Ark Baby

by Liz Jensen

  ‘We saw you at the Thistle Festival,’ said Rose.

  ‘In the old days, it was like an initiation ceremony,’ said Blanche.

  ‘To prove you were a man,’ said Rose.

  ‘You want proof, girls,’ I said, glancing at them in the mirror, ‘I’ll give you proof.’

  I thought that was quite a witty thing to say.

  On the journey to Hunchburgh we talked about their genealogy module, and their mum’s loopy idea about some television producer called Oscar or Jack arriving on her doorstep. Then they wanted me to explain how birds digest hard seeds, and why there were so many pet monkeys and apes in the cities, but hardly any in the country.

  ‘It’s a fashion thing, I reckon,’ I told them. ‘I used to get loads of them in my surgery back in Tooting Bec’

  ‘You had a surgery in Tooting Bee? In London?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  Bugger, I thought, remembering Giselle the macaque and Mrs Mann.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Because I had a sixth sense that, if I came to Thunder Spit, I might meet the two most desirable girls in the whole country.’

  They liked that, and giggled.

  ‘And you know something?’ I said. ‘My sixth sense wasn’t wrong.’

  They were good dancers. They were exhibitionists. There are plenty of starers in Hunchburgh. Male and female: people who prefer to watch, and comment. As they whirled about under the big glitter-ball, and waggled their peachy arses, I felt special. Special, that everyone was staring, the blokes with admiration and lust, the girls with criticism and envy. The twins were dancing for me, and I felt like a million Euros.

  Later, I said, ‘Come to my place.’

  ‘Both of us?’ suggested Rose, running her red nails up my right thigh.

  ‘Together?’ whispered Blanche, nibbling at the lobe of my left ear.

  ‘Both of you,’ I said. ‘Together.’

  Because as well as feeling a million Euros, I felt twelve metres tall and three metres wide.

  And Sigmund felt thirty-five centimetres long.

  CHAPTER 20

  FAREWELL!

  I felt small and alone. It was October on our herring-shaped peninsula, and the freezing air crackled with salt. Under a thin sun, slate roofs shone bright with hoar-frost, and the silhouettes of trees stood bare and stark against the churning seascape. Never had Thunder Spit looked colder, or bleaker, and in my heart, a part of me was glad to leave.

  ‘God has cursed you!’ Parson Phelps called after me as the silent Mr Peat-Hove flicked his whip and my horse and cart trundled off along the slippery shingle path. ‘You can never atone! Begone! Abandon yourself to that cursed metropolis, where the corruption is so thick that you can scrape it off the walls!’

  My father appeared to have forgotten that it was his own idea – and God’s – that I should go to Hunchburgh in the first place. There was no pleasing him, I thought dismally, as my father’s ranting died in the distance. I pulled my wool hat down over my ears, and shivered. In my hand, I clasped the linen bag that contained my most treasured possessions: my Bible, Herman’s Crustacea and Hanker’s World History, four dried gourds from my mother’s grave, the whelk shell Tommy Boggs had given me as a leaving present, a fish-knife from his mother, and my mermaid’s purse.

  ‘Goodbye, dear Father,’ I whispered under my breath, as the gnarled trees of the peninsula gave way to mainland shrubs.

  My new life had begun.

  * * *

  What I knew of cities amounted to what my father had chosen to relay to me, namely, that they are dens of vice; that they are crawling with women of ill-repute who are receptacles for foulness, and bear infants unblessed by God; that there is neither neighbourly nor brotherly love; that there are beggars in the street with suppurating sores that can never be healed.

  My train from Judlow arrived in Hunchburgh, and tipped me out on to thronged streets, where I saw at once what my father had failed to tell me: that there were more people in the world than I had ever imagined. It was market day, and the centre of the city was bustling; a million chattering voices filled the air; the cries of the stall-holders, the shrieking laughter of women, the plaintive whimpers of beggar children thrusting out grubby palms for halfpennies. I wandered through the market, past coffee-stalls and mountains of oysters, butchers’ carts and fruit-stalls. The place was buzzing and teeming with humanity – and yet these folk represented just a tiny fraction of the human population of the world! I suddenly felt small and insignificant, and invisible, as I wandered the cobbled streets in search of the Seminary. Nobody stared at me in the way they did in Thunder Spit and Judlow, or laughed at my gait; they were too busy, I soon realised, just going about their business. I saw a man with a painted face, juggling apples, and spotted a young urchin, a pickpocket, jostling the crowd who watched. By the wall of a church, I also spied a huddle of women guzzling gin and showing their bloomers to whomsoever cared to look; heeding my father’s warnings, I buttoned my frock-coat tighter and hastened my step, my head whirling with light and sound. O strange and bright and frightening new world! Yet my heart lifted in hope. For here, surely, I could begin life anew!

  I found the Seminary near the heart of the city, a red-brick rectangle, curlicued at the corners, and ringed with threatening holly trees, their glinting leaf-spikes flashing in the autumn sun like knives. When I saw the grandeur of the building and its big black shiny doors, I understood why my father had once dreamed that I should come here. For who could attack God, when He was housed in such a formidable fortress? After the chaos of the market, I entered the building with relief, and made my way along echoing tiled corridors to the Abbot’s office. I knocked hesitantly on his door.

  ‘Come in,’ called a loud, fruity voice. I entered. The room was lined with books and smelt of tobacco.

  He was a big red-faced man, with a handshake that nearly lifted me from the ground.

  ‘Welcome to the Seminary, Tobias,’ he said. ‘Your fame goes before you.’

  I quailed. What had he heard? Had my father written to him, telling him I was cursed by the Devil? I would not have been surprised.

  But my fame turned out to be of a more quotidian nature, and relayed to the Abbot by Mrs Tobash’s cousin, a former Thunder Spitter who was now married to his own cousin’s niece. ‘They tell me,’ said the Abbot, ‘that you’ve been reading aloud in church in Thunder Spit since you were five years old, and can do tongue-twisters like the Devil himself!’

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled. ‘It’s true,’ I said.

  ‘Well?’ he said, folding his arms.

  ‘Miss Mosh mashes some mish-mash,’ I ventured, and he applauded.

  ‘Betty Botter bought some butter,’ I went on. ‘But, she said, this butter’s bitter! If I put it in my batter, it’ll make my batter bitter! So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and she put it in her batter and it made her batter better!’

  ‘You’ll go far,’ pronounced the Abbot, slapping a meaty hand on his tattered Bible. ‘Now, I’ve found just the landlady for you. Her name is Mrs Fooney and she is a fine woman, with a very large – er, a large heart,’ he said, indicating the curve of a female bosom. I blushed. ‘In the meantime, let me introduce you to your fellow students.’

  The students were at luncheon, and the refectory echoed with the voices of five dozen noisy conversations. The Abbot led me to a table.

  ‘This is Farthingale,’ he said, indicating a weasel-faced youth who was shovelling boiled beans into his mouth with great speed. Farthingale looked up from his plate.

  ‘And, Farthingale, this is Tobias Phelps,’ said the Abbot. ‘I want you to take him under your wing. He is the son of a parson who attended this very seminary many years ago. Also has a knack with tongue-twisters. Did Betty Botter for me in my office. Most impressive.’

  Farthingale gave me what looked more like a smirk than a welcoming smile, and exchanged a glance with a fellow student
sitting next to him. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Betty,’ he said. ‘Serve yourself to beans.’ And he jerked his head in the direction of a metal pot.

  ‘That’s the stuff!’ said the Abbot, and slapped Farthingale on the back with a hearty laugh. Then he turned to leave, clasping his Bible in his hand like a brick he was going to plant somewhere. ‘Come to my office after lunch, Phelps,’ he said. ‘Farthingale will make the rest of the introductions.’

  ‘Well, Betty,’ said Farthingale, when the Abbot was out of sight. ‘Impressed the Abbot already, have we? There’s a good boy. Come and meet the new student, Popple,’ he said to his neighbour, a podgy lad with crooked teeth. ‘His name’s Betty Botter.’

  And so it was that Betty became my nickname – or rather one of them. My fellow seminarians had smelt meat. During the course of that meal, during which I made the acquaintances of Popple, Ganney, Hicks, McGrath and other seminarians, I was offered further appellations: Fartybockers, and Hobble-de-Hoy among them. I chewed on my beans, and said as little as possible. I had entered this building full of hope – but now, with a lurching feeling of recognition, I recalled my lonely days at school, when I was taunted by the other boys, or played alone in the playground.

  ‘So what brings you here, Betty?’ asked Ganney.

  ‘The Church is my vocation,’ I mumbled fearfully.

  They all laughed like drains at that. By the end of the meal, Farthingale, Popple, and Ganney had elected themselves my persecutors.

  ‘They’re just boisterous,’ the Abbot said airily, drumming his big sausagey fingers on his Bible. I had returned to his office after luncheon, and recounted some of the conversation. ‘I’m afraid that if you view the Church as your true vocation, you’re an exception here,’ he explained. I was taken aback by the somewhat breezy manner in which he announced this news. ‘Most of the fellows here are either younger sons, failures in other professions, or otherwise here against their will. That’s the truth of the matter.’ Then he sat back, and made a thick, blunt steeple of his hands. I wondered whether the same applied to him.

  ‘As a matter of fact it does,’ he said, reading my thoughts. ‘I’d like to have been a builder, but it would have been over everyone’s dead body.’ He stopped and chuckled. ‘So here I am, constructing souls instead. And doing repairs.’

  I hung my head, and tried to stifle my tears. ‘Look, son, let me tell you something,’ he said, when he saw my distress, taking my hand in his large benign paw. ‘This is a dying profession. I fear the Church is headed for extinction. And Darwinism hasn’t helped. All this stuff about being descended from monkeys and apes has turned people away. In a hundred years’ time, this seminary will be gone, and your little church in Thunder Spit will be but an empty shell.’

  I said nothing; I just sat there, miserable beyond words.

  ‘But maybe you are different, Phelps,’ he said kindly. ‘If you have faith, then it’s a good thing. Keep a hold of it. Just see Farthingale and his chums as a challenge God has given you,’ he proposed. ‘You must remember about turning the other cheek, son.’

  ‘Yes, Abbot, I will.’

  ‘And another thing.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I have the impression that you carry a burden, Phelps. Am I correct? You don’t walk straight, and you appear to stoop. Your shoes, if I may say so, look like a couple of pancakes.’

  I explained to him about my deformities of the foot, and the fact that I had been a foundling, and that my spine had been mutilated when I was a mere babe.

  He appeared sympathetic, in his rough and ready way, but had a warning for me.

  ‘You have suffered Tobias, I grant you that. But the way out of this suffering, son, is to witness for yourself how others suffer more, and to help them. If you’re serious about this as a vocation – God help you – you’ll need to get stuck in. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So go out there, Tobias, and visit the slums, of which there are many. Go to Mickle Street, and Petersgate, and Upper Hayside, and bring succour and help and faith to the needy of the parish, and thereby forget your own troubles. That’s my advice to you. Now go and settle in at Mrs Fooney’s, and come to me if you have any problems.’

  Although it was by no means what I had expected of my first encounter with my new vocation, I decided to put my worries to one side, and take up the Abbot’s advice. If he gave me little solid comfort, at least I found it elsewhere. Mrs Fooney’s lodging-house was next to the Seminary, and as soon as I crossed her threshold, I felt at home.

  ‘Come in, young gentleman!’ said Mrs Fooney. ‘Welcome! Wipe your feet on the mat and let me make you a cup of tea!’ Mrs Fooney was as big-breasted as the Abbot had indicated, and also as warm-hearted. Indeed, they are characteristics that have always gone together, in my limited experience of women. You cannot have the one without the other. Needless to say, Mrs Fooney reminded me very much of my own mother, and even offered me barley flip-cakes.

  I also met her granddaughter, Tillie, a charming, ringleted, cheeky child of seven who immediately settled herself on my lap and took my hand in hers.

  ‘You’re very hairy,’ she remarked, stroking my wrist. Suddenly she pulled her hand away. ‘Ugh! He’s got a flea!’

  ‘Shush, Tillie!’ Mrs Fooney rebuked her. ‘We all have fleas, child. Even men of God!’

  Between them, Mrs Fooney and Tillie lifted my spirits immeasurably. Tillie helped me to arrange my possessions on the mantelpiece in my room, and I let her hold my whelk shell while I read to her from the Bible.

  So began my new life.

  I am proud to say that I was good at my work; I already knew most of the Bible by heart, and the Abbot praised my diligence and the quality of my fledgling sermons. My first sermon, which concerned fossils, was a treatise condemning Darwinism – a subject close to my heart. He heralded it as a work of genius. I argued, just as Parson Phelps had taught me, that God had planted the fossils in the earth to muddle geologists into believing that the world was much older than it was, and tricked Darwin into developing a fantastical theory about man descending from monkeys and apes.

  Towards the end of my sermon, I held up the fossil I had brought with me from home.

  ‘This is God’s joke,’ I concluded. ‘And a fine one it is, too!’

  Needless to say, my presentation provoked much derision from my fellow students. However, I persisted with my studies, applying myself with fervour to my library books, thus earning myself another nickname; the Bookworm. In private moments of loneliness, the needs of my male object became ever fiercer, and I spent much time fighting my own bestial urges.

  It was then that I thought of my father and his marbles: would that, perhaps, bring me some respite? I bought a bag of these glass balls from a pedlar, and put them in my shoes.

  After half an hour, I realised that Parson Phelps must have been mad for longer than I’d thought.

  I gave the marbles to Tillie, who thanked me most prettily.

  Then she floored me with a strange query, which unsettled me for weeks.

  ‘Mr Phelps, who made God?’

  She had arranged her marbles on a plate, and was now stringing beads. The question hit me like a slap, for it was the very same one I had asked my father, when I was her age. I recalled the reply he had given me then.

  I cleared my throat. ‘God is self-made. Like a self-made man, but God.’

  ‘What d’you mean, self-made?’ asked Tillie, her eyes squinting in puzzlement. ‘Nothing can make itself, Mr Phelps. That would be a very silly idea, I think!’

  I considered this for a moment.

  ‘It requires a leap of faith,’ I told her finally. ‘It requires believing in what you don’t understand. It requires believing that everything is connected, like your beads are connected, but with an invisible string.’ Tillie looked puzzled. ‘A gourd plant sprouted on my mother’s grave the year after she died,’ I went on. ‘And every year since, the gourds it sprouts have been
of a different shape, colour and texture. Look,’ I said, and took her to the mantelpiece, where I had arranged my dried gourds. ‘This was the first one that grew.’ I pointed to the green, stippled fruit, now somewhat shrunk from its original size. ‘And the next year, this one came from its seed.’ I pointed to the gourd with the orange frill and yellow blotches.

  ‘And then this one?’ asked Tillie, picking up last year’s gourd, which was green and yellow, and striped.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘See? It looks nothing like it, but this is the next generation.’ And then from the seed of the stripy one, came this one,’ I said, handing her the gourd I had picked just before I left Thunder Spit. It was knobbled and almost mauve in colour. ‘Can you explain that?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Tillie. ‘But there must be a reason.’

  ‘There is. But only God knows it. All we know,’ I told her, the thought striking me as I said it, ‘is that they are related to each other, as surely as an island is related to the shore. Look deep enough, and you will see that, below the level of the sea, the land is joined.’

  I thought of Thunder Spit. I thought of the Flood, which had turned our herring-shaped peninsula into an island. And I thought of my father’s words in the church, just before we fell into the water and I saw my vision of the Contortionist. He had quoted John Donne’s poem to me, which I quoted to Tillie now.

  ‘ “No man is an island,” ’ I told her, ‘ “entire of itself. But a piece of the continent, a part of the main!” ’

  The tears came into my eyes most unaccountably as I said these words, and Tillie put her little arm around my shoulders.

  ‘Let’s play marbles, Mr Phelps,’ she offered gently.

  And so we did.

  When not occupied with my studies, I haunted the slums. I had taken the Abbot’s advice about avoiding self-pity and bringing help to others, and within a few weeks of my arrival in Hunchburgh, I had thrown myself with conviction into my task as a saver of souls and a champion of the Bible. I found Parson Phelps’ voice emerging from my larynx as I preached. I trod the bumpy streets with a stride that mimicked his, and grew increasingly confident in my manly gait, thanks, in part, to the well-fitting shoes Mr Hewitt had so skilfully cobbled for me. Slowly I learned to live without my father’s words and presence; I recreated him inside me instead. I had no choice; he returned my letters unopened. Turning the other cheek, I continued to send them, in the hope that charity, if nothing else, would prevail.