Ark Baby (20 page)

As she emerged slowly from her scorpion position, we saw that she was of diminutive stature. Her whole torso, like her legs and feet, was clad in the tight-fitting black of an unbroken silhouette, except for the stiff little skirt which stuck out horizontally from the waist. Something physical and visceral stirred within me, twisting my guts.

‘Mildred is punishing me,’ I told Tommy. ‘Let’s go.’

‘No. I’m staying,’ said Tommy firmly. ‘Look, she’s tying herself in another knot!’

And sure enough, she is on her belly again, balancing a tray on each foot. On the trays are tiny glasses of Madeira sherry. It seems you can pay twopence to come and take a glass, and drink it, then put it back on the tray. ‘Sherry comes from Spain,’
whispers Tommy. ‘It makes you drunk just to sniff it.’ I try to refrain from breathing at all; God forbid that Parson Phelps should discover me intoxicated! Now, still balancing her tray and a dozen little glasses, and still bunched in her uncomfortable knot, the woman has launched into song. I strain to listen over the babble of voices. There is a tune to it, of sorts, but no words, and for some reason I find her singing unspeakably unsettling and poignant. She has a small, cracked voice, and the clatter of notes that emerges sounds oddly familiar, though I cannot place them.

Maybe it was that lonely, wordless singing. Or maybe it was what happened afterwards. Either way, unaccountably, I found myself suddenly in tears, a curious, nagging sensation of sorrow mixed with happiness tugging at my innards and infuriating Mildred.

She had stopped, suddenly, mid-note. At first I thought she had merely missed a beat, and would resume her song, but it was as though she had lost interest in her own performance, and simply switched herself off, for there was a jagged hush. A few murmurs began to swell among the small crowd, and Tommy shifted from foot to foot.

‘Get on with it then,’ he muttered.

I drew in a sudden breath, and swayed on my feet. She was looking at me! Staring into my eyes! I could swear it!

It was when she flung her tray to the ground that I began to shake uncontrollably. It felt as though I were drowning all over again. I wasn’t alone in my fear, for I heard several women scream as she hurled the tray. It flew high into the air as though slowed down by an invisible hand. Then it reached the height of its arc and with a brutal suddenness, went crashing to the floor. There were more screams and gasps as the sherry glasses smashed, tinkling and sending up a spray of golden droplets that smelt sweet and harsh and forbidden.

‘Oh dear God!’ I murmur.

Now she is unwinding herself, but in a hurried fashion, pulling at the knot of her own body with impatience. Her limbs free,
she’s sniffing the air, ignoring the crowd who are beginning to shuffle about nervously, and to hurl little balls of paper and gumdrops in her direction.

It is then, in the space of a single second that seems to last an hour, that I am drowning once again. I am dashed back into the flood-water of St Nicholas’s Church, and the memory returns to me as vividly as a blow to my stomach.

My Angel is near. I am in a cot with golden bars, and I can hear the sound of a woman’s voice singing a lullaby.
Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top
…

A bristle-skinned animal with orange-ochre eyes guards me.

Then I hear Father’s voice calling me through the flood-water, begging me to return. I remember bobbing to the surface, and seeing the Parson’s cassock balloon about him in a bubble of righteousness. I sink again, and this time visit Hell.

My Angel has disappeared, and my golden cot has become a rusty cage. I am lying in a pool of blood. And I hear a scream, high and shrill, that plays up and down my spine like fingernails screeching across a blackboard.

Yes: I remember this.

And as I do so, my heart begins to thump horribly, banging at my ribs like a caged beast desperate to escape. The Contortionist is pointing at me. On her face is anger, and pride, and wildness, and beauty, and desperation, all in one. Tommy clutches my hand.

Time freezes.

And remains frozen.

It is indeed fortunate that I am in many ways my father’s child. For there, stuck in frozen time, I find a mood of sudden calm growing within me, and I feel the presence of Parson Phelps as solidly as if he were there in the flesh. And there, as I stare at the woman staring back at me, the full force of my faith tells me in a sane and measured fashion that there is nothing here that I know. The face, the ballet shoes, the little tutu whose skirt sticks out horizontally: nothing about the Contortionist is familiar to me in any way. Nothing, I realise, could in fact be
further from my world, and the calm and ordered life of Thunder Spit: that I can swear with my hand on my heart. A heart which, although it is still thumping within me madly, witnesses no swirl of recognition, feels no stirring of memory, and experiences no instinctive rush of hatred or of love. None. Nothing.

Just a desire to run away and return to my father, and the church, and God, and all the safety and security of home.

‘Come along, Tommy!’ I croak. I have grabbed his arm so hard that he yelps in pain. ‘Let’s go!’

So from that place of horror and depravity, gumdrops flying around us, the smell of sherry in our nostrils, the memory of a tuneless, wordless ballad ringing in our ears, we flee.

– stuk ther. Nothin to do. NOTHIN, ever.

Then I waks up one day and am SUMWER ELS. Dark. I ratles the CAGE. I screems and screems. Wer am I, I screems.

London Doks. This woz a SLAVE SHIPPE, says Trapp. I used to keep slaves in it. Afrika, and Gorgia. Gorgia, and Afrika. To-in and fro-in, like that. NOW it is sumthin els. Much mor CUMFTERBLE, He sez. Lots mor roome! It is an ARKE. And he is gon, larfin.

Ther is a man cald Higgins, feeds me, changis my BUCKIT. Wen do we sail, I arsks. Wer to.

He dusnt no, or says not.

But He tels me their is a LIST, and wen we hav got everythin on the LIST, we can cum home agen.

Wot kind of things is on this List, I sez.

Animals, He sez. The animals went in two by two, HURRA!

A few lines are obliterated here. But further down the page, the writing continues:

–
so they brings me FOOD, and water. Empties my buckit of piss and shit. Then TRAPP cums bak. Cumfterble? He arsks. Barsterd.

We will go to DISTANT CUNTRIES wer you will be QUEEN, He sed, that nite wen we met, wen I was DANSIN at the kings Arms. Long Ago.

Let me out of this CAGE, I sez. I am screemin and cryin. Wot is this for, I sez. Wy cant you treet me like a lady.

Becos you is an ANIMAL now, He sez.

I am an animal alrite, I sez, I am a COW, I sez, I am a stupid COW. He stil has a hold of me. Dont no wy. I luvs Him stil, even wen He shuttes the dor of the CAGE and leevs me in the darke agen.

Its WOT YOU WONTS, He sez. Wimin DREEM of this.

I opens my mouth to speek but ther is no words ther for wot I feel. And not a thing in the WURLD that I can do. Becos by now the ARK is aflote.

Which guests to invite and which to shun, what type of frilled smocking would best suit the bridesmaids, whether there will be enough champagne to go round, how the in-laws will get on: from as young as three, a normal healthy young girl will spend a fair proportion of her time, in the company of her favourite doll, agonising over the details of her hypothetical future wedding. Mrs Charlotte Scrapie being neither normal, nor healthy, nor a young girl, and in addition being already married, and indeed also dead, had long been concerned with a ceremony of the more gloomy variety, involving not white lace, but black. The happy hours she had spent preparing for this day! Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust! Ding-dong, loud and long and tragic may the bells toll! A time to live, a time to die, a time to love, a time to hate, a time to bawl your eyes out and blow long and hard into a big black hanky!

‘It was a marvellous funeral,’ bragged the Laudanum Empress to Abbie Ball, a hundred and fifty years later. ‘Far be it from me to boast, but it was certainly one of the most moving occasions I have ever attended.’

In accordance with her wishes, set out in detail in a document of some twenty-five pages, the ceremony was a grandiose affair, involving acres of pungent waxen lilies, hymn after tear-inducing hymn, black confetti, white faces, a fawning tribute to the deceased penned by the Empress herself and read by a hunchbacked vicar, and much booming organ music. Many of the Empress’s grateful former clients – from both sides of the Great
Divide – sat in rigid and respectful attendance. In the front row of the church, Violet Scrapie, clad in mourning garb, dabbed at her eyes as the coffin was borne in, heaped with a mountain of lilies topped with the Empress’s favourite old fox-fur.

‘I’ll let you into a secret, Vile,’ murmured the dry-eyed Scrapie, sitting next to her. ‘I gave her that fox because I botched it. It was unstuffable. Too many bullet-holes.’

Suet, reprieved from his fate as a dinner of the future, wheezed at Violet’s feet. For him at least, something positive had emerged from the calamity: from now on, the kitchen would be needing an official food-taster. Neither Scrapie nor Violet noticed the presence of the psychic particles hovering above their heads. It was an extraordinarily moving service, Mrs Scrapie felt, allowing her own ghostly bosom to shudder and a single human tear to roll down her pale cheek as she listened to the hunchbacked vicar’s heartfelt eulogy. ‘Mrs Charlotte Scrapie, adored by all who knew her – gone, but still with us!’ The tear fell upon the nose of the dog Suet with a plop. Crouching low with fear, he licked it off and whimpered.

‘Farewell, Mrs Charlotte Scrapie!’ intoned the vicar. ‘May you rest in peace!

Rest in peace? Fat chance!

It is a well-known fact that grief can set all manner of other emotions shooting off in odd directions. The result of Mrs Scrapie’s untimely death by food poisoning was to cause a deep doubt to hatch within the breast of Violet Scrapie. The week after the funeral, Monsieur Cabillaud, in an effort to relieve the child’s troubled spirits and take her mind off her bereavement, urged her to resume her hitherto tireless work on his great tome
Cuisine Zoologique: une philosophie de la viande
, but she refused outright.

‘I’m having nothing more to do with the wretched book!’ shouted the blubbering Violet, distraught. ‘I have poisoned my own mother!’

Cabillaud had the common sense to button his lip, but at the
back of his mind lurked rebellion. Should his life’s work grind to a halt, just because of a single, isolated misadventure? Should
Cuisine Zoologique
fail, just because a lone recipe within it had proved (in one case only) fatal?

There is a saying that goes: Too many cooks spoil the broth. Did too many, in the Scrapie household, now mean two? Was the Scrapie kitchen, spacious though it was, large enough to contain two consciences as afflicted as those of Violet Scrapie and Jacques-Yves Cabillaud? Both were volatile. Grief hung over them like a pall.

A philosopher such as Confucius might have said, ‘We witness before us here an imbalance of yin and yang.’

But a young woman such as Violet Scrapie said instead, ‘This is unbearable. I’m going out. Find your lead, Suet, and follow me!’

Cabillaud, kicking the stove, said, ‘
Merde!
’

Was it the ghostly presence of the Laudanum Empress and her cloud of psychic particles that steered Violet and the faithful Suet in the direction of Oxford Street that day?

Or was it simply fate that caused them to barge past the stalls selling roast-chestnuts, past the organ-grinders and the charlatans and the hansom cabs, and clatter straight, slap-bang, into a placard on which the following words were printed: MEAT IS MURDER?

The placard was attached to a man. The man in question – now cast in the role of victim, picked himself up off the pavement, and patiently awaited the apology he deserved. He was accustomed to abuse from strangers, but being a Christian, he also made a point of always hoping, most fervently, for the best.

‘I am most terribly sorry,’ said Miss Violet Scrapie. She said it with simplicity and grace. The man noted that, despite her quite monstrous size, she had a pretty, sad face, and was wearing mourning garb. So feeling suddenly sorry for her despite the shock she had caused him, he smiled at her, and began to speak.

‘Your apology is – OUCH!’

He yelped in pain. He had been assaulted a second time.

Violet never knew what it was that came over Suet. So far his canine instincts had been proved utterly sound – witness his refusal to eat the braised primate that caused the death of the Laudanum Empress – but surely this was utterly out of character? It was not in his nature to hurt a fly. It will take more than another gracious apology to fix this, Violet thought, as she whipped out her black lace handkerchief – still sodden with funeral tears from a week ago, that’s how much she had cried – and began dabbing at the wound on the man’s curiously skinny leg.

‘Suet’s never attacked a human before,’ Violet mustered. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s gone after rats, but …’ Her voice trailed off in confusion. ‘Look, can I escort you anywhere?’ she offered the bleeding man.

‘As a matter of fact you can,’ he told her, mopping furiously at his shin. ‘You can be good enough to help me stagger to a meeting I am about to hold in the public chambers.’

‘What’s happening there?’ asked Violet, picking up the MEAT IS MURDER placard and propping it against a railing.

‘A meeting of the Vegetarian Society,’ he replied. ‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Henry Salt, and I would like to invite you, miss, and your dog, to be my guests.’

‘I am Violet Scrapie,’ she said, proffering her hand. ‘And this is Suet.’ She kicked the creature lightly, and he hung his head. Going to the man’s wretched meeting was the least she could do, she supposed, as she half-carried the limping Mr Salt to the public meeting hall, the reluctant Suet pitter-pattering along in their wake. The hall was dusty, and as Violet seated herself, it was filling up with an odd selection of people, all spectacularly thin. Violet shuddered, grateful for her own padding on these hard little chairs.