He locked himself in the attic at night and worked for hours at a stretch. He had never been practical so he took a certain pride in the acquisition of this new and utterly manual skill. He suffered untold setbacks and began to understand why he had heard so little about basket-weaving. Awkward, monotonous, maddening work.
Then, one night, he found himself watching in fascination as the rushes began to flow from between his clumsy hands, braiding, interlacing, reproducing in their twisting plaits, in their infinite and subtle shades of green, the currents of the river they had grown in. His confidence rose, bobbed on the surface of his darker thoughts. He knew he could build a basket that would float, he knew the river would carry his son. He became impish and for the first time in years looked as young as he really was, if not slightly younger. He danced a jig in the spotlight of his desk-lamp. He unleashed silent cries of jubilation. He saw a policeman turn into the street below, a truncheon swinging from his wrist. From his attic window, the chink in the curtains narrowed to an inch, George mocked the policeman as he passed.
‘You fool,’ he hissed. ‘Fool bobby. Look at you. Bobby fool.’
It was four in the morning before his excitement died down and he could sleep.
During the hours of daylight he hid the basket under a torn sheet in the corner of the room. It looked like a miniature ghost — the ghost Moses would become. It looked capable of uncanny things. It radiated power. The various materials he had used lay scattered on the floor — dried rush-stems cut to length, coils of thin blond rush-stems stringy as hair, pots of rush-glue that he had made by boiling the base of the stalks — and the reek of pitch hung in the air, so acrid that it was almost visible. How long before it crept downstairs, spread through the house, filtered out into the village? How long before the police started poking their noses in?
In ten days he had finished. He took Alice by the hand and led her up to the attic. A drab spring day. Wind nagging the wet trees. When he drew the cover off, she held her face in both hands as if it contained something that she was afraid she might spill. She examined the basket with nervous fingertips, her left eye twitching. He had been standing close to her, his arm touching hers, but now he stepped back, allowed her room to speak.
‘It’s beautiful. It’s — ’ and she hunted for more words with her hands as if they might be found on her person somewhere, in a pocket, perhaps, or up a sleeve. ‘It’s, it’s,’ and they came tumbling out, ‘it’s like an ark, isn’t it, George?’
George clapped his hands, then brought them to his lips. ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ he cried. ‘It’s an ark. Of course. Oh, Alice. You’re — ’
He couldn’t speak. In that moment he had seen his wife transformed again. She had forgotten herself so rarely during their nine years of marriage. He opened his arms, offered her an avenue. She closed her eyes and turned into it, blind. They clung to one another. Just there and then, the room darkening, rain closing in and shutting out the world, she was with him.
‘Alice,’ he murmured. ‘I love you.’
*
A misty dawn in the June of that year. Trees’ branches blurred, hands gloved in white lace. The fields beyond the trees invisible.
The sun, the world, invisible.
Ideal conditions.
Since his birth, Moses had been growing at a startling rate and now, at thirteen months, he already measured over two and a half feet. George knew he had to act fast. If he left it any longer the whole thing would be impossible.
He turned away from the bedroom window. Alice was still asleep, her many anxieties holding her down, weights on her body, weights on her eyelids. She slept late these days. After that morning in the attic she had curled in on herself like a snail, all her life inside, withheld. When he tried to speak to her, she flinched, backed away, hands muffling her ears. She didn’t want to listen any more.
He crossed the landing to his son’s room. Moses lay on his back. He was gazing at his fish mobile. The window stood open a notch and cool air flowed in. Finned shapes swam in the gloom. When he noticed his father standing above him, one of his hands began to strike the air. Sounds that had the feeling of words and the complexity of sentences bubbled from his mouth. He would be talking in no time.
George reached down and lifted him out of his cot. The baby’s feet pumped the air like someone treading water. A trickle of silvery drool spilled from the corner of his mouth and ran down George’s sleeve. Moses grinned.
‘Thank you, Moses,’ George said. ‘Thank you very much.’
He carried Moses downstairs. He opened the kitchen door and groped one-handed for the light. The window jumped back, turned blue. The mist a bandage on the sky. The sun would soon bleed through.
He changed Moses on the kitchen table then set him in the high-chair while he made breakfast. Baked beans, toast and tea for him. Porridge with brown sugar, blended banana and a bottle of milk for Moses.
‘All your favourites, Moses,’ he said. ‘A real feast.’
Where would his next meal come from? What would it be? Who would be holding him? George squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, tilted his head back. His mind bustled with questions, a thousand voices babbling at once. He looked down at Moses, ran his hand through the widow’s peak. The hair stood up in a dark crest then fell forwards in wisps on to the baby’s forehead.
Remember these final moments.
The night ebbing. Trees rising out of the sky — dark islands, jagged coastlines.
Daylight beginning to heat the crimson roses in the kitchen window.
The taut click of the electric clock. The knocking of a waterpipe. The shudder of the fridge.
His nerves tightened and Moses, sensing tension, pushed the teat away from his mouth.
‘It’s all right, Moses. Everything’s all right. Here.’ His soothing voice as he touched the bottle to Moses’s lower lip. Moses began to suck again, his eyes drifting out of focus.
Later there would be no way to bring this close again or make it seem real. Memory is a museum. Events mounted on pedestals, faces in Perspex boxes, emotions behind looped red ropes. Everything temperature-controlled, sealed off, out of reach. Looking only. No touching. That alone is distancing enough but sometimes, after a difficult journey, you arrive at the bottom of the steps, those grand stone steps with lions sprawled on either side, and you look up and the museum is closed. New hours, renovation work, an obscure public holiday. There is nothing for it. You turn away. Later in George’s life there would be times when he doubted whether he had actually ever had a son.
The church clock struck six. George eased the back door shut, winced as the loose glass rattled. He moved across the damp grass, a suitcase in one hand, the basket in the other and Moses, snug in a one-piece suit, lying peacefully in the crook of his right arm. Nervousness turned his belly on a spit but he no longer feared anything. Now he was outside and under way, now he felt his plan begin to stir, to breathe, to come alive, he passed through fear into excitement. His eyes flicked from side to side, missing nothing. The row of marigolds, mist frosting their warm orange glow. The top of the fence a giant saw-blade. The hinges on the garden gate coiled like springs and burgundy with rust. The way he was looking around he might have been leaving the village himself. Seeing it for the last time. The one thought that had sustained him for the past six months now lifted him again. Moses was leaving New Egypt. Leaving the place where apathy lay like a fine dust over everything. Where people gave up, broke down, turned their faces to the wall. Where lips had forgotten how to smile and danger wore a blue uniform with silver buttons. Absurd. Pathetic. Criminal.
He glanced down. Moses lay still, but his eyes seemed lit from the inside. That’s because he knows something good is happening, George thought. Babies always know.