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  ‘He can’t have just — disappeared.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But it seems that he has. Disappearing is what he does. He’ll probably turn up sooner or later, but we could be talking months or even years. I’ve tried to track him down, but I think he must be abroad.’

  ‘Does he have a steady job?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ I laugh at Mum’s expression. ‘Musicians and steady jobs don’t necessarily go together. As you and Dad kept telling me, it’s risky business.’

  And for the time being, we leave it at that. I realise afterwards that Mum and I have covered more ground in the last hour than we have in the past ten years, and I’m grateful to her for initiating the conversation. If it had been left to me, would we ever have talked like this? I doubt it. My mother has the courage that I lack, and I feel new respect for her. In many ways, she is a much better human being than I can ever hope to be, and while I disagree with many of her principles, she has certainly lived by them. It is to my shame that this could never be said of me.

  The scan takes place the next day, and while the baby certainly appears to be more baby-like than it was last time, and Mum ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ over tiny fingers and toes, a waving arm, a ‘dear little face’ (‘I believe it’s got your nose, Ruth.’ Has it? How on earth can she tell?), I still fail to experience any of the wonder and delight I’m supposed to feel.

  ‘Aren’t you at all excited, Ruth?’ Mum whispers, when the technician disappears for a moment to fetch something. ‘I’d no idea it would be as amazing as this. We never had this sort of thing when I was expecting you.’ She seems to have forgotten the unfortunate provenance of her foetal grandchild in her wonderment at the combined miracles of nature and modern technology.

  ‘Of course I’m excited,’ I tell her (what else can I say?).

  ‘Do you want to know the sex of your baby?’ The technician has returned.

  ‘No — yes — I don’t know.’

  ‘Silas does,’ Mum reminds me.

  ‘Well, it’s not his baby,’ I snap, and am instantly sorry. I give her hand a squeeze. ‘Yes, okay. Why not?’

  ‘A boy,’ we’re told. ‘Were you hoping for a boy?’

  ‘I — don’t mind. But Blossom will be pleased.’

  ‘What’s Blossom got to do with it?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Blossom reckons she can always tell. She told me weeks ago that it was a boy.’ It would have been nice to be able to confound Blossom, but now it seems that even that small victory is denied me.

  We go through Silas’s list of questions, and receive patient (and on the whole, satisfactory) answers. No, the baby doesn’t appear to have any congenital defects or chromosomal abnormalities, although there are no absolute guarantees. Yes, it is the right size for its gestation, has all the right bits and pieces in the appropriate places and the degree of its activity is normal. It probably weighs about a pound (only a pound? That’s less than half a bag of sugar. I try to imagine a pound of baby, and fail) and its various measurements are to scale.

  As we emerge later on into pale autumn sunshine, I feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness, and suddenly I ache for the big, comforting presence of Amos; for the feeling of his arms around me, his clean man-smell, his comfortable chest, even the tickle of his beard against my cheek. I imagine him seeing in our baby all the things I don’t yet seem able to see, and telling me what a clever girl I am (isn’t that what new fathers are supposed to say?). We would walk hand-in-hand across the road to the pub for lunch, and he would have his usual pint of bitter (in a jug with a handle) and I would sip my tomato juice, and we’d get out our new photos of the baby, and admire them together. Best of all, we would be a couple; a couple sharing our baby.

  Mum has been better company than I could have hoped for (or deserved), but it’s Amos that I want with me now. I imagine his delight at the prospect of a son, his dreams of taking him to football matches (Amos loves football. Who will take the seahorse/rabbit to watch football if it hasn’t got a father? Every child deserves at least one parent who understands the off-side rule), helping with maths homework, running in fathers’ races on school sports days, and in the fullness of time, teaching it to drive. How will I manage to do all these things on my own? How do single parents cope?

  ‘Are you all right, Ruth?’ Mum asks me.

  ‘Something in my eye,’ I tell her, fumbling in my bag for a tissue.

  Despite our new improved relationship, I’m still not ready to tell Mum how much I long to find Amos.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It has taken Lazzo nearly a week to complete his labours with the hen house, and the project is almost finished. A large patch has been cleared in the back field, with a rough path leading to it from the main track, and the hens are comfortably installed in their new surroundings. The Virgin side of the hen house is exposed, with the rest — including the nesting boxes — fenced off by the run, so that the hens are spared the worshipful activities of their visitors. As Silas says, whatever the hens may or may not be, they are certainly not Roman Catholics. As it happens, they seem to have suffered very little from the upheaval, and I put this down to Lazzo. He has a quite extraordinary way with animals, reminding me of Dickon in The Secret Garden. Cows come up to him to be stroked; Sarah, who normally eschews any physical contact, allows him to tickle her tummy; the cats — usually so haughtily independent — fawn all over him; and poor Mr. Darcy is completely besotted.

  ‘How do you do it?’ I ask, as Lazzo and I sit together on a log contemplating his handiwork. Lazzo is holding a chicken on his lap, gently ruffling its feathers with a very dirty thumb, while Mr. Darcy lies adoringly at his feet.

  Lazzo looks down at the chicken.

  ‘Dunno,’ he says.

  ‘Have you always been good with animals?’

  ‘S’pose. Had a hamster when I was five,’ he offers, as though this is some kind of explanation.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Cat got it.’

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. ‘Have you ever thought of working with animals?’

  ‘Never thought of working.’

  We both laugh. I have grown fond of Lazzo. Apart from his appraising glances and the occasional suggestive wink, he has been on the whole civil, sensible, and fun. He has a good sense of humour, and his company is undemanding. He appears to be perfectly self-sufficient, comfortable in his own skin, and content. While Blossom may have been a pretty awful mother, she must have got something right.

  ‘What do you want to do? In the future?’ I ask him. ‘There must be something you’d really like to do.’

  ‘London Zoo,’ says Lazzo promptly.

  ‘What, work there?’

  ‘Just go.’

  ‘Have you never been?’

  ‘Never been to London.’

  ‘Then I’ll take you,’ I promise him. ‘One day, I’ll take you to London Zoo.’ I bend down to pull Mr. Darcy’s ears. ‘But what else? You must have some kind of — ambition?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Would you like to — get married?’ I venture, realising that this is possibly a tactless question.

  ‘Mum says no-one’d have me.’

  ‘She can’t be sure.’ I feel a surge of indignation on Lazzo’s behalf. How dare Blossom pass judgement in this way? How can she possibly know?

  ‘Says I’m too lazy. Got a point.’ Lazzo grins, and pats my shoulder. ‘Fine as I am.’

  And he’s probably right. It’s so easy to attribute to other people one’s own hopes and aspirations; to decide that they can’t be happy because their lot isn’t what one would want for oneself. In a way, I envy Lazzo. He appears to have everything he wants, plus his childlike ability to live in the present. A doorstep of bread and cheese, a can of beer, a sunny day, the rough lick of a cat’s tongue on his hand — Lazzo appears to get his pleasures from simple things. I can’t imagine him agonising over past mistakes or future plans; wanting things he can’t have or worrying about what
people think of him. Lazzo is what he is, take it or leave it. One could learn a lot from Lazzo.

  Now that the business of relocation has been dealt with, the small matter of the Virgin has to be addressed, together with the imminent advent of her admirers. But when I mention the subject to Blossom, it would seem that everything’s in hand.

  ‘All sorted,’ she tells me, her beady eyes challenging me to interfere with her plans.

  ‘What about the tickets?’ I ask her. ‘You said it would be a tickets-only affair.’

  ‘Done,’ says Blossom.

  ‘What do you mean, done?’

  ‘Church.’

  Blossom’s minimalist means of communication can be absolutely maddening. Sometimes I want to take her by her shoulders and shake the syllables out of her until there are enough of them to constitute a proper sentence.

  ‘What about the church?’

  ‘All in hand.’ Blossom reaches for the switch on the vacuum cleaner, but I turn it off at the wall.

  ‘Blossom, we need to know. We need to know who’s coming, when they’re coming, and how many. You can’t just make all the decisions off your own bat.’ Eric and Silas are out, and Mum is washing her hair. Blossom and I are on our own.

  After a lot of cajoling I manage to acquire a few basic facts. A small committee from the Catholic church has apparently visited the hen house (how come we didn’t notice? It’s not as though small committees are a normal part of the landscape) and have given their seal of approval. Someone has volunteered to print tickets on their computer, and Father Vincent has given his blessing (I’ll bet he has. I suspect Father Vincent will do anything for a quiet life). Visitors will be admitted on two afternoons a week. A large notice has been made for the gate (we now have a separate path leading to the hen house), giving the days and times when the Virgin is receiving visitors, and Father Vincent is donating a padlock out of the church petty cash.

  ‘You could at least have checked with Eric and Silas,’ I tell her.

  ‘Did. Weren’t listening,’ Blossom tells me. ‘Eric on the phone; Silas stuffing something. Often don’t listen,’ she adds. ‘Not my fault.’

  I know very well whose fault it is. Blossom has a habit of raising awkward subjects when she knows they are least likely to be heard, and then interpreting silence as agreement. Whatever may be said about Blossom, she’s not stupid.

  ‘Oh, well. I suppose that’s okay,’ I concede. ‘Two afternoons should be manageable. How will people know about it?’

  ‘Parish magazine. Told them start next week.’

  It would appear that Blossom has thought of everything.

  When Eric and Silas return, they agree that we should be able to accommodate visitors on two afternoons a week, although, as I suspected, they were unaware that they had already agreed to the arrangement.

  ‘So long as you take charge, Ruth. You said you would,’ Silas reminds me.

  ‘If Blossom lets me, I’m happy to be in charge.’

  ‘She’ll have to do as she’s told,’ Eric says.

  ‘Blossom,’ I remind him, ‘never does what she’s told.’

  ‘Well the two of you will have to work things out together. Silas and I haven’t the time.’

  Working with Blossom proves to be easier than I had anticipated, largely I suspect because she is so keen for the project to work and knows that as Eric’s and Silas’s representative, I have the power of veto. After the first week, Eric and Silas agree that the project has given rise to very little trouble. Visitors arrive at the appointed times, bearing their tickets, and on the whole they behave nicely. They come in twos and threes, reverent and respectful, murmuring in low voices, sometimes praying, and Blossom, Lazzo and I take it in turns to oversee things.

  The Virgin herself looks if anything more lifelike than she did before she was moved. Her outline is sharp and well-defined, her robe flowing, the stars — and they really do look like stars — form a halo round her head. I find myself wondering whether Blossom might have touched her up a bit when we weren’t looking, but everything is true to the original grain of the wood. Even Blossom can’t interfere with nature. Blossom herself maintains a small vase of flowers beneath the apparition, and while these are regularly consumed by Sarah and her brood, they add to the hen house a touch of the roadside shrine which reminds me of a long-ago Austrian holiday.

  Do I believe in the Virgin of the hen house? Once I would have said categorically that I did not, but now, I’m not so sure. I’ve never been the kind of person who looks for (or wants) signs or miracles, but I have to admit that this is, if not miraculous, then certainly a rare kind of curiosity. Mum watches me anxiously, and I know she harbours a secret fear that I shall “go over to Rome” (I heard her confiding as much to Silas), but I certainly have no intention of doing that. Not for me the trips to the confessional, the collection of indulgences and the weekly attendance at Mass; I had far too much religion when I was a child to be tempted back into any kind of church. But I have a growing respect for our pilgrims; for their apparently unquestioning faith and their readiness to accept proof of the existence of God, while having no actual need of any such proof. And I envy them. It must be wonderful to be able to place oneself in the hands of a deity, and trust that everything will be taken care of.

  Eric and Silas take little interest in the Virgin. Now that they know that their chickens are safe and that Blossom is being kept sweet, they apparently feel they can get on with their lives. Silas is still working on his whippet (‘I think it’s my best yet, Ruth. I do hope no-one wants it back.’ Since it no longer bears any resemblance whatever to a dog, never mind a whippet, I think he can rest assured that this is unlikely to happen). And Eric’s researches are becoming increasingly complicated.

  ‘Take the bettong,’ he says at breakfast.

  ‘What’s a bettong?’ Mum asks.

  ‘A small Australian marsupial.’

  ‘How interesting.’ Mum reaches for the marmalade.

  ‘And the possum,’ Eric continues. ‘And the wallaby, and of course the kangaroo. And all the other marsupials. I’d no idea there were so many of them. Would Noah have taken two of all of them, do you suppose?’

  ‘You don’t believe in Noah,’ I remind him.

  ‘That’s not the point, Ruth.’

  ‘No. Of course not. Sorry.’ I have a vivid mental image of kangaroos (and bettongs) leaping over the side of the ark into the boiling waves. ‘Can kangaroos swim?’

  ‘Why?’ Eric looks at me suspiciously.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. No. I’m sure Noah would have taken just two kinds of marsupials. A big one and a small one.’

  ‘Ah.’ Eric looks relieved. ‘It’s just that all the working out takes so much time. I’ve given up with all the insects. I’m keeping those to a minimum. Not that they take up much room, but there are literally millions of them.’

  ‘I know.’ I have the flea bites (courtesy of the cats) to prove it.

  ‘Sad about the marsupials, though. I liked the sound of the bettong.’

  ‘Something would probably have eaten it.’

  ‘Ruth, I wish you wouldn’t persist in treating this whole thing as a joke.’

  Mum excuses herself and gets up from the table. Ark conversations always make her uncomfortable.

  ‘And bees,’ Eric continues (he loves it when we pay attention to his research).

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Big problem, bees. Did you know that without bees, life on earth would die out in two years?’

  ‘Then you’d better take more than two.’

  Eric looks at me in exasperation.

  ‘Of course there’d have to be more than two. But how would they survive, without flowers?’

  ‘Don’t they hibernate in the winter?’

  ‘Yes. But the flood didn’t subside until the ‘tenth day of the tenth month’. It would be difficult to persuade a hive — or even several hives — of bees to sleep for ten months.’

  ‘Pot
plants? You could take lots of pot plants.’

  ‘Now you really are being silly.’

  ‘Yes. I doubt whether the Noah family would have the time to look after pot plants as well as everything else.’ I myself have never managed to keep even one pot plant alive, and I don’t have an Ark full of animals to take care of. ‘So without the bees, the whole thing falls apart?’ I ask him.

  ‘You’re missing the point, Ruth. What I’m trying to do is not so much prove that Noah didn’t build his Ark, as showing exactly how big and how much of everything there would have to be, and therefore he couldn’t have done it. I’m designing an Ark which could take everything, but showing that it would have to be far too big to be remotely possible. So we have to have bees, even if it means an even bigger Ark.’

  ‘Bigger than the Isle of Wight?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Ah.’ I start clearing away the breakfast things. ‘I think I ought to get going,’ I tell him. ‘And it seems clear that you’ve got a few more calculations to do.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Meanwhile, Mum is still fretting about Dad.

  ‘How does he seem when you speak to him?’ I ask her.

  ‘Not too bad. But he keeps asking me when I’m coming home. He doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘And you’ve told him that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She hesitates. ‘Ruth?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Would you go and see him? Just to make sure he’s looking after himself?’

  ‘Mum, of course he’s looking after himself. The reason he’s usually no good in the house is that you do everything for him. He’s perfectly capable if he’s got no-one else to wait on him. Why don’t you go and see for yourself? You don’t have to stay.’ But even as I speak, I know that my mother can’t do as I suggest. I know as well as she does that if she goes back, she’ll stay there. My father has such a hold over her that she would never be able to, as it were, leave him twice. It’s a miracle that she’s managed to do it at all.