Noah's Ark (36 page)

Homecoming had been a decidedly mixed blessing, he considered, but his whole frame rejoiced at being back again with Ali. Being a loyal and generous man, it had not crossed his mind to blame her for the wretched affair of the marmalade kitten;
even though it had been her absurd indulgence towards the children which had now forced him into the role of villainous patriarch. Over the fate of the kitten he had been resolute, and had driven promptly to the research unit where he had – as he said – ‘dealt with’ the animal. Ali, on a sound instinct, had begged him to return with the corpse. In this she had turned out to be quite right.

Hattie at first was not to be coaxed from the darkness of her bedroom where she sobbed under a Holly Hobbie quilt, making wet corkscrews of her wild hair, but she had finally sat up and had thereafter thrown herself with gusto into the macabre ritual of the burial. She had gone on stridently to dictate the kitten’s needs for the after-life with her usual strength of character. Susan needed rose petals, Hattie said, pink rose petals, and a whole box of her favourite Swiss baby cereal. She needed the small fur-fabric mouse impregnated with catmint herb and the singing of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Then, with a final placing of one tin of Whisk as kitten food in the grave, Hattie had turned the sod over the kitten’s lifeless form and had returned to bed with her mind satisfactorily composed.

It was Ali who had seemed most distressed by the animal’s death. She had gone to bed so quiet and white and listless that Noah, in attempting to comfort her until she slept, had rendered himself wide awake. He had then retired to his study for some hours, where Camilla found him after the late-night film, plugged into his earphones and drinking whisky with his feet on his desk. Having been deaf to her entry, he jumped a little when she touched him.

‘Sorry, Noah,’ she said. She smiled at him so exactly as her mother did, appeasingly. ‘I gave you a fright,’ she said. Noah took off the headphones and laid them in his lap. Then he took his feet off the desk.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Sure, I can’t sleep, that’s all. How was the movie?’

‘Where’s the cat?’ Camilla said. ‘Did you take it, or has it escaped? It’s not in the shed.’

‘I took it,’ Noah said. ‘It’s dead. Listen, Camilla, don’t imagine that the episode has left me feeling good. I’ll get the child another kitten if necessary, just exactly like the last. There was no way I could have allowed her to keep that animal – not without compromising all of us. No person of sense imposes a burden of secrecy on a nine-year-old child. The truth will always out.’ Camilla shuddered then, but whether from distress or sudden cold he could not determine.

‘Female ginger tabbies are hard to find,’ she said. ‘And Susan had the smallest speckle of white on the end of her tail. Did you notice? Just like the tiniest spatter of milk. Anyway, won’t a kitten give you asthma?’

‘The drugs get better all the time,’ Noah said dryly. ‘All of them tested on live animals, of course, like our lamented friend.’ Camilla chewed on her lower lip and found it hard to speak.

‘You
did
put her down, didn’t you?’ she said, hating to ask.

‘You tell me what you imagine I did,’ Noah said coldly. ‘You think I nailed it live to a board, or what?’

‘I think you put it down,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Camilla,’ he said. She reached out apologetically and touched his arm.

‘Dear Noah,’ she said. ‘Are you sure that you’re all right? You look so thoughtful. Are you worried about Hattie?’

‘Some,’ Noah said. ‘Hattie has behaved outrageously. I believe that she wants rather serious taking in hand.’

‘Oh go on!’ Camilla said. ‘You were never so headmasterish with me; so puritanical. Mummy tells me you’ve signed up the poor child for that god-awful dump with the prison uniforms. That place where Mr Bobrow sends his child to school. Are you buying her a course in “character building”?’

‘In literacy,’ Noah said. ‘Hopefully in numeracy too. That’s all. But I do happen to believe that Hattie will be less of a nuisance when her abilities are usefully employed and directed.’

‘ “Habits of industry”,’ Camilla said. ‘You’re sweet, Noah. You are old-fashioned. I do love you. I love you most dearly. I have always known you to be the best thing since sliced bread – right from that very first day when you kept gritting your teeth and telling Mummy to fasten her seat belt. Do you remember?’

‘I do not remember gritting my teeth,’ Noah said. ‘But I remember thinking you and your mother were two very beautiful women.’

‘Is Mummy all right?’ Camilla said. ‘I guess,’ Noah said.

‘You don’t give much away, do you?’ she said. ‘Mummy has been a bit funny lately, I’ve noticed. Ever since you went to Bologna. She’s not menopausal or anything, is she?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s as regards your first proposition. I can’t answer for the “or any things”.’

‘God save us all from brainy men,’ Camilla said. ‘You’re telling me I don’t speak properly. I’m sorry. But seriously, what’s the matter with her? Why did she go rushing off to South Africa like that?’

Noah shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s where she comes from.’

‘So?’ Camilla said. ‘We don’t all go running back to where we come from. Only if we’re a bit dotty, like Mr Bobrow. You know. Like the way he embraces Judaism once in every ten years or so. I believe she’s having a crisis; a reversion of some sort.’

‘Sometimes it helps to go back,’ Noah said. ‘She’s okay. She’s just fine, Camilla. Believe me.’

‘This Adderley person she used to know,’ Camilla said persistently. ‘He’s featured in
Vogue
this month wearing paisley elbow patches. God, he isn’t half gorgeous, Noah.’ Noah smiled evasively.

‘He’s too old for you,’ he said. ‘Elbow patches or no.’

‘Me?’
Camilla said. ‘For
me?
But you don’t really mean that about age, I hope. I’m in love, Noah. That’s really what I came in to tell you. I’ve never been in love before. Until now I’ve just had strings of men.’

‘Congratulations,’ Noah said. ‘With whom are you in love?’

‘With Arnie,’ Camilla said.

‘You’re not serious,’ Noah said.

‘Don’t tell him, will you?’ Camilla said. ‘It might alarm him. I wanted to tell you that the whole thing has been entirely my responsibility from start to finish. I seduced him, and with great difficulty. He was laboriously honourable about the whole thing.’

‘The hell he was!’ Noah said.

‘No, truly,’ Camilla said. ‘I threw myself at him most insistently. He kept expressing himself with great propriety on the matter. He seemed to think that you might mind.’

‘I see,’ Noah said. ‘And what did you answer to that overnice and wholly irrelevant qualm?’

‘I told him that you thought I was so immoderately promiscuous anyway that you would be most of all indifferent,’ Camilla said.

‘That’s not true,’ Noah said. ‘I’m never indifferent to your well being.’

‘I know,’ Camilla said. ‘But leaving that aside, it’s all quite different when you’re in love. What I mean is that I had to have him. I know now with absolute certainty that I want Arnie and nobody else. I wish the hours away when he isn’t with me. I have no assurance that he will ever want me anything like as permanently or as exclusively. In fact I think it highly unlikely, but I will struggle not to hold it against him. What else is there for me to do?’

‘Nothing,’ Noah said, marvelling at her clarity and her courage. At that point he got up from his chair and put his glass down on the desk-top. He planted a kiss on her forehead.

‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘What is there that I can say to you? If you’re wanting coffee for two, in the morning, call room service, that’s all.’

‘You’re nice,’ Camilla said. ‘I knew you would be nice. Perhaps we could have fried rose petals instead of coffee? I read a recipe last term for fried rose petals, to be eaten by brides at
midnight. To tell you the truth, Noah, Arnie says we are not to share beds under your roof. Isn’t that decorous? I mean for a promiscuous letch like Arnie. I hope you’re going to bed too, because you look exhausted. If you sit here all night knocking back your duty-free, you will damage your liver, you know.’

Hattie was next to wake. She joined her father in the kitchen wearing nothing but her small bikini pants and a violent marigold T-shirt bearing the words ‘Sunny South Africa’. Seeing Noah there at the table, she climbed on to his knee and sucked cosily at her thumb.

‘Can I get another kitten?’ she said.

‘Sure, baby,’ Noah said with a good grace, because he knew now for absolutely certain that Hattie had won the last battle in the pet war, and that he himself had lost it. ‘I
would
have gone to jail for Susan,’ Hattie said. ‘I would have if I’d had to.’

‘I know,’ Noah said. ‘But they don’t actually put small children in jail, Hat. Their parents are held to be responsible for some of the things which they do.’ Hattie looked quite shocked.

‘Do you mean Mummy would have had to go to jail because of me?’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it, Hat,’ Noah said. ‘Nobody’s going to jail.’

‘Can I really have a kitten?’ she said. ‘Truly?’

‘Yes,’ Noah said. ‘So long as you keep it out of the bedrooms and out of my study.’

‘And can I have my ears pierced as well?’ Hattie said, jumping in hopefully while blessings to the bereaved were being dispensed.

‘No,’ he said firmly.

‘When I’m older?’ Hattie said. ‘Like when I’m ten?’ ‘Like when you’re eighteen maybe,’ Noah said. ‘Some good things are worth waiting for.’

‘Mummy’s had her ears pierced,’ Hattie said. ‘Did you notice?’

‘Sure I noticed,’ Noah said. ‘Do you take me for a blind man?’

‘And do you hate it?’ Hattie said.

‘I love it,’ Noah said truthfully, since – to his own surprise – he had discovered Ali’s pierced ear lobes to be quite irresistibly sexy. ‘I bought you a beautiful book, Hat,’ he said and he reached across the table and handed to her a hardback poetry book for children, liberally endowed with shiny pastel illustrations. He had bought it for her on the day he had gone bearing gifts to the Brainbox and his new born sister.

‘Thanks,’ Hattie said and graciously she leafed through her book, though her heart cried out in disappointment for disco roller-skates like Rebecca’s. ‘I like the pictures,’ she said truthfully, because there
was
a lovely picture of a gypsy lady called ‘Old Meg’ who was all alone on a scary moonlit moor with crags, and she looked sort of wild and brave. Hattie found the picture an inspiration, but she couldn’t quite say why and did not try. ‘Why are the pictures called plates?’ she said. ‘Because they’re not plates, are they? They’re pictures.’

Ali rose at nine-thirty after a restless night of troubled dreams which, having meandered through bullet holes and lifeless cats, had fixed, as usual, upon Camilla. When Ali was troubled it was safe to say that she always dreamed about Camilla. Camilla at three, pulled away from her at cattle trucks or lost on refugee trains; backdrops of barbed wire as in Käthe Kollwitz; Camilla abducted on her way from school; Camilla, trying through tears to pull at parachute strings while aeroplanes flamed in the air. Camilla, as now, disintegrating horribly into particles and atoms before her eyes. Ali woke in terror and ran to the window wanting evidence of Arnie’s hired motor car in the drive, but the car was not there. Shaking, she entered Camilla’s room to find the empty bed. Perhaps because she was not yet wholly awake, she threw back the covers out of old habit and checked the bed for urine stains. There was nothing on the sheet but a small speck of menstrual blood.

‘Camilla!’ she called at the bathroom door, but Camilla was not there. Neither was she in the kitchen where Noah sat reading verse with Hattie.

‘Noah,’ she said shaking visibly, ‘Camilla is not here. Arnie’s car has gone. What’s happened to them?’

‘They’re home, Al,’ Noah said patiently. ‘For heaven sakes I saw them come in last night. They parked by the barn not to wake anyone. It was late. Sit down. Relax.’

‘I had a dream,’ Ali said. ‘Where is she?’

‘Search me,’ Noah said, a little evasively. ‘Taking a bath; taking a walk; asleep maybe. Relax.’ Ali stared at him.

‘She’s in Arnie’s bed!’ she said with sudden violent illumination. ‘That philandering bloody bastard has got her in his bed! I’ll kill him.’ The outburst was not wise before Hattie – a spurned stepsister who jerked violently in Noah’s lap, grinding the bones of her pelvis sharply into his testicles and crashing his teeth together with the upward twitch of her head. Noah winced and responded in kind. He smacked her hard on the tender sunburned flesh of her exposed thigh. Ali drew in her breath and watched transfixed, as the brazen imprint of his hand sprang up fast and telling on the skin. Tears of surprise and shock sprang to Hattie’s eyes. She leaped to her feet, snatching up the poetry book, and lifted it in readiness to bang him on the head with it. Then, instead, she flung herself wildly at Ali.

‘I HATE HIM! HORRIBLE PIG!’ she screamed. ‘ANYWAY, I DIDN’T WANT A STUPID POETRY BOOK! SO! I’LL NEVER TALK TO HIM AGAIN! NEVER! SO!’ She ran from the room and up the stairs, slamming doors fit to wake the dead. Ali’s reproachful glance was enough to make Noah rise up in his own defence, though she said nothing.

‘An honest response, Al,’ he said. ‘An honest response is sometimes necessary. Did you ever get kicked in the balls?’

‘I didn’t see,’ said Ali. ‘But whatever she did you oughtn’t to have hit her.’

‘Pardon me,’ Noah said impatiently, on his four hours’ sleep, ‘but there is room for only one saint and martyr in this house and, baby, it ain’t gonna be me. The child needs constraints. Any child needs constraints. Al, for God’s sake sit down. Calm down. You’re living on your nerves, do you know that?’ Ali was visibly shaking by now, on behalf of her daughter.

‘What I’m telling you,’ Ali said, ‘is don’t hit my children. Don’t you dare ever hit my children.’

‘And how about you not feeding mine on Sugar Puffs?’ Noah said. ‘I don’t “hit children”, Al, for Chrissake. Sometimes I defend myself against violent assault, that’s all. Hey, listen, can I get you some breakfast?’ He made a move to accommodate her at the table, but Ali turned away and began to hack crudely at yesterday’s loaf on the workboard.