Ark Baby (25 page)

‘Not bad, eh,’ agreed Ron Harcourt, when I commented on the size of the thistles. ‘Thank God for phosphates.’

‘Ron managed to wangle two grants for this field, didn’t you, you cunning bastard,’ said Billy Clegg, appearing beside me and thrusting a can of Guatemalan lager at me. ‘A Euro grant not to plant genetic aubergines on it, and a Nature Council one, to stop the thistles becoming endangered weeds.’

‘Nice work if you can get it,’ said Norman, emerging from the Portaloo behind us.

‘Bugger off,’ said Ron Harcourt, and fired his stun-gun for the start of the game.

‘Hey!’ yelled Norman, wrestling with his machine. ‘Wait for me, guys!’

Within seconds, the air was filled with the roar of a hundred strimmers. The men charged up and down the field with their excitable appliances – state-of-the-art, in Norman’s case – thistledown flying all over the place, little thistle-thorns whizzing through the air at hectic speed. The women, standing in rows by the thorn hedge, jeered and whooped and blew the men kisses, swigging Buck’s Fizz out of plastic cups.

Then I spotted the twins.

They were jumping up and down by the electricity generator.

‘Get a move on, Dad!’ they were yelling. You couldn’t call them beautiful, I thought, in any classical sense. Their eyes were too close together, and they had Abbie’s slightly bony, tilted pelvis – but nevertheless there was something about the two of them that drove Sigmund wild. I wasn’t the only bloke looking in their direction. They must give off some undetectable animal scent, I thought. A sort of musk. Watching them, my resolve kept stiffening. Then they looked up and saw me, too, and smiled invitingly. Hey, Buck, I thought. Now’s your moment, mate. I was just wandering nonchalantly over in their direction when Mrs Clegg tapped me on the shoulder.

‘About my foal,’ she said. Talk about bad timing, missis, I thought.

When I’d countered all her accusations, her son crashed into
me with three pints of beer and in the imbroglio I lost sight of Rose and Blanche. Then a huge cheer went up: the last thistle had been mown down.

‘And the judges have decided,’ farted a megaphoned voice across the field, ‘that the winner of the year’s strimmer event, and therefore this year’s Thistle Champion, is Mr Tom Boggs!’

There was another huge cheer, and some honking of car-horns. Tom Boggs stood on the podium and waved, then burst open a bottle of champagne, slewing everyone near him with froth. I recognised him; he was the young bloke who ran the Texaco garage. The field was suddenly swarming with people carrying candy-floss and talking into their mobiles. After wandering about trying to catch sight of the girls again, I finally gave up and retreated to the beer tent.

‘It’s a cheap way of getting my field mown,’ Harcourt confided. He’d been getting quietly sozzled all afternoon. ‘My dad did the same thing. And his dad before him. That’s tradition for you.’

‘That Tom Boggs’ great-great grandfather was a champion, too,’ mused Billy Tobash. ‘Back in the old days. It runs in his family.’

Charlie Peat-Hove said nothing, as usual, but spat on the floor. It could’ve meant anything. On the way back, I had to stop off at Ned Morpiton’s farm, to see to some poisoned Lord Chief Justices, and give his new BSE-free moo-cows the once-over; by the time I drove up the high street, and turned into Crawpy Street, it was evening. I kept thinking about Rose and Blanche Ball. The look they’d given me.

Then I caught my breath. Christ! There they were, just standing there! In the street. The two of them, at the bus stop, right opposite my front door!

Hey!
Yes!

It was a chilly evening, for spring; they were standing in the bus shelter smoking, and kicking at old blobs of dried-up chewing-gum with their elasticated trainers. Like they were waiting for a bus, but for me, too. Whichever came first.

I drove up slowly.

‘Like a kerb-crawler,’ they said to me later.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Rose, as my window wound down.

‘Wherever you’re going,’ I told them. I gave them my sexy grin.

‘What are we waiting for then?’ asked Blanche. ‘Let’s go to a club.’

They were dressed in black, with fake jewels twinkling, and wearing the bold red lipstick, dramatic eye-shadow and vicious nail-extensions that I soon learned were their night-wear hallmark. They were temptation incarnate. I opened the doors of the Nuance for them, and gave them one of my Elvis looks, which they missed because they were too busy settling themselves on the back seat, where they sank fragrantly into the soft leather. I say fragrantly, but actually they’d overdone the perfume a bit and once we were on the road I had to keep the window open to prevent myself from asphyxiating. Like good girls, they’d stubbed out their fags first.

‘We saw you at the Thistle Festival,’ said Rose.

‘In the old days, it was like an initiation ceremony,’ said Blanche.

‘To prove you were a man,’ said Rose.

‘You want proof, girls,’ I said, glancing at them in the mirror, ‘I’ll give you proof.’

I thought that was quite a witty thing to say.

On the journey to Hunchburgh we talked about their genealogy module, and their mum’s loopy idea about some television producer called Oscar or Jack arriving on her doorstep. Then they wanted me to explain how birds digest hard seeds, and why there were so many pet monkeys and apes in the cities, but hardly any in the country.

‘It’s a fashion thing, I reckon,’ I told them. ‘I used to get loads of them in my surgery back in Tooting Bec’

‘You had a surgery in Tooting Bee? In London?’

‘Yup.’

‘Why did you leave?’

Bugger, I thought, remembering Giselle the macaque and Mrs Mann.

‘Well?’

‘Because I had a sixth sense that, if I came to Thunder Spit, I might meet the two most desirable girls in the whole country.’

They liked that, and giggled.

‘And you know something?’ I said. ‘My sixth sense wasn’t wrong.’

They were good dancers. They were exhibitionists. There are plenty of starers in Hunchburgh. Male and female: people who prefer to watch, and comment. As they whirled about under the big glitter-ball, and waggled their peachy arses, I felt special. Special, that everyone was staring, the blokes with admiration and lust, the girls with criticism and envy. The twins were dancing for me, and I felt like a million Euros.

Later, I said, ‘Come to my place.’

‘Both of us?’ suggested Rose, running her red nails up my right thigh.

‘Together?’ whispered Blanche, nibbling at the lobe of my left ear.

‘Both of you,’ I said. ‘Together.’

Because as well as feeling a million Euros, I felt twelve metres tall and three metres wide.

And Sigmund felt thirty-five centimetres long.

I felt small and alone. It was October on our herring-shaped peninsula, and the freezing air crackled with salt. Under a thin sun, slate roofs shone bright with hoar-frost, and the silhouettes of trees stood bare and stark against the churning seascape. Never had Thunder Spit looked colder, or bleaker, and in my heart, a part of me was glad to leave.

‘God has cursed you!’ Parson Phelps called after me as the silent Mr Peat-Hove flicked his whip and my horse and cart trundled off along the slippery shingle path. ‘You can never atone! Begone! Abandon yourself to that cursed metropolis, where the corruption is so thick that you can scrape it off the walls!’

My father appeared to have forgotten that it was his own idea – and God’s – that I should go to Hunchburgh in the first place. There was no pleasing him, I thought dismally, as my father’s ranting died in the distance. I pulled my wool hat down over my ears, and shivered. In my hand, I clasped the linen bag that contained my most treasured possessions: my Bible, Herman’s
Crustacea
and Hanker’s
World History
, four dried gourds from my mother’s grave, the whelk shell Tommy Boggs had given me as a leaving present, a fish-knife from his mother, and my mermaid’s purse.

‘Goodbye, dear Father,’ I whispered under my breath, as the gnarled trees of the peninsula gave way to mainland shrubs.

My new life had begun.

* * *

What I knew of cities amounted to what my father had chosen to relay to me, namely, that they are dens of vice; that they are crawling with women of ill-repute who are receptacles for foulness, and bear infants unblessed by God; that there is neither neighbourly nor brotherly love; that there are beggars in the street with suppurating sores that can never be healed.

My train from Judlow arrived in Hunchburgh, and tipped me out on to thronged streets, where I saw at once what my father had failed to tell me: that there were more people in the world than I had ever imagined. It was market day, and the centre of the city was bustling; a million chattering voices filled the air; the cries of the stall-holders, the shrieking laughter of women, the plaintive whimpers of beggar children thrusting out grubby palms for halfpennies. I wandered through the market, past coffee-stalls and mountains of oysters, butchers’ carts and fruit-stalls. The place was buzzing and teeming with humanity – and yet these folk represented just a tiny fraction of the human population of the world! I suddenly felt small and insignificant, and invisible, as I wandered the cobbled streets in search of the Seminary. Nobody stared at me in the way they did in Thunder Spit and Judlow, or laughed at my gait; they were too busy, I soon realised, just going about their business. I saw a man with a painted face, juggling apples, and spotted a young urchin, a pickpocket, jostling the crowd who watched. By the wall of a church, I also spied a huddle of women guzzling gin and showing their bloomers to whomsoever cared to look; heeding my father’s warnings, I buttoned my frock-coat tighter and hastened my step, my head whirling with light and sound. O strange and bright and frightening new world! Yet my heart lifted in hope. For here, surely, I could begin life anew!

I found the Seminary near the heart of the city, a red-brick rectangle, curlicued at the corners, and ringed with threatening holly trees, their glinting leaf-spikes flashing in the autumn sun like knives. When I saw the grandeur of the building and its big black shiny doors, I understood why my father had once dreamed that I should come here. For who could attack God,
when He was housed in such a formidable fortress? After the chaos of the market, I entered the building with relief, and made my way along echoing tiled corridors to the Abbot’s office. I knocked hesitantly on his door.

‘Come in,’ called a loud, fruity voice. I entered. The room was lined with books and smelt of tobacco.

He was a big red-faced man, with a handshake that nearly lifted me from the ground.

‘Welcome to the Seminary, Tobias,’ he said. ‘Your fame goes before you.’

I quailed. What had he heard? Had my father written to him, telling him I was cursed by the Devil? I would not have been surprised.

But my fame turned out to be of a more quotidian nature, and relayed to the Abbot by Mrs Tobash’s cousin, a former Thunder Spitter who was now married to his own cousin’s niece. ‘They tell me,’ said the Abbot, ‘that you’ve been reading aloud in church in Thunder Spit since you were five years old, and can do tongue-twisters like the Devil himself!’

I breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled. ‘It’s true,’ I said.

‘Well?’ he said, folding his arms.

‘Miss Mosh mashes some mish-mash,’ I ventured, and he applauded.

‘Betty Botter bought some butter,’ I went on. ‘But, she said, this butter’s bitter! If I put it in my batter, it’ll make my batter bitter! So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and she put it in her batter and it made her batter better!’

‘You’ll go far,’ pronounced the Abbot, slapping a meaty hand on his tattered Bible. ‘Now, I’ve found just the landlady for you. Her name is Mrs Fooney and she is a fine woman, with a very large – er, a large heart,’ he said, indicating the curve of a female bosom. I blushed. ‘In the meantime, let me introduce you to your fellow students.’

The students were at luncheon, and the refectory echoed with the voices of five dozen noisy conversations. The Abbot led me to a table.

‘This is Farthingale,’ he said, indicating a weasel-faced youth who was shovelling boiled beans into his mouth with great speed. Farthingale looked up from his plate.

‘And, Farthingale, this is Tobias Phelps,’ said the Abbot. ‘I want you to take him under your wing. He is the son of a parson who attended this very seminary many years ago. Also has a knack with tongue-twisters. Did Betty Botter for me in my office. Most impressive.’

Farthingale gave me what looked more like a smirk than a welcoming smile, and exchanged a glance with a fellow student sitting next to him. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Betty,’ he said. ‘Serve yourself to beans.’ And he jerked his head in the direction of a metal pot.

‘That’s the stuff!’ said the Abbot, and slapped Farthingale on the back with a hearty laugh. Then he turned to leave, clasping his Bible in his hand like a brick he was going to plant somewhere. ‘Come to my office after lunch, Phelps,’ he said. ‘Farthingale will make the rest of the introductions.’

‘Well, Betty,’ said Farthingale, when the Abbot was out of sight. ‘Impressed the Abbot already, have we? There’s a good boy. Come and meet the new student, Popple,’ he said to his neighbour, a podgy lad with crooked teeth. ‘His name’s Betty Botter.’

And so it was that Betty became my nickname – or rather one of them. My fellow seminarians had smelt meat. During the course of that meal, during which I made the acquaintances of Popple, Ganney, Hicks, McGrath and other seminarians, I was offered further appellations: Fartybockers, and Hobble-de-Hoy among them. I chewed on my beans, and said as little as possible. I had entered this building full of hope – but now, with a lurching feeling of recognition, I recalled my lonely days at school, when I was taunted by the other boys, or played alone in the playground.

‘So what brings you here, Betty?’ asked Ganney.

‘The Church is my vocation,’ I mumbled fearfully.

They all laughed like drains at that. By the end of the meal,
Farthingale, Popple, and Ganney had elected themselves my persecutors.