smoke from charcoal burners. Down alleyways, in open sewers, excrement wound its way towards the Thames and thence to the sea, while in the sky, as ever, a thick pall of smoke hung low like a throttling blanket. God knows how Cabillaud managed to leave the Beagle unnoticed on his wobbly legs. Nor how this small, intrepid, stubble-jowled man came to stagger halfway across the capital, jostled by an unruly March wind, and enter the elephant enclosure in the Zoological Gardens. And above all to remain there, unnoticed, for a week, nursing a fever and eating only swill, straw and mouse-droppings. Or how it was that the chief zoo-keeper, Mr Gardillie, rather than tipping him back on to the streets, took a perverse liking to him and, once Cabillaud had explained that his Beagle experience had accustomed him to wildlife, offered him a job shovelling elephant shit. Cabillaud, who took a long view of things and possessed a formidably stoical side, accepted the job with the humility required, retreated to the enclosure of Mona the elephant, bided his time, hatched his plans, and shovelled. And lo and behold! After three weeks of negotiating with elephant turds the size of the moon, the kind of opportunity he had been hoping for – as a first step on the glittering pathway of his dreams – arrived on a plate. On a plate, in the form of an irascible-looking man who one morning entered Mona’s enclosure without so much as a by-your-leave, and set up a step-ladder.

  The surly gentleman, who is none other than the bipedal mammal we spied earlier from the Montgolfier, mating with his drugged female in Madagascar Street, ignored the Belgian completely. But Cabillaud scrutinised the taxidermist closely. He had
already heard much about Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie from the head keeper. Scrapie was one of several taxidermists who often came by the Zoological Gardens, like a vulture in search of carrion. News of Mona’s stomach upset, which was keeping Cabillaud busy round the clock, must have spread to the museum, where Dr Scrapie was not only chief taxidermist, but in charge of Her Majesty’s own personal bestiary of stuffed animals. Which the Monarch was anxious to enlarge in proportion to her growing Empire. Mr Gardillie had told Cabillaud about her proposed Animal Kingdom Collection, which would contain a stuffed example of every living creature in the world, clad in human clothes and depicting pious scenes. Impressive. And now, here, was the man who was by all accounts charged with stuffing the things; all fifteen thousand or so of them. No wonder he looked haggard and distracted. (The Animal Kingdom Project was indeed to blame, but only partly; there was also the fact that the Laudanum Empress was wearing her pregnancy badly, and even at this early stage, arising sixteen times a night to empty her bladder.) Cabillaud, his mind racing with possibilities, leaned on his giant shovel, and observed Scrapie with interest, as the tall thin man reached the pinnacle of the step-ladder, and raised a lamp to Mona’s ear. She flapped it like a gigantic wing, irritated, and Scrapie wobbled precariously.

  ‘Monsieur,’ announced Cabillaud, who had by now decided upon his plan of attack. Scrapie slowly looked down, annoyed at the interruption. Then, realising the social stature of the man who had addressed him, he took out his magnifying glass and peered through it at the human insect on the floor.

  ‘I sweep out elephant’s piss, I clear away merde all day,’ Cabillaud informed him by way of self-introduction. ‘And all night, also, now, because ze creature is malade.’

  Scrapie polished his magnifying glass on a hanky.

  ‘Zis,’ Cabillaud elaborated, indicating the shovel and the sloppy lagoon of ca-ca that Mona’s breakfast had engendered, ‘is not my natural position on ze ladder of nature, Monsieur.’

  Scrapie, tottering on his own ladder, leaned forward to peer closer at the elephant-keeper. He could see nothing much: just a black-and-white blur, and some facial hair in close-up. Cabillaud continued, ‘I am not slave of elephant creature, I am artiste. Give me to spend one day in your kitchen, Monsieur. I zen will show you what is in true fact la gastronomie.’

  Mona, swinging her trunk, shifted silently and ominously on her umbrella-stand feet, and Scrapie, sensing danger, disengaged himself jerkily from the step-ladder and re-arranged himself on to the straw next to Cabillaud. This time he drew up close, applied the magnifying glass to Cabillaud’s face and inspected the man again: he noted five days of stubble, a torn and infected ear-lobe from which an earring had clearly been forcibly ripped, a foul odour, and a huge brown eye, larger than a cow’s. An overseas specimen, he concluded. Nothing rare. Probably European in origin. Satisfied with his diagnosis of both species and genus, Dr Scrapie pocketed his magnifying glass.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Cabillaud recognised an order when he heard one. His life-story, as relayed to the taxidermist, necessitated holding the shit-shovel between his knees, clamped as in a vice, so that the hands were free to gesticulate their accompaniment to the tale. Cabillaud described how he was destined for great culinary fame (a reaching on high of the right hand), but had mistakenly ended up on board the Beagle (here Scrapie pricked up his ears), a terrible vessel (a thwack of spittle aimed at the water-butt), full of Englishmen (a turning-down of the corners of the mouth), on which since leaving the Galápagos, apart from his experiments in Cuisine Zoologique (Scrapie looked puzzled; he had no French), all he had been required to cook was porridge, pickled herring, and seaweed (more phlegm). Dishes containing, sometimes, when the sea was rough – Dieu me pardonne! – his own seasick vomit.

  ‘Seaweed soup, seaweed fishcakes, fried seaweed, mashed seaweed. I make seaweed gratin one time, because some cheese falls off another ship, I fish out, I make gratin, zey send it back, say no good. You English, you would take the choice to eat human ordure if it had lumps in it unchewable suffisamment to your taste of like.’

  It was a challenge. Hands on hips. Fini. Voilà.

  ‘I’ll consider the matter,’ said Scrapie, eyeing up Mona once more, and estimating her weight to be approximately two tons. As every taxidermist can tell you, it’s not the stuffing so much as the skinning and the construction of the armature that are problematic in such cases. Not to mention the space constraint imposed by one’s workshop. Scrapie’s conclusion: Forget it, Your Majesty. She’s overly gigantical; discussion over.

  Mona shifts uneasily, as if telepathically interpreting Scrapie’s train of thought, which is now moving on (she sighs a big windy sigh of relief) to the subject of the Monarch, who lurks permanently at the back of the taxidermist’s brain like a constant nagging headache. Bloody woman! Scrapie is thinking. Bloody, bloody woman! Look at her, with her pink-splotched map of the world and her Animal Kingdom nonsense! Only a woman as rich and unhinged and as grandiose as she is would come up with such an idea. And only a man like Horace Trapp could have the audacity to persuade her that he could actually bring a thousand foreign species home intact, in a single vessel. A royal Ark! What hubris!

  ‘Bloody woman!’ says Scrapie aloud.

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘The Queen. I told her not to. I said it was a bad idea. More than bad. Noah did it, but that was in the Bible.’

  ‘Ah,’ murmurs Cabillaud, doing his best to look sympathetic, and wondering how he is to steer the conversation around towards his own goals. He is also preoccupied with a parallel train of thought: Would the acidic tang of a gooseberry coulis go well with the succulence of raccoon?

  ‘Everyone knows that Trapp is nothing but a fool,’ Scrapie is saying. ‘A dangerous fool.’ Blast him, thinks Scrapie, his exhausted brain churning with rage. The man has a whole history of entrepreneurial disaster behind him. Not to mention the slavery business. It was well known that the only reason he’d been forced to quit trading in humans was because a whole ship-load had died on him for want of food. Bloody hell! What possessed the Hippo to put her faith in such a man? What wild promises did he make her? (I must have some sleep. Sixteen times in a single night! And she had drunk no liquid!)

  ‘A dangerous fool,’ echoes Cabillaud, not having a clue what Scrapie has been mumbling so angrily about, but hoping to please. ‘I too have heard zis same thing. Dangerous, and a little bit deranged also, zis man Tropp.’

  ‘Trapp,’ Scrapie corrects him wearily, patting Mona on the big leather wall of her thigh. ‘Horace Trapp.’

  ‘Yes,’ rejoins Cabillaud with enthusiasm. ‘That’s iz name! Trapp! Complete madman! Complete idiot!’

  Scrapie remains lost in thought. It is now two years since Trapp and his entourage set sail for Africa, and needless to say, nothing has been heard since. Just as well, maybe, the taxidermist reflects. For it is he, Scrapie, who will be in charge of stuffing the creatures on their return. As if he doesn’t have his hands full already. (The Laudanum Empress is no help to him. Pregnancy sends her into a nine-month trance, broken only by her nocturnal sorties to the Crapper.) Meanwhile, Horace Trapp appears to have taken the royal money and run.

  ‘And that’s no surprise,’ says Scrapie.

  ‘No, no it is surely not,’ agrees Cabillaud. ‘Not one bit surprise at all, I sink.’

  ‘Bugger the Queen!’ concludes Scrapie.

  ‘And bugger Trapp, also!’ says Cabillaud with gusto. ‘Bugger him utterly, zis madman who I hate with all my heart and my very soul also! And ze Queen also who is nothing but a big, big, big, big, big –’

  ‘Hippopotamus,’ finishes Scrapie.

  Mona snorts through her trunk in agreement, and begins to work her way through a bale of hay.

  Then Cabillaud, emboldened by his own vehemence on a subject about which he knows nothing, ventures; ‘Vous acceptez, done, ma proposition, Monsieur?’

  Scrapie takes out his magnifying glass again and stares the man in the eye.
Yes: they appear to speak the same language.

  ‘I’ll give you three days in my kitchen.’ And he turns to leave.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ whispers Cabillaud, barely able to contain his joy. His heart is all set to leap out of his very chest! ‘You will not regrettez!’

  Scrapie folds his step-ladder and swings himself over the gate.

  ‘Three days.’

  Cabillaud and Mona watch him as he makes his way down the gravel path past the monkey enclosure, a tall, lanky figure with a rolling walk.

  Then they see him turn. Cabillaud blanches. Can the man have changed his mind?

  The taxidermist is cupping his hand over his mouth to yell something.

  ‘Any objections to cooking unusual meats?’ comes his voice, faintly, over the chattering of chimps. ‘The casualties of the Zoological Gardens have a tendency to come my way. Waste not, want not!’

  Mon Dieu!

  ‘No objections at all, sir! My very own delight!’

  He is grinning so widely, he realises, that his jaws hurt. When was he last so happy? He kisses Mona on her trunk, which she curls around him affectionately. Then like the lady she is, she lifts her keeper clear of the ground and high into the air like a little toy, and gratefully opens her bowels.

  The dusty old peacock feather bobbed in the gaslight as the Frozen Woman scratched away with its quill on a sheet of onion-skin parchment.

  My first mistake, she wrote, woz to BELEEV that wen a man sez he has a DREEM, that DREEM is to be TRUSTID and must command RISPECT. It is NOT. The things He spoke of were: