‘I can see a head!’ he gulped.
‘Gently then, gently,’ Alice instructed.
Louise heaved for air and floated trustingly on the water, supported by gentle hands. Her stomach rose, went rigid, and as she groaned Jonafon gave a yelp of amazement as the baby slithered out. He stretched out his hands to catch it, but the baby was wet and slippery, and Jonafon was nervous.
‘Oh damn!’ he said in exasperation. ‘I’ve dropped it, Mrs Hartley!’
‘Well, pick it up,’ Alice said, exhaling deeply to keep her irritation from invading her aura. ‘Pick it up, Jonathon darling.’
The moon went back behind the clouds and darkness enveloped the pool. Alice could see nothing but she could hear Jonafon floundering around.
‘I can’t find it,’ he said desperately. ‘It’s floating around somewhere. I had it in my hands and now it’s slithered out and sunk somewhere.’
‘My baby!’ Louise called anxiously.
‘It’s down here somewhere,’ Jonafon said helpfully.
Alice could see nothing in the murky waters; the moonlight came and went, never bright enough to illuminate the darkness of the deep water. Alice gritted her teeth in fear.
‘Can anyone dive?’ she asked. ‘Can anyone go underwater and find the baby?’
She looked around. All the faces were white and aghast. No one was competent to cope with this emergency. They were all looking to her, and Alice did not know what to do. A deep fast wave bulged underneath them. The group bobbed on the turbulent water, Alice experienced rising panic as a swiftly moving swell of the water hit them and a dolphin beneath them brushed against her legs, nosing around where the baby had sunk.
‘Where’s the baby?’ she said urgently. ‘Jonathon – feel below you for the cord. We must get the baby up to the air at once!’
As she spoke, Bibby the dolphin nosed up out of the waters of the deep end. Before him, as pale and perfect in the starlight as a floating cowrie shell, he pushed the baby with his long gentle nose.
‘The dolphin brought it,’ Alice said incredulously. ‘The dolphin brought it up!’
Louise held out her arms and the dolphin gently nosed the floating baby towards her. The baby was on his back, his eyes open and as he saw the sky, he took his first breath of air, and he cooed, a trusting sound of joy. Louise let out a little cry of wonder, and held him to her, and the dolphin laid his long beaky nose on her shoulder, wearing the asinine grin of a proud father.
‘A boy,’ Alice said with delight.
‘I want to name him after the dolphins,’ Louise said with sudden determination. ‘This has been the most wonderful moment of my life. I want to name him after the dolphins, all four names. What are they, Alice?’
Alice shut her eyes for a brief moment, thinking of what life would be like for little Bilbo Bibby Peety Tutu Biddings on his first day at school.
‘Their proper name,’ she said, ‘their Latin name, is Daniel. You shouldn’t name your son after nick-names. Call him Daniel which means dolphin.’
Michael leaned over and kissed Alice’s bare shoulder in the water. ‘You know so much,’ he said respectfully.
Alice glowed. She knew she did. Knowing something from your imagination is equal in merit to knowing it because you happened to read it in a book written by some dried-up old idiot of a professor.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Let’s get Louise and Daniel home to bed.’
Louise suddenly clutched her hand. ‘No!’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go home! I don’t want Daniel to be a worker for the cause, I don’t want him to be a foot soldier in the remorseless army of revolution.’
Alice patted her reassuringly, and heaved herself out of the pool. ‘Certainly not,’ she said. Jonafon, Timofy and Gary boosted Louise from behind while Michael and Alice pulled from in front. Gary, for the first time in his life, felt the compact rounded buttocks of a woman in both his hands – and discovered, to his awestruck amazement, that he liked it.
‘You are coming home with us!’ Alice said joyfully. ‘And Daniel is not going to be a soldier in the revolution. He is going to be a wholly integrated person!’
‘Oh good,’ Louise said.
Alice towelled herself briskly dry and stepped back into her blue gown. Gary, who had grown a good deal in personal sexual terms in the past ten minutes, watched the disappearance of Alice’s bushy pubic hair and broad white hips with regret.
Alice walked back to the rim of the pool.
‘Daniels, we are grateful to you,’ she said. Her voice was clear and sweet over the dark moving waters. ‘And we acknowledge that you have helped us. I am waiting for a sign from you if there is anything you want from us?’
Alice stood very still and held her mind in quiet readiness. She waited for mental images of a pint of prawns, say; or a box of mackerel. But she saw nothing.
At least, all she saw was the image printed on her retina of a light sky and darker water.
‘Oh,’ she said, rather surprised.
‘What do they want?’ Michael asked rather anxiously. He knew these dolphins had been doing tricks at the end of the pier for a long, long time. He was aware they would have seen many desirable consumer goods during that time, especially cameras. He had a small private fear that they would want a state-of-the-art rapid-focus and automatic rewind camera, or a video camcorder; and he was afraid for his Nikon camera which his mother had given him last birthday. If the dolphins wanted it, he was sure that Alice would make him give it to them.
Alice recovered from her surprise and beamed at him. ‘They want to be free,’ she said simply. ‘They want to be in the sea.’
‘Oh yes,’ Michael said. He was so relieved about the Nikon that the implications of what Alice said did not sink in.
‘What?’ he asked. Then, ‘But, Alice, we can’t set them free!’
Alice rounded on him, her dark eyes flashing. ‘Why not?’
‘Because they belong to someone,’ Michael said feebly. ‘Someone bought them.’
‘All property is theft,’ Louise murmured out of habit, while Mary and Suzanne wrapped her warmly in blankets.
‘Exactly,’ Alice said brightly. ‘You can’t own a person can you?’
‘Well, no,’ Michael said. ‘Slavery is illegal.’
‘And these are people aren’t they?’ Alice asked.
‘Well, they’re dolphins,’ Michael offered.
‘Have they proved their humanity tonight?’ Alice demanded.
Michael nodded; the memory of Bibby, the dolphin’s broad shiny grin as he pushed the baby towards Louise, was very vivid.
‘Then they are people. And we pay our debts,’ Alice said sternly.
Michael shrugged. ‘But how do we get them to the sea?’ he asked.
Alice looked around. The walls around the pool were steep, the sea washed invitingly on the other side – but there was a long shingle beach to the first wavelets.
‘We’ll have to drive them,’ she said.
Michael had a picture of himself herding squirming dolphins seawards, a lariat looped casually around his wrist, a Marlboro cigarette drooping casually out of the corner of his mouth.
‘In the car,’ Alice said.
In moments she had reorganized the cars. Gary drove Mary, Suzanne, Louise and baby Daniel home to the Growth Centre, while Jonafon, Timofy and Stephanie waited behind with Michael and Alice to pay their debts to the Daniels.
Alice patted the water with her hand. ‘Come on dolphins,’ she called. Almost at once a firm rounded snout pressed into her palm. Alice nodded to Michael and the two boys, who obediently stripped off again and slid into the water. The dolphin grinned cooperatively and lay still as they knotted an improvised sling of Jonafon and Timofy’s matching pale blue dungarees beneath its creamy grey belly.
Alice held its head while they heaved it out of the pool and on to the side.
‘Now what?’ Michael asked, panting.
‘Into the car,’ Alice said. She stepped back to avoid
getting wet and slipped her dress off again and spread it out carefully over one of the seats at the poolside. ‘Gently now,’ she said.
Reverently they laid the dolphin on the smooth leather back seat of Professor Hartley’s one-time concourse-condition Jaguar car.
‘I’ll stay here and pour water over it while you get the other one,’ Alice said. She leaned over the dolphin and wrung little streams of water out of her thick hair. The dolphin clicked agreeably, enjoying the smell of the walnut dashboard and high-octane fuel, and the feel of hand-stitched leather upholstery.
Michael, Jonafon, Timofy and Stephanie heaved the second dolphin on to the floor in the back of the car.
‘Will he be all right?’ Michael asked.
‘Wet those dungarees and spread them over him,’ Alice said. ‘It’s only a short way.’
They drove out carefully past the watchman’s hut. A long whine from the television indicated that the station had closed down, and the watchman had closed down also. Now and then there was a rumbling snore from one of them.
Alice drove through the hole in the mesh and turned to the right along the promenade. The big car slid easily through the moonlight, passing piles of chained deck-chairs and a white-painted shelter with seats. A little way along there was a ramp for towing boats out of the sea. Alice drove past it and then reversed the car down with ill-founded confidence.
She left the motor running and helped the boys and Stephanie unload the two dolphins.
‘We won’t take them out deep straight away,’ she said. ‘We’ll let them all go together.’
They gently laid the two dolphins in the shallows where the waves could wash over them. They clicked and whistled companionably, apparently content to wait and see what would happen next. So far, it seemed to have nothing to do with hoops, balls, trumpets or funny hats, which was a relief in itself.
Alice made the return journey and supervised the loading of the last two dolphins. She folded her dress and put it in the boot, not wanting to get it wet. Then she drove carefully towards the hole in the wire mesh again.
The watchman, awake at last, heard the purr of the well-tuned engine and stumbled out of his hut, flashing his torch wildly around. He saw the Jaguar-shaped hole in the mesh and let out a bellow of rage.
‘Who did this then?’ he demanded of the silent sky. Then he wheeled around and saw the silver-grey Jaguar coming slowly towards him.
The British class system is a great and potent power. As soon as he saw the expensive elegance of the car he put a finger to his cap and stepped to one side. Alice regally bowed her head and imperceptibly pressed the accelerator.
As the great car gathered speed and swept past him, the watchman could see that the driver was a woman and her passengers were three young men and one girl, all of them completely naked. And in the back, one on the floor of the car and one on the seat, wearing matching pale blue denim dungarees, were two dolphins.
‘Stop!’ he shouted. But it was too late. Alice and the Daniels were gone.
‘We’ll have to be quick,’ she said as she parked the car at the foot of the ramp. ‘He’ll probably call the police.’
Jonafon, Stephanie, Timofy and Michael hastily heaved the two dolphins from the car to the shallows. All four lay along the beach, like great idle lubbery trippers with a day-return ticket from Manchester.
‘We’ll have to help them out to sea,’ Alice said.
They waded into the water. It was surprisingly warm. The shingle underfoot sucked and seethed, the little pebbles tickling, teasing. The tide was coming in. As the waves washed in deeper and deeper, they heaved on tail fluke and fin to shift the dolphins to deeper water. The dolphins wiggled helpfully, grinned around at them, crackled and clicked. Waist-deep in foaming water they each took a dolphin and urged it outwards, away from the land, away from Sargent’s Oceanside Marine Park, away from the frozen coley and the balls and the depressed girl in the bikini. And each dolphin, tasting authentic salt water for the first time in a long while, rose up to the surface, pointing its long conical snout at the yellow moon, and blew out and gurgled to each other in delight, and chuckled and remembered long swims from ocean to ocean, and told dirty jokes and sang comic songs about moonlight on the water and female dolphins, and the chummy pleasures of spawning grounds.
Alice and Michael and Stephanie and Jonafon and Timofy swam alongside them, further and further out to sea into deeper and deeper water as the broad butter moon sank slowly down in the west and the dark sky overhead became lighter grey, and then pink with the rising sun.
Then, when the dolphins were safely out in deep water, and heading southerly, Alice stroked their smooth flanks and told them farewell. They circled her, and the four others, as if to share the freedom of the seas together. Then, with their broad tails beating deeply and silently in the dark currents, the four headed south to the ocean, and the others headed north to the land.
They never saw each other again.
But none of them ever forgot.
Monday Morning
At home, in the early hours of the day, Michael and Alice melted into one another’s arms and slept the sleep of innocent children. They were drained of desire by their earlier satisfaction, they had been physically stretched by heaving the dolphins in and out of the car, they were emotionally sated by the joy of childbirth, and they were knackered. Once Michael stirred, and cuddled a little closer to Alice’s broad back, Blinkie questing for a home in the warm darkness of the bedclothes. Alice, still completely asleep, put a strong white hand behind her and clamped Michael’s penis between the welcoming damp warmth of her thighs with practised ease. Michael slept again.
In the morning he was fresh and joyous but Alice was weary.
‘You look tired,’ Michael said.
‘Not at all,’ Alice said, grouchy. She felt old.
‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea in bed?’ he offered. ‘I’m going in for an early lecture. Gary and Jonafon and Timofy are taking me.’
Alice nodded. For a brief contradictory moment she longed for Professor Hartley’s sullen unbreakable silence before 10 a.m. and the middle-aged settled routine of her old home.
‘All right,’ she said ungraciously.
Michael pattered barefoot out of the room, and came back a few moments later with a cup of tea and a copy of the Guardian.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you can be comfy.’
Alice glanced at the headlines. The government were going to axe all the remaining grants which had been accidentally left available from the last round of cuts, and give the money thus saved to the extremely rich – this is called incentive. Someone had taken a photograph of Princess Diana dancing with a strange man in a nightclub which was held to prove how strong the royal marriage now is (though it did go through a sticky period a little while ago). There was a military coup on an island in the Pacific which no one had ever heard of. One of the newly privatized companies – Gas, Water, Electricity, or Telephones – was poisoning, or cheating, or robbing its helpless customers. The consumer agency specifically established to prevent this abuse of power was surprised and baffled to find it had no control over this loophole, no legal status, and no punitive powers. Another Arab splinter group had decided to join in whatever trouble was currently raging in the Middle East, justifying their expenditure and death rate by their glorious history – unknown till now. An American woman was taking a man to court for an offence against her which she had richly deserved, or for which there could be no excuse, depending on the reader’s preconceptions of the nature of womanhood (see interminable editorial).
There were riots and uprisings in an unpronounceable place in what used to be the USSR. There was a famine in central Africa, Hartlepool had been relegated off the bottom of the league table to outer darkness. Peace talks in Northern Ireland had broken down but hopes remained high of a settlement sometime within the next millennium. Hemlines would be longer this autumn, except for those which would be dramatically short.
‘That’s nice isn’t it?’ Michael said encouragingly.
Alice looked at him. Behind his round-rimmed glasses his eyes glowed with stupidity and affection, like a well-trained inbred puppy. ‘That’ll cheer you up,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Alice said gloomily. ‘Thank you, darling. This will cheer me up a lot.’
Michael bent over and gave her a swift kiss. ‘I’ll be back at lunchtime,’ he said. ‘Gary, Jonathon and Timothy want to come out this afternoon as well. They’ll bring me home. They’re going to buy a cot for Daniel.’
Alice nodded and waved Michael out of the room, then she drank her tea, carefully avoiding even glancing at one word of the miseries of the world, drew herself a bath, and prescribed an extended floating meditation with fruit extract supplements. In other words, Alice retreated to the bathroom with a bottle of sloe gin and did not come out until she felt better.
She took three hours but by eleven o’clock, dressed in a long sweeping red gown and swathed in gold and black scarves, Alice drifted drunkenly down the stairs to be greeted with the surprising vision of Aunty Sarah, swathed from head to toe in virginal white, giving an interview to half a dozen reporters and three photographers who were gathered respectfully on the front steps.
‘These alien life forces have been naturally drawn to the doctor,’ Aunty Sarah proclaimed. ‘He is a great believer in these kinds of things. I am not at all surprised that they chose his hayfield to land on.’
‘Aunty Sarah, what is this?’ Alice asked, coming forward.
Sarah turned, her face luminous with innocent candour. ‘Such exciting news!’ she said. ‘They’ve found crop circles in Doctor Simmonds’s hay, in his hayfield.’
‘Really?’ Alice exclaimed. She brushed past the journalists and walked down the drive, and crossed the road to the hayfield which ran the length of the road alongside the doctor’s house. Today all the curtains in the Simmonds’ house were drawn tight against the invasion of the public, they did not even twitch. A scramble of cars was parked crookedly on the verge of the road, blocking access to Rithering village. Twenty or thirty people were trampling down the hay in Doctor Simmonds’s precious meadow, walking up and down, admiring the wide flat circle which had appeared, as if by magic, in the very centre of the meadow.
Alice Hartley‘s Happiness Page 14
