Ark Baby

by Liz Jensen

  I smiled. This was true; I ate everything she offered me with enormous relish, and was feeling healthier and in better spirits by the day as a result.

  ‘But I hope it is not only my appetite that appeals to you, Miss Scrapie,’ I ventured, and she blushed, and I blushed, too, causing her to blush even more, and her blushes in turn increasing my own still further, until soon we were both as fiery-faced as a couple of red-hot pokers.

  Miss Scrapie and I had by now exchanged stories about our childhoods; she, too, had been lonely. All the more so, when she had parted company on ideological grounds with a man – a certain Monsieur Cabillaud – who had been more of a father to her than Dr Scrapie himself.

  ‘All those years when he was stuffing the creatures from Trapp’s Ark’ (I winced at the mention of this vessel) ‘I was in the kitchen with Cabillaud, cooking the carcasses,’ she said wistfully. ‘He taught me everything I know.’

  I sympathised. ‘I, too, am estranged from a loved one. When Mr Darwin published the Origin of Species, my father went insane.’

  Miss Scrapie gasped. ‘No! Did he really? Why so did my father!’

  And she told me how Dr Scrapie had entered a monumental sulk and taken to his workshop with a bottle of rum, and stayed there for a week. In turn I recounted to her the story of Parson Phelps’ public shredding of Darwin’s tome, in full view of his congregation in the church, and his subsequent removal to the Sanatorium for the Spiritually Disturbed. Omitting, I must confess, the part about the jar and its contents.

  ‘You must write to Parson Phelps,’ she urged. ‘He would surely not wish to be estranged from you for ever.’

  ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘Will you be reconciled to your Monsieur Cabillaud?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I do not know,’ she said, ‘but I shall see him soon at a banquet.’ All of a sudden she was looking anxious, and twisting away at the cloth of her voluminous skirt. I knew how she must feel.

  ‘Fear not, Miss Scrapie,’ I said softly. I put my hand upon hers. And she did not resist me, reader, or pull away. Was I right to draw hope from that?

  I must tell her, I thought. But my cowardice stopped me.

  The next day I begged Violet for writing paper on which to pen Parson Phelps a letter. For what had I to lose, that had not already been lost? What could I do, but appeal to his sense of justice? He was a fair man.

  ‘Should the sins of the mothers and the fathers be visited upon their children?’ I wrote. ‘Surely not, dear Parson Phelps! If there is one thing you have taught me, sir, it is that God is just!’ Although I was personally beginning to question this. What was ‘just’ about the pickle He had landed me in? ‘All I desire is that we shall be reconciled again,’ I ended my letter. ‘If you cannot love me as your foster-child, then love me as one of God’s creatures!

  ‘Your loving son, Tobias Phelps.’

  Miss Scrapie, ignorant of the contents of my missive but pleased that I had followed her advice to attempt a reconciliation, accompanied me, with the ailing and now skeletal Suet, to St Pancras, where my carrier pigeon Jared was housed. I personally attached the tiny envelope containing the tightly folded letter to his ringed ankle. He fluttered out of his cage, disoriented for a moment by the cornices of the station, but he soon found a skylight, and as we watched him take wing northwards, I said a small and hopeful prayer.

  With Dr Scrapie so preoccupied with his New Theory of Evolution, of which the Gentleman Monkey and my own self formed the unique basis, Miss Scrapie and I had been thrown together more and more. Thrown? Or dare I venture to say that it was by choice that we found ourselves in one another’s company for the greater part of each day?

  It was the following morning, emboldened by the fact that she had once again allowed my hand to rest upon hers, that I decided to summon the courage to confess to her the full truth. I trembled as I spoke.

  ‘There is something I should like you to know,’ I began. ‘Concerning my origins.’

  Did I imagine it, or did a ghostly figure appear briefly at my side as I said these words? Something in petticoats? I blinked. A trick of the light. She had gone. Violet looked up from her ledger, in which she was noting my comments about her latest recipe, swede regale (‘Most delicious,’ had been my verdict), and smiled.

  ‘Your origins, Mr Phelps? You mean Thunder Spit, and Parson Phelps, and your late foster-mother? I thought we had told each other everything, Mr Phelps!’ She smiled coquettishly. ‘Or is there a shameful secret?’

  My heart began pounding with slow and heavy thuds. But I could not stop now. I cleared my throat.

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, there is, actually,’ I began. Miss Scrapie’s fine eyebrows arched questioningly. But then, observing my intense discomfort, her expression softened into pity and concern, and she held up a hand, gesturing me to halt my words.

  ‘Please, Mr Phelps.’ she begged. ‘I would hate you to distress yourself over something that is after all a private matter.’

  ‘No,’ I blurted. ‘I must tell you, Miss Scrapie. ‘At the Travelling Fair of Danger and Delight, I saw a Contortionist, and she –’

  Violet took my hand – so hairy it looked suddenly, next to her smooth padded flesh, as fine as uncooked pastry! – and held it tightly.

  ‘Mr Phelps, you have turned quite pale!’ she said. I swallowed, and breathed in deeply, willing myself to continue. My voice was cracked and thin.

  ‘I have reason to suspect that this Contortionist was really my true mother.’

  ‘A Contortionist?’ Violet enquired, smiling. She did not withdraw her hand, but continued to clasp mine firmly. (So far, so promising!) ‘A Contortionist! How – unusual!’

  ‘There is more,’ I said. ‘More, that is even more unusual.’

  I paused, then whispered, ‘Concerning my true father. I have reason to believe, Miss Scrapie, unlikely though it may sound, and perhaps somewhat shocking to your delicate ears, that my true father was a –’

  ‘Yes?’

  I hung my head. ‘Please, Miss Scrapie, will you be so good as to furnish me with a pen, ink and paper, that I may write it down for you? For I fear that I cannot bring myself to say it.’

  ‘Why certainly, Mr Phelps,’ she said, eyeing me in a puzzled fashion, then waddling over to the writing desk. She returned with the writing implements, and handed them to me in silence. She watched me with concern as I began to write my secret shame with a slow and trembling hand. But I had barely started when a violent clatter of shoes upon the stairway broke my flow and Dr Scrapie burst into the room. Instinctively, I crumpled up the half-completed confession and shoved it into Violet’s hand, and she in turn stuffed it into a fold of her dress like a guilty child.

  ‘I have an idea, Mr Phelps!’ Scrapie was shouting excitedly. ‘Would you do us all the honour of attending the Celebration of Evolution Banquet on Saturday?’

  ‘The what?’ I mumbled. ‘Am I to understand –’

  ‘You see,’ he interrupted me, ‘I would very much like to present you to Mr Darwin, before –’ He paused for a moment, and shifted on his feet. ‘Before you have to leave us,’ he said finally. ‘The Banquet will be the perfect opportunity!’

  Before you have to leave us? I had not thought of leaving. Violet and I exchanged a glance of incomprehension. Dr Scrapie had been behaving rather strangely of late.

  ‘I am in your hands, Dr Scrapie,’ I replied courteously.

  He seemed to like this idea.

  ‘In my hands!’ he beamed. ‘Yes! Most excellent! Then I shall lend you one of my old dinner suits, and you will join us!’

  Violet was smiling, and thrusting my piece of paper further into the folds of her dress.

  ‘Us?’ I asked, exchanging a glance with Miss Scrapie. ‘Do I infer, therefore, Dr Scrapie, that your charming daughter will be among the guests?’ I mustered, trying to hide my blushes.

  ‘Who?’ he asked. Then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, you mean Vile. Yes, of course,’ he replied, looking distracted.
‘Violet always tags along to these things, don’t you? Though she’s not much of a dancer.’ Violet, who had not missed the import of my question, was smothering a little embarrassed giggle.

  ‘Then I will be even more delighted to attend,’ I told him, attempting, but failing, to suppress the smile that was spreading across my face. I was to attend a banquet at the Palace, in the company of Miss Scrapie! I was so delighted at this prospect that for a moment I forgot that I had just handed her the beginnings of my hideous confession. My admiration of the taxidermist’s daughter was surely by now as plain as the day, but Dr Scrapie seemed quite oblivious.

  ‘Then come with me at once,’ he commanded, striding out of the room. As I began to follow, I saw Violet smoothing out the piece of paper I had shoved at her, and reading it. Remembering what I had begun to write, my heart began to thud once more.

  ‘Come on, Phelps!’ Scrapie was calling me impatiently from the corridor. ‘Let’s get you fixed up with some clothes.’

  I turned to Violet. She was looking at me with obvious consternation.

  ‘Your revelation is indeed most unusual,’ she whispered. ‘What a singularly strange mixture you carry in your blood, Mr Phelps! Your mother a Contortionist, and your father a monk!’

  A monk?

  ‘No!’ I blurted. ‘Not a monk! I didn’t finish writing it! Not a monk, a –’

  ‘Come on, Phelps!’ yelled Scrapie.

  Fate had intervened. I shook my head and fled.

  A firework suddenly went off in the sky above me, and I realised it was Bonfire Night.

  ‘Where the fuck’s the monkey?’ I yelled at the twins, storming down the stairs.

  ‘Gone,’ said Rose, patting her huge belly. ‘Ouch! I felt a twinge.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Blanche. ‘We’re definitely going into labour.’

  ‘Yeah, we felt a bit funny earlier,’ said Rose.

  ‘Like a dam about to burst,’ explained Blanche.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I told them, wondering how many other blokes up and down the country were going through this very scenario. It was nine months to the day since the Government had announced the Fertility Reward. Coincidence, or what? ‘You’ve probably just got flatulence or indigestion,’ I told them. There are limits to a bloke’s patience, I was thinking. ‘Listen, I’ve just been up there, and there’s no sign of the –’

  ‘We’ve never been surer of anything,’ warned Rose.

  ‘Never,’ agreed Blanche.

  ‘Bollocks!’ I said. ‘Have you seen the news? The whole country’s full of phoney emergencies. The ambulance service is going bananas. Just tell me where you put the monkey. It’s urgent.’

  I’d realised, of course, as I drove up the motorway, that my discovery of the monkey carried the most extraordinary implications. I’d somehow always known that I deserved more in life than just being a vet. And here it was. Or here, all of a sudden, it was not.

  ‘So? Where is it?’

  ‘We sold it,’ said Rose, smiling. ‘At the car-boot sale.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased,’ offered Blanche.

  ‘Pleased?’ I yelled. ‘Did you say pleased?’ I felt so angry at their stupidity that I wanted to kick something to death. But I just groaned instead.

  ‘Well, why not?’ pouted Rose. ‘You’re always going on at us about paying our way. We made a list of ways to make some money. Number three. Flog all our old junk at the car-boot sale. Don’t think we’ve just been sitting on our arses while you were in London.’

  ‘We showed you our financial plan, Buck,’ Blanche reproached me. ‘So don’t pretend you can’t remember. We got quite a bit of money for it, in the end.’

  ‘Twenty-five Euros,’ boasted Blanche.

  Keep calm, Buck. Just get the facts. I cleared my throat, and tied to sound mature. ‘Who d’you sell it to?’ Silence. Well, fuck that approach then. I’ll start yelling. ‘Come on! Where the fuck is it?’

  ‘Slow down, Buck.’

  ‘I said where the fuck is it? I’ve got to get it back!’

  ‘Why?’ they asked together.

  ‘Because it’s valuable,’ I said. My hands kept making fists of themselves. The desire to kill and smash was almost overwhelming.

  They looked chastened.

  ‘What, worth more than twenty-five Euros?’ questioned Rose.

  ‘Worth millions, you fucking idiots.’ My voice snagged on tears of rage.

  There was a short silence. They hadn’t seen me like this before.

  Then Rose blurted: ‘We sold it to Harry Gawvey.’

  ‘He lives on Ladder Hill.’

  ‘But he won’t be there now.’

  ‘He’ll be over at the community centre. Dad’s been helping him with the Heritage Firework Party.’

  ‘Which is due to begin any minute,’ said Norman. His weight made each stair creak as he descended, zipping up his fly. ‘Fancy coming along, mate? You’re a party animal. The Stoned Crow will be there en masse – hey! Whoah! No big hurry, mate!’

  I’d snatched up the keys to my Nuance and rushed out.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE CELEBRATION OF EVOLUTION BANQUET

  If you are not familiar with Buckingham Palace, now is perhaps a good moment to contemplate its inner ballroom. It is situated in the West Wing, and occupies the same size, approximately, as Thunder Spit: four acres. How I would have loved to see the Barks and the Tobashes, the Peat-Hoves and the Mulveys and the Boggses watching me arrive at its grandiose portals in a hansom cab! And enter its arched galleries with Miss Violet Scrapie on my arm! But then, as the footman took our cloaks, and ushered us towards the centre of the Banquet, I wondered suddenly what Parson Phelps would make of it all. The thought of him sent a bleak shudder through me. Will Jared have arrived at Fishforth by now, I wondered, accepting a glass of chilled champagne and an unusual-looking sweetmeat which sent Mildred into instant convulsions. Will the Parson be reading my letter at this very moment, I mused, as Miss Scrapie, clad in a great meringue soufflé of a garment which suited her so well it looked as though it had grown out of her, like the wings from a butterfly, grabbed my hand (Oh joy!) and, catching me in the majestic tumble of her skirts (Oh further joy!), swept me along in the direction of the buffet.

  Will I ever have the pleasure, I wondered, of addressing her as Violet?

  I gasped at the scene that streaked past me as she dragged me in her wake, thinking: What a fabulous beast is man! Chandeliers probably do not come much more elaborate than this! Curtains probably do not come in much redder a velvet, or heavier, or more strangulated with gold silken cords than these! Ballgowns surely do not come so ponderous, or so fabulous, or so mesmerising!

  ‘Look!’ whispers Miss Scrapie in my ear. ‘Over there! The Royal Hippo!’

  And there she is, by the potted palm, Queen Victoria herself, a dumpy little madam, no taller than myself, in her widow’s black garb, scowling a petulant fat-faced scowl, and surrounded by fawning courtiers and admirers – Dr Scrapie now suddenly among them, and barging his way to the fore.

  ‘Old hypocrite,’ murmurs my paramour, watching her father perform an elaborate and dangerously low bow, then unfold himself to kiss the Monarch’s black-gloved hand.

  ‘And look,’ she says, pointing in the direction of the buffet table. ‘Cabillaud has surpassed himself!’ She says this with pride, but a hint of sadness.

  A marvellous, glistening quilt of food is spread before us, on a white-clothed table which runs the whole length of the ballroom; guests, armed with china plates, are tucking in to pale jellied eels, glistening prawns, huge tureens of chilled turtle soup, tubs of pink paste, little pastry cases filled with odd-smelling chopped meats, mounds of Turkish Delight and other exotic bonbons; waiters are milling about bearing great platters of oysters with wedges of lemon and lime, huge blancmange desserts and nougat cake heaped with chocolate cream. On a small pedestal stands a great wobbling white jelly topped with a splash of fragrant s
trawberry sauce, surrounded by tiny dishes of liquorice and sherbet. Beneath it, upon the floor, stands an enamel bathtub containing a fruit salad; a waiter is ladling out raspberries, melon, blackberries and – my mouth waters as I spot the first slice – banana into little dishes, and adorning them with grated chocolate and swirls of cream.

  Impressive.

  So impressive, indeed, that suddenly Miss Scrapie is deserting me to congratulate the chef.

  ‘Monsieur Cabillaud!’ she cries, rushing headlong into the outspread arms of a small tubby man in a tall white hat.

  ‘Ma petite chérie! Ma petite Violette!’ he responds, pressing her to his bosom.

  Oh, what it must be, to be reunited with a loved one! What would I not give to be so embraced by dear Parson Phelps!

  Assaulted by my own sudden feelings of longing, I averted my eyes from the touching scene taking place before me. But it was an error to do so, for when I looked up again, having contemplated my shoes for the space of perhaps one minute, I saw that Miss Scrapie and the chef had vanished in the throng. The sudden loss of Miss Scrapie left me feeling horribly alone and ill-at-ease. I had been obliged to dress for tonight’s occasion in a cast-off old dinner suit of Dr Scrapie’s which was far too big, and which, thanks to the well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful adjustments made by a certain Mrs Jiggers, hung off me in a way that Miss Scrapie could surely not find attractive.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ ordered Scrapie, suddenly re-appearing and grabbing my arm with force. ‘Do not move. I’m going to find Mr Darwin, and bring him here, and we will tell him of your origins!’ He was clasping A New Theory of Evolution to his breast, and his eyes were darting eagerly about the room in search of the great man. ‘My dear, dear young specimen!’ he choked, still clasping my arm tightly. I winced in pain. ‘I must confess I was growing almost fond of you!’

  Specimen? I felt foolish, and uneasy, as though an important fact hung just beyond my grasp.