“It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like,” she said, “but don’t. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?”
“I know. I was plagued with them too. Rabbits in waistcoats.”
“Exactly. These rabbits were in fact on a raft, as were assorted rats and owls. There may even have been a reindeer.”
“On the raft.”
“On the raft. And a boy was sitting on the raft.”
“Among the rabbits in waistcoats and the owls and the reindeer.”
“Precisely there. A boy of the cheery gypsy ragamuffin variety.”
“Ugh.”
“The picture worried me, I must say. There was an otter swimming in front of the raft, and I used to lie awake at night worrying about this otter having to pull the raft, with all these wretched animals on it who shouldn’t even be on a raft, and the otter had such a thin tail to pull it with I thought it must hurt pulling it all the time. Worried me. Not badly, but just vaguely, all the time.
“Then one day – and remember I’d been looking at this picture every night for years – I suddenly noticed that the raft had a sail. Never seen it before. The otter was fine, he was just swimming along.”
She shrugged.
“Good story?” she said.
“Ends weakly,” said Arthur, “leaves the audience crying ‘Yes, but what of it?’ Fine up till there, but needs a final sting before the credits.”
Fenchurch laughed and hugged her legs.
“It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost unnoticed worry just dropping away, like taking off heavy weights, like black and white becoming colour, like a dry stick suddenly being watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says ‘Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.’ You probably think I’m saying that because I’m going to say that I felt like that this afternoon or something, don’t you?”
“Well, I…” said Arthur, his composure suddenly shattered.
“Well, it’s all right,” she said, “I did. That’s exactly what I felt. But you see, I’ve felt that before, even stronger. Incredibly strongly. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a one,” she said gazing off into the distance, “for sudden startling revelations.”
Arthur was at sea, could hardly speak, and felt it wiser, therefore, for the moment not to try.
“It was very odd,” she said, much as one of the pursuing Egyptians might have said that the behaviour of the Red Sea when Moses waved his rod at it was a little on the strange side.
“Very odd,” she repeated, “for days before, the strangest feeling had been building in me, as if I was going to give birth. No, it wasn’t like that in fact, it was more as if I was being connected into something, bit by bit. No, not even that; it was as if the whole of the Earth, through me, was going to…”
“Does the number,” said Arthur gently, “forty-two mean anything to you at all?”
“What? No, what are you talking about?” exclaimed Fenchurch.
“Just a thought,” murmured Arthur.
“Arthur, I mean this, this is very real to me, this is serious.”
“I was being perfectly serious,” said Arthur. “It’s just the Universe I’m never quite sure about.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Tell me the rest of it,” he said. “Don’t worry if it sounds odd. Believe me, you are talking to someone who has seen a lot of stuff,” he added, “that is odd. And I don’t mean biscuits.”
She nodded, and seemed to believe him. Suddenly, she gripped his arm.
“It was so simple,” she said, “so wonderfully and extraordinarily simple, when it came.”
“What was it?” said Arthur quietly.
“Arthur, you see,” she said, “that’s what I no longer know. And the loss is unbearable. If I try to think back to it, it all goes flickery and jumpy, and if I try too hard, I get as far as the teacup and I just black out.”
“What?”
“Well, like your story,” she said, “the best bit happened in a café. I was sitting there, having a cup of tea. This was after days of this build up, the feeling of becoming connected up. I think I was buzzing gently. And there was some work going on at a building site opposite the café, and I was watching it through the window, over the rim of my teacup, which I always find is the nicest way of watching other people working. And suddenly, there it was in my mind, this message from somewhere. And it was so simple. It made such sense of everything. I just sat up and thought, ‘Oh! Oh, well that’s all right then.’ I was so startled I almost dropped my teacup, in fact I think I did drop it. Yes,” she added thoughtfully, “I’m sure I did. How much sense am I making?”
“It was fine up to the bit about the teacup.”
She shook her head, and shook it again, as if trying to clear it, which is what she was trying to do.
“Well that’s it,” she said. “Fine up to the bit about the teacup. That was the point at which it seemed to me quite literally as if the world exploded.”
“What…?”
“I know it sounds crazy, and everybody says it was hallucinations, but if that was hallucinations then I have hallucinations in big screen 3D with 16-track Dolby Stereo and should probably hire myself out to people who are bored with shark movies. It was as if the ground was literally ripped from under my feet, and… and…”
She patted the grass lightly, as if for reassurance, and then seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say.
“And I woke up in hospital. I suppose I’ve been in and out ever since. And that’s why I have an instinctive nervousness,” she said, “of sudden startling revelations that’s everything’s going to be all right.” She looked up at him.
Arthur had simply ceased to worry himself about the strange anomalies surrounding his return to his home world, or rather had consigned them to that part of his mind marked “Things to think about – Urgent.” “Here is the world,” he had told himself. “Here, for whatever reason, is the world, and here it stays. With me on it.” But now it seemed to go swimmy around him, as it had that night in the car when Fenchurch’s brother had told him the silly stories about the CIA agent in the reservoir. The trees went swimmy. The lake went swimmy, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be alarmed by because a grey goose had just landed on it. The geese were having a great relaxed time and had no major answers they wished to know the questions to.
“Anyway,” said Fenchurch, suddenly and brightly and with a wide-eyed smile, “there is something wrong with part of me, and you’ve got to find out what it is. We’ll go home.”
Arthur shook his head.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
Arthur had shaken his head, not to disagree with her suggestion which he thought was a truly excellent one, one of the world’s great suggestions, but because he was just for a moment trying to free himself of the recurring impression he had that just when he was least expecting it the Universe would suddenly leap out from behind a door and go boo at him.
“I’m just trying to get this entirely clear in my mind,” said Arthur, “you say you felt as if the Earth actually… exploded …”
“Yes. More than felt.”
“Which is what everybody else says,” he said hesitantly, “is hallucinations?”
“Yes, but Arthur that’s ridiculous. People think that if you just say ‘hallucinations’ it explains anything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can’t understand will just go away. It’s just a word, it doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain why the dolphins disappeared.”
“No,” said Arthur. “No,” he added thoughtfully. “No,” he added again, even more thoughtfully. “What?” he said at last.
“Doesn’t explain the dolphins disappearing.”
“No,” said Arthur, “I see that. Which dolphins do you mean?”