Ark Baby (30 page)

‘Christ Almighty!’

‘Buck?’ called Abbie faintly from the other room. ‘With you in a mo!’

‘It’s nothing,’ I murmured.

But it wasn’t nothing. The sketch wasn’t just any monkey. It was my towel-holder. No mistaking it. Only in the picture, he was minus the blue glass eyes and complete with male genitalia. The same humanoid stance, caused by the unusual slant of the pelvic girdle. The same fragile-looking ears, the same hair distribution, the same –

Below it, Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie had written: ‘
The Gentleman Monkey, last remaining specimen of its species, captured in Mogador in 1843, and transferred from the Jardins Zoologique de Mogador to Britain in the zoological research vessel, the
Ark,
in 1845
.’

Well, I’ll be buggered, I thought.

‘Buck, where d’you want these pillow-cases?’ called Abbie. But I didn’t answer. By now I was riveted. I kept reading. And I kept turning back to the page with the monkey picture. I barely noticed Abbie leaving, and the twins had to shriek at me for their Ovaltine.

While they lay in bed all day, sleeping or working on their chart, I sat downstairs on the settee, poring over Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie’s document. The ink was faded in a lot of places, and barely legible, but by the end of the day, I’d read the whole seventy pages. It was clearly written by a madman. Its main thesis – an absurdly childish and unscientific conjecture concerning the monkey that had turned up in the Balls’ attic – appeared to be inspired by jealousy of Charles Darwin. I reckoned that the author, Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie, probably
had
been a taxidermist of some sort, as he claimed. There was no question that he had a sound grasp of taxonomy, and if the specimens in the Balls’
attic were his own work, he was clearly an expert. But like many taxidermists, he appeared to be a failed zoologist, and very keen to make his own impact in zoological circles.

It was entertaining stuff, in its way. Complete rubbish, of course.

The thesis itself could be dismissed. But the sketch of the monkey got my brain racing. My appetite was whetted. I needed to know more about this creature. Urgently. Because if Scrapie’s claims that the monkey was extinct were true then it might well be worth a lot of money.

A
lot
of money.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind all day, and it was still rattling about in my head when I strolled into the pub that night.

Norman Ball saluted me as I entered.

‘Hail the conquering hero, mate! What d’you make of the news? You must be getting pretty excited, with two of them on your hands.’ He gave a big wink.

‘What news?’

‘You haven’t heard?’ laughed Ron Tobash.

‘It’s been on all the news bulletins since five o’clock,’ said Tony Mulvey.

‘What has? Spit it out!’

‘There’s a woman in Glasgow who says she’s pregnant,’ announced Norman triumphantly, handing me a beer. ‘Cheers, mate!’

It took me a while to absorb this. ‘What, naturally? Not from the Egg Bank, before the bomb?’

‘No. It’s too recent for that.’ His eyes were bright with excitement. ‘See for yourself, mate.’ And he flicked on the news.

The TV news confirmed what the blokes said about the woman in Glasgow. But went further. The number of pregnant women had now risen from one to –

‘
Seven thousand
? What, just in a couple of hours?’ shouted Ron Harcourt. We all gawped at the screen.

‘Nice ONE!’ exclaimed Norman. ‘Quite a turn-up for the
books, eh? I always said the British were survivors!’ He pulled out a tissue from the pocket of his cardigan, and unashamedly wiped away a tear. ‘The miracle of life, Buck! Just think! We’ll be hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet again!’

The programme on the news channel showed a map of Britain. Concentric circles were emanating from Glasgow, where the first pregnancy had been reported; it seemed that subsequent reports of pregnancy were coming from areas to the north, south, east and west of the city.

‘Look!’ cried Ron Harcourt, pointing at the animated graphic. ‘It’s reached past Hunchburgh! Yo!’

Various scientists, church leaders, and politicians were discussing the reports excitedly. It was a rebirth, they agreed. A triumph. We could begin to plan for the future again.

‘We always maintained that it was just a blip,’ said a politician smugly.

Only one man – a washed-out-looking academic type with a stammer – was expressing doubts.

‘Where’s the p-p-p-p-proof?’ he kept saying. ‘Do we have one case that’s actually corroborated by m-m-m-m-medical evidence?’ I’d heard him before on the radio. He was some kind of psychologist.

‘Seven thousand home pregnancy-testing kits can’t be wrong!’ said a woman.

‘C-c-c-c-can’t they?’ mustered the weedy man. ‘And do we know that they all took home p-p-p-p-pregnancy tests? I don’t think we d-d-d-do. We are t-t-t-t-talking about seven thousand w-w-w-w-women. I don’t think there are that many p-p-p-p-p-pregnancy t-t-t-t-testing k-k-k-k-k-kits in the c-c-c-c-country!’

‘Shame on you!’ yelled Norman, red in the face with indignation.

The studio audience and the Stoned Crow all agreed with him. There were boos, and calls of ‘Get him off the show!’ and ‘How dare he!’.

‘The last thing we need is more gloom and doom,’ agreed the
religious man. ‘I say we fall on our knees and give thanks unto the Lord for this, folks!’

But the weedy psychologist was quite pathetically persistent. ‘I don’t like to put a d-d-d-d-damper on the euphoria that’s sweeping the n-n-n-n-n-nation. Believe me. I want my wife to have a b-b-b-b-b-baby as much as the next m-m-m-m-man. But we should bear in mind that these k-k-k-k-kits are easily tampered with. And that there’s a very b-b-b-b-big reward being offered here.’

‘Get him off!’ yelled Tony Morpiton.

‘There may be some w-w-w-w-wishful thinking going on,’ he was saying, but his stammers were being drowned out by a chorus of boos.

‘What a d-d-d-d-dog-in-the-manger!’ said Billy Clegg indignantly. ‘He’s suggesting that they’re inventing their p-p-p-p-p-pregnancies just for the money!’

Everyone laughed.

‘But you must admit it
is
pretty odd,’ I said. ‘Everyone suddenly getting p-p-p-p-pregnant all at once.’

‘It’s not everybody,’ said Norman. ‘Just look at the m-m-m-m-map!’ It’s Glasgow! It’s starting in G-G-G-G-Glasgow, and spreading outwards. Anyway, it’s no odder than conceptions just stopping with the M-M-M-M-Millennium.’

I had to admit he had a point.

‘Rule Britannia!’ shouted Norman. And began to sing. Soon we had all joined in. It made you feel quite patriotic, the whole thing. Blokes together.

‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!’ we sang, lurching about, our arms around one another’s shoulders. ‘B-B-B-B-B-Britons never never never shall be slaves!’

It was that night, when I staggered home from the Crow, that the twins broke their news to me. They were sitting up in bed surrounded by party balloons, drinking more Ovaltine through novelty straws.

‘Buck, we’re pregnant.’

‘Congratulations, girls,’ I said. They were kidding, of course.
They’d seen the news, and they were trying it on. But I felt myself going faint.

‘And am I the lucky father?’ I tried to keep my voice steady, but what with all the beer and the nationalistic emotions sloshing about inside me, it came out slurred. They sucked on their straws, then looked at me solemnly.

‘Yes,’ they said together. ‘You are.’

‘We’re going to be rich!’ said Blanche.

‘I need to sit down for a minute,’ I said. And fell into blackness.

It is true that in nurturing me from boyhood to manhood, Parson Phelps had prepared me to follow in his footsteps. Had he and Mrs Phelps not raised me as their son, Heaven knows what path I might have followed. Would I ever have ceased to scramble on all fours? Would I ever have learned to speak?

Yet the expression ‘a self-made man’ came to my mind with increasing frequency as my stay in Hunchburgh drew to a close. For what had I been, these past three years, but a young man, forced by circumstance, into the process of making of himself what he could? Like the whaling-ship that Tommy Boggs and I had once unleashed from its moorings, I was now a vessel voyaging alone. I had left the captain on the shore. And I had finally (if I may be pardoned the pursuit of this nautical metaphor) landed on an even keel. Or so I thought.

But how quickly and suddenly can a storm break, and fortune change! In my case, it took no more than a few seconds.

It was the winter of 1864, and I was about to become ordained. The ceremony was to be the crowning moment of my two years’ stay in Hunchburgh, and as a gift to myself, I had indulged in purchasing from little Jimmy Cove a bunch of eight green bananas, which were just ripening nicely in my wardrobe. I planned to eat them, one by one, after my ordination ceremony, which was the following morning at eleven o’clock, presided over by the Abbot and the Bishop. I was looking forward to both events – though I am ashamed to say that I was by now so in thrall to the banana that the prospect of eating some more
of the fruit appeared even more exciting to me than my elevation to the status of Parson.

‘Hey, Betty!’ yelled Farthingale across the refectory table at me that morning.

I looked up and saw his weasel face.

‘We’re holding a party in your rooms tonight!’ he said. It was a Seminary tradition, he told me, that a sort of ‘stag-night’ is always held for those students about to enter the Church. My heart sank, for now I understood what all the recent whisperings in corridors had been about. Mrs Fooney was away in Wales with Tillie visiting her cousin, and would not be back for a week; my fellow theologians had clearly discovered this.

‘Happy, Fartybockers, that your lodgings have been chosen?’ Farthingale asked, smirking. ‘Quite an honour for you, eh? And if you’re a good boy, you’ll even be invited!’

‘So what d’you say, Hobble-de-Hoy?’ asked Ganney menacingly, joining Farthingale with his plate of soup. I turned the other cheek.

‘Hey, listen, everybody!’ yelled Popple, standing on the table. ‘Fartybockers is inviting us all to a party in his rooms tonight! Meet at Mrs Fooney’s lodging-house at eight o’clock sharp!’

At eight, as threatened, my unwelcome guests began arriving, and within half an hour, my two small rooms were swarming with fellow theologians. Soon the place was crammed to bursting; students from other disciplines had caught wind of the party, and before I knew it, five students of botany, a geology student, and several medical scholars who had just finished their final exams decided to turn up, with more hangers-on in tow. The rooms were filled with the pungent haze of tobacco smoke, and I began to feel ill. Soon the party had no choice but to implode, or to spill over into Mrs Fooney’s own private quarters. The former not being an option, the latter course was taken, and I was horrified to see my beloved landlady’s neatly arranged belongings being scattered to the floor, and the contents of Tillie’s toy-box investigated.

A group of young men were soon playing with the marbles I had given her, and peeking beneath the petticoats of her china dolls. I was horrified, and from time to time tried to stammer my objections, but to no avail.

‘Enjoy yourself for once, Fartybockers!’ jeered Farthingale.

‘Unless, of course, you would rather celebrate with your whore on Mickle Street,’ added Ganney, swigging at a bottle of rum.

‘Hey, look at this!’ yelled a student from my bedroom. And he emerged bearing the trophy of my cherished bunch of bananas – the very bananas I had been saving to celebrate tomorrow’s ordination.

‘Bananas!’ cried Ganney. ‘I tasted one once! Capital! Share them out, everybody!’

I groaned, and could only watch as my prized fruit was torn from Ganney’s hands amid big beefy roars of delight. The revellers made quick work of the fruit, and soon there was nothing left of my bunch of bananas but the scattered skins on Mrs Fooney’s floor.

‘Hurrah for Parson Fartybockers!’ yelled out Higgs through a mouthful as he thumped me on the back. ‘Most excellent bananas!’ A morsel flew out of his mouth and landed on my waistcoat, and I was filled with melancholy. ‘Have a drink, sir!’

At this, a bony-kneed boy of about twenty, already quite drunk, had the bright idea of standing on my mantelpiece, which was wide enough to take three men, and proposing further toasts to us all, in honour of our forthcoming ordinations.

Some of my ornaments had to be displaced for this purpose, and I watched nervously as Farthingale swept my whelk shell to the floor, and Ganney fingered the fish-gutting knife that Tommy’s mother had given me. My Bible, likewise, was removed, and my mermaid’s purse, and my copy of Hanker’s
World History
, and Herman’s
Crustacea
; my dried gourds were all shoved unceremoniously to one side. My eyes were on my jar;
I did not wish to draw attention to it, but was concerned for its safety. I watched worriedly as Farthingale slid it over to the far end of the mantelpiece, and Ganney gave him a leg-up. But as soon as he was up there, Farthingale must have spotted that my focus was on the jar, for it immediately became a topic of interest.

‘What’s in here, Phelps?’ he asked, picking it up.

I said nothing, but my heart yawned in fear.

‘A secret?’ asked Farthingale. He could spot any sign of weakness at a thousand paces.

‘Yes, tell us what you keep in it!’ demanded Popple. ‘Is it rum?’

It was he who had once referred to me, because of my cordial respect for the Abbot, (forgive me, reader, for repeating his crude words) as an ‘arse-licker’.

‘Or pickled herrings?’ asked Farthingale. He knew I came from a fishing village. I was dragged over to explain.

‘How about the toast?’ I managed weakly, but Popple had set his heart on my explaining what was in the jar.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just something my father left me.’

But Popple was infuriatingly insistent. I racked my brains for a lie, but untruth does not come naturally to me, having been punished for it so consistently when I was a child, so I could think of nothing.