Boating for Beginners (20 page)

'Mother, the Lord's flooding the world because he says we're all wicked.' Gloria opted for the simple explanation. 'Noah's floating off in that ark-thing full of animals and we're doing our best to survive.'

'I don't believe a word of it!' yelled Mrs Munde. 'It's just a freak of nature, that's all.' At that moment a sudden gust of wind tore the part of the dress attached to Doris' bill hook and Mrs Munde was swept away into the darkening tide.

'Good luck, mother,' shouted Gloria as loudly as she could.

'I wonder if she'll survive,' mused Marlene.

'I wouldn't be at all surprised,' said Gloria gloomily. 'I don't think my mother's prepared to be extinct just yet. She still has that look about her.'

'There's a whole crowd of people coming past now,' said Doris excitedly. 'They're wearing badges and hats. Looks like Noah's flooded a conference.'

The serious people floated past, bewildered.

'Look, look!' Gloria pointed though she could hardly believe it. 'It's Northrop Frye.'

'I'm getting there, I'm getting there,' she called as he came within earshot. 'I read your book and it changed my life.' But he was lost to her in the night and she didn't know if he'd heard. 'Northrop Frye,' she murmured to herself. 'If I die now I'll die happy.'

'Look out,' said Doris again. 'Here's your ma's wedding cake. We'll have that,' and swinging skilfully with her net she landed it clean onto the attic floor. 'It won't keep, but we can have some to start with. I'm going to shut the window now, otherwise it'll start pouring in and we'll be out there ourselves soon enough. Who's going to light the stove and make a cup of coffee?'

'I will,' offered Marlene. 'Oh, coffee. What a terrible goodbye this is going to be,' and she sniffed the aroma of beans as she ground them. 'My mother always smelt of coffee beans. I didn't like her but she smelt lovely. You expect mothers to smell of something domestic, don't you? I don't mean lavatory cleaner or brussel sprouts but coffee or fruit or hot ironing.'

'Hot ironing?' chorused the others, unable to fix this image.

'Well, perhaps not,' agreed Marlene. 'I wonder how they're doing on the ship? I hope they've forgotten something crucial.'

Marlene's wish was granted. Noah had forgotten to charge up the generator and the whole boat was plunged into darkness as soon as the light failed. That meant no 'Saturday Night Theatre' because he'd said they wouldn't need batteries. Bunny was the only one who didn't care. She'd brought candles and she thought they were more romantic anyway. She snuggled up to Noah and asked him if he'd like her to recite one of her novels. She knew all two thousand five hundred of them off by heart.

'Suppose I start with the first one and we just work through? I can do one each evening after supper.'

That'll be nice,' said Noah faintly.

'Yes it will, won't it?' cooed Bunny. 'There's nothing like a good book.'

Noah thought of the rest of his life, and his sons, and he comforted himself with the taste of that vineyard he was going to plant. Then he remembered the python and a faint gleam of hope irradiated his gloomy bosom.

'Perhaps she had heard a slithery noise under her pillow after all-----'

The waters increased and bore up the ark, and the girls in the attic reckoned they'd better be getting into their waterproofs.

'Last cup of coffee?' suggested Marlene.

As they sat around the stove they couldn't help wondering if they'd see each other again. 'Have we all got our lifebelts?' said Gloria.

They checked and they had. Doris held up her cup. 'Here's to the future — a world of fridge-freezers and poetry.'

'And Northrop Frye,' put in Gloria.

'And anti-cellulite cream and disposable razors,' cheered Marlene.

'And the day we rediscover champagne,' said Desi. They clinked their cups together and smiled. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. ...

'Let's cut the cake,' Gloria picked up a knife, 'and celebrate.'

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And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

Gardener was very excited. He was to accompany Soames to Ararat to look for the remains of Noah's ark. Soames felt sure it was there and had got all the right sponsorship from all the right foundations. As they set off Gardener asked Soames if he believed in the Bible.

'I think I do, my boy, I think I do,' and then he didn't say anything else for the whole of the journey except to ask Gardener to pass the salt. When they arrived the sun beat down, and the trek to the top of the mountain was made worse by a sick donkey and sly guides...

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his
   
i kind, every bird of every son.

'If it did happen,' began Gardener by way of conversation, 'it must have been awful, all those smelly animals and all that pitch.'

And all flesh died that moved upon the earth...

All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

'Do you think it really would have killed everyone?' persisted Gardener. 'If it happened at all, I mean?' Soames didn't answer and the patient Gardener finally lost his temper. 'Look here, I know I'm just a junior and jolly grateful to be here, but you haven't spoken to me for three weeks.'

'I'm a man of few words,' replied Soames simply.

Savagely Gardener took out a liquorice stick and chewed on it. He wished he were chewing Soames' hat. He tried to imagine what life must have been like for those people, primitive to start with, but hopelessly impoverished afterwards. He thought of them sitting round their tiny fire perhaps telling one another stories. And he thought of all the ones who must have drowned. There had been a flood around that time, but Gardener didn't think it had much to do with God.

That afternoon they reached the summit and camped for the night. Soames wanted to read and Gardener decided against further conversation. Really, he was a rum chap. You'd expect a bit of encouragement from a famous man..

And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made… ... he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;

But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth….

And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;

And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.

'Damn good story,' thought Gardener as he drank his coffee. Absolutely plausible once you started to go along with it. He wondered what they'd find in the days that followed.

Soames was the first to find the gopher wood that showed clear signs of ancient wet-rot. It was the first time that Gardener had seen Soames look pleased. He immediately telexed his university, and all the papers jumped up and down and all the Bible scholars said, 'We told you so' and all the born-again believers said, 'Praise the Lord.' Gardener was fed up — he was just a skivvy — and so he decided to go off the next day and dig around by himself...

And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

I do set my bow in the cloud ...

'This is odd,' thought Gardener to himself as he extricated it from the earth. 'It looks exactly like the barrel of a one-armed bandit.' (Gardener knew about such things because his father had serviced them at funfairs.) How had it got here? And why was it covered in ante-diluvian slime? He put it to one side and continued. The next thing he found was a message in a bottle. It was written on parchment he guessed, and therefore the bottle would have to be skilfully broken in order to get it out.

He rushed back to Soames who was still packing the gopher wood. Soames examined it, then carelessly broke open the bottle. He deciphered the writing. ' «Hey girls, I made it,»' he read slowly, '»love D ...» D what?' Here he faltered. 'Dorcas?' Gardener craned his neck to read it, then he cleared his throat. 'With respect, sir, it looks like Doris.'

Soames turned on him, his face purple with rage. 'Don't joke with me. You did this, didn't you? Some kind of revenge, eh? I know your type. What kind of a cheap hoax is this?' and he tore up the parchment and threw the bottle over the mountainside. 'Doris! What kind of a name is Doris? If you want to joke, show some flair,' and he stomped into his tent, leaving Gardener nonplussed. It was the longest sentence Soames had spoken, but that didn't help.

The next day Gardener found what looked like an ancient bottle dump — in fact it looked like a French farmer's back yard. Gardener ignored it. It was all a bad dream..

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

And he drank of the wine, and was drunken...

The morning after, Gardener asked to be sent home. He didn't say why. In fact he'd found a book, clearly thousands of years old, bound in a tough animal skin unlike anything Gardener had come across before. As he turned the brittle pages — only a few left and most of them badly discoloured — he had the horrible feeling that his mind had gone. He could read Hebrew, he could read Sanscrit, he could read hieroglyphs and had done so accurately many times before. But what he was reading now, while in a recognisable combination of languages, was quite ridiculous. If he hadn't known better he would have said it was part of a romantic novel; and in the bit he had, the heroine was in the kitchen whipping up a mushroom soufflé.

He kept the book. He still has it, and friends admire it as a clever joke and roar with laughter when he starts to translate it. 'Gardener,' they say to one another. 'What a sense of humour.'

But for Gardener himself as he grows older and more esteemed the question comes back and back. 'Where did it come from? Who wrote it? And Doris, who was she?' And he answers himself time and time again as he walks down English lanes watching the stars: 'God knows,' he says. 'God knows!'