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.’