The motion carried. Bob’s mother informed him of his excellent good luck and B was told to jack in his current job and prepare for transfer. Two of the governors took him aside and explained his role – he would, they said, have a good deal of responsibility, given how inexperienced the other appointee was. ‘We think you’ll work well together.’
The fact that the job had not gone entirely to Mr B was a terrible blow, final confirmation that the career ambitions he had treasured quietly over the years had come to nought. Had he been too introspective, not ruthless enough? Had he been wrong to assume that years of competent, responsible service would attract notice?
The sinking feeling that Mr B experienced at his first meeting with the new boss did not augur well. The boy was arrogant, badly brought up and monosyllabic, patently uninterested in sharing the job and unembarrassed by his general ignorance. Mr B had been around long enough to know that start-ups were tricky operations, not to be bartered casually in poker games or entrusted at random to someone’s chippy know-nothing son.
Oh well, he thought. If the boy fails, it’ll be his problem, not mine. But in his heart Mr B knew this was untrue. If things went well, the kid would get all the credit. If not, he, himself, would get the blame. He hoped the committee would be proved right about Bob – hoped his energy and creativity would somehow make up for what looked, on paper, like a lamentable lack of experience. Mr B shut his eyes and hoped against hope that somehow it would all turn out fine.
He had lived long enough to grasp the danger of hope.
4
Lucy enters the zoo through the employee turnstile.
She has worked here three months and, though it is not a particularly large or sophisticated zoo, she loves it dearly, considers herself among the very lucky to have landed such a job.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you,’ whispered the human resource manager, ‘but more than ninety people applied.’
The team that runs the zoo consists of just two senior keepers and six juniors. They specialize in families and school groups and have only last month received a commendation for services to education. An environment this intimate resembles a family and, in the manner of all families, the zoo is not without its petty politics. But Lucy is not attracted to trouble, and wakes up every morning delighted with her lot.
All of this she considers as she changes into her blue overalls and hauls the metal zip up and over her chest, pushing a stray lock of hair behind one ear.
‘Hello, Luke.’ She addresses the senior keeper, a bit nervously. ‘Shall I start on reptiles this morning?’
‘Your call,’ he answers briskly, without turning to look at her.
Luke is the flaw in Lucy’s happiness. At first she thought he might be shy, or perhaps socially awkward. But lately she has noticed that he seems perfectly able to share a laugh and a drink with just about anyone but her. She is not the sort of girl accustomed to making enemies, and it is a point of private puzzlement that his face, when he looks at her, is stony.
She is not to know that her appointment irritated him greatly. He feels certain that if he’d been involved in the hiring process, one of the other applicants would have triumphed – for surely her good looks trumped more qualified candidates.
On this basis, he has made it his policy to avoid her, determined not to be suckered into her circle of admirers. Positive reports of her performance he discounts as motivated by infatuation, a sort of mass hypnosis among the staff. One slip, he thinks (ignoring an accumulating pile of evidence that she might, after all, be quite good at her job), one slip, and he’ll insist that they replace her with someone proper.
‘Good morning, beauties.’ Lucy aims her greeting at a wall of glass vivaria as she unlocks the door to the reptile kitchen. She wrenches the heavy freezer lid up and pulls out a frozen block of embryonic chicks, placing them on a metal tray to thaw. ‘Breakfast,’ she murmurs, with a little grimace. ‘Yum.’
In the first glass box, she lifts a sixty-centimetre corn snake aside gently and scrapes out his soiled bedding with a trowel. The bulge in his neighbour’s stomach from yesterday’s mouse is still visible. The boa can be churlish while digesting, so she leaves him, moving along the row to update feeding charts. She pokes at the thawing chicks with a fork; three or four minutes in the microwave will sort them out.
Lucy loves snakes, loves the sensual skim of them against her skin, like silky leather. She doesn’t love defrosting their meals, but on balance it’s a small point. At least the monkeys, God bless them, eat fruit.
By the time she has finished reptiles it is mid-morning. She is desperate for a cup of coffee. Emerging into the bright spring day, she blinks rapidly; her pupils shrink and for a moment the world darkens. When she can see again, she looks left and right, a little anxiously. It has become a habit, she realizes, one that annoys her greatly – this seeking to avoid Luke.
The coast is clear and she crosses over to the staff room, which at this hour is nearly empty. Oh, please let there be coffee in the pot, she thinks, but there is none. And so she rinses it, removes the old filter and sets about making fresh, glancing at her watch as she fills the machine. She has time, just, to get the monkeys fed by lunchtime.
Lucy hears voices, and turns to see Luke and his assistant, Mica, passing the window. They are laughing together and she freezes against the wall like a rabbit, hoping to make herself invisible. Don’t come in, she prays, and slumps a little with relief when they don’t.
How is it that he makes me feel guilty about a cup of coffee, she thinks angrily. Like I’m skiving? Like I make a habit of bunking off work?
She fetches milk from the fridge, trying to view Luke objectively, to imagine what others see in him – entirely without success. Mica thinks he’s good-looking but Lucy can’t see it. With that personality? The coffee machine pings.
She pours, adds milk and gulps it down as quickly as possible. Oh well, she thinks, a little ruefully, I suppose that’s life. And anyway, things change. He could get a new job tomorrow, move on, find some other innocent hard-working employee to dislike for absolutely no good reason at all.
Draining her cup, she rinses it and runs a sponge quickly over the worktop. Back to the grind, she thinks, and despite herself she laughs. What a dimwit I am. Best job in the world and all I can think of is the flaw.
As she steps out into the light, Bob watches her, shivering with devotion.
5
Bob’s talent, such as it is, consists entirely of the few unconscious charms of youth: its energy, audacity and complete inability to recognize its own shortcomings.
Mr B has means to cope. Routine, for instance. Every day begins the same, with two slices of rye toast, unsalted Normandy butter, raspberry jam, two poached eggs, strong coffee. And for the boss, at whatever hour he happens to wake, hot tea and half a box of Coco Pops. Bob’s pet stands by the edge of the table willing food to tumble off into his mouth. He is an odd penguiny sort of creature with the long elegant nose of an anteater, beady eyes and soft grey fur. The Eck is always hungry; no quantity of leftovers can fill the eternal emptiness of his gullet.
From Bob’s room, Mr B can hear thrashing and sighing. Since the discovery of Lucy, God has slept fitfully, unable to escape the iron jaws of sexual desire. The transformation from needy teenager to weapon of mass destruction is nearly complete.
Eventually he wakes. With a sigh, Mr B gets up from his desk and carries tea to Bob’s bedside because it is his job to do so.
‘It’s noon, sir.’
‘Oh, sir, is it?’ He’s cranky. ‘Wasn’t sir yesterday, was it?’
‘The flood?’
Bob screws up his face and farts. ‘Your job is to know in advance that I’d forget to turn off the bath.’
‘Eck?’ Eck looks from Bob to Mr B, hoping for a fight.
But there will be no fight. The older man may not accept responsibility for the calamity, but Bob does not
actually care.
God pouts. His thick adolescent hair has fallen over one eye, and his skin has the greyish tinge of someone who doesn’t leave the house often enough. Yesterday’s bath would have done him good.
‘Your clothes, O Holy Master of All.’ Mr B bows and hands him a sweatshirt with a large sporting-goods logo on it, which Bob dutifully pulls over his head. He hasn’t changed out of the same T-shirt in what might be a week now.
‘Any progress on the girl?’ He tries, and fails, to sound casual.
‘None at all, nothing, nada,’ says Mr B. ‘Doesn’t know you’re alive, as far as I can tell.’
‘Why doesn’t she know I’m alive?’
Mr B can feel a strop brewing. He feels obliged to assist Bob in every endeavour – but not unduly, not enough to complicate his own miserable existence. He sighs. ‘Why not be upfront about it, let her know you’re up for a bit of squishy woo-woo and see what she says?’
A look of quite superior contempt suffuses the boy’s features. ‘She’s not the sort of girl you can get into bed as easily as that.’
Oh really?
‘Can’t you tell her?’ Bob’s contempt dissolves to oily supplication. ‘You can make her like me. I know you can. You’ve done it before.’
‘Not any more,’ Mr B answers. ‘I’ve resigned from pimping. It’s not in my job description.’ In point of fact, he has no job description, or if he ever had, it was so long ago that the details have been lost in the mists of time.
‘I can make you help me.’
The look of petty menace on the boy’s face makes Mr B shudder. It is difficult for him to imagine that any woman finds Bob attractive.
‘Go out and tell her how you feel. Or you’ll end up wanking alone in your room till the end of time. The worst that can happen is she rejects you.’ He knows this to be particularly cruel, for rejection is what the boy fears most.
Bob looks glum. ‘How do I find her?’
‘Zoo. Tuesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to …’
The noise that emerges from God’s mouth resembles a wail. ‘I never know what to do in one of those animal places. How do I get in? What do I say? What if she doesn’t like me?’
‘Buy a ticket. Visit the hippos.’
Bob storms out and slams the door. He feels beleaguered. In the old days, they wouldn’t be having this discussion. In the old days, he snapped his fingers and things happened.
He hates the way things are now. It is so unfair.
Eck tilts his head and gently licks Bob’s ear with his long sticky tongue. It is his special way of expressing sympathy and it is not effective.
6
In the beginning, the earth was without form and void and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.
Only it wasn’t very good light. Bob created fireworks, sparklers and neon tubes that circled the globe like weird tangled rainbows. He dabbled with bugs that blinked and abstract creatures whose heads lit up and cast long overlapping shadows. There were mile-high candles and mountains of fairy lights. For an hour or so, Earth was lit by enormous crystal chandeliers.
Bob thought his creations were very cool.
They were very cool, but they didn’t work.
So Bob tried for an ambient glow (which proved toxic) and a blinding light in the centre of the planet, which gave off too much heat and fried the place black. And finally, when he curled up in the corner of the nothingness, tired as a child by the harebrainedness of his efforts, Mr B took the opportunity to sort things out – with an external star, gravity, roughly half the cycle in darkness and half in light so that there was a Day and a Night. And that was that. The evening and the morning were the first day. Not fancy, but it worked.
All of this happened while Bob napped. When he awoke, light was no longer an issue, and he’d mainly forgotten about it in any case. He’d moved on to waters and heavens, dry land and great oceans. Mr B hadn’t ever seen anything like it, but he shrugged. Why not? Maybe the kid had some kind of a plan.
And Bob said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass and the fruit tree,’ and it did, and Mr B had to admit that many of the fruits were inventive and delicious, with one or two exceptions – pomegranates, which seemed to be all form and no function, and lemons, which caused his mouth to purse up like a duck’s anus and caused Bob to howl with laughter until he fell over into the oceans and had to scramble spluttering to safety.
Bob looked at all he’d done so far and saw that it was good. And he said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundant species of fish-like creatures, and fowl ones too.’ And, boy oh boy, did Bob go to town on the creatures. He put spines on some, and strange colours on others; he added feathers and scales, and sometimes feathers and scales; and savage sharp teeth and beady eyes on some, and sweet expressions and razor-sharp claws on others. Some of the fowl were lovely to look at, with long graceful necks and luxuriant plumage, but others had the most idiotically large feet, or wings that didn’t work.
Having neglected to create food for the carnivores, they began to eat one another almost immediately, which disturbed Mr B and didn’t seem to be a temporary aberration but a situation destined to get far, far worse.
He began to suspect the boy was flying blind.
But before despair had a chance to take root, Bob suggested (with an annoying touch of noblesse oblige) that Mr B create something himself. Though reluctant at first, B began to picture a race of majestic sleek creatures with gently smiling faces and powerful tails that swept through the seas at wondrous speeds – yet breathed air and gave birth to live young. They lived underwater, but were not alien and cold-blooded like fish, and their voices were eloquent and haunting.
And so he created the great whales, which even Bob had to admit were pretty nice. And Mr B watched in awe as the blue-black waters magically parted for his creations and closed over them once they’d passed through. Long after Bob had moved on to create a whole slew of idiosyncratic aberrations (like platypus and slow lorises), Mr B stared with happy wonder at his whales.
‘How beautiful you are,’ he whispered to them, and they smiled back at him with their subtle smiles, happy to be admired.
And then Bob went on to create every creeping thing, and some that leapt and climbed and slithered and tunnelled as well, and he told them to be frantic and multiply, which they did by the most gobsmackingly weird mechanism Mr B had ever observed, one that slightly embarrassed him as well. He wanted to tap the boy on the shoulder and say, ‘Excuse my presumption, but are you quite certain about that?’
In the meantime, Bob was jumping up and down and pronouncing it all ‘good good good’, so good that he couldn’t stop giggling with self-satisfied glee like a demented toddler. And then, like the child who couldn’t resist adding more sprinkles to an already overloaded ice cream, he bestowed upon his creations a cacophony of different languages, so that they couldn’t communicate with one another, and tied the weather to his moods just for fun, so that when he was cheerful the sun would shine, and when he was unhappy it would rain and storm and make everyone else unhappy too. When, eventually, B asked (with a great deal of respect he didn’t feel) how it was all going to work ensemble, Bob didn’t seem to understand the question, and Mr B sank deeper than before into gloom.
And then Bob blessed the whole misshapen weirdo lot of them, but not before performing an act of creation so audacious, so utterly appalling, so suicidal and wrong, that Mr B felt something must be done at once to stop him. He created man in his own image, and gave him dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and the cattle and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Which anyone could see was one big fat recipe for disaster.
And when, finally, on the sixth day, Bob sat back (like the smug know-nothing Mr B had become utterly convinced that he was) and said that
it was very, very good, really amazingly good, adding that he’d like to have a rest now because all that creation had tired him out, B stared at him aghast and thought: You’d better get as much rest as you can, buddy boy, because you’ve just created one monster mess on your precious little planet and the minute all those hungry fish and fowl and idiot carnivores with spines and sharp teeth and tiny little brains get together there’s going to be a bloodbath.
And as he thought those very words, the first lion ate the first antelope. And concluded that it was very good indeed.
The more Mr B thought about it the more anxious he became. Not only was he stuck with Bob himself, but with an entire race created in the image of that skinny arrogant dimwit. This was not Mr B’s idea of a very good, or even a fair or a poor idea, or anything short of one more step on the road to eternal damnation.
Which is pretty much what it turned out to be.
7
‘How lovely of you to phone, Lucy darling. Nothing’s wrong?’
‘You phoned me, Mother. And of course nothing’s wrong.’
‘Well, I won’t keep you, but I did want to say that there’s a wonderful sale on at –’
Lucy sighed. ‘No thank you, Mother. I’m fine for clothes.’
‘Of course you are.’ She paused. ‘And how’s work?’
‘All right, I guess. I’m supposed to hear if I’ve passed my three-month trial this week. I wish they’d tell me.’ Tomorrow was Friday. How much longer would she have to wait? ‘It’s driving me mad.’
‘Never mind, darling. I’m sure you’ve passed. You work so hard.’
Lucy grimaced. Her mother didn’t know the first thing about office politics, and how difficult it was to keep a job these days. ‘I’m going to be late if I don’t get dressed.’
Mrs Davenport cleared her throat. ‘You know, Althea’s getting married at Christmas.’