Noah's Ark (37 page)

‘Would you like some toast?’ she said. ‘There’s no coffee. I’ll shop this morning.’

‘I’ll shop,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the kids. Have yourself some time off. Finish the painting.’

‘It’s finished,’ Ali said. With the painting finished and along with it the days of creative intensity, Ali felt drained and flat.

‘How was the gallery interview?’ Noah said. ‘You never told me.’

‘I stood it up,’ she said. ‘I forgot. I’m sorry. How I must pain you with my lack of ambition.’ It was perfectly true that Noah promptly experienced on her behalf a small undemonstrative agony.

‘I don’t want for you to be ambitious,’ he said, ‘only for you to be happy.’ Ali was fidgeting with bolts on the grill pan. ‘How’s the old lady?’ he said.

‘Lousy,’ Ali said. ‘She’s been put into a home. I went to see her there. It’s not a good way to go, believe me. The old aren’t very nice, Noah. They grumble and they smell. They fidget with their false teeth. No wonder doctors don’t like geriatrics. No wonder lungs and hearts are generally more popular.’ Noah ignored the jibe sensing that the moment was not appropriate for taking issue with her.

‘Her neighbours said there was a fire,’ Ali continued slowly. ‘They sent for an ambulance and for the firemen. Margaret suspects the landlord. She says he was trying to prise her out. There was no fire, she says. Only a bit of smoke from signed dog meat.’

‘For Chrissake, Al, there was a fire,’ Noah said. Even before he had said it, Ali knew that there was no way that Noah would not believe the neighbours and the landlord. Profound and gaping differences in allegiance would appear before them which – though affection and loyalty would help them to be tolerant – would never be resolvable. It made her sad.

Arnie appeared suddenly, shirtless, myopic and rumpled, stretching idly like a waking cat.

‘What time do you have, Noah?’ he said. ‘Darn it. I lost my watch last night.’

‘Five after ten,’ Noah said. ‘It’s late. God knows how you sleep so well in a house full of children slamming doors.’ Arnie laughed on a careless yawn, and staggered to the kitchen tap.

‘Hi, Al,’ he said.

Ali turned on him a pent-up and hostile stare which, without his glasses, completely passed him by. She found herself resenting his half-naked indolent intrusion into her kitchen; his yawning ease, his underarm hair, his nasty, grizzling wart. It was then that she noticed, to her further intense annoyance, that he was wearing, in his pierced ear, one of the small roseate clusters given to Camilla by her stepfather.

‘You are wearing my daughter’s earring, you swine,’ she said. ‘Take it off!’

‘Pardon me?’ Arnie said, and he compounded the insult by putting an arm around her shoulders. Ali threw him off.

‘I said take it off!’ she yelled violently. ‘And put your clothes on before you come into my kitchen. Do you mind?’

‘Hey, wait a bit,’ Arnie said. ‘The
earring
, did you say? Are you talking about the earring? Camilla gave it to me. What d’you think? You think I stole it?’

‘You bloody well seduced her, Arnie Weinberg,’ Ali said. ‘And in my house. Go on. Deny it.’

Arnie, having stipulated separate beds the previous night, had woken in the small hours to find Camilla sharing his comforter and weeping quietly in remembrance of a small dead cat with a white speck on the end of its tail. She was dressed inadequately in a thin sleeveless nightgown, her arms goose-pimpled from the cold, her feet like blocks of ice. Arnie, who had gone to sleep in his soft twill shirt, peeled it warm off his back and wrapped her in it. In the bleary haze of a heavy sleeper, he had leaned down and groped on the carpet for his thick, discarded sports socks which he had then pulled on over her feet. After that he had drawn her into the warm zone of his bed before returning, very promptly, to sleep.

‘Sure, I’ll deny it,’ he said, filled with righteous indignation. ‘Your daughter came to my bed last night, Al. She was crying over the cat. Nothing happened.’

‘Like hell!’ Ali said.

‘Cut it out, Al,’ Noah said warningly. ‘Drop it. Drop the whole subject right now.’

‘Nothing happened,’ Arnie said angrily. ‘Al baby, your daughter has her period, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh indeed?’ Ali said sarcastically. ‘And that would stop you I suppose?’ Having said it, the greater awfulness dawned upon her that it quite possibly would.

‘Oh my God!’ she said in disgust. ‘Now I see it all. You can screw everything in skirts between here and Middletown just so long as there’s no bleeding. Is that right? Oh my God, I almost believe you.’

‘I said
drop
it!’ Noah said. ‘Behave properly, Al, or get out of the kitchen. Go get a shirt on, Arnie. Al’s upset. Can’t you see that? She’s emotional. She’s upset about the cat. She’s readjusting. She’s protective of her children.’

‘One of her goddam children just bit me in the leg,’ Arnie said ruefully. ‘I offered to help the kid tear up a poetry book since the
project was giving her some trouble. Meanwhile, she’s taking up most of the bathroom. Do you mind if I pee in what your wife’s gardener has left of your flowerbeds?’ He made a timely exit through the kitchen door.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Ali said, turning to Noah with a wish to dredge up grievance, ‘can you tell me why you brought the child a poetry book? How often do you read poetry?’

‘Al,’ Noah said wearily, ‘the grill pan is on fire.’

‘Poetry is for women, I suppose?’ she said. ‘“Created by men with women in mind”. Like Crimplene. I hope you brought a poetry book for Daniel?’

‘Daniel can’t read,’ Noah said. ‘Al, the grill pan is on fire.’

He leaped from his chair as a column of black smoke rose to the ceiling. Stretching over her, he grabbed the flaming pan by the handle, but as Ali turned to face it, they came into collision. An accumulation of William’s bacon grease, melted and bubbling treacherously, slopped over both of them, down on to Noah’s left forearm and on to Ali’s right. Both of them yelled in pain.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Noah said, crashing the pan down on to the workboard where the flames subdued and died. He took her by the hand to the sink where he held first her arm and then his own under cold running water.

‘Sorry, Al,’ he said, moved beyond conflict towards inexpressible pity by the injury to her flesh. Ali, undone by pain and by pent-up emotion, sat at the table and cried. Noah sat down beside her, while between them they watched the white blisters rise from the red.

‘Mine’s bigger,’ Ali said. ‘Much bigger. Say, doesn’t it stink of old dripping in here? A touch of the old streaky rashers, what? I may not be
cordon bleu
, but I don’t leave other people’s grill pans full of stinking pig fat, do I?’ Chastely, Noah kissed her cheek.

‘I love you more than my life, Al,’ he said. ‘I always have. I always will. Can we go out for breakfast? I need coffee.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I have driven out your esteemed, half-naked colleague. Why do you think I care? Is it that
Camilla’s sexuality disturbs me? Does it make me jealous? I surely don’t want that ever-so-slightly bent Middletown hip for myself, do I?’

‘Let’s just say you’re worried about your daughter,’ Noah said. ‘That’s fair enough – I’ll make you a deal. You worry about Camilla and I’ll worry about Hattie.’

‘Hattie’s all right,’ Ali said. ‘Hattie will go far.’

‘Only if the country discovers a sudden need for a good hanging judge,’ Noah said. ‘How’s your arm feel now?’

‘Not bad,’ Ali said. ‘It feels all right.’

Camilla came wafting through the kitchen, trance-like and breathing sleep. Yesterday’s eye make-up smudged her cheeks, but could do nothing to sully the remarkable purity of her extraordinary looks. She had on Arnie’s socks and Arnie’s shirt, the latter flapping loose at the cuffs. She moved right through the kitchen and on into the garden where she embraced Arnie from behind, leaning her cheek on his spine between his bare shoulder blades and rocking him slightly to and fro. Ali, in spite of herself, was profoundly moved. It was while she watched them that the telephone rang. Noah took the call, reaching for the receiver with his unblistered right arm.

‘Glazer,’ he said abruptly, not wanting the intrusion. Mervyn Bobrow, just back the previous morning, was talking fast and furious with his mouth full of news.

‘Hello stranger!’ he said. ‘It’s Mervyn. I didn’t expect to find you at home.’

‘I come home once in a while to have Al launder my shirts,’ Noah said. ‘Also to ensure that I stay on the payroll. But I understand that you’ve done some travelling yourself of late?’ Ali could hear Mervyn’s laugh, touched with a hint of obsequious malice.

‘By profession you travel in time, of course,’ Noah said. ‘But it seems that you have also travelled in space.’

Ali turned aside from the precarious idyll in the garden to consider admiringly that when it came to the cut and thrust of articulate malice, her husband was no mean slouch.

‘Thomas Adderley has had his car blown up,’ Mervyn said. ‘I ‘phoned to tell Ali. Is she there?’

‘She knows that already,’ Noah said. ‘Listen Mervyn, I’ll tell her that you called.’

‘Congratulate her for me,’ Mervyn said. ‘I’ve heard that a West End gallery is buying her paintings these days. Eva and I would also like to buy something of hers as a matter of fact. Have meant to for quite some time.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ Noah said. ‘But she ain’t cheap. She’s selling around three thousand dollars.’

‘Dollars!’
Mervyn said. ‘If she’s selling in the States, then I suppose we have missed the boat. Incidentally, we have William Lister staying with us at the moment. Eva wondered about a nice, impromptu get-together for dinner tonight. Say seven-thirty for eight?’

‘Regrettably,’ Noah said, ‘it’s out of the question for us. Al is suffering from severe burns right now. She got entangled with an unwashed grill pan. You might tell William Lister.’

‘Will do,’ Mervyn said. ‘And give her my sympathies.’ Ali was looking up at him admiringly as he replaced the receiver. ‘Severe burns?’ she said. ‘God, Noah. When you really want to you can lie like a pro.’

In the garden Ali made her peace with Arnie, holding out her hand to him self-consciously.

‘Arnie,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I think that it is true to say I have had a rather bad time of late. Things have been difficult for me.’

Arnie drew her affectionately towards him, within the shadow of the garage, and kissed the fingers of both her hands.

‘You know something, Mrs Glazer?’ he said wickedly. ‘You still got damn nice pins.’ She made a gesture with her hand. A gesture as of casting off or of sowing; as of throwing magic beans into the air. For she saw the whole of her past life firmly behind her as a riotous black comedy upon which the curtain could now fall. And were she to have woken the next morning to find a
beanstalk sprung to heaven outside the window, it would have given her no surprise; no terror. Nor any need to climb.

In the bathroom Hattie had stopped shredding her poetry book. Swinging violently from anger to regret, she gathered up the telltale pieces and threw them into the lavatory bowl. Then she tried to flush the evidence away, but the pieces clogged the U-bend. In panic she watched the waters rise and rise. Then she slammed down the lid and stood on it. Fervently she counted to a hundred to make time pass before she dared to flush again and peer into the bowl. Mercifully, the water level had sunk.

‘Phew!’ she said. ‘Thank goodness!’ Daniel was thumping on the bathroom door needing urgent access. Quickly she took up the book in its reduced condition and retired with it to her bedroom, where she locked the door on intruders and settled cross-legged into a chair. Seduced by the limpid, fairytale illustrations, Hattie leafed on until she came to where, among crags and larch trees, Old Meg was gathering faggots. The poem was written by a man called John Keats whom she had heard her mother talk about and she began to read it. It reminded her of her mother’s friend who was an old lady called Margaret, and who lived all by herself and didn’t eat properly. Crying her private tears into the text and wiping her nose on her T-shirt, Hattie discovered herself in the web of its rhythms and in the mazes of its fine, stoical agonies.

THE END

Barbara Trapido was born in South Africa and is the author of six novels –
Brother of the More Famous Jack
(winner of a Whitbread special prize for fiction),
Noah’s Ark, Temples of Delight
(shortlisted for the
Sunday Express
Book of the Year Award),
Juggling, The Travelling Hornplayer
(shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Novel Award) and
Frankie and Stankie.
She lives in Oxford.

By the Same Author

Brother of the More Famous Jack

Temples of Delight

Juggling

The Travelling Hornplayer

Frankie and Stankie

Stylish, suburban Katherine is eighteen when she is propelled into the heart of Professor Jacob Goldman’s home and his large eccentric family. As his enchanting if sharp-tongued wife Jane gives birth to her sixth child, Katherine meets beautiful, sulky Roger and his volatile younger brother Jonathan. Inevitable heartbreak sends her fleeing to Rome, but ten years on, older and wiser, she returns to find the Goldmans again.

Brother of the More Famous Jack
is the highly acclaimed classic that redefined the coming-of-age genre, featuring Trapido’s much-loved Goldman family and most enchanting heroine.

Buy this book at
www.bloomsbury.com
or call our sales team on 020 7440 2475

Praise for
Noah’s Ark:

‘Full of wisecracks, efficiency, carnal delights, and love of children … warm and comic’

The Times

‘
Noah’s Ark
is excellent—funny, sexy, glowing. An easy read, but in Trapido’s case easy reading is the product of hard writing … an unobtrusively artful book. There is something Nabokovian in [her] determination to enchant … Trapido casts a faery light over the materials of everyday life’