Boating for Beginners (19 page)

As midnight struck they filed out one by one, and Noah turned out all the lights. Ham was pushing a one-armed bandit on castors because he said he didn't want to waste all his loose change. The ark lay waiting; and when everyone was safely inside, Noah shut the door.

How do you say goodbye with some grace? Gloria didn't know. She had always believed her world would go on being there. Getting up in the morning made her happy; she greeted life like an old friend and if, like an old friend, she sometimes hated it and wanted to kick it, that was only an excess, not a lack, of feeling. And now it was all going to be taken away and she didn't have a say in the matter. It would be like drinking hemlock, she thought, watching the world drown, watching it go numb and disappear bit by bit.

She stood on her favourite hill and looked down across the landscape. It was quiet and fertile, with the river moving in a snake-tail down the valley. She had seen it snow once, and got up early to catch the fields while they were still covered and perfect. At dawn she had waited until the sun came up, first in bars that slatted the snow and afterwards in a huge expanse of lit-up white. Then, while she watched, a fox ran out, brush high, scenting the wind and pitting the field with trailing paws. She was glad he had got there first, even before the birds.

She wondered about her memory. Would it be less painful if she could remember nothing? Was most pain a product of memory? She set herself, then, to think forward, to think of ways to survive. It must be possible. She and the others needn't give up. They could find something between them. Doris, who always talked about death, wasn't looking forward to it, and Marlene was positively furious. Given the will no flood myth would destroy them. Gloria loved the world; and many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. She walked back to the hotel and went in to breakfast to meet the rest who were sitting at a circular table with a mound of croissants in the middle. She slid into her place and started to spread marmalade.

'How can you think of eating at a time like this?' demanded Doris.

'I'm not going to get many more chances to eat croissants, am I? Even if we survive to build a new world it's going to be ages before we can invent them again. That's one of the things about this whole business that really makes me cross. I don't want to spend the rest of my adult life hoeing turnips with poxy tools and having no books to read.'

'It's better than being dead, though, isn't it?' asked Marlene.

'I don't know if it is or not,' interrupted Desi. 'All we'll have to think about is how the world used to be and how it isn't any more. I think that will drive me crazy.'

'You don't know what's going to be left,' insisted Marlene. 'We might find all kinds of things left over, a bit damp probably, but they'll dry. We have to make some effort, not just sit here being gloomy.'

'I feel like I'm at the Last Supper,' moaned Doris.

The orange demon slid out from underneath the croissant plate, glowing very bright. He nipped Doris' arm.

'Just let's get this straight. I'm the one who can time travel and jump ahead of the plot, not you. You can't be at the last supper because we're nowhere near there chronologically. You've got thousands of years to go before you can get into that plot. We've got the Flight from Israel, Daniel in the Lions' Den, all the prophets and a lot of trouble in some place called Bethlehem, to say nothing of the Greeks and the Romans and the Battle of Salamis — which reminds me, Persia doesn't exist yet. And there's another reason,' the creature continued as Doris was about to protest. 'You can't be at the Last Supper because it's breakfast time. How can you hope to break into chronological leaps when you don't even recognise what meal you're eating?'

'Look here,' said Doris, really miffed. 'You wouldn't like to have my job. I always end up playing bit parts, so if I want to indulge myself in a bit of time travel at the end of somebody's book I'm going to do it. Besides, it was a good line and no one would have noticed it if you hadn't butted in.'

Across from her table were a couple of tourists who wanted to know if it often rained so hard in these parts.

'No,' said Desi gently. 'It never has before and it probably won't again.'

They looked rather mystified by her answer and very soon left the room.

Doris continued to glare at the orange demon, who matched the marmalade nicely and knew it. 'Have you got your stores ready?' he asked. 'Plenty of beans, I hope.'

'We've done all that,' replied Gloria, 'but we don't feel too optimistic about our chances. There's a gale blowing and it's cold.'

'Do your best,' soothed the demon. 'Now, hadn't you better go up into the attic? People are going to start drowning soon; you don't want to go before you've even tried, do you?'

'What about you?' Doris wanted to know. 'Where are you off to? Somewhere exotic I'll bet; some book about the inner life. You're not going to hang around in a damp attic, are you?'

'No,' agreed the demon. 'I'm not. I've done what I can for you, and now I have to go and do it for someone else. There's an Irish poet - oh, light years away from here — who needs to be jolted out of reveries about fairy islands and mist. That's where I'm going. Goodbye,' and the creature slipped round the marmalade jar and was gone.

'Elementals,' spat Doris. 'I hate elementals. They're always so superior, always think they can save the world just because they have a way with words. I'm glad it's gone.'

For a moment no one spoke, then they all chattered at once in a flurry of trivial conversation about horses and dogs.

'We'd better move,' said Desi, standing up. 'My feet are wet.'

The hotel was nine stories high, and by later afternoon the waters had reached the seventh. Doris spent most of her time leaning out of the window with a fishing net and a bill hook, catching anything useful. She'd already hooked a whole smoked salmon, various fruits and a couple of garden spades. 'We might need these for our new world,' she explained, hauling them in through the window. 'I don't want to be down on my hands and knees digging like a dog, especially not with rheumatism.'

Desi was wondering about her mother, whose tower would more or less be waterlogged by now. She imagined her clutching her almanac and log table in a welter of uncertainty. It's one thing to be confused in the world's eyes, but to be confused in your own eyes is where the problem starts. All her equilibrium would be floating away along with her husband's rockery. 'If that occurs to her,' thought Desi, 'she'll die happy.'

'Oh yes,' Doris was continuing to whoever was listening, 'before I became an organic philosopher, in the days when I was married, I used to do a lot of fishing. I found it calmed me down. One year I won a prize for landing the biggest swordfish in Marblehead. We painted its bill and hung it up in the living room. I was very proud, but I think that's what killed Samuel, my second husband. He decided to dress up as a swordfish once, when we'd been invited to a fancy-dress party; thought it would make me laugh. Well it did until I realised he was stone dead inside it. He'd suffocated and he hadn't fallen over because the costume was papier-mache and so it held him upright. Only when I said we'd best be going home and he didn't move did I notice something was wrong. And when we got him out and had him examined it turned out he must have been dead since just after the Martini and olives. To think I'd been talking to a corpse all that time. Makes you wonder about yourself, doesn't it? I never went fishing much after that, I didn't feel it was respectful; but I buried him with the swordfish bill, even though I would have liked to have kept it.' 'That's a very moving story,' murmured Marlene...

On board ship things were also very moving. The animals were terrified and rioting and Bunny was convinced that a python had hidden itself in her cabin. She had gone to feed the reptiles and found only one python, which made her suspicious. She peeped in and offered live mice and warm sparrows, but the other python didn't show up. Then back in her cabin, as she was doing her hair, she heard what she described to Noah as a 'slithery noise'.

'What the hell is a «slithery» noise?'

'It's the kind of noise that pythons make,' she said tearfully.

'And how would you know? I suppose you've been flooded loads of times in your life, haven't you? I suppose you've travelled on scores of arks full of animals, so you'd easily recognise a python.' Noah was cruel, because love's young dream seemed a bit thin every now and again.

'I've been on safari,' replied Bunny with dignity. 'I have seen the creatures of the world in their natural habitat and I have certainly heard the slither of pythons before now.'

'You wouldn't know a python if it got up and bit you.' (At this Bunny gave a little shriek.) 'You wouldn't know a python from a dressing-gown cord.'

'I don't care what you say, there's only one python in that cage and there's a slithery noise in my room.'

Noah strode over to the snake cage and lifted the lid. True, he could only see one python. 'What have you tempted it with?' he asked, and Bunny told him. 'Well why not try a rabbit? They like rabbits, you know.'

Bunny picked up a can of linseed oil that happened to be lying by her right hand and threw it at Noah's shiny head. It was a direct hit and the father of the multitudes-to-be collapsed in a heap in front of the snake cage, a large egg-like lump forming on his small egg-like head.

'Oh, what have I done?' wailed Bunny; then to herself, 'I don't care,' and she flounced out to ask Ham if he wouldn't mind going into her cabin to inspect a slithery noise.

When Noah came to, he considered the incident and decided to put it down to marital nerves. Besides, having a python apparently missing on their first day was a bit worrying. They'd have to talk about it over supper.

'Did you pack those bits of gopher wood I told you about?' Noah asked Japeth, 'because if you didn't...'

'They're here, don't worry; but what do you want bits of old gopher wood for?'

'I'm going to plant them on the top of Mount Ararat when we get off this crazy ship so that future generations can discover them, and then they'll think this thing really happened the way I've told it. I don't want them digging up bits of old fibre-glass and speculating on the validity of the Lord's word. We have to inspire confidence.'

'You're clever, Dad,' admired Japeth. 'You think of everything.'

'It's my job, son. I'm just doing my job.' There was a sudden crash and a lurch and the sound of Bunny screaming in the bathroom, and the ark began to float.

Noah rushed to the porthole and looked out. 'We're off,' he cried. 'The show's on the road. This water must be half a mile high. I can't see the house at all now.' It wasn't half a mile high but it was deep, and up in the heavens the Great One was celebrating.

'No more hymns tonight, you lot,' he said benignly to the angels. 'Go and play football or something. This is a holiday.'

'I think this calls for a drink,' said Noah, smiling. 'Here's to our trip.'

Back in the hotel, the flood had reached the ninth floor and the girls were getting their canoes out, though Doris was still busy adding to their pile of useful things.

'How do you feel about your inner life, Gloria?' asked Marlene.

'I feel I can continue it after the flood,' replied Gloria evenly. 'I can think, I can string sentences together and I hope one day to manage a whole paragraph without losing my theme.'

'Well, I look forward to your moment of continuous prose,' said Marlene in a heartfelt and generous fashion. 'At least you can get on with your projects. My cellulite's going to take over my whole body. I'll be like a piece of discarded orange peel and then I'll get hairy because I've only got enough razors to last a year.'

'Two years,' said Gloria, smiling. 'I packed some too, just to show you that I really do care.'

'You're an angel,' cried Marlene, hugging her. 'In two years I might have reinvented the razor.'

'There's someone out here,' shouted Doris, 'in either a tent or a wedding dress, but I can't tell which.'

The others rushed across to the window and Gloria recognised her mother. 'Hook her in, Doris,' she cried, 'it's my mother,' and Doris swung out with the bill hook and caught Mrs Munde as she swirled past.

'Mother, what are you doing and why are you wearing a wedding dress?'

'I tried to get in touch with you, but I couldn't find you,' shouted Mrs Munde above the sound of the rain. 'A very nice man asked me to marry him and I said yes, what with you being grown up and having a start in films and me only having one arm and not being able to work as a cook. We had the ceremony today, hut during the reception the rain poured in and my wedding cake floated away. My husband wasn't going to let that happen, not when we hadn't even had a slice, so he swam after it, and that's the last I saw of him. Oh I just want to die, but I can't because this dress keeps me afloat. Why's it got so wet all of a sudden? It never used to be like this in August.'