Boating for Beginners

by Winterson, Jeanette

  The creature smiled up at her. 'If I told you that now, it would ruin the ending, wouldn't it?' and he vanished.

  'So what do we do now?' Gloria was beginning to sense helplessness setting in and she wanted to evict it quickly. 'I think we should get the toads,' suggested Marlene. 'Every year twenty tons of toads get squashed, just trying to mate. The least we can do is save a few ounces for posterity,' and so the two of them set off with a flashlight into the garden, leaving Desi to start packing.

  In Nineveh, meanwhile, Mrs Munde was experiencing a very different kind of encounter — not demons for her, but suitors. She felt like a schoolgirl again because the secretary of NAFF, Herb Mill, had asked her to marry him. He had been in the crowd while she had spoken to the heathen and fought off the nasty man from SCOFF, and his heart had been full of the kind of wonder and admiration that can only be called love. Being a decisive man he had followed her to her hotel and asked her to be his wife. He couldn't give her any more children, but he could help her set up a new home with an Aga and no fridge. They might even start a little business — a cake shop perhaps - and Mrs Munde had said, yes! yes! to it all. They could use her compensation money to buy a freehold and a big oven. What would they call it? 'Just Desserts', she decided, as a warning to the heedless and a consolation to the believing. Her arm now seemed a small price to pay for the happiness she was finding. A kitchen after all; not so grand, but ample. She had to tell Gloria, and as she gazed up at the stars they seemed especially bright. 'For me,' she thought. 'They're shining for me.'

  Rita was beginning to wonder about her husband. He had been unusually silent all through dinner. But about half an hour after they'd finished their coffee and were sitting watching the television he spoke. 'Why don't we go for a walk in the woods?'

  'What for?' she said, not wanting to leave the fire or the TV.

  'Oh, for old times' sake. Like we used to. Moonlight ... you know.'

  'There's no moon tonight, and you hate the woods.'

  'Well, I'd like a change then,' said Japeth defensively. 'A man can start wanting other things and I'd like to walk in the woods.'

  'I don't want to,' said Rita firmly. 'Anyway, I'm watching the TV.'

  'Typical,' sneered Japeth. 'Other people's wives go for walks in the woods. Why is it you never want to do anything? I slave all day just to keep you in hair-dos and you won't even come for a walk in the woods. I'm not asking you to come on holiday or anything, just a short stroll. You don't even need a coat.'

  'I don't want to go,' shouted Rita. 'Do I have to spell it out? Do I have to sign-write it like the Unpronounceable? Just let me watch this programme will you? It's about computers.'

  'So why can't you learn to be user-friendly?' snapped Japeth. 'OK, just come out into the garden and we'll look at that fern you like so much.'

  'I hate ferns like you hate woods. Now will you shut up?'

  'All right, all right,' yelled Japeth. 'I didn't want to do it this way, I wanted to do it nice and gentle with chloroform, but it's your fault.' And he picked up a vase and smashed it over Rita's head. When she was cold he scooped her up and carried her into the library where Sheila was already lying peacefully in a large tea chest. 'She'll need an injection, quick,' he panted. 'I had to hit her over the head. She didn't want to come for a walk in the woods.' He stared at his family who just smiled and carried on with their hobbies. God, he hated selfish people. It was all he could do to make Noah tear himself away from his model ark and give the injection.

  'What are you doing with that model?' he demanded. 'We've got a full-size one out the back and soon we'll be in it.'

  'I'm trying to find out how porous gopher wood becomes after a period in the water,' explained Noah.

  'But that ship's not made out of gopher wood. It's made out of fibre-glass,' protested Japeth.

  Angrily Noah swung round. 'Are you crazy? How can I rewrite the start of the world and then say that we sailed away in a fibre-glass yacht with its own tilt-free pool table? What will it look like? I'm experimenting with something primitive because we're supposed to be a primitive people according to the story. Now why don't you just go and check the bourbon? I'm tired of you and your brothers. You're going to breed a race of morons.'

  'And what are you going to breed?' shot back Japeth sarcastically as he swung out of the door. 'A race of bald romantic novelists?'

  Noah turned back to his tank and what dignity he felt he had left. If only he could he'd scrap the whole lot of them and run away with Bunny Mix and a crate of gin. Maybe they'd live, maybe not, and he didn't much care. He'd been the best father he could to those boys, and he'd been more than a mother to that chocolate sundae in the sky, and in the end they'd all turned against him. Well he'd show them. First dry land and he'd plant a vineyard and get roaring drunk and stay drunk for the rest of his life.

  The rabbit of romance was in a flap. She had just received the message from her old friend Noah concerning the end of the world. He said it was God's Will, though he didn't tell her the whole story about God's will being more or less his own fault. The message advised her to pack up a small suitcase with her favourite belongings and to hurry over to his place as soon as possible. They were already loading the animals and time was short. He warned her to say nothing. If the others found out (and by others she presumed he meant everybody), there'd be street riots and petitions and trouble at the docks. The Lord wouldn't change his mind so they had to do what he ordered and keep quiet.

  Bunny Mix sat on her long pink sofa, taken aback by the sudden turn of events. One minute you're publishing a new book of poems and the next you're being offered a place on a cabin cruiser. As the full implications dawned on her she felt cheated. She had worked all her life and could honestly say that she was enjoying the fruits of her labour. Now her labour was going to be turned into a reservoir. Surely the world wasn't so wicked? Naughty yes, and wayward in places; but really, the idea of starting again... She resolved to telephone Noah at once and make him make the Lord see sense.

  When she got through, Noah was not helpful. 'I can't talk to you over the phone. Pack up and get here,' and he hung up.

  Slowly the rabbit paced her plush carpet. Perhaps, to be on the safe side, she should do as he said and argue later. After all, with her many reading tours behind her she was used to travelling light. And so it was that two hours later Bunny Mix swept out of her health lodge, trailed by three porters bowed down with suitcases and one cabin trunk. She had arranged for her sofa to be delivered, along with a set of her complete works. The specially bound calfskin set she so admired.

  The sun was low in the sky when she arrived at Noah's house, and so as not to attract attention she entered by the library patio and had her bags dropped outside on the lawn. Noah was working on something with his back to her, so she rushed over and covered his eyes with her hands.

  'Peek-a-boo, guess who?'

  'I can't imagine,' growled Noah ungraciously. Since her telephone call he had begun to regret giving her the opportunity of accompanying them while still conscious. Maybe he should arrange another tea chest. He had meant to do that, but his sons were so repulsive to him just now that he had decided a bit of congenial company might help him get through the worst of it. He turned round and pecked her on the cheek.

  'Look,' she said gaily, rummaging in her handbag. 'I've brought you a sugar pig,' and she laid it snout-down on the table.

  That's very kind,' thanked Noah, mellowing towards her. 'Have you brought your luggage? I hope there's not much?'

  'No darling, hardly a stitch, and no shoes to speak of. I left it on the lawn because I didn't know what you'd want to do with it.'

  Noah walked over to the windows and looked out. 'I can see three suitcases and a cabin trunk,' he said slowly.

  'Yes, it's nothing is it? Don't you think I've done well?'

  'Bunny, I told you to pack one small bag with your favourite possessions.'

  'Well those are my favourite possessions, but I couldn't qui
te squeeze them into one bag. Oh, and my sofa's coming too - just one sofa, the pink one, because I'll still have to work you know, and I can't work with no equipment, can I?'

  Noah toyed with the options before him. He could hit her over the head right now, himself, in the middle of the library, and throw her baggage into the cesspit, or he could ask her to be reasonable. He started with the latter, so that no one could accuse him of being short-tempered.

  'Unless you can get all your favourite possessions into one of those bags, you'll be floating away with the lot of them. We've got a pair of every animal you can think of to go in that ship and hardly room for the sauna, which God knows we're going to need, and you want to fill the place up with party frocks.'

  Bunny started to cry into her pink fox fur. 'Oh, just like a man. We women need our little comforts, our one or two belongings.'

  Noah was beside himself, and taking the rabbit by the hair he pulled her into the garden. 'One or two belongings don't take up four or five bags,' he screamed. 'Now sort them out, now right here on the lawn where I can keep an eye on you.'

  Soon the grass was awash with day dresses, evening dresses, night dresses, monogrammed bathrobes, skiing jackets and sportswear.

  'Just what do you think this is?' demanded Noah. 'A cruise?'

  Bunny continued to sob uncontrollably, and finally pulled out her blue diamanté roller skates. Noah snatched them from her. 'Those are too heavy. You'll have to leave them behind.'

  Bunny gave a little screech and lunged out to grab them back. She caught one of them by the lace. 'They're not heavy. I had them made to my own specifications. Look, you could lift them both with one finger. Why don't I show you?' But with a terrific pull Noah tugged them from her grasp and fell over backwards into the mimosa.

  'My favourite flowers,' wailed the rabbit. 'You've ruined my life and you've squashed my favourite flowers,' and she beat her heels up and down on the impeccable turf.

  As Noah was resolving to murder her on the spot — preferably with her own roller skate — a messenger arrived and tried to look respectful, even though two luminaries and notables were rolling around on the grass in a state of high emotion, arguing about clothes.

  'What do you want?' Noah snapped.

  'I've come to deliver a sofa, sir, a pink sofa and a set of calf-bound books, two and a half thousand calf-bound books.' The man waited for a tip, wondering if all the loose change had been lost in the grass.

  'Sofa? Books?' repeated Noah, and Bunny dried her eyes and intervened: 'Yes, dear, you know, I told you,' and she turned to the man and asked him to have them delivered to the lawn.

  'Oh no you don't.' Noah regained himself. 'You take those things back to wherever they came from and forget about them. We're not running a library service for the emotionally parched. Bunny, you can have ten of them, I don't care which, but that's your lot; and no sofa. And now I'm going to pack for you since you clearly can't do it yourself,' and with the fury of a lunatic squirrel Noah began to cast garments into the suitcase while Bunny pleaded and persuaded and crawled round on her knees trying to slip things in.

  'What's the point of one ballet shoe?' she asked bitterly, when Noah had finally shut the case by sitting on it.

  'Think of it as a memento,' he offered, feeling better. 'There won't be any ballet for centuries.'

  'No ballet?' whimpered Bunny. 'No opera?'

  'Nothing,' relished Noah, beginning to enjoy himself. 'No poetry readings, no press cuttings, no first nights, no honey toast, no treated bath mitts, no hothouse flowers in winter, no mint juleps in summer.'

  'What will there be left?' she asked in a voice bereft of its richness.

  'Oh, disease and hoeing. Yes, lots of hoeing and rheumatism and the same faces for years and wild animals ...' He broke off and decided to stash extra bourbon and not tell anyone.

  Long after Noah had gone indoors to have a bath, the rabbit of romance was still sitting on the lawn surrounded by her tussle of excess baggage and the glittering wheel from one of her roller skates. Miserably she picked it up and put it in her pocket. It was dark and no one could see her, and she was trying to decide what to do next. Should she bother to survive or not? What does one decide when Life's Happy Rug is whisked away from under one's feet leaving only the Doormat of Despair? At least these were the terms she used to address herself to the question. She had never been keen on language that was only descriptive. She liked to think that her prose had many levels. Of course she told a story, what novel does not? (Except for those very dreary experimental things that were only fit for wrapping up vegetables.) Yes, she told a story but her prose, like lasagne, was layered. There were strange undercurrents and frivolous cheesy bits and serious meaty bits and a spicy sauce, and of course there was pasta, the body of the book, but who would be content with just pasta?

  She remembered her very first book, a passionate and inspiring saga about a cripple and his nurse. In the end they had got married. Two thousand of her books ended in marriage; three hundred saw the male suitor going off to foreign parts with a broken heart; one hundred and fifty showed how a woman rejected may exact horrible vengeance and the other fifty had an untimely death just when the star-crossed lovers were nearing their final happiness. And Noah had said she could only take ten.

  She'd bred her very own herd of cattle specially to use as binding for those books. A basic Aberdeen Angus crossed with a Nineveh Nip (so called for their lightness of hoof) had provided resilience and suppleness, the very qualities, she felt, most prevalent in her writing. Now it was all wasted.

  She lay on her back, watching the indifferent stars run their circuit, and she smelled the grass, now damp, alongside her nose. She dug her perfectly manicured nails into the soil, her voice breaking with emotion. 'I will survive,' she whispered. 'I will survive.'

  The loading of the ark was scheduled for completion that night. Noah had persuaded his crew to work through the night for the sake of speed and secrecy. He claimed he had to have the vessel kitted out for tour by the following morning so that the eager and uncouth press men could come and take their photographs. He promised everyone extra pay. He had never done that before, but then he wasn't going to have to pay up. Noah was especially anxious that the sauna should be working, though Ham wanted to use the space to store a car. He was still convinced that they could start an oil refinery as soon as the earth had dried out. They tossed for it, and Noah won; so that was a relief. Cars, party frocks — thank God Rita and Sheila were in their boxes. He couldn't bring himself even to imagine what they would have wanted to take along.

  They had all briefly wondered where Desi was, but feeling sure that she would return in time to be knocked out, Noah got on with the business of putting away the animals. As they disappeared up the gangplank he counted and ticked them off his list: two tigers, two lions, two hippos, two bears, three elephants. He stopped. Three elephants?

  'Why are there three elephants?' he yelled at one of his men, who shuffled forward rather shamefacedly.

  'We got two, like you said, and then we found this one behind the kitchens. He wanted to come too.'

  'What are you talking about?' demanded Noah. 'Elephants don't have feelings.'

  At this Trebor dropped a huge tear onto Noah's hand and the hired man looked hopeful.

  'I'll do it in memory of Grace,' thought Noah, softening a little. She had always liked elephants. It would be a parting memory before his new life in a new world with Bunny Mix.

  'Take it away — it can come as well,' he said, gruffly, going back to his list.

  When he had sorted out the animals with four or more legs, he turned to the swimmers and birds. He chose birds to start with. As he began a little cloud came hovering by and unzipped itself by Noah's ear. It was Lucifer in a new hat.

  'What do you want?' grumbled Noah, glancing up.

  'Like my hat?' asked the angel cheerily. 'We've all got new hats to celebrate. It's not so bad up there now.'

  'You haven't come here just
to show me your hat, have you?'

  'Well no. Actually I've got a message from the boss. He says he'd prefer it if you didn't pack any pigeons.'

  'No pigeons? Why not? There's nothing wrong with pigeons. I'm taking them,' and Noah started scribbling again.

  Lucifer rearranged his hat, which was actually very nice.

  'Oh don't. Be a sport. I don't want to have to tell him you're taking them, just when we'd got it all feeling better up there.'

  Noah turned round, exasperated. 'Look, this is my ship and my trip. I didn't ask him to flood the bloody place. If that's what he wants to do then he's going to have to put up with pigeons. Can you imagine a world without pigeons?'

  Lucifer was getting agitated, so in a rare moment of generosity Noah decided to help out. 'You tell him I'm not taking any, and I'll take them all the same. Then it's my problem, not yours. How about that?'

  The angel cheered up and climbed back into the cloud. 'What a life,' he thought. 'One day I'm going to start my own business.'

  Noah continued down his list. He hated interruptions. He always had, even as a child. Grace had never interrupted him. She'd never got in the way, just pottered about the house, smiling and having a gin or two — and then she'd gone and started fencing. He felt the old well of anger boil up, but knew it wasn't the time and got back to the birds. Kookaburras, wagtails, German spider birds, lesser-plumed featherene, hoopoes. No hoopoes. And why not? That girl was supposed to be bringing hoopoes. He called one of the men and sent him to check up. Why, he thought bitterly, couldn't life go smoothly just for a change?

  The hoopoes were sitting in a hideout with Marlene, Gloria, Desi and Doris. They'd been hiding out all day, stashing cans of baked beans and slabs of banana bread into waterproof containers. They'd agreed to act normally when the rain began the following afternoon. Desi would go with Gloria to drop off the hoopoes, pick up some clothes and then they'd meet the others at the hotel recommended by the orange demon.

  When Noah got tired of the flying things he went inside for a cup of coffee and a hamburger, and found Bunny Mix propped up in his favourite armchair wearing one of his dressing gowns. She had a strange bright look about her, rather like the picture of St Bernadette meeting the Holy Virgin for the first time. Noah couldn't make this comparison, but it did occur to him that .she seemed very odd. She was making a list.