Ariel, Zed and the Secret of Life Read online

She and Lancelot went downstairs now to winkle Concetta out of her shed. They found her already in the kitchen, burrowing away in the back of the fridge, and whistling her favourite tune. Ariel grinned; she knew what that tune meant. Concetta had finished her chapter, and was in a fine mood.

  ‘Hullo cupcake, have a good time?’ She gave Ariel a quick hug but didn’t stop for an answer. She was opening cupboards hopefully, but as usual they held only boring cans of baked beans and beetroot. Ariel was resigned to the fact that, when Concetta was submerged in her book, small details like food tended to be forgotten. Her mother gave a running commentary on her search: ‘Door after door was flung open as our young heroine desperately sought the missing treasure. What ghastly secret awaited her now, behind the last door of all?’

  Concetta’s language always took on the flavour of the books she was writing. Once, she had spoken like a gangster for a whole month, and Ariel had refused to go into shops with her.

  Now she gave a shout of triumph. Behind the last door of all was a tin of corn. ‘A corn omelette with salad, how does that sound?’ she asked.

  ‘And chips?’ said Ariel.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  As Ariel cut up the potatoes, she thought about Concetta. Living with a mother who happened to be a writer was an unusual experience, Ariel was sure. Because often it meant that she was living with several people at once. When Concetta created a character, she would mould and knead it, pinch and pull at it, add dark eyes and a tan for spice, or perhaps, why not? a talent for music—and slowly, that character would come to life: dark-eyed, tanned, and musical.

  It was a kind of magic, Concetta said, known only to writers and their families.

  Ariel and her father had met many of Concetta’s characters, and it was mostly a happy, if surprising, experience. She’d shared her muesli with a friendly weight-lifter, and Frank had lent his razor to a racing-car driver who preferred Ferraris. The trouble was, Ariel would just begin to grow fond of them, and Concetta’s story would finish. Then, the characters would dissolve and disappear, like steam from a bathroom mirror.

  ‘People who are born of sentences, not mothers, do have a lot to put up with,’ Concetta had once explained to Ariel. ‘But people who are in print can live forever.’

  Ariel had thought this over and decided that, on the whole, it was a comforting thought.

  Now Concetta, watching the omelette turn golden in the pan, broke in on her thoughts.

  ‘So how was the movie?’ she asked.

  Ariel shrugged. ‘Oh, it was all right. It was about a monster who looked just like Dan Something-or-other—remember that fat actor with the trick teeth?’

  Concetta smiled. ‘Who could forget dopey Dan?’

  They laughed, as Concetta flipped the omelette over in the pan.

  ‘Za za!’ she shouted in triumph. ‘The perfect omelette for Madame. Ready in two minutes. How are the chips doing?’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  Lancelot came sniffing around their legs, whining like a kettle on the boil. He always ate with them at the table. He was an extremely well-trained dog and never ate from anyone’s plate but his own.

  Ariel took her plate and ate quickly, as she was hungry, but Lancelot, as usual, finished first.

  ‘You were telling me about this afternoon, Ariel,’ said Concetta, on her last chip.

  ‘Oh, it was pretty boring.’ Ariel would have liked to say ‘agonising’, but she supposed that word was suitable only for torture victims.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said instead, ‘that I’m the only person in the world who laughs in horror movies? I’m the only person who likes cold bean sandwiches. And I’m the only one who has teeth 1.3 centimetres long.’

  ‘Really?’ said Concetta. ‘Let me see.’

  Ariel shut her mouth with a snap. Then she said, ‘This is serious. Everyone at school thinks I’m a weirdo, and I’m getting weirder by the second. No-one really likes me except you and Lancelot.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ protested Concetta. She thought for a moment. ‘Remember what your Aunt May said about you at the wedding last month. “What a sweet, clever girl!” she said.’

  ‘Well if she did,’ Ariel groaned, ‘that was before I met little Eddie.’

  Concetta sighed. Ariel had been a bridesmaid at the wedding, and she’d had to walk down the aisle with the bride’s small brother. The little boy was nervous. So, to set him at his ease, Ariel had decided to distract him with a few interesting facts. Fact No. 1 had been that Santa Claus was a story made up by grown-ups, to amuse little boys like him.

  Eddie’s howls of rage grew to such a pitch and volume that he’d drowned out the organist, and stopped the ceremony.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ariel concluded now, ‘no-one likes me, and that’s that. When I grow up I’ll be a hermit and live in a cave. I’ll keep bats and a small vegie garden. Beans will be my speciality.’

  ‘But you used to make lots of friends when we were travelling. You used to send postcards everywhere we went.’

  Ariel played with her fork. ‘That’s only because I like buying stamps in a foreign language. Mind you, I was good friends with that history man in Rome. Professor Rampelli, he was called.’

  ‘The archaeologist,’ said Concetta.

  ‘Yes. Personally, I like ruins, and bones. When you’re talking about bones, you know exactly where you are.’

  Ariel fell silent when she saw the faraway look in her mother’s eye. When Frank had been with them in Rome, they had all been allowed to watch while a Roman Senator was dug up. Frank had found a finger. Just yesterday a letter had arrived from Frank, but it hadn’t been the usual fat package of news about the project. Instead it had sounded a bit flat and dispirited. Ariel hated to think of him far away like that, all fed up.

  Concetta’s gaze came back to the table, and the brightly lit kitchen. ‘There you are, then,’ she said, focusing on Ariel. ‘You just need to find something in common with people to make friends.’ She smiled encouragingly.

  Ariel smiled back, not liking to point out that making friends with some man old enough to be her grandfather was not the same thing as having a talk with someone her own age.

  ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ said Concetta, pushing away her plate, ‘you’ll soon have a live-in friend. Just think, you can practise on him every day!’

  Concetta wore her breezy, careless smile, as if she’d only said ‘there’s rice pudding for dessert’.

  Ariel wasn’t fooled. Concetta had tried to introduce the diabolical news of Lancelot’s lumps with that smile. (Luckily, the vet had diagnosed ticks, and they were out within the hour.)

  Ariel raised her eyebrows. ‘What live-in friend? Are you inventing a new character for your book?’ This was what she hoped, but thought not, as Concetta did not usually bother to introduce her characters to the household. They just appeared at breakfast, amiable and unnamed, ready to make the tea.

  Ariel peered suspiciously into her mother’s face. ‘There’s something dreadful you have to tell me, isn’t there?’ said Ariel, her voice sharp.

  ‘Well, of course, I would have liked to consult you about it first,’ began Concetta, looking apologetically at the saltcellar. ‘But really, I didn’t have any choice, and you’ll see, it will be great fun.’ She looked up and patted her daughter’s hand.

  ‘What will be fun?’

  ‘Zedinov!’ said Concetta in a rush, and she jumped up and busily cleared the table.

  ‘Zedinov? Who’s that? Come back here! Is he coming to stay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Concetta, sitting down again. ‘You remember Madeline?’

  ‘Yes—she’s a writer too, isn’t she? We all went to Cairo together while you did that story on the pyramids.’

  ‘That’s right, and Madeline was reporting on a cholera outbreak in a town nearby.’ Concetta suddenly giggled. ‘Do you remember how she found that snaggle-tooth rat in her mattress at the Hotel Giza? She was so appalled that she wrote another story called “Wildlife in
the World’s Hotels”. And what about that time she found those slugs as thick as thumbs slithering around her bathroom in Bombay.’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Ariel, ‘I trod on one when I was cleaning my teeth one night.’ She laughed, then stopped. She looked at Concetta fidgeting with the saltcellar.

  ‘So? What about Madeline?’

  ‘Well, you remember that she had a son? About your age?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Vaguely. He was always being left with someone or other while she went on assignments. The last time I saw him, he was crying and complaining about the flies. A bit of a pain in the neck, I thought. What was his name? It was, oh God—Zedinov!’

  ‘Yes,’ Concetta sighed. ‘Zedinov.’

  They both stared blankly into space. The idea of Zedinov floated in the air around them, sinking slowly into Ariel’s mind with the finality of a knife in butter.

  ‘It seems Zedinov can be rather trying,’ Concetta confessed, taking down a letter from the shelf behind her. ‘Madeline writes that he’s a bit resentful about being left with us—“abandoned in Birchwood backwoods” as he puts it. You know his father died a while ago. Madeline says he took it very badly.’

  ‘How long will she be away?’

  Concetta cleared her throat and returned her gaze to the saltcellar. ‘Well, she’s on a tough assignment, that’s why she couldn’t take Zedinov with her. She’s going to war-zone territory in Africa, and it’s too dangerous to take a child with her. If only Mack, his father, were alive…’

  ‘Yes, yes, but for how long will she be away?’

  ‘A year.’

  ‘Great thundering fizzballs! A year? How am I going to put up with him for a year? It’s me who’ll have to talk to him and share my things with him and listen to him complaining! Oh why did you say yes?‘

  ‘Because she’s a good friend and we’ve got plenty of room. Oh come on Ariel, we’ll put him up the other end of the hall. You’re always saying that this house is too empty.’ Concetta glanced down again at the letter. ‘Mind you,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘he does sound a bit of an oddball.’

  ‘That’ll make two of us,’ said Ariel gloomily, and stumped off to tell Lancelot the news.

  3. THE ARRIVAL OF ZED

  IT WAS SATURDAY and Ariel and Zedinov sat on a large rock in the middle of the garden. It had rained the night before (Zedinov had arrived sopping and furious) and now, in the warmth of the midday sun, the earth steamed, smelling of jasmine and a new season.

  Zedinov plucked at a loose thread on his sleeve. He sighed. His face was naturally long, rather like a sad giraffe’s, and he had a habit of pulling his mouth to one side as if in permanent disapproval of the world. His large grey eyes were often hidden by the red curls that swarmed all over his head and down his neck.

  ‘Like coiled worms,’ was all he’d said when Ariel complimented him on his curls. She had looked at his head in envy, having always wanted waves instead of her dead straight hair. That his hair was not a source of satisfaction to him, Ariel found astonishing.

  It was hard, in fact, to find anything cheerful to talk about with Zedinov. Having come to a full-stop early in the day, Ariel had resorted to bringing out her private notebook.

  ‘What do you want to measure the gecko for?’ he’d frowned, flipping through her nice precise pages of lizard figures. ‘What you should do is describe its colour and habits, like how its tail drops off when it’s attacked.’

  Ariel would have liked to ask more about geckos, but Zedinov’s face stopped her.

  He was even more scathing about her bat counting. ‘Bats,’ he’d spat, ‘bats are despicable animals. They have such nasty screwed-up human faces, and some of them suck the blood of living animals.’

  ‘Those bats are tiny, and they suck about as much blood as a mosquito,’ said Ariel hotly. ‘Anyway, my bats are fruit-bats, so that’s how much you know about it!’ Thundering fizzballs, did he have stinger wasps under his tongue, or what?

  Zedinov’s mother had arrived before him last night; dry, luggage-laden and exasperated. She had taken a taxi from the railway, but Zedinov had refused to accompany her.

  ‘I’ll walk,’ Zedinov had said. ‘I’m in no hurry to get to this Backwoods place where you’re dumping me.’

  ‘I’m not dumping you,’ she said, not for the first time. ‘I have to take this job in Africa, we need the money.’

  ‘And I could come too,’ said Zedinov as his mother pulled him back from the path of a speeding semitrailer. ‘A revolution couldn’t be more dangerous than this traffic, anyway.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Zed, get in the taxi and shut up. It’s going to rain.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Zedinov, with a hint of a smile. ‘Typical.’

  And with that he strode off into the night: down Grace Street, into Howard Avenue and right into Catherine Street. He was good at finding his way.

  Twenty minutes later, Zedinov rang the doorbell. His hair was plastered to his head with rain. ‘There you are,’ he’d said in ringing tones to his mother as he’d walked, dripping, into the living room, ‘snug and dry as a rat in its hole.’

  ‘Oh, Zed, how rude you can be!’ quavered Madeline. ‘Really, I can’t take you anywhere!’

  ‘Least of all to Africa, it seems,’ replied Zed, and sat down, squelch, into Concetta’s best velvet armchair.

  Despite the women’s attempts at tea and conversation, the evening had not been a wild success. Zed had refused all offers of hot baths and towels, clinging to the velvet chair like a barnacle to a rock. He didn’t say a word, not even when his mother left (which was most upsetting for everyone). He just sat on, a sopping cold bundle in the quiet of the living room. Like a dead planet, he refused to be warmed, revolving silently in his own private universe.

  In the morning, Zedinov spoke.

  ‘I have a cold coming on,’ he said. ‘I have a tickle in my throat, a stuffy head, a general feeling of weakness and a slight cough.’

  ‘I don’t wonder,’ said Concetta, ‘sitting in those wet clothes all night.’

  ‘I have a wart,’ said Ariel, kindly offering her thumb for his inspection.

  Zed was not impressed (‘How disgusting! Is it catching?’) so Ariel had changed the subject and taken him out to the garden. That was where they were now, sitting in the sun, watching the ants carrying their mighty loads over the earth.

  Ariel sighed. Neither the breakfast of bacon and eggs and beans, nor the tiny lives within the garden had had the slightest effect on Zed’s mood. Sitting with him was like coming to a deep part in a river: the water was suddenly freezing, and her skin went numb.

  She shook herself. She’d have to find something interesting to do. Reluctantly, she brought out her idea for the ultimate treat, her favourite thing she’d been saving for later. And here it was now: treasured, fascinating, and irresistible.

  Ariel ran up the steps, taking two at a time. Before her stood the stately old building, the colour and texture of shortbread biscuits. Behind her, at the bottom of the steps, stood Zed.

  ‘The museum! Is that all?’ scoffed Zed, and his mouth pulled to the side with disdain.

  The huge glass doors opened at their approach (Ariel liked that part). Inside, signs pointed in all directions, but Ariel knew exactly where she was headed.

  ‘Dinosaurs!’ she breathed, and stood back to take in the full effect of Tyrannosaurus Rex baring its dagger-like teeth. It looked as if it had just devoured some tasty pterodactyl. ‘The Largest Land-Living Meat-Eater of all Time’ said the caption underneath.

  Ariel swung around to see Zed’s face pale.

  ‘You see those teeth? How they’re serrated and pointed? Sharp as knives they’d be. They show old Rexie here was a meat-eater. He used them to tear flesh apart. Come on, ask me something. Isn’t there anything else you’d like to know?’

  ‘Not at the moment, thanks,’ murmured Zed, and moved on to the next exhibit.

  Ariel liked this one best. She even liked the caption: ‘Tyrannosaurus h
ad a head the size of a small car’. Such an astounding fact, so calmly expressed.

  ‘You may well ask,’ she said hopefully, ‘how scientists know what dinosaurs looked like, seeing that they lived over 100 million years ago.’

  ‘Who, the dinosaurs or the scientists?’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Ariel. ‘The dinosaurs, stupid. Well, when they died, the soft part of their bodies rotted away, and all that was left were the bones. Bones are very important in history. So, from digging up the bones and putting them together, people could see how the dinosaurs would have looked.’

  ‘I suppose when the human race dies out some extraterrestrial being will find our bones. That is, if they don’t burn out in some world war. You can’t really count on anything lasting, not even bones.’

  Ariel looked at Zed’s face closely. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘but before the world ends there’s lots to do. There’s the Egyptian room to see, and the stuffed killer mammals. And there’s chocolate ice-cream cake for dinner.’

  ‘Erk,’ said Zed, wrinkling his nose. ‘Chocolate gives me hives.’

  ‘Come on then,’ sighed Ariel, ‘let’s go and look at the mummies.’

  In the Egyptian room there were several wood coffins, decorated with painted birds and stick figures and strange spidery writing. Inside lay embalmed human forms wrapped in cloth. They were thousands of years old.

  Ariel had invented a name for each of them. She particularly liked Max, the ‘middle-aged man’ in coffin No.2. ‘See here,’ she said to Zed, who was trying not to look, ‘this is an X-ray photo of the skull.’

  ‘“This skull,”’ she read aloud, ‘“has many teeth missing and the other teeth show signs of decay. Other X-ray photos indicate early signs of arthritis.” Look, here you can see how the cloth is raised, where the hands are folded underneath.’

  The bile rose in Zed’s throat. He was trying not to imagine what lay under the hills and valleys of that cloth. When the cloth was ripped off, would the body just fall apart, all squishy, like jelly?

  ‘You’re morbid, Ariel,’ he gasped. ‘You’re as batty as a … bat!’