Boating for Beginners (13 page)

For the rest of the trip they talked again about Art and the Meaning of Life and whether or not the Experimental Novel had any significance in the society that haggled over which television channel should show Dallas.

'I like reading books,' insisted Marlene, 'but I'm more concerned with how to get rid of the cellulite on my thighs. I mean, there's plenty of books around but I've only got this one body.'

'Art shows us how to transcend the purely physical,' said Gloria loftily.

'Yes, but Art won't get rid of my cellulite, will it?'

'Art will help you put your cellulite in perspective,' replied Gloria, wondering for a moment who was feeding her her lines.

'I don't want to put it in perspective.' Marlene tried to be patient. 'I want to get rid of it.'

'If you can't get rid of it - and a lot of women can't, you know, no matter how many Swedish bath mitts they buy - Art will help you find other fulfilling ways of being a beautiful person.'

'Rubbish,' snapped Marlene. 'If I don't get rid of it I'll become bitter and twisted and start interfering with small children,' and she loomed over at Gloria, pulling faces and gnashing her teeth.

'Now you're being difficult,' sighed Gloria. 'Why don't we play Hang the Man or I Spy?'

'No, I'd rather play Battleships but we haven't any graph paper, have we?'

They hadn't, and so they were forced to talk about the Space-Time Continuum, and whether or not you should write books which clearly fixed themselves into time or books which flouted the usual notion of time in an effort to clear the mind of arbitrary divisions.

'It's not illogical to ignore time, it's anti-logical; and I expect that's quite useful if you have a pedantic mind.'

'Yes, but would you like to see all the episodes of Dallas in the wrong order?'

'I don't think it would make much difference,' said Gloria, who no longer had any interest in the fortunes of Sue Ellen. 'But it seems to me that to restrict your fantasy life is the most oppressive form of masochism. And fiction both belongs to and creates fantasy, so why should it not be as wild as your wildest dreams?'

'Well, I just like things to happen in a line, that's all; and talking of lines, we're at the end of ours. Come on, let's find these hoopoes.' Marlene heaved the cage from the luggage rack and the two of them bundled out onto the platform. 'Got the piece of paper with the details?' Gloria said she had, and they set off into the vast expanses of Nineveh City which, as the Bible tells us, was a city of sin..

Mrs Munde was standing in Nineveh centre arranging her orange box. It was a collapsible one that the newspaper had given her, and she very much admired it. She was a woman easily preoccupied by technology, hence her intricate and fatal interest in the Hallelujah Hamburger machine. She had been one of the first women in Ur of the Chaldees to embrace fully the electric toaster, and although Noah had subsequently outlawed such quick-meal gadgets from the true believer's kitchen, Mrs Munde had never quite been able to forgive and forget. She enjoyed and made a success of cooking over open fires with the most primitive equipment — indeed, for most of her married life she had been renowned for her versatility with the naked flame and a skewer — but she had dreams: dreams of working in a huge automated kitchen with electronic egg slicer and pre-programmed French dressing. She always repented after such dreams, worked extra hard cleaning the dirtiest leeks and made unnecessary trips to the cesspit. She had hoped that Ham might help her dreams come true without compromising her position as faithful chefette to the servant of the Unpronounceable. She couldn't change the world with one arm though; at least, not gastronomically. She'd once seen a book about people with one arm. It was called Famous Disabilities and it listed everyone who had ever frothed, squinted, fallen over at intervals or had less than their full complement of limbs, and had yet managed to do remarkable things. Remarkable, yes; but none of them had ever invented a dish to melt the heathens' stony hearts, so Mrs Munde was relieved that she had not been put out to grass in that great meadow of neglect but had been given another chance to alter history. The box was a bonus, and as she fitted its last wood-like plastic side she reflected ever-more-gladly on how the Lord understands our little hobby-horses.

She began to sort out her material. She had her large NAFF banner, specially embroidered by veterans of the Good Fight who still wanted to help with active service; she had a collection box and a tract she had prepared herself called 'Know your enemy' which displayed pictures of the most common fridge-freezers and their specifications. On the back she'd printed a list of the most tempting frozen foods and their natural alternatives. She was ready to go. Now all she needed was an audience.

Marlene and Gloria were walking down the street, arguing again, this time about body hair.

'Listen!' shouted Marlene, already inflamed. 'Don't give me all this natural rubbish. If you had warts growing out of the side of your ears, would you leave them there or would you get them seen to?'

Gloria said that the type of warts Marlene was describing would be person-specific and therefore belonging to medical science. Body hair was gender-specific and therefore to do with image and cosmetics.

'You mean,' said Marlene, 'that however you're born is how you've got to stay — buck teeth, spotty, maybe bald, maybe hunchback, perhaps dribbling. Why bother to wear any clothes at all? Why don't we just grow our hair, those of us who can — Gold help the baldies — and run hooting?'

'I never mentioned hooting,' snapped Gloria. 'I think you're too concerned with the way you look, that's all. I don't care if you've got underarm hair.'

'You don't care about my cellulite either. As far as you're concerned I could be as matted as a furze with thighs like orange peel as long as I read Northrop Frye.'

Gloria sighed. 'I just don't see how you can be happy when all you care about is the way you look and whether you should wax, shave or annihilate your underarms.'

'You seemed to worry about the same things for long enough. What about the hair on your head? What about your nose? What about your cheekbones?' demanded Marlene, poking Gloria hard to press home her point. At least Gloria had the sense to blush, but she was put out. She thought her past belonged to her. She didn't want Marlene reminding her of what she'd been. She had already started to rewrite it in accordance with her future, which included drowning. She wanted to die with integrity. Still, Marlene was right, Gloria had been unfair; and she took her friend's arm and smiled.

'I wasn't happy then, I wasn't anything; you have to remember that. I was no more than the colour of the dye I put on my hair.'

'Well you were peculiar,' insisted Marlene. 'Some of us can lead rich emotional lives and shave our armpits, you know.'

For a while they walked on in silence. 'I don't know where we are,' grumbled Gloria, still sulking. 'Give me the A to Z.'

While she was looking, Marlene wandered off and noticed a large crowd who appeared to be laughing and cheering at something. 'Gloria,' she called, 'come over here; there's a Punch and Judy show, I think.' Together they circled closer, jostling through the crowd till they reached the front.

'Marlene,' said Gloria in a faint voice, 'I'd like you to meet my mother.'

Mrs Munde was having a grand time. The good Lord had sent her an audience and she was certain she was reaching their doubting hearts. A lot of the crowd had already taken her leaflets and accepted her invitation to a further in-depth, follow-up discussion at the NAFF offices. She offered personally made chocolate mousse and re-pounded tea to anyone who turned up — a device never known to fail.

Suddenly, a fat man with a box of his own, though not so stylish as Mrs Munde's, hauled himself up beside her. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves to reveal bulging forearms and a tattoo that said: 'Some like it cold.' He took no notice of Mrs Munde, but instead addressed himself directly to the crowd who were agog.

'This woman has no right to tell any of you how to spend your money or your time. What's wrong with diced carrots? What's so corrupting about mixed veg? We've all enjoyed Rum Babas haven't we? And some of us will have enjoyed them with ice cream too. There's not one of you here who hasn't got a packet of petits pois hidden away at home. What do you do when that unexpected guest arrives? Where do you turn when your relatives want to come for Sunday lunch and don't tell you till after closing time on Saturday night? How do you cope when your children's friends get locked out? You turn to the freezer, that's what. Side of beef, Yorkshire pud, last year's raspberries; it's all there. Then there's the problem of midnight feasts - you can't have cheesecake when you've got a craving if there's none to thaw out. What about Friday night, eh? Work over, Martini time coming up: where do you keep the frosted glass, the welcome ice cubes? Where do you put the cocktail cherries? I don't have to spell it out do I?

'Forget about NAFF, join SCOFF, the Society for the Celebration of Frozen Food. Subscriptions are low, you get a regular bulletin, regular news on offers to improve the quality of your freezing stock and an annual outing to Andorra, done at half price for all our members. We go to Andorra because as you will have read in the local newspapers — ' (he glared across at Mrs Munde) ' - the President of Andorra, Gary Cooper, who used to be in all our favourite films, has been scientifically and fully cured of his deafness by adhering to a diet made up entirely of frozen food. We have testimonials from him, and if you can't trust a president, who can you trust?'

'You can trust the Lord!' yelled Mrs Munde, showering her tracts onto the baffled crowd.

'I want to ask a question,' piped a voice from the floor. 'I want to know where you draw the line. Can I keep my milk in a cool box in summer or not? It doesn't have any ice and it doesn't freeze anything, but it does keep things cool.'

'If it doesn't freeze anything then it's not a freezer, so I wouldn't worry about that,' declared Gloria's mother grandly.

This is nonsense,' yelled someone else. 'You want to put the clock back. Where would feminism be today without the deepfreeze? Where would the Salvation Army be?'

'Liars and hypocrites, the lot!' shouted Mrs Munde. 'Give up your fridges and join me in the garden. Go back to the humble larder, the innocent marble slab, teach your children the value of fresh food.'

'My,' said Marlene admiringly, 'she does have a way with words, doesn't she? Are you going to introduce us properly?'

The crowd had begun to disperse, and Mrs Munde, who had timing even if she didn't have anything else, stepped down from her box. Gloria noticed that her arm was missing. 'She used to have two arms, I'm sure of it,' hissed Gloria. 'Come on, we'll do our best... Hello mother, it's me.' Gloria waited patiently.

'Who — who are you?' asked Mrs Munde, standing up.

'I'm your daughter — you know — Gloria.'

'Oh I'm sorry, dear,' apologised her mother. 'I didn't recognise you without my arm. It changes your perspective on life, only having one.'

'What happened to the other one?' Gloria hoped it wasn't in bad taste to ask.

'I lost it like you said I would, in that hamburger machine. But don't fret, I've got this job now, and really it makes a nice change to get away from those pans for a bit. I'm staying in a hotel, too. Do you want to come and look at it? It's got a lovely view of the sky at night.'

'No we can't. We've just come to collect a couple of hoopoes and then we have to get back to the farm. This is Marlene, who helps.'

Mrs Munde said she was very pleased that Gloria had found such a nice friend, but that she had to go and work out her campaign for tomorrow as well as report back to the NAFF offices, warning them about the SCOFF offensive. She finished folding her orange box and waved goodbye, pausing only to warn Gloria that hoopoes bite.

'Well, there you are,' Gloria shook her head at the retreating figure. 'Are you surprised I lived in a diving bell for eighteen years?'

'I'm surprised you lived at all. Come on, let's get these birds.'

They passed on towards the address Bunny Mix had written down. It was an old house, battered and crumbling, the garden covered in bindweed.

'I'm not keen on this,' declared Marlene. 'What a state the house is in. You can get grants nowadays to do up your home. She must be socialist. Who's going to ask her? I think it should be you. Since you're struggling towards continuous prose it'll give you some practice.'