Boating for Beginners (15 page)

'What do we tell the girls?' wondered Japeth 'They might get upset if they find out.'

'My advice to you is to drug them along with that rabbit creature,' said the Lord. 'Just put something in their tea, and when they wake up it'll be all over and you'll be singing sea shanties and playing poker.'

The boys nodded and looked at each other. 'Well, we'd better start getting those animals aboard, and somebody should wire Bunny to tell her to hurry up that girl, Mrs Munde's daughter. She's doing the birds and reptiles, I think. Is that right, Dad?'

Noah nodded. If Mrs Munde hadn't lost her arm he might have tried to persuade the Lord to make it nine, or maybe even done without Bunny Mix; but he couldn't be expected to run a charity and he'd been good to her while it lasted, giving her stable employment and her own choice of pans for all these years. He sighed. The old order changes, giving way to the new. He could deal with it...

Desi in her bush was horrified. She wasn't going to get on that boat and spend the rest of her life living with those lunatics and that self-aggrandising Being. She'd rather take her chance on the dining room table with Marlene and Gloria. She waited till the car slid off in a skid of dust, then scrambled back to her horse. Should she go straight to Rita and Sheila? No, she didn't think that would work and she had more than a suspicion that Rita and Sheila would be out for their own skins, not the collective skin. Much better that she make it to Bees of Paradise and talk it out with the others. If she used the horse she should be there at about the time they made it back from Nineveh. Her mind too full to think clearly, she hit the road, wondering if a horse could tread water for forty days.

In the car, Noah and the boys were arguing about how much they should take in the way of luxury goods and essentials. Food and tools they agreed on, and seeds and animals grain. What they couldn't agree on were the relative merits of gin and bourbon or who should be allowed to choose what kind of soap they needed to start a new world.

'What are the girls going to say if there's no Martini?' fretted Shem.

'And if they won't cooperate we can't get on with the new race,' said Ham.

'I say we take hard stuff,' insisted Japeth. 'Forty days on a fucking boat with a pile of animals. You can wake me up when it's all over.'

'Young people,' fumed Noah, as he swerved the car round and round the hairpin bends that led home. 'You young people have no stamina, no instinct for survival. You just care about clean bed linen and aftershave. It was different in my day, when you came from nowhere and you were going nowhere unless you got your hands dirty. Perhaps I've failed as a father. Perhaps I gave you too much?' and he became so emotional that he was forced to let Japeth take over the driving.

When the men reached home they found Rita and Sheila fresh from the hairdresser's feeling, in their own words, like a million dollars.

'I hate women who use clichés,' grumbled Noah to himself, but he didn't say anything because he was still feeling insecure about his role as a father, and wondering if he'd made a big mistake all those years ago letting a super-powered ice-cream cone loose on the world. He'd made money and he'd had a few laughs, but what did that mean now he was going to be reduced to a tiller of the soil? He had an uncomfortable feeling that someone somewhere was giggling at his expense.

Morosely, he peeled a pear with the inlaid fruit knife his first wife had given him as a wedding present. Suddenly he came over sentimental. Grace? - why did you have to die? Why did you have to leave me alone with three sons and a hole in my best cabin cruiser? Women — why did they always run out on you at the last moment? Just when you needed them most? Just when you'd worked to get the family home up to scratch, proper carpets, nice three-piece suite, boys at a good school ... and then Grace had to take up fencing. Said she needed the exercise. What for? What did women have to take exercise for? It was a fad. Bunny Mix was just as bad with those roller skates. Still, he'd make sure they got thrown overboard. But Grace — and tears came into his eyes - she'd persuaded him to buy her a nice sword, the right weight, and an outfit and then one day she'd fallen on top of the blade, split right down the middle like an over-ripe avocado, and they'd had to get her spliced together again for the funeral.

It was after that he'd started to invent things: harmless things at first like walkie-talkies and learn-to-talk tapes for parrots. Then it had got more ambitious, more sinister; but it wasn't his fault, was it? He was a man pushed by grief and she had grieved him. An idea occurred to Noah at that moment: when he sat down to re-draft Genesis, he'd make sure everyone knew where the blame lay. Women; they're all the same...

When Marlene and Gloria tumbled into Marlene's room with a pair of disgruntled hoopoes and just enough time to have a wash before supper, they found Desi already sitting in the bath-tub.

'Have I got news for you two! Want to hear it?'

'Can't darling,' said Marlene, breathless. 'We've got to show for supper and one of Bunny's little readings, otherwise she'll be right up here and you'll be in trouble. Tell us when we get back.'

'Typical,' thought Desi savagely. 'The world's about to end and they run off to a poetry reading,' and she rubbed harder with the pumice stone.

Soup had already been served as Gloria and Marlene slid into their places, carrying the hoopoes who were now irate as well as disgruntled. Frantically Marlene gestured to a waiter. 'Get me some party sausages will you? My bird's just dying of hunger.'

She might just as well have asked for a bucket of vomit. The waiter stared at her coldly, then shouted something in a foreign language to one of the others. Gloria could tell it was rude because he finished each sentence with 'Hah!' and a spitting noise; but they got the sausages, and the tall bird screamed with delight and gobbled them all up while the short bird just sat and looked sad because he hadn't been fed at all that day.

'We have to get something else for this one,' decided Marlene firmly. 'Eh, garçon, ici,' she called. Unwillingly the waiter returned. He hated women who tried to speak French when they couldn't. But Marlene demanded the cheeseboard and a selection of crudités, and to her relief the small bird made whoops of delight as soon as he saw the celery sticks stuffed with garlic pâté. When he had eaten six he fell asleep on the green baize floor. Quickly Marlene threw her shawl over the cage. 'Let's leave them here till after the reading. If they make a sound while she's at it, we won't get out of this health farm, let alone survive a global flood.'

Gloria nodded, and together they went into the hall. Marlene had stolen a few bits of cheese to keep them going. 'Lowers the acidity level in your mouth — useful for when we have to compliment her afterwards.'

The hall was packed with rustling people from exotic places. The dashing rabbit of romance had arranged herself in the centre of the stage, flanked on both sides by towers of flowers in colours she thought matched and contrasted with her clothes. In fact they matched her hair and clashed with her frock, but no one seemed to notice. She was back-lit with a pink gel spot, and music from her album of love songs recorded with the Nineveh Philharmonic Orchestra filled what space there was left in the hall. Most of the guests had programmes.

'I do like an orchestra,' said Gloria, by way of conversation.

'It's an anagram of carthorse,' replied Marlene airily.

Then Bunny stood up and there was rapturous applause. She was holding her book of poems.

'My friends,' she began, 'I want to welcome you all to another of my special evenings. I have a very distinguished guest for you tonight who's come all the way from Andorra just to be with us, and I know we appreciate that.' (Murmurs of appreciation rippled through the audience and Bunny smiled.) 'Yes we do, I do too. But first, though it wasn't my intention, I have been persuaded to read to you a few of my poems from my forthcoming book which is receiving so much attention in the press. I have called this collection If On A Summer's Night, A Bee ... because it's about flowers and love and moonlight and those things in life we hold most dear. Ladies and gentlemen, may I start with the title poem?'

There was another round of applause and she cleared her throat.

If on a summer's night a bee

Should make honey for you

For you and me.

Be glad.

For we, and the bee

Are really one.

Joined together

By blossom.

As soon as she had finished the audience leapt to its feet as if it were the Hallelujah Chorus, as if the building were on fire, and cried out with one voice: 'More.' They stamped. 'More, more.'

Winningly Bunny Mix blushed and held her hands in the air until the noise had subsided; then she spoke again, her voice rich and full. She agreed to read just two more poems, then they really must buy the book for themselves; but for the moment she would offer her lyric poem, 'Hyacinths', about stumbling on a sweep of hyacinths and enjoying it, and her more serious and stirring 'Ode On A Grecian Parrot', which said how parrots seemed to transcend time by living so long - which was enviable — but how they couldn't kiss each other - which was their shortcoming.

The audience was rampant by the end of these two, and she promised that they could place orders after the evening so that the very first copies would arrive on their very own doorsteps. Generously, because she liked to show that the very great care for the not-very-great, she promised to autograph the first fifty orders that came her way.

'And now,' she crooned, 'our special guest for tonight. Will you please welcome Miss Tawdry Slattern who's going to tell us all about her revolutionary P-Plan diet.'

The woman on Bunny's right stood up and, after a few moments of effusive praise about everything she could see, began her lecture.

'Ladies, what I have discovered will alter your lives once and for all time; gentlemen, you can have the woman of your dreams, because my new discovery will turn your wives into just that. Remember when every belt notched on the last hole? When the smallest skirt was never too right? Those lost days can become a reality again. You can walk out of here tonight knowing that tomorrow you begin a new life, a life without embarrassment, a life where you will be able to say «Yes» to any invitation — whether it is a beach party or a seductive little dinner for two. From now on your body won't let you down.

'We all long for romance, don't we? We all tremble with those sylphlike heroines who fill the pages of this wonderful lady's books? We've all imagined ourselves swept away, and then how bitterly realised that it's not the same in a pantie girdle. Too many of us lead a size ten fantasy life with a thirty-inch waistline. How can your man carry you through the puddles of life when he can't get his arms around your middle? We have to think what men want, as well as what we want to eat. We need their strong bodies, they need our shapely selves. It's called exchange, it's called balance, the mysterious Yin and Yang, but most of all — and I don't have to tell you this — it's called love. Love lies waiting there for each one of us if only we make that extra effort.

'I used to be a Marriage Guidance Counsellor before I became a millionaire, and I saw so many couples whose lives had broken down over too many oven chips and late night cookies. I'd turn to the woman and I'd say: «Slim; your future is in your next meal.» As time passed I became more and more interested in the nutritional side of our lives. I have always wanted to help women reach their true potential, and one day, by accident and hard work, I found the formula we need.

'In this suitcase, yes suitcase, not briefcase, I have letters of gratitude from the hundreds of women I have been able to set on the right path. We are what we eat, ladies. There is no better tonic than the body tonic. Of course, like all the really worthwhile things in life, my treatment isn't cheap; but I know that you wouldn't want to be insulted with cut-price gimmicks. No, the P-Plan diet is for the discerning woman everywhere, and like all brilliant ideas it's very simple.

'I discovered it when my son was constipated. I hazarded that if I gave him as much water as he could possibly drink then he'd start to pee, and on the toilet one thing does lead to another. It worked. It made him look brighter, feel better and he did lose an awful lot of weight, which I was glad about because he was quite chubby. My husband thinks he lost too much; but then we did keep him on nothing but water for three weeks and as I said to Derek after the funeral, «We've made an enormous scientific breakthrough and we can always have another baby.»