‘Yes,’ she murmured, hoping her own whisper might temper his wild voice. It hardly mattered, really. Nobody else could hear him, with that pack of raucous Cub Scouts catcalling and sniggering, trying to urge the male to repeat its brief performance, so they could point and jeer again.
The female chimp stuffed her mouth with peanuts, started spitting out the shells angrily, vindictively, as if furious at her rape. The male sat sullen on its own, scratching at its fur, its penis still erect, its small eyes hostile, narrowed.
‘Look, Luke,’ she said, still trying to distract him. ‘The chimps have all got names. They’re written up over there, with pictures of each one. Shall we see if there’s a Luke?’
‘There won’t be.’
He was right. Bobby, Johnny, Barbie, Jane and Fanny, even Amanda and Rosanne. Human names. She stared up at the chart which showed man grouped with the apes, listed all their similarities – their frontal vision, grasping hands, their closely related anatomy and structure, even their similar blood groups, biochemistry. What had Robert said – way back in April when he’d first brought her to his lighthouse – that there was only a one per cent difference between man and chimpanzee? At the time, she had hardly deemed it credible, suspected that he’d got the figure wrong. One per cent seemed ridiculously little, impossible, in fact. Yet they’d discussed it at a later date, and Robert had explained the new and clinching evidence which showed man was closer to the chimp than a donkey to a horse; that chimps, gorillas, humans, were virtually identical, at least as far as genetics were concerned. She’d continued to resist the notion; somehow found it most distasteful to imagine Mother Mistress or Reverend Mother Abbess composed of the same chemical components as a gross and hairy ape. Yet now she could actually see it for herself, pictured on that chart – naked man crouching beside a row of fellow apes, all with roughly the same head-shape, the same muscles, joints and organs, even the same expression on their faces, one of cunning, guile.
Luke was tugging at her arm. ‘Come back to the cage. The chimps are fun.’
‘But we haven’t seen the reptiles.’ Reptiles were much safer, far removed from man – cold-blooded, with small brains.
‘No. I like the chimps best. Oh, look! They’re fighting now.’
The male was in pursuit again, howling with frustration as a younger slimmer female managed to elude him. She was screeching too – high-pitched yowls of rage, as she swung high up on the bars, then turned her back and urinated, directing the fierce jet at her pursuer. Luke crowed with vulgar laughter, the Cub Scouts joining in, mimicking the male’s outraged expression. Hilary glanced from boys to chimps: the same open mouths, bared teeth, the same crude and braying noises, piggy eyes screwed up; the same grabbing snatching hands. The bars were down, the cage dissolved; boys and man and monkeys all muddled up together, all chewing, spitting, defecating; hurling nutshells, picking noses, scratching heads and rumps.
Luke was in the centre of the scrum, stuffing his mouth with rotting fruit and vegetables, hitting out at smaller boys as they tried to grab his share; Joe, yowling with frustration at his women, threatening them with leers; Robert, too, and Simon, pink penises erect; she herself swollen and on heat, submitting as they covered her and thrust. She could feel their hairy bodies rutting into hers, their rough coarse pelts hurting on her breasts; the constant stabbing pain as they rammed again, again; the heat, the sweat, the smell of dirty fur. Her head was like a cage itself, fetid with their droppings, jarring with their noise snortings, gruntings, sudden yelps of triumph as they spurted into her, as suddenly withdrew.
She limped away, found an empty corner, slumped against the wall. She had to be alone, remove herself from that barbarous savage pack. She opened her eyes, saw all the colours blurring, solid shapes melting and distorting; heard discordant shouts and laughter, jumbled up and booming through her skull. She was alone – totally, completely – alone in this new terror, this sudden choking panic. She wouldn’t make it, couldn’t cope. She had tried to believe that she was sufficient in herself, a fighter like Aunt Eva, who no longer needed gods or nannies, glass cocoons, high protective walls. Now she realised she was nothing, too feeble and defenceless to save herself, let alone a child. She was just an animal, a mix of random chemicals no different from a monkey’s. She stared up at the chart again, man beside the apes, five squatting snarling figures on a level – man crude, uncouth, unfinished.
‘No,’ said Robert. ‘You haven’t understood.’
She started, glanced around. No one there; only the dark shapes on the chart, which she watched through half-closed eyelids, still uncertain where she was, or what was happening. One figure seemed to move, appeared to struggle to its feet; naked man standing slowly upright, towering now above the four crouched apes. She moved swiftly back, as he took a step towards her, a grotesque and lumbering man, reaching out for berries, digging for small grubs. Already, he had moved past her, was fashioning an axe-head from an unshaped lump of stone, building a rough shelter, striking flints together and sparking off a fire – man’s first and potent fire. The flames nickered in her face as he roasted deer and buffalo, kept wild beasts at bay; then joined his fellow hunters, trekking the broad plains to pursue and trap his prey; no longer naked, but dressed in skins and furs. His face was slowly changing, finer-honed, less savage, as he settled down to farming, cleared forests, grew new crops, domesticated animals, carved out settlements; his dress less wild and shaggy, his brain and tools more subtle. She watched him as he learned to write, drew up laws and codes, founded cities, raised temples to his gods; marvelled as he mastered mathematics, tested scientific theories, reasoned and debated, reflected on himself.
She rubbed her eyes, disorientated; glanced down at her hand, surprised to see it bleeding where she’d scraped it on the fence. She’d felt no pain at all, only a strange elation at the sense she had of the whole pattern of existence, with herself as an essential part of it; part of her own awesome human species. She needed Robert to put it into words for her – that startling concept of her own infinitesimal speck of life, touching on the infinite – a life which reached right back to slime, and on to sages, seers.
She swung round, still half-dazed. A raucous tinny pop tune was jangling out behind her; a lanky boy with acne nursing his transistor, though radios were forbidden in the zoo. That insistent thump-thump-thump had broken up her vision, dispersed those mysterious figures in her head. Now, all she was aware of was the whine of a guitar; the banal and jaunty twang of an electric piano. She swore beneath her breath, about to stalk away; stopped, transfixed by one repeated phrase. She knew that phrase – the ascending run of semiquavers from her Beethoven sonata. Had the pop composer stolen it, or was it sheer coincidence? The phrase rang out again, seemed to throb through her whole body, repeating and repeating, as if she herself were a soundbox or a keyboard. The boy had mooched away now, turned the volume down, but she was still hearing that same phrase, amplified, insistent, and then the flurry of arpeggios which followed in the score, the spirited crescendo which brought the movement to a close.
There was no close. The second movement was now clamouring in her head; the sustained dark chords which opened it; the forlorn and brooding theme with its restless left-hand tremolo fretting beneath the triplets in the right; and then the slow and groping change as the melody enlarged – gradually, uncertainly – the sombre mood shattered by abrupt explosive chords. She felt her own mood change with the arresting modulation which ushered in the serene and song-like passage in the major. That chain of rising fourths seemed to promise hope and certainty; those bold assertive chords to challenge and sustain her. The words of Isaiah suddenly jolted through her mind: ‘The land that was desolate and impassable shall be glad.’ She could feel that gladness suffusing the whole movement – a dazzling spill of quavers shimmering in the treble; lifting her spirits with its buoyancy, its verve. ‘The wilderness shall flourish like the lily.’
The melody was now in the left hand, the right hand playing a stea
dy ostinato, its compelling rhythm ripped apart by those sudden offbeat accents, which had always thrilled her and defeated her. She tensed instinctively, at the tricky treacherous passage which followed in the minor, with its unexpected cadences, its sudden change of key. It needed practice, hours and hours of practice, as man himself had needed years and years before he evolved a hand and brain. She would have to work on it, daily and meticulously, until the whole piece flowed, refined; developed power and meaning; became a vital part of her, as she herself was grafted into it, rooted in the score.
She unzipped her heavy coat, flung it open, ran a sweaty finger round the collar of her shirt. She was burning hot, despite the freezing air, yet everything was clear. She had to play – she knew that now had to use her one great gift which saved her from the apes; had to battle, struggle, for her own small evolution, use claw and wile and guile to get her own piano, deny the voices shouting out ‘Impossible!’ Joe could help, had started clearing houses as well as selling scrap, might well hunt down an instrument which at least would get her started. She must simply quash her pride, overcome her scruples, beg for what she wanted, make it paramount. She had never really given up her music, not even in the convent, not through more than twenty years. And she refused to renounce it now. Music was that one per cent, or at least a vital part of it; that unique and crucial element which had made man what he was: a thinking reasoning animal who had moved beyond the apes, finitely beyond them as he wrote and built and calculated, painted and composed. Robert was right – she hadn’t understood. That one per cent was huge; accounted for the whole of consciousness and culture, for philosophy and science, literature and language, art and music.
She stretched out both her hands – amazing agile hands, which had evolved through those millennia of grasping, shaping, whittling; refined themselves through every skill and subtlety, until they could write and sew and play – though not with that precision yet, that heady combination of passion and control she was hearing in the music, as the final movement swept into her head. She could never match that perfect tone, the audacious power of those relentless rushing triplets, but at least she must attempt it, wring out any shred of skill she had. When she’d entered Brignor as a novice, every nun had repeated to her in turn, ‘May the Lord grant you peace and perseverance’. She had found neither in the convent, had lost the Lord Himself; yet now she felt a spacious peace, a wild determination. This time, she’d persevere.
Of course there were problems, absolutely basic ones: no space for a piano, no cash for one, no chance of getting lessons, no money spare for buying music. But there would also be solutions, as there had always been solutions – had to be, for man to survive at all. She was suddenly aware again of that strength which Ivan had mentioned, that sense of possibility – and not only in the music – the strength to stand alone, or maybe not alone, the strength to grow and give. The exultant dancing rhythm of the coda seemed to blazon out her confidence; the insistent rising bass asserting, reasserting, her resilience, conviction; the sudden threatening chords dissipated instantly in a glittering run of semiquavers; all doubt and fear resolved. She was going to play – and soon – next month, next week, tomorrow; not just in the future. There wasn’t any future, only Robert’s eternal ‘now’, with those triumphant closing cadences soaring out across the zoo, seeming never quite to reach their final bars; the notes building, building on themselves, as if the sound were solid, like a monument.
She plunged back to the chimps’ cage. Three billion years or more had passed, as man struggled from the slime, but Luke hadn’t seemed to notice she had gone. He was still laughing at the chimps, his pale skin chapped with cold, her gloves stuffed in his pocket, scarlet muffler trailing.
‘They had a drink,’ he shouted. ‘The keeper gave them fruit squash from a bottle. Can we have orange squash?’
‘You’ve just had some in the café.’
‘I want another one.’
She began to tell him ‘no’; they were short of money, the cafe was too far, it had just begun to snow again and they ought to … She broke off in mid-sentence. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
She retied his muffler, took his hand. He didn’t pull away this time, not even when she broke into a run. His chilled and grubby hand began to thaw into her own, as they galloped on together, dodging puddles, tripping, noses running in the cold.
‘Can we have ice cream as well?’ he yelled. ‘It is your birthday, Gee.’
He was pushing his luck, to use his father’s phrase, demanding what he wanted, challenging her to provide a few indulgences. She’d better do the same, push her luck, believe in it; start scrounging cap in hand, insisting life gave her what she needed. It was her birthday – yes – time to start again; put pleasure and achievement before penance, abnegation; time to put her new self to the test.
‘Okay,’ she shouted back, above the echo of their footsteps, the rush and blur of snow. ‘Let’s be devils, for a change.’
Copyright
First published in 1989 by Grafton
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Wendy Perriam, 1989
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