Ark Baby

by Liz Jensen

  He seemed to sense me in the room, then, because he opened his eyes. When he saw me standing there, he groaned and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Father?’

  Slowly, he lowered his hands and looked at me with an expression of hatred, pity and horror.

  ‘Yesterday,’ said the Parson, his voice struggling, ‘I met a witch.’

  ‘A real witch, Father?’ I whispered.

  ‘As real as you or I.’ He gazed at me for a minute, then averted his eyes from my face.

  I felt myself flush. Yes; I had recognised her. From my dreams, and my vision during the Great Flood, and from the Tent of Miracles. And Tommy had, too.

  She was the Contortionist.

  When a leaf dies, its colour changes so gradually from green to brown, its skin shrivels so imperceptibly, and yet with such purpose, that its final dropping from the tree is more a blessing then a sadness. But to observe this process speeded up, and not in a leaf but in a human – ah. There is a pitiful sight, and one I now witnessed day by day as my Father lost his faith. His voice was increasingly bereft of conviction when he said his prayers, and those passages of the Bible which had once been of the most comfort to him now seemed to be the source of some bitter irony. Every day was now Marble Friday, and I winced as I watched him stuffing the glass balls in his shoes with such a look of grim determination as to make you weep. One morning I even spotted him put itching-powder made from rosehip seeds down his own shirt. In his madness he refused to speak of the Contortionist, and every time I opened my mouth to ask a question he would put up his hand to stop me, with an expression on his face so tragic that I had not the heart to pursue my enquiries.

  Not the heart, nor the courage, either. For where might my questions lead?

  As Parson Phelps turned his broad back on God, his congregation, once solidly packed into St Nicholas’s Church, began to thin out. As the weeks went by, his sermons became more and more haunted and rambling.

  He talked of the sin of cities, and of corruption so thick you could scrape it off the walls. He said the Bible was a lie.

  ‘Throw each of you your own so-called holy book into the deep, and see its pages disintegrate and fall away,’ he hurled at what remained of his congregation one Sunday, namely Mrs Harcourt, Mrs Sequin, Dr Baldicoot, Mr Tobash and myself. ‘And if there is a God, let Him work a holy miracle to save His word.’

  ‘The Contortionist has done something to your father,’ Tommy said, when I reported this to him. ‘She’s poisoned him. I reckon she’s made him give her all his money, and then drink what was in that jar, and it’s a witch’s brew that’s sent him mad.’

  Tommy and I stared at each other.

  ‘It’s not our fault,’ said Tommy, but his voice was shaking.

  That night I dreamed of her again. This time she was slitting her own belly with a knife, and tadpoles were slithering out, surrounded by horrible clots of frogspawn. I touched my own skin, and screamed. I, too, was jelly.

  ‘Something came to me in my sleep,’ my father announced to me the next morning. I shuddered; had she crept into his dreams, too? But no. ‘When you are seventeen you will go to Hunchburgh,’ he announced, ‘and become a servant of the Lord.’

  God – or what was left of Him – had spoken.

  And that was that.

  Trapp sez we hav past Cape Horn.

  Wer is Cape Horn, I sez. I do not no the shape of the Globe, and all its Places. I have no LERNIN.

  He dus not tell me, so I do not discuver wer Cape Horn is. I hav been SEESICKE all nite and all day.

  The Queen wants Trapp to bring bak animals for her stuffd colecshun, Rogers sez. I nows this much by now. The Animal Kingdom, its calld. He gets the animals from other zoos, African zoos, Indian zoos, zoos everywer. The hole of Empyre. Brings them bak alive, to London, that’s the PLAN. There a man calld SKRAPY will keep them in the ZOO, kill them wun by wun and stuff them. Sooveneer for her Majisty. But they must be kept wel. Nice fur, nice fevvers, no bad spessymens. She wonts kwality.

  I am giving you a job, soon, Trapp sez wun Day. A very important job. Wen we get to Moroco.

  Wots that I sez. I am SLEEPIN all the Tyme in my cage,. It is the onlie way not to run MADDE. Ther is a DWORF GIRAF arrived next to me, maks fartin noisis in the NITE. Ther is a walrus and an antylope and a big Beaver. Al of them so RARE, says Rogers, that they is practicly the LAST IN THE WURLD.

  I dont think I wonts a job, but I sez to TRAPP, wot job? from my CAGE.

  Lookin after a certin GENTLEMAN, Trapp sez. You wil LIKE HIM. He is verie Hansum, verie HUMAN.

  And he larfs and larfs.

  CHAPTER 18

  ADIEU

  Last night Violet had found herself on a beach of grey rocks and grey quicksand. She was walking and sinking at the same time. The more she tried to struggle, the quicker and more greedily the quicksand gulped her down. Then it changed to soup; a thick, greenish primordial soup, writhing and lukewarm; she slapped into creatures with dark, flapping wings, horned elbows, jutting teeth, razor-edged beaks, gruesome tusks, metallic scales, prehensile talons of rusted iron. Metal-riveted sea-monsters and fowl of the air whirled in the viscous firmament, brandishing curved claws, cruet sets, flippers and dinner forks. They pinioned her to a waterlogged commode, where they bit, and pecked, and clawed, seasoning her with cloves and cayenne pepper, and ripping out the guts from her abdomen like visceral spaghetti. And she watched, helpless, pinned to her useless piece of furniture, as a stream of jeering animals paraded before her, yelping and baying and yowling for her blood. An eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! A rump for a rump!

  And then she awoke, screaming, in a soggy pool of her own menstrual blood.

  She shudders now at the recollection of her dream, and shivers in the cold breeze. All that pain! And now more!

  ‘So not au revoir, Miss Scrapie,’ says Cabillaud finally, when Violet has finished recounting her carnivore’s nightmare.

  ‘No, not au revoir.’ Both of them, involuntarily, shiver, as the word hangs, unspoken, in the October air outside 14 Madagascar Street.

  Then falls.

  ‘Adieu.’

  The yellow-painted cart is almost fully loaded. As Violet watches the frozen kangaroo carcass being slowly winched aloft and placed precariously on the top of the meat pile, she inhales deeply to smother a sob. In all, some forty-odd skinned creatures from Trapp’s Ark are to accompany the Belgian chef as he leaves 14 Madagascar Street for the last time. Violet will not be sorry to see them go, but the departure of Monsieur Cabillaud is another matter. More personal. Less clear-cut. Messier. Sadder.

  ‘All ready, zen, to go.’ The Belgian bows stiffly, and takes Violet’s hand, whereon he plants a chilly kiss. Their eyes slide away from each other. Cabillaud vaults atop his stack of frozen carcasses, making a niche for himself within the natural chaise-longue created by a half-zebra, its exposed rib-cage glistening with ice. Around them, pale and twinkling, stand the frozen statues of hippo, mongoose and chameleon, wombat and jackal, hammer-headed shark and tiger. Violet Scrapie’s uncooked-pastry skin pales further, and she feels a lump forming in her throat. She gulps painfully. Her coming of age, she acknowledges, had been a bitter conflict. A clash of wills and minds, as experienced in families, that had evolved, inevitably, into a broader argument, such as lovers might have, provoking wider disagreements, as enacted by politicians and ideologues, and thence to a huge full-blown opposition of belief systems such as in war. The two sides solidly intractable. But one with a definite edge, formed by her higher social status and class, her position as the man’s employer, and her sudden, newfound crisis of conscience. Everything has its price. And I am paying it now, Violet reflects as she watches Cabillaud now, settling himself into his icy seat. The price of principle. And the price of pride.

  Violet has heard a rumour, via the next-door scullery maid, his one-time mistress (she of the stuck-pig episode), that Cabillaud’s monstrous ambition has secured him a prestigious post in the Pa
lace kitchens. As Cabillaud’s cart, pulled by two shire horses, creaks off down the road, Violet is aware of the lump in her throat expanding, as though a walnut is growing within it at great speed, against her better judgement. She swallows with difficulty, but the walnut will not budge. If Cabillaud sheds tears, it is in secret, and they freeze on his face as the yellow-painted cart trundles towards Buckingham Palace with its ghoulish load.

  The meeting of the Vegetarian Society in that dusty hall in Oxford Street, and in particular the words of Mr Henry Salt, following hard on the heels of her mother’s poisoning, have continued to prey on the distraught conscience of Violet Scrapie – day and night, with a cruelty and relentlessness that beggars belief. Witness her soup dream. Cabillaud’s departure, Violet realises, watching as he turns to a speck that vanishes around the corner of Madagascar Street, has done little to alleviate the unspeakable burden of her guilt.

  The dream comes back to her again, and she shudders. Then turns, waddles back inside the house, and slams the door in her wake.

  A moment later she is seated at her kitchen table, her big shoulders heaving, the tears running freely. Feeling more alone than she has ever felt in her entire life.

  Alone? Wait! For is that not the corgi Suet, snoring beneath the table? And is a certain ghostly presence also discernible? Over there, by the door to the larder? Could it possibly be, gentle reader, that the cloud of flickering ectoplasm that is forming on the fourth shelf of the dresser is the Laudanum Empress herself, metamorphosed into phantom form?

  ‘Still wallowing in self-pity, then, Vile?’ murmurs a familiar voice.

  Violet sits up rigid in her chair and listens intently. Suet stops snoring, pricks up his ears and begins to whimper.

  ‘Mother?’ ventures Violet through her tears. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Gone, but still with us!’ whispers the petticoated Empress, quoting the epitaph from her own gravestone.

  ‘Mother?’ falters Violet. She was so sure that she heard something!

  ‘You wouldn’t believe what I can see from here!’ the Laudanum Empress is saying. ‘A huge grocery store, Vile. Motorised vehicles driving into its great maw, and emerging with improbable merchandise, wrapped in a substance known as cellophane. A National Lottery. Shoes with wheels, like ice skates. The young ruling the world!’

  ‘Pardon, Mother?’ whispers Violet. She can make out individual words, but they do not seem to cohere. Vehicles? Cellophane? Wheeled shoes? She must be having another nightmare. Violet’s meaty shoulders slump once more.

  ‘Vile! I’m talking to you!’

  But Violet is oblivious. It is all a ghastly dream, induced by guilt! The Empress sighs with frustration. What can one do to nudge her out of this decline? ‘And did I ever tell you about the workings of a high-speed food-warmer called the microwave oven?’ she offers.

  But wild horses cannot drag Violet Scrapie from the misery that is rightly hers. At least, not yet. In her lifetime, Violet Scrapie calculates, she has not only killed her own mother, but cooked and eaten four thousand chickens, twenty cows, nine hundred sheep, a thousand fish, and three thousand sea Crustacea. And what of the incalculable? All those creatures from the Zoo and from Trapp’s Ark, all those jettisoned carcasses from her father’s workshop – how do you begin to assess quantities as vast as those? Mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, insects – where, oh where, can one even begin? All that meat. All that blood. All that murder. And for what?

  FOR WHAT?

  Violet shudders again, and blows her nose loudly into a large lace handkerchief.

  ‘I will atone for all those lives!’ Violet snuffles, her eyes red with weeping. ‘I will atone for them, in the only way I know how!’

  ‘Ow-ow-ow!’ echoes Suet from beneath the table.

  ‘Pure melodrama,’ snorts the Laudanum Empress, and floats off.

  CHAPTER 19

  2005: THE MATING RITUAL

  The Thistle Festival was the second-biggest community event in the Thunder Spit calendar, after the Guy Fawkes Heritage Party in November, Norman told me. And when I arrived there that Saturday afternoon I realised he wasn’t bullshitting. ‘Le tout Thunder Spit,’ as Norman called the clientele of the Stoned Crow, was represented. Scattered about the famous Thistle Field I spotted all the blokes from the pub, Jimmy Clegg, Ron Harcourt, Jack and Ken Morpiton, Charlie Peat-Hove, Billy Tobash, and a whole gaggle of wives, kids, mobile phones, dogs and mountain bikes. The Festival was jointly sponsored by the Baldicoot Medical Centre and the Hunchburgh Echo, and sure enough, the local nobs were there, too: I spotted Sir Terence Baldicoot mingling among the hoi polloi – I’d put his daughter’s Indonesian iguana out of its misery – and the MP Bruce Yarble. He’d called me out to Judlow once to bandage his racehorse, and now here he was in a tweed cap, strutting about giving the Who’s Who types little salutes of recognition. Mrs Sequin and Abbie Ball had hired a marquee for pizzas and chicken nuggets, and Mrs Firth had organised a crèche and video room for the kiddies. I wandered through the gathering crowds. Someone had lit a wall of joss-sticks to counter the reek of dead fish from the River Flid, and their incense wafted across the field, mingling with the odours of popcorn, crushed grass and car-grease, giving the whole event a real buzz of community. I get sentimental about things like that.

  ‘Not bad, eh,’ agreed Ron Harcourt, when I commented on the size of the thistles. ‘Thank God for phosphates.’

  ‘Ron managed to wangle two grants for this field, didn’t you, you cunning bastard,’ said Billy Clegg, appearing beside me and thrusting a can of Guatemalan lager at me. ‘A Euro grant not to plant genetic aubergines on it, and a Nature Council one, to stop the thistles becoming endangered weeds.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ said Norman, emerging from the Portaloo behind us.

  ‘Bugger off,’ said Ron Harcourt, and fired his stun-gun for the start of the game.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled Norman, wrestling with his machine. ‘Wait for me, guys!’

  Within seconds, the air was filled with the roar of a hundred strimmers. The men charged up and down the field with their excitable appliances – state-of-the-art, in Norman’s case – thistledown flying all over the place, little thistle-thorns whizzing through the air at hectic speed. The women, standing in rows by the thorn hedge, jeered and whooped and blew the men kisses, swigging Buck’s Fizz out of plastic cups.

  Then I spotted the twins.

  They were jumping up and down by the electricity generator.

  ‘Get a move on, Dad!’ they were yelling. You couldn’t call them beautiful, I thought, in any classical sense. Their eyes were too close together, and they had Abbie’s slightly bony, tilted pelvis – but nevertheless there was something about the two of them that drove Sigmund wild. I wasn’t the only bloke looking in their direction. They must give off some undetectable animal scent, I thought. A sort of musk. Watching them, my resolve kept stiffening. Then they looked up and saw me, too, and smiled invitingly. Hey, Buck, I thought. Now’s your moment, mate. I was just wandering nonchalantly over in their direction when Mrs Clegg tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘About my foal,’ she said. Talk about bad timing, missis, I thought.

  When I’d countered all her accusations, her son crashed into me with three pints of beer and in the imbroglio I lost sight of Rose and Blanche. Then a huge cheer went up: the last thistle had been mown down.

  ‘And the judges have decided,’ farted a megaphoned voice across the field, ‘that the winner of the year’s strimmer event, and therefore this year’s Thistle Champion, is Mr Tom Boggs!’

  There was another huge cheer, and some honking of car-horns. Tom Boggs stood on the podium and waved, then burst open a bottle of champagne, slewing everyone near him with froth. I recognised him; he was the young bloke who ran the Texaco garage. The field was suddenly swarming with people carrying candy-floss and talking into their mobiles. After wandering about trying to catch sight of the girls again, I finally gave up and retreated to the beer tent.
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  ‘It’s a cheap way of getting my field mown,’ Harcourt confided. He’d been getting quietly sozzled all afternoon. ‘My dad did the same thing. And his dad before him. That’s tradition for you.’

  ‘That Tom Boggs’ great-great grandfather was a champion, too,’ mused Billy Tobash. ‘Back in the old days. It runs in his family.’

  Charlie Peat-Hove said nothing, as usual, but spat on the floor. It could’ve meant anything. On the way back, I had to stop off at Ned Morpiton’s farm, to see to some poisoned Lord Chief Justices, and give his new BSE-free moo-cows the once-over; by the time I drove up the high street, and turned into Crawpy Street, it was evening. I kept thinking about Rose and Blanche Ball. The look they’d given me.

  Then I caught my breath. Christ! There they were, just standing there! In the street. The two of them, at the bus stop, right opposite my front door!

  Hey! Yes!

  It was a chilly evening, for spring; they were standing in the bus shelter smoking, and kicking at old blobs of dried-up chewing-gum with their elasticated trainers. Like they were waiting for a bus, but for me, too. Whichever came first.

  I drove up slowly.

  ‘Like a kerb-crawler,’ they said to me later.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Rose, as my window wound down.

  ‘Wherever you’re going,’ I told them. I gave them my sexy grin.

  ‘What are we waiting for then?’ asked Blanche. ‘Let’s go to a club.’

  They were dressed in black, with fake jewels twinkling, and wearing the bold red lipstick, dramatic eye-shadow and vicious nail-extensions that I soon learned were their night-wear hallmark. They were temptation incarnate. I opened the doors of the Nuance for them, and gave them one of my Elvis looks, which they missed because they were too busy settling themselves on the back seat, where they sank fragrantly into the soft leather. I say fragrantly, but actually they’d overdone the perfume a bit and once we were on the road I had to keep the window open to prevent myself from asphyxiating. Like good girls, they’d stubbed out their fags first.