Boating for Beginners (12 page)

'Why the shit does YAHWEH want to do this?' she asked, hitting a rock.

'Flood myths,' said the orange demon, hopping down in front of her. 'Flood myths are very potent things; humankind can't resist them. I knew this was going to happen right from the start. Don't you know that men always pee on the fire? That's why they were sent out to hunt in the old days, and much more sensible it was too; but now, have you ever known anyone have the power and not use it?'

At supper that evening Gloria hailed Bunny Mix across a crowded throng of eager guests and proposed that Marlene help her out in the animal search.

'Has she had any training?' asked the famous novelist, overlooking the fact that Gloria herself had had none, apart from being the owner of a pet elephant.

'Oh yes,' enthused Marlene. 'I have such a way with animals. Look at this,' and to Gloria's horror she pulled the stuffed lovebird out of her bag. 'My bird loves me so much he can't bear to stay at home without me. Now, have you ever seen anything like this before?'

Clearly Bunny hadn't, and she backed away as though she might be bitten.

'Oh, don't mind him,' laughed Marlene. 'He won't hurt you, he's a real dream,' and she balanced the unfortunate thing on the edge of her spinach dish.

'Marlene,' chaffed the rabbit of romance, 'you are not allowed to bring pets, however well trained, into this health spa. But I will ignore your indiscretion and yes, you may help Gloria if she feels it's necessary. But remember, this is an indulgence and only because I feel it may improve your very nervous condition,' and she swept away.

'Great,' cheered Marlene. 'Now we can have fun.'

After supper Marlene and Gloria went to drink cocoa upstairs and plan their campaign. Bunny had given Gloria the list, and none of the animals seemed too hard to catch, except for a pair of hoopoes that could only, it said, be found in Nineveh in the custody of a rather strange old woman. They were to travel there the next day, on the off chance that she might part with them.

'We ought to bring some order into this,' decided Marlene, and got out the blackboard she usually kept for her dietary progress. 'We'll have to make a list. I'll draw up four columns: Things that Fly; Things that Swim; Things that Run/Crawl/Leap or Totter; and Things that Creep.'

'Yes,' said Gloria, 'that seems very sensible.'

'Gloria,' asked Marlene a few minutes later, 'what did you do before you started collecting animals?'

'Nothing,' said Gloria simply, and she meant it. 'The Cosmic Rien.'

'Oh well,' sympathised Marlene. 'At least you've had it easy. As for me — ' and for the next hour she narrated the whole ghastly tale of her life as a synchronised swimmer, a potter and a woman with problems. 'I've had seventy lovers, but I've never found the one.'

Did the one exist, though? This was what Gloria wanted to know. Wasn't it rather a fantasy of romantic propaganda?

'Well, I expect it is in some ways,' agreed Marlene. 'But in others, there's something to be said for being in love. Lovers take you dancing, they tell you commonplace things that sound different and are different because lovers make you look again at familiar things and find beauty there.'

'Weren't any of your seventy lovers important?' marvelled Gloria.

'Of course they were, at the time. It's just that the time didn't last very long, and the only one who really had any drama was lost from the moment we saw each other.' She dabbed her eyes gently.

'Oh tell me about that one,' begged Gloria in a fit of regressive goo.

Marlene's story was a tragic one. Immediately after her sex change she had fallen in love with a curate, older than her in most ways, riddled with guilt about pleasure that did not involve pain, and unable to enjoy love for its own sake. They had spent nervous afternoons and tension-filled evenings together. On many of their encounters the curate chain-smoked while Marlene sat moodily recounting their relationship to date, and why it was so awful. They had enjoyed simplistic analyses that sounded profound, e.g. 'If it were truly awful we'd stop/you'd leave,' or: 'All I'm certain of is that I love you,' and they wrote letters to each other to be delivered by hand in the middle of the night, especially when it was raining hard. Marlene had become particularly adept at waylaying the curate on his way home from church. They would embrace, stare and sigh, and then the curate had to go home to his family. Once he had gone, Marlene liked to stare up at the bedroom window, while waves of lust and rage convinced her it was the real thing she was feeling.

They did sleep together, once, the day before their relationship ended forever. It was during that graceless and frantic act that Marlene felt the magic wand prodding her in the ribs, and when she woke up, the curate had turned into a toad.

So much for passion. She packed her bags, stared in amazement at the flannel she had used only the night before to wash the curate's bony back, and went home. There she looked in the mirror, and realised she was very far from being the fairest of them all. She was a mess. She had always imagined that pain suited her. It didn't. It made her fat and lunatic, and she realised it for the first time. Her room was untidy and littered with the curate's letters. She put them in a box, opened the windows and started to dust. 'And then,' concluded Marlene, 'I picked up a handful of soil and thought, Tomorrow is another day.'

'Gosh,' sighed Gloria. 'That sounds awful. Why do you still believe in love?'

'Because it's always better to feel something, even if that something is pain. Besides, after that incident I'll never be chasing things I can't have. Now I keep an eye out for the accessible. No more creeps.' She walked over to the window and took a deep breath: 'Come and sniff the honeysuckle; it's magnificent — ' then she paused. 'On second thoughts go and get a bowl of water, because something big and creepy is creeping towards our window right now.'

Gloria rushed across and peered out. Sure enough a dark shape was feeling its way up the clematis towards them.

'It's some kind of Gross Reality, but I don't know which one,' panicked Marlene. Then they heard the thing speak.

'Will you two stop talking amongst yourselves and help me in? It's me, Desi, and I've got enough problems without you pouring water over my head.'

'Heavens!' squeaked Marlene. 'Why can't you use the stairs like everyone else?'

'Because I don't want anyone to know I'm here, that's why not,' panted Desi, heaving herself over the window-sill. 'Individual I may be, but I'm not totally out of my tree. I didn't climb three storeys up a wistearia for exercise and general amusement.' She stood in front of them, dusting herself down.

'Clematis dear, not wistearia. So why are you doing The Lady Loves Milk Tray for our benefit?'

'I've got some terrible news, that's why. So find me a drink and prepare to be shattered.' Marlene found the Scotch and poured a large measure, while Desi unbuttoned her jacket. As calmly as she could she told her story — the manuscript, the equipment, the meeting in Gaza. 'So you see, the Unpronounceable's an all-powerful ice-cream cone and Noah and the boys are going to float away to a better world.'

They discussed the problem for some time, but Desi was clearly exhausted.

'Why don't you sleep here?' suggested Marlene. 'There's nothing any of us can do tonight. Tomorrow we'll go to Nineveh as planned, otherwise Bunny will tell Noah something's up, and you can go back to the film set and see if you can learn anything about the new plans. We can meet again tomorrow night, here, at about this time.'

Wearily Desi agreed and they made her a bed in the bathtub.

'Don't you think we should be panicking?' asked Gloria anxiously, when Desi was safely asleep.

'Yes, I expect so, but what good will it do? We can do our best to warn people as soon as we can prove it, but what makes you think anyone is going to believe a zoo keeper, a transsexual and a member of the rich middle class? Only if Noah starts getting that boat under way and it starts to rain, do we stand a chance of making them see sense. Would you believe this story? I wouldn't. A flood; when has there ever been a flood? It's not part of our history.'

Gloria went to her room and sank into a fitful sleep. She dreamed she was floating along on a log and all she had once known was floating by her. She was cold, wet and cross. As she sailed on she noticed an orange demon cooking sausages over a little fire. The demon seemed entirely unconcerned about the flood, which made Gloria even crosser.

'What's going on?' she demanded.

'Flood myths,' answered her bright friend sagely. 'What seems outrageous to one generation becomes a commonplace to the next. You think this can't happen; but later, when it's history, no one will be surprised.'

The morning dawned bright and fair. Desi slipped away before anyone else had stirred, leaving Gloria and Marlene to rush down to breakfast, acting as casually as possible. They had hardly started on their dandelion croissants when Bunny came bounding across and placed herself beside them.

'Now dears, I hope you two won't idle away the day. I want you to go into Nineveh and pick up that pair of hoopoes. It shouldn't take you long, and besides I especially want you to be back tonight for one of my exclusive talks in the main hall. I shall be reading from my forthcoming book of poems to give the occasion some feeling. I'm sure you've read about the book already, because the press are so excited. It's called If On A Summer's Night, A Bee ... and I think it's my most mature work to date, though of course I have lost none of my freshness. Anyway, there'll be that, and there will also be a very important lady who's come all the way from Andorra just to share with us some of her life-changing secrets, so do get back for seven-thirty, won't you?' and off she swept.

'Bossy isn't she?' said Marlene, stashing a few of the croissants in her handbag. 'I'm taking these in case the journey takes a long time. You know how unreliable the railways are.' She noticed Gloria's face. 'Oh, don't worry. I haven't still got the bird in here. I put him back with the other one.'

Gloria sighed, and they set off together for the station, Marlene commenting enthusiastically on the flora and fauna and what a pity they weren't going to be seeing it for much longer. Gloria, who was beginning to get upset about being drowned, asked Marlene how she could be so carefree in the face of her own mortality and the planet's doom.

'The planet will find a way back, and I don't think of myself as indispensable. Truth to tell, if I didn't have this attitude I'd be a gibbering wreck by now. Besides, we've got work to do - we have to make one heroic attempt at foiling that cosmic dessert and the little chocolate button that created him. If I think about how awful it is, I'll just sit down here until I float away.'

'I don't know what I'm going to do about my mother,' said Gloria. If she was going to worry she might as well worry about the lot now, and get it over with. 'I mean, she won't believe a word of it and most likely she'd go off and tell Noah. I think I'll have to kidnap her.'

Marlene was sympathetic but not much help. She had never met Gloria's mother and could not imagine the force of nature that was Mrs Munde. On the train Gloria tried to explain, but the more she said, the more impossible the picture grew: the bedrooms that stayed up by themselves, the obsession with fish, her romantic fiction and her belief that only two sorts of people existed — friends and enemies; her star-gazing and her belief that she was an astronomer without telescope; and finally her calling to the kitchens of the world where, if she could not put the Lord in their hearts, she could sneak him into their stomachs on a slice of pizza.

'I don't know anyone else like that,' admitted Marlene. 'How have you survived all these years?'

And Gloria explained that she had survived by disappearing to the bottom of her private pool with a collection of unsuitable literature and a vivid imagination. 'And now I am scrutinising the world for the first time and hoping to reach a state of continuous prose.'

'What are you talking about?' asked Marlene, not surprisingly. So Gloria had to tell her about Northrop Frye and her own present state of probing curiosity which she had exchanged for her previously inchoate state and would, if all went well, trade in for an understanding of the world which was both fluent and fluid. Continuous Prose.

'I see,' said Marlene. 'So your mother is in a genuinely poetic state in which she cannot distinguish between herself and nature, and you were in a fallen quasi-poetic state in which you had no distinguishing powers, but no poetic powers either.'

'That's right.' (Gloria was relieved.) 'My mother is a very affecting woman. You may think she's crazy but you can't ignore her. Ignoring me was not an effort at all. There was no alternative.'

'Pigeons aren't poetic,' hissed Marlene, seeing one out of the window. 'They're the most prosaic birds invented. That's the only thing about this flood stuff that cheers me up; those shitty excuses for powered flight will be wiped off the map. Have you seen anything with less charm?'

'What about those hoopoes we're collecting? They bite.'

'I'm not bothered about being bittten. Animals and things always bite. What I object to is the psychological reign of terror imposed on me just because I want to kill them all. I used to have a catapult and a bag of dried peas, that got rid of them, but then I got fined. Fined for threats on a pigeon's life with a pea.'