Noah’s Arc

By Jack Messenger

Funny and sad, sweet and sour, flippant and serious. And that's only the first page. This is one weird voyage.

Ben runs a restaurant, Nicholas runs the world. Ann wants to help others, Vicki wants to help herself. Georgia needs to feel clean, Coral does the cleaning. Gerald needs to hold on to love, Sibella wants to be top of the tree. François wants to feel at home, Frank builds homes. Emily has lost herself, Debbie has never known herself. Larry just wants more of everything. And then there is Noah: washed-up on the shores of a life he never wanted, his mind addled by pills, the world around him going to hell in a handbasket. How can he – how can any of them – survive the coming flood? Do they want to? And what exactly is going on at the local airport?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greyhound Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386042686

Jack Messenger

I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by books: I became an avid reader as a child and have never stopped since! It was a natural step to a career in publishing, where I’ve  worked full time for major publishers as an editor and project manager. However, for most of my working life I’ve been an independent editor and writer. My editing skills have brought me into close working relationships with literally thousands of authors across many genres and subjects – from children’s picture books to cutting-edge academic scholarship and most points in between. I’ve written non-fiction for mainstream publishers, as well as for organizations in the not-for-profit sector. Putting my skills to work for good causes has been a particular satisfaction for me. For some years, I’ve been involved in exciting new projects: writing contemporary fiction. I am a founder member of my fiction critique group and currently a submissions reader for an online literary magazine. I’ve been privileged to review some fine work and, sadly, noted the common errors that independent authors make time and again. Why do I write? Do you know that feeling when you are too busy with life really just to talk to your loved ones, to connect? Have you ever made a big mistake and had to deal with the consequences, not just for you, but for the people you care about as well? Do you sometimes look at your life and wonder where it’s going and what have you really accomplished? These are the things I write about. My fiction is about people: the mistakes they make; the things they do to live with themselves; how the world changes them. Sometimes I like to write about people on the wrong side of the law; sometimes I write about safe, respectable people who encounter life unexpectedly; sometimes my fiction is set in the United States or England or elsewhere; a lot of the time I like to write from a woman’s perspective. I try to write interesting stories in which things happen and people change. My first collection of short stories – Four American Tales – is out now. I also have some novels that will be published after Four American Tales: look out for news updates on Take the Late Train and The Long Voyage Home.

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Noah’s Arc

Jack Messenger

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Published 2018 by the Greyhound Press, Nottingham, UK

Copyright 2018 Jack Messenger

Cover design: Jack Messenger

Cover photo: Pixabay

Dog graphic by Freepik from Flaticon is licensed under Creative Commons by 3.0. Made with Logo Maker.

The right of Jack Messenger to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

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‘Reality – that incidental, confusing and fragmentary experience we are pleased to call life – is in point of fact seldom real and invariably unreliable.’

Dr Lewis Judd, The Mind and Its Masks, third edition, p. 197

1

Convergence

For a long time now there’s been a rumour going round that life isn’t cut out for human happiness and we don’t always get what we want. Once in a while, however, life behaves as if it’s been reading too many second-rate novels. Noah Tredwell was more than able to recognize a second-rate novel when he lived it, for he’d written one or two in his time.

The stories they tell begin with a beginning and end with an end, and we’re not supposed to be curious about what happened before page 1 or after page 250. They’re not like life, which goes on and on with one damn thing after another, and they have a fondness for dramatic openings of the kind preferred by Noah’s friend, Sibella. This might involve an ingenious variation on such promising lines as ‘A single gunshot rang out over the cold night air’ or ‘Marsha eased out of her cocktail dress and joined Brad on the couch’. Once you’ve read the first lines of Sibella’s novels you know exactly what you’re in for, which explained – to Noah at any rate – why they made a lot of money and were completely worthless.

Ann, on the other hand, while she agreed with Noah in principle, enjoyed Sibella’s books, of which there were many. Noah alleged they were so many because they were fundamentally identical, with only the names changed to protect the author. Sibella banged them out as carelessly as a monkey at a typewriter, and when Noah once imprudently suggested she had a computer program that produced novels to specified lengths and content, it earned him a smack on the nose and a faceful of expletives.

A mouthful of insults was typical of Sibella’s imperious character, and Noah should have seen the danger signs, for he and Ann had known her for years as an emotional, arrogant, often infuriating friend. Her trump card – one she never tired of playing when Noah was in the game – was her prolific writing career and her ruthless efficiency at self-promotion, which had earned her some kind of celebrity.

Noah envied her as much as he hated what she produced.

‘Why do you like her stuff?’ he asked Ann each time she picked up another one. ‘They’re so bloody predictable.’

‘It’s genre writing, Noah. Theme and variations. I like crime novels. They’re comforting.’

‘Do you need comforting?’

‘We all do. I like what you wrote years ago.’

To which Noah had no response. Somewhere back in the Edenic past to which his wife referred, he, too, had written novels with lurid covers and half-baked storylines. That he could have thus contributed to the painful and protracted demise of serious literature made him feel embarrassed but also nostalgic, for at least his books had sold and made some money. According to his publisher, his last effort had performed ‘somewhat disappointingly’ and was, Noah maintained, completely misunderstood by the reading public, who had expected regular bouts of gunfire and sadomasochistic sex and been confronted instead with bleak and arduous dialogues about the meaninglessness of life.

On one of their regular nights at the Keane’s Head on St Mary’s Gate, when Noah was feeling more than usually sorry for himself and plagued with existential doubts aggravated by a surfeit of alcohol, he asked Gerald Lake a question he’d been asking himself over and over.

‘How long can a writer write nothing and still be called a writer?’

Noah knew this was a dangerous question to ask his friend. He waited nervously for the answer, burying his face behind a worried frown and a glass of Sheriff’s Tipple.

Gerald was an art dealer of some reputation, whose latest protégé also happened to be his current life-partner. This happy blend of the professional and the personal should have made Gerald a contented man, but it didn’t. It was his experience that the two didn’t mix, particularly when the protégé was as talented and as youthful as Daniel Fordham. At age forty-five, with thin grey hair and myopia to boot, Gerald was a considerable number of unspecified years ahead of Dan, and while both of them claimed the discrepancy in their ages didn’t bother either of them, in reality it bothered Gerald like hell. Dan was now preparing for his first major exhibition, under Gerald’s aegis. Gerald welcomed and feared this event in equal measure. He wanted Dan to enjoy the recognition he so plainly deserved, but worried that once it arrived, Dan would depart.

Thus, Noah’s question touched a nerve, for it spoke of regrets for the past and fears for the future. Gerald was unused to discussing such matters with Noah, a friend of long standing prone to long windedness in his own behalf. Gerald guessed the question was a serious one that required a serious answer. He looked at Noah for a moment, then decided to play safe.

‘Depends,’ he said. ‘There are people who write constantly who’ll never be called writers by anyone with any sense.’

Noah thought of Sibella and nodded approvingly. ‘Are there people with any sense? Apart from you and me, that is?’

Gerald shrugged his shoulders, as if to say ‘what do I know?’ He decided to take refuge in the past. ‘I dipped into A Life Worth Losing the other day.’

‘Oh?’

‘That big air raid was as fine a description as I’ve ever read – in a first serious novel. You should be proud.’

‘Thank you, Gerald.’

‘So I wouldn’t worry if I were you. You’ve written good stuff and will again.’

‘I hope so. I’ve also written a lot of bad stuff.’

‘Deep down, Noah, you believe that even your bad stuff is better than a lot of other people’s best.’

Gerald was probably right about that, but Noah preferred not to think about it. When he did think about it, he also assumed that every other writer thought the same.

Where did that leave him?

Several lunchtimes later, when the sun burned righteously in a pristine sky and the innocent waters of the Trent shone like silver, Ann had phoned from the university to tell him she would be late.

‘Again?’

‘I’m sorry, Noah, it’s conference time, you know that.’

‘But you’re never bloody home!’

‘It’s called work, Noah. Try it some time. I’ll meet you at eight at Galileo’s.’

Ann had hung up and Noah had stared bleakly into the mirror, noticing nothing there in particular, except a vague shadow of a worried man in imminent need of a haircut. His wife had sounded querulous and more than a little irritated. Was it with him or her job? Her hours had grown longer over recent months and she was often obliged to work late into the evenings whether or not she was at home. Her flourishing career was important to her – important to them both – but he was prone to take it as an accusation against his own inactivity.

Later, during an endlessly hot afternoon, Noah turned reluctantly to his long-postponed Scamp duties. The new e-journal of art and culture had recruited him to undertake an occasional review. This time he was asked to judge A Darkening Mist, Paula Fenton’s fifth novel. He didn’t like the book, which he had ploughed through with increasing listlessness, but gave it a glowing recommendation anyway, as was his habit, in hopes that Paula might remember to return the favour one day. Then, just before five, after an hour of so-called work had resulted in several discarded ideas for his projected novel, he changed into fresh clothes, selected a sunhat and headed for town.

The aptly named Bunbury Street was the first road he encountered upon leaving the front door, which always lightened his heart, and it was with something of the insouciance of Algernon Moncrieff that he crossed over Victoria Embankment to the Trent and then followed the canal towpath. His leisurely walk took twenty minutes or so and was pleasantly populated by the occasional morose fisherman, an obese jogger or two and gangs of irascible geese contemplating punitive action. The autumn sun was still riding high upon a blaze of heat. Remorseless traffic crawled fractiously through the poisoned air of the London Road, but in the shelter of the Beeston Canal it was possible to feel peacefully detached from the everyday strife. Nottingham fell in step beside him, took his arm concernedly and asked – confidentially and between you and me – how he felt.

Such questions were by no means easy to answer these days.

Noah was unwell in some indeterminate way that required constant mental vigilance and a dogged determination to track down every nuance of thought and feeling. In the old days, he supposed, it would have been called melancholia, which sounded romantic and strangely soothing, but was no less debilitating than its modern equivalent. Noah had been labelled depressive and was on medication, but he believed this to be a misdiagnosis. When Dr Judd asked him questions and conducted tests, Noah invariably disappointed him with his lack of despair and his ability to function in daily life. All he could claim was a profound emptiness and a near-total disinvestment from his own affairs. This was a void he imagined feeling at around age eighty, when all was said and done, and not in his forties, with so much life ahead of him.

How could a man go so wrong, he asked himself, and not know how?

That Ann bore the brunt of these feelings was a cause for shame and guilt. It wasn’t much fun living with him right now, and he had taken to wondering if it ever had been. She had her career, of course, and her friends and colleagues, but could they really get her through this thing that washed over them with such frightful regularity? He’d run out of road, it seemed, while her highway curved gracefully into the distance, full of promise and with splendid vistas along the way. Thus, they had drifted apart and would no doubt continue to do so until something happened.

It was this that worried him – what was the ‘something’ and when would it occur?

Noah panted up Hollow Stone and crossed the tramway into the city centre. He strayed instinctively to Old Market Square and stood at the big blowsy heart of Nottingham. The wind funnelling down from Chapel Bar swept over him in a benign frenzy of hot and beery breath. For one brief moment, Noah felt exalted, washed clean of Scamp and work and failure. He could feel the roar and rush of the city flowing through his veins. He was at one with himself and all creation. He closed his eyes and turned his face heavenward, until the wind snatched at his hat and sent it spinning across the pavement.

He watched it lodge in the wheel arch of a patrolling police vehicle and speed away. Despondent, he decided he would head for Bridlesmith Gate. He still had a couple of hours to kill before dinner with Sibella and Frank, so he’d murder them at the bookstore café.

He took a lugubrious pleasure in the sight of Sibella’s novels prominently displayed under her photograph, which looked suitably glamorous for the creator of Marsha Sebastian, Private Investigator. Sibella’s suspiciously raven hair hung luxuriantly to her shoulders, while her green eyes stared provocatively from behind her tinted spectacles.

Noah gazed at the face of his friend and asked himself what she’d been thinking. He knew it couldn’t have been about the next novel, as Sibella had no need to concern herself with minor details. More probably she’d been contemplating some kind of deal. There had been talk of film rights. It was all so depressing. He wondered if Sibella knew in her heart of hearts that she had sold out, and that it was futile to wish to look like her impossibly voluptuous heroine – although, he had to admit, she wasn’t doing a bad job.

Noah wondered about the effect on his own career had he been blessed with astonishingly good looks and unlimited self-belief. Maybe he wasn’t sufficiently handsome to write another novel? Then he recalled that George Orwell had looked like a bookie’s runner and Paula Fenton an escapee from the island of Dr Moreau. He pondered these possible connections between personal physiognomy and creative output as he flicked through his text messages, pausing only when he saw Michael Hammond’s urgent plea: ‘Checked your emails? Let me know asap.’ That didn’t sound good. He filed it away under Beware.

‘Oh my God! Noah?’

Noah tore his gaze from the source of his discomfort and saw Miranda Brooks smiling down at him. She carried a satchel over her shoulder and clutched a large cup of coffee. ‘Noah?’ she repeated.

‘Miranda! What are you doing here? Do sit down.’

Miranda explained what she was doing here and while she did so he studied her carefully, a habit he enjoyed with a guilty pleasure that scratched at his conscience. She was, he realized with astonished admiration each time they met, incredibly pretty and so tenderly young. Her black hair was deliciously thick and lustrous, while her brown eyes were frank and friendly and warm. What a delicate nose she had, and such a lovely chin! And her skin looked so fresh! Noah took a deep breath and savoured the aroma of her scent and her leather satchel. Even her coffee smelled better than his.

She sat on the sofa and turned to face him, crossing her beautiful legs and flicking a strand of hair from her eyes. ‘And what about you?’ she asked, and he realized he’d not listened to a word she’d said.

‘What about me?’

‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you working?’ she asked in mock seriousness, emphasizing her words by stabbing him in the chest with her finger.

‘I needed a break,’ Noah improvised, still tingling from the touch of her hand. ‘I’m also meeting my wife for dinner. Along with her.’ He nodded at Sibella’s poster in front of them.

‘Really?’ Miranda squealed. ‘How exciting!’

‘For whom?’

‘For you all!’ she laughed.

‘I can’t answer for Sibella, but we’ve had many a dinner over the years, so it’s hard to be excited at the prospect of another. Although I am very hungry. How are things with you?’

‘Great, thanks! Okay. Well, you know, same old same old.’

‘And your writing?’

Miranda pulled a face. ‘Yet another short story just bit the dust. You know – that competition entry I told you about?’

‘Mr Bailey, Grocer? It’s a great story! What do they know? Keep trying!’

‘That’s easy to say,’ pouted Miranda. ‘But how? How do you keep trying, Noah? Like, you’re older than me, you’ve had so much more experience of rejection. How do you cope with it?’

‘It’s important to have a system. I have a good one. It largely consists in not submitting anything.’

‘But you are still writing.’

This question came disguised as a statement that brooked no contradiction, especially as Noah had already convinced Miranda he was engaged in a titanic undertaking, the like of which had not been seen since the Reverend Casaubon’s Key to All Mythologies, a comparison he’d quickly come to regret. What could he call the great sprawling mass he claimed occupied most of his computer, over which he spilled so much metaphorical ink and literal coffee, except a masterpiece in waiting, the great work of his life, the consummate novel of their time, after which nothing in the literary landscape would remain standing, and through whose shadow all things must pass?

Not for the first time was he torn between shame for his deceit and regret for its falsity. Nothing like that could conceivably come from his exhausted imagination.

Miranda pondered her own bitter dregs of rejection with a sigh and another sip of coffee.

She wears her youth so lightly, thought Noah. At her age he’d been a mass of neuroses and social inadequacies – barely an adult in fact. He’d decided long ago there was no one he could blame for this except his parents, whose partiality for his vacuous older brother had bordered on the pathological. Would he never escape the curse his mother had screamed at him the last time they met? ‘May you rot in hell, Noah Tredwell! You’re no son of mine!’

She hadn’t said this literally, of course, but he was sure it was what she meant when she kissed him perfunctorily and told him goodbye. Whereas Miranda ...

Noah shook his head. He wondered if people grew up more quickly than in his day, then berated himself for sounding twenty years older than he actually was. He made a mental note to think young.

‘At least you’ve been published,’ Miranda told him, accusingly, as if he ought to be ashamed of himself.

‘A long time ago,’ he consoled her. ‘These days writing has to compete with so much else. The important thing is not to give up.’

‘And don’t give up the day job, I know.’

‘Do you have a day job?’

‘I just started. Telemarketing.’

‘Oh? That must be –’

‘Crap.’

Noah thought of his own Scampian wage slavery and nodded sympathetically, although he knew Miranda’s parents were pretty well off and never hesitated to assist their daughter.

‘I really want to support myself,’ Miranda continued. ‘But nobody helps,’ she added, somewhat inconsistently. ‘What is it about human beings that governments hate so much? Is it because so many of them are rich and we’re not?’

‘The world is run by fools and scoundrels, Miranda. I’ve learned that much, at least.’

‘It seems to me they hold everyone morally accountable except themselves.’ Miranda sipped her coffee, frowning most attractively. ‘Oh! By the way, I’m going to try some more science fiction. I know somebody who has a friend who’s a games designer. I’m hoping he might be interested. He’s looking for a collaborator.’

‘You can do a lot with SF – politics, the environment ...’

‘Fuck that! I’ll go for adventure and sex. What’s the matter?’ Miranda drew closer and put her hand on Noah’s. ‘You look, like, shocked?’

‘No, I’m all right, really,’ he replied, withdrawing his hand so that he could lightly pat her fingers. ‘I was just thinking that you and Sibella would get on well.’

‘Oh? Why?’

There was no trace of suspicion in Miranda’s question, simply innocent curiosity that Noah felt he had to satisfy as decently as he could. ‘You both know what the market wants.’

‘Don’t you? You used to!’

‘Not anymore. I don’t even know what I want.’

Miranda appeared to give this some thought but was evidently puzzled.

‘Life,’ Noah explained, ‘my life, has got out of focus. I look at myself and realize that things are a little blurred.’ He thought then of Ann’s phone call and his involuntary paralysis before the hall mirror.

‘Perhaps you need new glasses.’

‘It’s probably age,’ added Noah, seeking sympathy.

‘Oh, come on! You’re not that old!’

‘I’ll never see forty again.’

‘So what? You’re still an attractive man ...’

‘Am I?’

‘... for your age, of course.’

‘Oh!’

Noah wondered about that ‘still’. Was he attractive and had he ever been? The last time he looked, he was not without a lanky and grizzled charm, but you could hardly call it classic good looks. Not even good looks. It took a special kind of woman to find him worth looking at twice. Whereas Miranda would turn anyone’s head.

‘Things happen when you get older. One day you wake up and wonder if it’s worth getting out of bed.’

‘Depends who you’re with!’

Noah blushed at Miranda’s suggestive smile. ‘Speaking of which, how’s your boyfriend?’

Miranda frowned and stared at the escalator on the other side of the store. ‘He’s not my boyfriend. Not really. I’m not sure what he is.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I thought –’

‘Oh, I like him well enough.’ She took another sip of her coffee. ‘François is very young, for all his brains.’

Noah laughed. ‘You’re both very young!’

‘Yes, but with him it’s a disease. I think he studies so hard because he’s frightened of growing up. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘He likes Ann very much.’

Noah was startled. ‘Does he? Well ... she likes him.’

He stared through the nearest window across the rooftops of Hockley and wondered if he liked the idea of François liking his wife very much. Miranda was riffling through her satchel, oblivious to the unease she had unleashed with her casual remark.

Noah looked at his watch and told her he really had to go. Miranda gave a mew of regret and kissed his cheek. ‘Cheer up!’

On the way out he stopped by the crime section and noted the absence of his own work from the ranks of his more successful confreres. He obtained a grim satisfaction each time he did this, for it meant he would not be missed if he never wrote anything again. If A Life Worth Losing did still haunt the bookshelves there was always the chance that someone would buy it and then pester him with questions about why he’d never done anything since. Assuming, of course, they liked what they’d read. He hadn’t seen it for years and was in no hurry to form a judgement.

He always hoped the end of each afternoon would bring some relief from the extreme heat, as the last several weeks of uninterrupted tropicalia had fatigued him beyond endurance. When he stepped outside to make his way to the Lace Market, his shirt clung to his back, and his head throbbed from the thermals that swirled angrily from the pavement. Nobody else looked as troubled by the airless chaleur through which they wandered. For Noah, the summer’s refusal to budge was another stage in the erasure of the seasons, the breakdown of the natural order, and the expunging of the human race from the face of the planet. No wonder he couldn’t settle to anything, he thought. And if by some miracle he did manage to write his next book, by the time he’d finished there’d be no one left alive to read it.

He stopped for a moment at the corner of Bottle Lane and watched everyone ignoring the Big Issue woman stationed across the road. He marvelled at her patience and the layers of clothing she wore on such a hot afternoon – early evening, he corrected himself, as the Council House bell tolled seven o’clock like the crack of doom.

How young most people are, he noticed yet again as he climbed Warser Gate and turned gratefully into the cool breeze that blew zephyr-like along Stoney Street. And how uncaring!

He wondered about Miranda. Sometimes it seemed to him there was something going on between the two of them that could bear watching. He recalled how they had met one evening at a talk given by an experimental neo-imagist poet and had immediately decided to leave early. They had ended up having a drink together and talking about their work. He’d had to do some fast talking to make it seem like he was working on something. Research was a safe bet in such situations, as everyone knew that research was important and could go on for years if you let it. Noah let it. Despite the difference in their ages, strange undercurrents had sometimes struggled to the surface of their conversations and troubled him with their implications.

‘I am a very weak man,’ he muttered to himself by way of admonitory warning. ‘I shouldn’t make a fool of myself.’

Did Ann also have such thoughts?

Miranda’s comment about François liking his wife very much could have been innocuous, but in the circumstances it felt like an implicit threat, a knife held to his jealous heart. Apart from anything else, François was doing something, working hard, even if it was partly for the reason Miranda alleged. And so was Ann. Work brings people in close proximity, especially when one is a tutor and the other her research student. He, Noah, was not doing very much at all, and he knew that inactivity breeds contempt.

He threw these disturbing thoughts into the gutter.

The breeze continued to soothe him, while the depths of shade cast by a succession of elegant Victorian façades eased his mind and body. He admired the Lace Market’s imposing red-brick warehouses, which had escaped Nottingham’s murderous rage for self-destruction and turned themselves into colleges and offices and apartments. Marketing hucksters had suffered a crisis of imagination and branded all this functional beauty the creative quarter – thereby consigning the rest of the city to uncreative oblivion – in an effort to attract suitably dynamic persons to some unique accommodation. Noah felt uncomfortable about this, since most dynamic types these days did things he barely comprehended. In comparison with their complex and arcane activities, the writing of fiction – or attempts at same – seemed trivial and old fashioned. Writing was Noah’s only claim to creativity, however, and he was lumbered with it. Or, rather, he would have liked to have been.

As he passed by the Writers’ Guild he felt an acute pang of nervousness. He had hesitated about renewing his membership, and not just because he feared that questions would be asked. He had spent the last few years carefully shunning human contact, which meant the gradual and sometimes graceless elimination of friends, the refusal of most social engagements and generally keeping to the house. He’d been at a point in his life when he couldn’t bear to be with other people. Of course, they wouldn’t be people at the Guild, they’d be writers, but that brought problems of its own.

Could he make believe to himself and to others that he was really a writer with a future and not just a past?

*

The past is painted in light across the night skies. Look deep enough and you can see the beginning of the Universe.

Ben Wade had known this to be true ever since his boyhood, when astronomy had consumed him with fascination, in the way that interests can when you’re young and seldom do again. The unimaginably vast, the infinite stretches of interstellar space seethed with activity. Suns exploded in distant galaxies, stars collapsed in remote constellations. Planets fragmented, asteroids collided, gravity twisted and turned, time warped and light was vanquished by endless night. Everything was expanding, all was creation and destruction.

The Universe was certainly an exhilarating place to grow up.

Ben and his father had constructed an observatory in the back garden. It was a shed with an eight-inch reflecting telescope, maps of the stars pinned to the walls, and shelves for sandwiches and a thermos. He could still remember the woody smell inside, the garden aromas that wafted in via the open roof, the night sky segmented for his admiring gaze. They were in the countryside then, where no city lights penetrated and where the air was clear of the stain and glare of sinful humanity. Dad had hoped an appreciation of the wonders of the night sky would bring Ben closer to God, but Ben had looked eagerly through his telescope for a glimpse of the Almighty and seen nothing but emptiness and terror. It had taken him a long time to get over the shock.

He often thought of that hut at the bottom of the garden. One day, he would go back and see if it was still there.

Galileo’s had thus been an obvious choice of name for Ben’s restaurant. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope, but his optical improvements had led him to discover sunspots and the rings of Saturn. He also enjoyed a good bowl of linguine. At least, that’s what Ben alleged, for Galileo had lived well into the seventeenth century, long after Marco Polo had returned from his epic journey to China, from whence he may well have brought back with him valuable cargoes of pasta noodles. The rest, as they say, is cucina italiana.

Galileo’s stood proudly on Goosegate, a few doors up from the Oxfam shop and across the road from some of the competition. None of these other places knew anything of string theory and celestial mechanics, so Ben felt free to decorate the dining room with stunning photographs of nebulae, awesome moonscapes and other interesting snapshots of the local solar system. Portraits of such luminaries as Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe and Galileo Galilei himself dotted the empty spaces between tables. The whole effect was curiously intimate in so large a space, as if infinity had shrunk itself to the size of Nottingham in order to oblige an old friend.

Business had been good for several years, but times had changed – he had changed – and entropy had set in. Still, Ben had one remaining ritual left over from better times: he tried to count the aromas. Today, coffee, certainly; that was as constant as a comet returning at predicted intervals. And each morning brought its own variations. This morning, a vague scent of parmesan, warm and ripe, together with a lingering touch of the sea bass that had sold so well. Perhaps chocolate, something sweet anyway. Now some bread toasting gently, which immediately suggested butter and strawberry conserve, but that must be his imagination.

Ben’s arms ached. As usual, he’d helped the eight o’clock shift take down the chairs and lay the tables, then bring out the plates of pastries and other breakfast essentials. He liked to begin the working day with something physical he didn’t need to think about, especially when he knew some taxing mental work lay in wait.

Whenever paperwork beckoned, Ben sat at his favourite corner table in the back, near Einstein’s photograph. From there he only had to lift his eyes from the laptop and gaze across the restaurant to the big window and see the world outside. The people on their way to work looked drained of colour, the buildings opposite were grey and depthless. It was so very warm for autumn, but he could recall this morning that first real acrid smell of fallen leaves and damp earth mingled with the fumes of the traffic.

Thus positioned, Ben could kid himself he was still captain of his destiny. He’d always run a tight ship, supervised the crew with skill and discretion, known where everything belonged and what needed doing. He had gained the staff’s confidence because they had learned he could be trusted. Galileo’s had been a well-oiled machine that had begun to turn a profit, but it had never become the kind of impersonal and ruthless enterprise that treated its customers like necessary nuisances. Then, one day, his wife Katherine had jumped ship, blowing a hole in his life through which was sucked every last drop of his enthusiasm and motivation. The frail craft of Galileo’s became rudderless, drifting inconsolably through the vast reaches of Ben’s grief to the beat of his aching heart. That was when he lost it, lost it all. Bereft, stripped of the captaincy, he’d been kept on as second lieutenant.

There was no convenient mirror where he sat, so Ben could not see the grey hairs creeping into the black, the rings under his eyes and the furrowed brow of concentration. Nevertheless he knew them to be there, that he was looking older suddenly, without meaning to and without even thinking about it. There was little time to think about anything these days, except the business and his new role. And the girls, of course, but rather than think about them he worried, knowing they had escaped his vigilance, just like Katherine.

Katherine – who would have drifted through the Milky Way by now, as she had drifted through life, lost and alone despite Ben, despite Emily and Vicki. What a dreadfully lonely voyage it must be!

Space travel is tiring stuff and always gave Ben a thirst. He should have a cup of coffee, but there was nobody behind the bar for the moment. He glanced at the other tables. Everything lay in readiness. Cutlery gleamed coldly beneath the white spotlights. One or two of the tall glasses, he noticed, looked a little foggy. The bottles of red wine were dark and inviting. Music played quietly. He liked the way it echoed off the wooden floor, glanced off the glass shelving behind the bar and drifted towards the front door. He’d chosen much of the music himself originally, but lately he’d left it up to Emily. ‘Dad, you’re too old fashioned,’ she’d told him. So she’d mixed in whatever it was she liked with the jazz and ballads he’d chosen, and the combination had worked well.

It had rained a little without his noticing. The rain was so fine he could barely see it, except for the little droplets that collected on the windowpanes and slipped away. The sky was already clearing, and it was getting warmer, so it looked like autumn would be driven underground one more time. Was it a good day to be serving breakfasts? He couldn’t trust himself to know these things anymore. They’d taken to offering it until midday, on Larry’s insistence, and business was steadily increasing. His brother-in-law had smiled with self-approbation. ‘Trust me, Ben,’ he’d said, his eyes glinting, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

It was Ashley’s shift this morning. When he came through from the kitchen hugging a heavy cardboard box to his chest, Ben called out across the dining room. ‘Cup of coffee please, Ash.’

Ash brought over the coffee and found a place for it among the accounts spread all over the table.

‘How’s Coral these days?’ asked Ben.

‘She’s okay.’ Ash glanced at the spreadsheet on Ben’s laptop. ‘Rather you than me,’ he said.

Ben smiled and thanked him for the coffee. He didn’t like the paperwork either. He had never been good with figures, which was a real drawback for someone in hospitality. He had to make himself care about every last detail, as that was where the devil was, Larry reminded him. Larry knew what he was talking about.

Ben took off his spectacles and put them down carefully on the pile of bills to his left. Immediately, the room became blurred and all he could see of passers-by were shifting shadows and bleary colours. His eyes ached a little. He’d been adjusting to his new varifocals with difficulty. The ophthalmologist had told him he’d be able to work with them on, but he found the letterbox of clear vision they afforded too constricting for detailed work. Today, he’d forgotten to bring his old pair of reading glasses, so the numbers had been dancing tantalizingly in and out of focus while he moved his eyes and head searching for that elusive rectangle of clarity.

The first customers of the day arrived. Ben put on his spectacles. Two middle-aged women, already carrying the branded bags of expensive clothing stores. They sat at the front of the restaurant near the window and examined the