Boating for Beginners (17 page)

Bunny started to cry into her pink fox fur. 'Oh, just like a man. We women need our little comforts, our one or two belongings.'

Noah was beside himself, and taking the rabbit by the hair he pulled her into the garden. 'One or two belongings don't take up four or five bags,' he screamed. 'Now sort them out, now right here on the lawn where I can keep an eye on you.'

Soon the grass was awash with day dresses, evening dresses, night dresses, monogrammed bathrobes, skiing jackets and sportswear.

'Just what do you think this is?' demanded Noah. 'A cruise?'

Bunny continued to sob uncontrollably, and finally pulled out her blue diamanté roller skates. Noah snatched them from her. 'Those are too heavy. You'll have to leave them behind.'

Bunny gave a little screech and lunged out to grab them back. She caught one of them by the lace. 'They're not heavy. I had them made to my own specifications. Look, you could lift them both with one finger. Why don't I show you?' But with a terrific pull Noah tugged them from her grasp and fell over backwards into the mimosa.

'My favourite flowers,' wailed the rabbit. 'You've ruined my life and you've squashed my favourite flowers,' and she beat her heels up and down on the impeccable turf.

As Noah was resolving to murder her on the spot — preferably with her own roller skate — a messenger arrived and tried to look respectful, even though two luminaries and notables were rolling around on the grass in a state of high emotion, arguing about clothes.

'What do you want?' Noah snapped.

'I've come to deliver a sofa, sir, a pink sofa and a set of calf-bound books, two and a half thousand calf-bound books.' The man waited for a tip, wondering if all the loose change had been lost in the grass.

'Sofa? Books?' repeated Noah, and Bunny dried her eyes and intervened: 'Yes, dear, you know, I told you,' and she turned to the man and asked him to have them delivered to the lawn.

'Oh no you don't.' Noah regained himself. 'You take those things back to wherever they came from and forget about them. We're not running a library service for the emotionally parched. Bunny, you can have ten of them, I don't care which, but that's your lot; and no sofa. And now I'm going to pack for you since you clearly can't do it yourself,' and with the fury of a lunatic squirrel Noah began to cast garments into the suitcase while Bunny pleaded and persuaded and crawled round on her knees trying to slip things in.

'What's the point of one ballet shoe?' she asked bitterly, when Noah had finally shut the case by sitting on it.

'Think of it as a memento,' he offered, feeling better. 'There won't be any ballet for centuries.'

'No ballet?' whimpered Bunny. 'No opera?'

'Nothing,' relished Noah, beginning to enjoy himself. 'No poetry readings, no press cuttings, no first nights, no honey toast, no treated bath mitts, no hothouse flowers in winter, no mint juleps in summer.'

'What will there be left?' she asked in a voice bereft of its richness.

'Oh, disease and hoeing. Yes, lots of hoeing and rheumatism and the same faces for years and wild animals ...' He broke off and decided to stash extra bourbon and not tell anyone.

Long after Noah had gone indoors to have a bath, the rabbit of romance was still sitting on the lawn surrounded by her tussle of excess baggage and the glittering wheel from one of her roller skates. Miserably she picked it up and put it in her pocket. It was dark and no one could see her, and she was trying to decide what to do next. Should she bother to survive or not? What does one decide when Life's Happy Rug is whisked away from under one's feet leaving only the Doormat of Despair? At least these were the terms she used to address herself to the question. She had never been keen on language that was only descriptive. She liked to think that her prose had many levels. Of course she told a story, what novel does not? (Except for those very dreary experimental things that were only fit for wrapping up vegetables.) Yes, she told a story but her prose, like lasagne, was layered. There were strange undercurrents and frivolous cheesy bits and serious meaty bits and a spicy sauce, and of course there was pasta, the body of the book, but who would be content with just pasta?

She remembered her very first book, a passionate and inspiring saga about a cripple and his nurse. In the end they had got married. Two thousand of her books ended in marriage; three hundred saw the male suitor going off to foreign parts with a broken heart; one hundred and fifty showed how a woman rejected may exact horrible vengeance and the other fifty had an untimely death just when the star-crossed lovers were nearing their final happiness. And Noah had said she could only take ten.

She'd bred her very own herd of cattle specially to use as binding for those books. A basic Aberdeen Angus crossed with a Nineveh Nip (so called for their lightness of hoof) had provided resilience and suppleness, the very qualities, she felt, most prevalent in her writing. Now it was all wasted.

She lay on her back, watching the indifferent stars run their circuit, and she smelled the grass, now damp, alongside her nose. She dug her perfectly manicured nails into the soil, her voice breaking with emotion. 'I will survive,' she whispered. 'I will survive.'

The loading of the ark was scheduled for completion that night. Noah had persuaded his crew to work through the night for the sake of speed and secrecy. He claimed he had to have the vessel kitted out for tour by the following morning so that the eager and uncouth press men could come and take their photographs. He promised everyone extra pay. He had never done that before, but then he wasn't going to have to pay up. Noah was especially anxious that the sauna should be working, though Ham wanted to use the space to store a car. He was still convinced that they could start an oil refinery as soon as the earth had dried out. They tossed for it, and Noah won; so that was a relief. Cars, party frocks — thank God Rita and Sheila were in their boxes. He couldn't bring himself even to imagine what they would have wanted to take along.

They had all briefly wondered where Desi was, but feeling sure that she would return in time to be knocked out, Noah got on with the business of putting away the animals. As they disappeared up the gangplank he counted and ticked them off his list: two tigers, two lions, two hippos, two bears, three elephants. He stopped. Three elephants?

'Why are there three elephants?' he yelled at one of his men, who shuffled forward rather shamefacedly.

'We got two, like you said, and then we found this one behind the kitchens. He wanted to come too.'

'What are you talking about?' demanded Noah. 'Elephants don't have feelings.'

At this Trebor dropped a huge tear onto Noah's hand and the hired man looked hopeful.

'I'll do it in memory of Grace,' thought Noah, softening a little. She had always liked elephants. It would be a parting memory before his new life in a new world with Bunny Mix.

'Take it away — it can come as well,' he said, gruffly, going back to his list.

When he had sorted out the animals with four or more legs, he turned to the swimmers and birds. He chose birds to start with. As he began a little cloud came hovering by and unzipped itself by Noah's ear. It was Lucifer in a new hat.

'What do you want?' grumbled Noah, glancing up.

'Like my hat?' asked the angel cheerily. 'We've all got new hats to celebrate. It's not so bad up there now.'

'You haven't come here just to show me your hat, have you?'

'Well no. Actually I've got a message from the boss. He says he'd prefer it if you didn't pack any pigeons.'

'No pigeons? Why not? There's nothing wrong with pigeons. I'm taking them,' and Noah started scribbling again.

Lucifer rearranged his hat, which was actually very nice.

'Oh don't. Be a sport. I don't want to have to tell him you're taking them, just when we'd got it all feeling better up there.'

Noah turned round, exasperated. 'Look, this is my ship and my trip. I didn't ask him to flood the bloody place. If that's what he wants to do then he's going to have to put up with pigeons. Can you imagine a world without pigeons?'

Lucifer was getting agitated, so in a rare moment of generosity Noah decided to help out. 'You tell him I'm not taking any, and I'll take them all the same. Then it's my problem, not yours. How about that?'

The angel cheered up and climbed back into the cloud. 'What a life,' he thought. 'One day I'm going to start my own business.'

Noah continued down his list. He hated interruptions. He always had, even as a child. Grace had never interrupted him. She'd never got in the way, just pottered about the house, smiling and having a gin or two — and then she'd gone and started fencing. He felt the old well of anger boil up, but knew it wasn't the time and got back to the birds. Kookaburras, wagtails, German spider birds, lesser-plumed featherene, hoopoes. No hoopoes. And why not? That girl was supposed to be bringing hoopoes. He called one of the men and sent him to check up. Why, he thought bitterly, couldn't life go smoothly just for a change?

The hoopoes were sitting in a hideout with Marlene, Gloria, Desi and Doris. They'd been hiding out all day, stashing cans of baked beans and slabs of banana bread into waterproof containers. They'd agreed to act normally when the rain began the following afternoon. Desi would go with Gloria to drop off the hoopoes, pick up some clothes and then they'd meet the others at the hotel recommended by the orange demon.

When Noah got tired of the flying things he went inside for a cup of coffee and a hamburger, and found Bunny Mix propped up in his favourite armchair wearing one of his dressing gowns. She had a strange bright look about her, rather like the picture of St Bernadette meeting the Holy Virgin for the first time. Noah couldn't make this comparison, but it did occur to him that .she seemed very odd. She was making a list.

'Better now, are you?' he threw out gruffly. After all, he did have to spend the rest of his life with this woman.

'Yes,' she cried, jerking her head towards him. 'I want you to know that I am determined to survive. That's why I'm planning the variations we can do on seven-card whist.'

'Seven-card whist?' Noah poured himself a drink.

'I realise that it would be useless to ask you to lay on a games room, and if we run into storms, backgammon will simply slide away and darts could be fatal. I have decided that a pack of cards is all we need, and accordingly I am plotting the variations on every game I can remember.'

Noah sat opposite her beside the fire. He didn't even ask for his chair back. He was thinking of the days when he had been a young man, poor and optimistic, playing card games on the front steps or down by the boats. That's how he'd got started in boats. He'd won a rower from a lousy card player.

'Poker,' he said smiling. 'You know, Bunny, I won my first boat in a poker game, with a royal flush of spades. Give me that piece of paper and I'll write down the poker variations. Duck in the Pond, Soap in your Eye, Poison Ivy. All depends on which cards are wild.'

Bunny hadn't a clue what he meant, but then she wasn't a poker player. While Noah busied himself she wondered if it was possible to play Donkey with a straight pack. Then when she'd organised the games to her heart's content, there'd be the question of after-supper entertainment with no quartet. They could play charades, but not I Spy because it would have to begin with 'W' after a while and everyone would guess the answer. If Noah would take the cassette player and a supply of batteries they could try Scottish reels or slump in armchairs listening to tapes of 'Saturday Night Theatre'. Her task was large. Four grown men needing diversions, and she the only truly experienced hostess on board.

Noah still had a faraway smile on his face. When he'd first married Grace he'd not been able to offer her much, just a leaky boat and a rented house; and he'd always dreamed of the day when he'd swoop down in a private plane to their backyard as she was hanging out their one or two clothes, and say, 'Climb in honey, I've made it.' After his empire had grown a little, mainly through blackmail, he'd been able to do that, but he still regretted that she hadn't lived long enough to share his real fortune as valet and mother to the Unpronounceable.

'I've got ten ways of playing this game, Bunny. Do you want me to go on to Bridge or would you rather do that yourself?'

Bunny said she'd do it herself, and he went to fix them both a hamburger. On the way to the kitchen he met Ham struggling with a huge TV set.

'Son, why are you rupturing yourself so early on?'

'Dad, I have to take this TV with us. I can't leave it behind. I don't care if I can't switch it on - it's a memory, like other people have photo albums and nodding dogs?'

Noah nodded quietly and patted Ham on the back. 'You go ahead, son. You need it, you have it. Haven't I always said that?'

'Yes Dad, you've been more than a father to me,' and a huge emotional moment was about to burst with recollections of the first bicycle and the first full-size cricket bat. Fortunately, Gross Reality came to the rescue: Ham dropped the TV on his foot. While he was yelping and going blue Noah hurried away to find the curried ketchup. He was running out of reasons for people's behaviour. If in doubt, he thought, eat; and soon he and Bunny were tucking into a pair of quarterpounders with extra relish.

'We've got to get the story straight,' he chomped. 'The story of how all this happened and why. I don't want to complicate things for future generations by telling them the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is an historic occasion and so we should keep it simple.'