Read Online Noah's Ark by Barbara Trapido - Free Book Online Page A

one’s right thumb on Middle C. A process which she feared would not be quick enough for a person who gave out an impression of decidedly practical competence.
    They were late, of course. Not very late, but late enough. Camilla was immediately visible to Ali, seated woefully upon the low brick wall of the school. For Camilla, the relief of seeing her mother brought on instant hysteria. She flew at Ali, breathing misery and hurling wild reproaches.
    ‘You’re late!’ she snivelled. ‘You
promised.
Now I’ve missed the kit inspection and I’ve got detention tomorrow and it’s your fault. You
promised
me, Mummy. You promised!’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Ali said repeatedly. ‘Please Camilla, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.’ Noah tried at first not to watch but he couldn’t prevent his ears being a party to the protracted exchange. It was all most extraordinary, he thought. An eleven-year-old child who needed parents to run to and fro with sports equipment? Eleven-year-olds, as he recalled from his own sons, were people who earned their own pocket money and went back-packing all summer without writing home. Furthermore, he liked respectfor mothers. Who was Mr Bobrow that he allowed this kind of misconduct to go on?
Was
there a Mr Bobrow? Here was a woman, weak with shock from a narrowly averted automobile accident, humbling herself before a hysterical child over a sports bag. He leaned over and opened the back door.
    ‘Jump in little lady,’ he said, with pointed severity. ‘Your mother almost got knocked down.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Ali said to him. ‘She’s upset.’ She looked furtively over her shoulder at Camilla hiccuping in the back seat and biting her lip between spasms of mucus.
    ‘That’s okay,’ Noah said with level restraint. ‘I’ve had kids myself. Fasten the seat belt, Mrs Bobrow.’
    ‘Sorry,’ Ali said, making a flustered rush upon the object in the hopes of catching it unawares.
    ‘How about if I make a charge for every time you say you’re sorry?’ Noah said.
    ‘Sorry,’ Ali said and blushed. Noah shifted into gear with a stifled smile.
    ‘Where to now?’ he said. ‘Right? Left? Mrs Bobrow, please, do I make a right?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Ali said.
    They lived in the same street, though they had never seen each other before. Engrossed bachelor men, car-borne and coming home late, don’t often notice local mothers and housewives, nor do housewives notice absentee householders. Added to that, Noah lived in a modern architect-designed infill house with almost no windows to the street side and great shop-window panes to the back. That being the way with modern glazing procedures, the windows were either all or nothing. Furthermore, he lived on the first floor, because at ground level his house boasted the only garage in the street. He was, in short, by geography and inclination cut off from the life of the street. He had bought the house nine months before for its proximity to the hospital, its trouble-free plastic drainpipes and its adequate central heating system. He had lived in England for no morethan a month when an agent had come up with the house and, since nobody had ever occupied the place before, the transfer had been satisfactorily uncomplicated and speedy. Ali lived, by contrast, in a prettily got-up terraced workman’s cottage with a slightly crumbling stone lintel over a sanded front door, window frames which rattled loudly in a high wind and a structural crack running the length of the back. From her position within it she constituted a magnet for almost every social problem in the neighbourhood.
    ‘Take care, now,’ Noah said as he delivered her to her door with her dejected little daughter. ‘I’ll come by this evening,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know what happened.’

Three
    When noah returned with Arnie that evening, as he had promised, the door was opened to him by Camilla who, having recovered herself, was modelling her hard-earned running shorts.
    ‘Mother at