Ark Baby (40 page)

‘Yes?’

‘Spit it out, then,’ says the Laudanum Empress from Norman’s armchair. She is darning one of her cobwebby old stockings.

‘Well, Abbie,’ says Oscar Jack, oblivious to the interruption, ‘some people are simply what we call “television naturals,” and –’

It always happens, doesn’t it? Something. A crack of thunder. The ping of the microwave. An urgent call of nature.

Or the ring of the telephone.

‘Excuse me, just one moment,’ says Abbie. Her heart is pounding in a way it hasn’t done since she met Norman for the first time twenty years ago, in the park. She’d been sitting by the sandpit babysitting her friend’s little girl, and he’d rammed her in the bum with his nephew’s remotely controlled racing car. ‘It’s probably your AA man.’

Abbie picks up the phone, and instantly turns as white as self-raising flour.

‘Mum, it’s us. You’ve got to come now.
Now.
’

‘What’s happening?’ she whispers shakily.

‘We’ve just gone into labour, Mum!’ shrieks a twin. ‘And Buck’s buggered off!’

‘Are you
sure
, Roseblanche?’ asks Abbie nervously, cupping her hand over the receiver so that Oscar Jack can’t hear. ‘I mean there have been an awful lot of false alarms …’ she whispers.

‘Please, Mum!’ shriek the voices in unison. ‘
You’ve got to believe us!
’

What mother can resist a cry of help from her baby?

The unfairness of it! Dilemma city. The recipe for disaster, thinks Abbie, drifting into a shocked reverie as Oscar Jack tucks into another Apfelkuchen. Cruel-world stew:

So much blood has drained from Abbie’s face that Oscar Jack is thinking she’ll need a lot of panstick when the time comes.

‘Bugger,’ she mutters finally.

‘Language!’ trills the Empress gleefully.

‘Is there anything I –’ begins Oscar Jack.

‘Mum!’ yells Roseblanche down the phone.

‘Yes?’ manages Abbie, faintly, her eyes on Oscar Jack’s well-shaven, innocent face. He’s already punched her name and address into his personal organiser. If only –

‘I can’t come now! My television producer’s arrived! Just call an ambulance!’ she hisses weakly into the receiver.

‘We did!’ shrieks Roseblanche. ‘They don’t believe us! They
think it’s a hoax! They say they’re getting three a night like this! We’re nearly ready to push! Mum, help!’

Abbie groans. ‘I’m on my way,’ she sighs, and slams down the receiver.

The Contortionist, having made several curtsies to the crowd, is now scampering balletically atop the elephant’s head and beginning, amid enthusiastic applause, to tie herself into a human knot.

Meanwhile below, at ground-level, a regiment of
sous-chefs
are busy attacking the Time-Bomb with carving-knives, cutting slices of elephant, zebra, and hog meat and placing it on the platters held by the
sous-sous-chefs
, who are in turn handing them to the
sous-sous-sous-chefs
for the addition of garnish. Minions further down in the kitchen hierarchy mill about, proffering plates of food to guests, who comment delightedly upon the unusual taste and texture of the meats.

The Time-Bomb, Cabillaud reflects, has certainly been the crowning triumph of his whole glittering career, the pinnacle of his own personal evolution. Even Violet, now a militant vegan, has mustered the
politesse
to congratulate him on it, despite her opposition to all forms of cruelty.

‘May I present you with my book?’ Cabillaud now enquires of Violet, thrusting a first-edition copy of
Cuisine Zoologique: une philosophie de la viande
into her hand. She is looking quite magnificent, he notes. Extraordinarily well, and happy. There is beauty in ugliness after all. The dress she is wearing suits her. She seems distracted, though. Her eyes keep scanning the room, as though she is looking for someone.

Which she is. And now, finally, Violet has spotted him. He’s over at the buffet table, where he is serving himself to a generous portion of fruit salad. Tobias’s gaze, she notices, is firmly resting upon the little ballerina-woman who recently emerged from Cabillaud’s Time-Bomb. The woman, having untangled herself from her scorpion position atop the elephant’s
head, has now leaped off it and is pirouetting across the room at great speed in the direction of the ladies’ powder room. Violet watches as, just as suddenly, Tobias abandons his fruit salad and strides across to follow the little ballerina.

‘Violette?’ Cabillaud is saying. ‘You will accept a copy of my
oeuvre!
’

‘Oh,’ says Violet distractedly. She has lost sight of Tobias and the ballerina (surely he could not have followed her into the ladies’ powder room?), and turns her attention reluctantly back to the chef. ‘Thank you, Monsieur Cabillaud.’ Despite the nature of its contents, she feels the need to accept the book with grace. Such is compromise.

‘I am working on a plant version of my own,’ she offers.

‘Ze foliage?’

‘Yes. I am planning to call it
The Fleshless Cook.
’ Cabillaud raises an eyebrow.

‘One day, my dear, you will learn that ze human being is not designed to eat plant life alone.’

Violet smiles. ‘I survive very well,’ she tells him.

‘May I interrupt?’ asks a small, bearded, twinkle-eyed man who has been hovering at the edge of their conversation.

Violet and Cabillaud exchange a glance.

‘Please do, Mr Darwin,’ says Violet. At last, an expert witness in their ideological dispute! ‘We would be most grateful, Mr Darwin, for your opinion on the matter, wouldn’t we, Monsieur Cabillaud?’

‘Of course! And very honoured! Please allow me, Monsieur, to present to you Miss Scrapie.’

‘Charmed to meet you, Miss Scrapie,’ begins Mr Darwin. ‘I am acquainted with your father. Now the human body originally evolved, as we know, from the primate. Primates are largely fructivorous, although there are exceptions. However, if we study the evolutionary path of man, we will discover hints that his descendence from several species of
ape
, descended in turn from a branch of the
monkey
family, involved an adaptation of the alimentary canal which –’

‘Mr Darwin!’ interrupts Dr Ivanhoe Scrapie, yelling from across the room, and fumbling his way through a mêlée of sparkling ballgowns. ‘Mr Darwin! I have finally found you! You must come with me immediately, and see an extraordinary specimen. A walking, talking, human-monkey hybrid, here in this very room!’

Charles Darwin bursts out laughing. ‘This is indeed an exceptionally entertaining banquet,’ he smiles. And then, lowering his voice, to address Violet, ‘And not at all what one would have expected from Her Majesty.’

‘It is true!’ yells Dr Scrapie, his faced flushed. ‘And the creature’s father is in the ladies’ powder room to prove it! The Gentleman Monkey! I stuffed him myself!’

Violet, feeling something curdle violently within her, and recognising there is a strong risk that she will faint, collapses with a padded thud on a stiff little seat and begins flapping her fan furiously. A human-monkey hybrid? What is her father talking about? He couldn’t possibly be referring to – her breath catches in her throat.

‘My
father was a monk.
’ Violet releases a quiet moan as Dr Scrapie and Mr Darwin continue their conversation. ‘
I didn’t finish writing it,
’ he had said.

‘A monkey? Excellent!’ Mr Darwin is exclaiming. ‘I do approve of your sense of humour, my dear Scrapie! Lead me to this alleged specimen at once!’

As Violet fans herself with such force that she risks mimicking the un-aerodynamic bumble-bee and taking flight, Charles Darwin’s laughter is overheard by a group of military gents and their wives, who, somewhat affected by champagne, repeat the joke and join in the laughter, which thereby becomes so amplified that the curiosity of others is aroused, and the joke is passed on, and more people are attracted to the steadily growing throng, until a huge gaggle of laughing banqueteers has encircled the two scientists. Violet, pale beneath her face-powder, and still seated near the heart of the kerfuffle, has the presence of mind to keep listening to her father’s urgent and
garbled speech to Mr Darwin, the content of which is causing her increasing unease.

‘His name is Tobias Phelps,’ continues Scrapie excitedly. As the import of her father’s words dawns on Violet, she groans, then freezes, immobilised with shock. She has not felt such a churning confusion of emotions since the death of the Laudanum Empress. Her father is tugging at Darwin’s sleeve.

‘He is a creature aged some twenty years,’ her father is telling Darwin. ‘Nurtured as a man, and with quite remarkable – really
most astonishing –
success. What I am planning to do, Mr Darwin, once you have inspected him for yourself and verified my findings’ – Violet leans forward, straining to listen – ‘is to keep him captive for a few days, so that other zoologists may have a chance to view him while he is still alive’ – Violet gasps, and clutches her hand over her mouth – ‘then kill and stuff him myself, and present him thus to the Zoological Society.’

Keep him captive? Kill and stuff him?

Violet feels suddenly quite monstrously sick. She drops her fan to the floor with a clatter and clutches her chair, her knuckles whitening with the pressure of grasping on. It’s as much as she can do to prevent herself from keeling over. So that is what Tobias was trying to tell her that day! That is why he was so upset, and why he had insisted on writing it down on that piece of paper. Not monk, but
monkey!
The Gentleman Monkey!

‘Oh no!’ she groans, remembering with sudden clarity the braising process, and the shrimp sauce that had accompanied the dish that killed the Laudanum Empress.

‘I ate him!’ she whispers to herself, appalled. ‘I ate his father! I am a cannibal!’

‘Come along, then, Mr Darwin!’ Scrapie is saying. ‘I left him standing over by that pillar. Let’s go and meet him!’ Another huge smile spreads across the face of Charles Darwin, and the naturalist once again throws back his head and laughs uproariously, shaking little fragments of food from his beard as he does so.

‘I should have thought to come in fancy-dress myself,’ he chortles good-humouredly. ‘Dressed as a gorilla. I believe one can hire such a costume. Would that not have been more apt, for such an occasion, Dr Scrapie? Might the’ – he lowers his voice conspiratorially – ‘
Royal Hippopotamus
, as you call her, have been amused?’

But Dr Scrapie is not laughing. He is looking strangulated instead. His face is almost blue. He is still clutching Mr Darwin’s sleeve, and now starts tugging it again with urgency.

‘There is no time to lose,’ Violet murmurs to herself, gulping back her urge to vomit and smoothing the cream crêpe of her billowing skirts.

‘But he is the answer to your paradox, sir!’ Scrapie is insisting to Mr Darwin, who is by now laughing so heartily that he appears at serious risk of choking. ‘I swear, sir, that this is not a joke!’

Darwin laughs some more. ‘I do not possess a paradox,’ he replies.

‘Well, you do now!’ explodes Scrapie, wrenching the man by the arm and frog-marching him across the ballroom. The bevy of interested spectators follows chattering and giggling in their wake. What an unexpectedly entertaining occasion this is turning out to be! As they move off, Violet bites her lip, her mind racing.

‘Push!’ Abbie is yelling at the twins.

‘I warned you,’ says the Laudanum Empress, hovering by the loo. She did no such thing, but Abbie is in no state to argue. When Abbie had made the call to the Baldicoot Medical Centre, she’d been referred to the Ambulance Service, which had refused point blank to send an emergency vehicle.

‘But this is real!’ Abbie had screamed.

‘That’s what they all say, love,’ said the duty nurse wearily.

‘We’ll pay the fine – we don’t care!’ shrieked the twins.

‘Sorry, love,’ said the duty nurse, when Abbie relayed this. ‘The fact is, all the ambulances are out. They’re calling it the Day of Madness.’

‘Well fuck you, then!’ shrieked Abbie, distraught. What was happening to her? She’d never uttered a swear-word before in her life, until today. And now two (there was a ‘bugger’, earlier) in front of Oscar Jack! Could she be developing Tourette’s syndrome? Good thing Oscar’s here, though, she realises suddenly. Because there’s no sign of Norman, or of that wastrel Buck. He’s off on some wild monkey chase, apparently.

‘Bless you!’ she sobs at Oscar Jack. The television producer has grabbed the twins’ camcorder, perched it on the kitchen table and left it running; no slouch he, when it comes to capturing a potential exclusive. In addition, he’s rolled up the sleeves of his leather jacket and is now doing sterling work with towels and bottles of Perrier.

‘AAAGH!’ yell the twins again.

Wow. If this is another of those bogus ones, thinks Oscar Jack, then it’s frighteningly realistic.

When I saw the Contortionist leap off the elephant’s head and pirouette across the room, I knew I must confront her.

Following her with difficulty across the banqueting hall, tripping over the legs of my trousers and bumping into dinner guests with plates piled high with meat, I reached a corridor which led to a parlour which led to a door which swung shut in my face. LADIES’ POWDER ROOM, it said.

I hesitated for a moment, and then entered.

And came face to face with my father, the Gentleman Monkey.

I stopped in my tracks and caught my breath. And stared. He was holding a towel of purple and yellow. His eyes were a bright and unnatural blue. His fur was a rusty orange-red – the same colour and the same coarse texture as my own hair. Like
me, he had a thick down on his arms. He was a little shorter than me. His expression was one of great nobility and poise. He had a short tail, which emerged from a slit in his red pantaloons and curled upwards behind him like a question mark.