Noah's Ark Read Online Free PDF Page B

gushed blood?
    Ali cast an eye over Noah’s remaining luggage. Last-minute sweatshirt and socks from the tumble dryer. Razor and shampoo. Airline ticket and passport. A sheaf of medical papers which he meant to read on the plane. One large jar of gritty peanut butter, which she had bought at his instruction in the health food shop. The absurdity of it now delighted her.
    ‘Why you should be taking peanut butter to New York beats me,’ she said. ‘I thought Americans invented peanut butter. For a straight man, Noah, you have some wonderfully eccentric habits.’
    ‘I promised some to Barbara,’ he said. ‘Her peanut butter is nothing like as good as the peanut butter we buy here in the health food store.’ Ali looked surprised. Barbara was a research doctor who worked with Noah in America. She came to stay sometimes and brought presents and took the children strawberry picking. Once she coincided with a resolute spell of snow and knew immediately that a sledge was the best of all presents. Ali liked people who liked her children. It was her major criterion for judging guests.
    ‘AI,’ Noah said. ‘Do we have a couple of extra orange juice cartons I could take along?’
    ‘Yes,’ Ali said, but with some surprise, ‘of course. Does Barbara want you to carry the British carton to America?’ Noah’s dislike of the British carton appeared to ruin his breakfast some mornings. It didn’t pour properly, he said. Not like the ones in the States. Ali could not bring herself to call America ‘the States’ though it was more accurate. It sounded too in-groupish for all but the citizenry.
    ‘I could use it on the flight,’ Noah said. ‘It doesn’t do one’s jet lag any good to get dehydrated. Airlines don’t give one enough.’ Ali got the orange juice from the cupboard, thinking wistfully of Noah with his informed and disciplined eating habits. The preparation of virtuous food was often, sadly, so laborious.
    ‘Take scissors, Noah,’ she said, ‘to open the cartons. Dannie and me will drive you to Heathrow.’
    ‘Only to the train station,’ he said. ‘That’s all I need. I don’t need to waste your time.’ Noah was always considerate of Ali’s time, though she herself so happily squandered it. He put pen and scrap pad into her hands.
    ‘Some small chores I have hanging over,’ he said briskly. He recited a familiar list of minor ‘phone calls and errands which he delegated to her, consisting of meetings to be postponed and references to be handed on to typists. And could she, please, he said, tomorrow midday, call Arnie Weinberg and tell him his curriculum vitae was sitting on the desk in the study? Arnie had applied for a job in California which, regrettably, he just might get, but after ten years of working with him, one couldn’t stand in his way.
    ‘He’ll be back sometime tomorrow a.m.,’ Noah said, sounding like the speaking clock. ‘It’s absolutely vital that you call him, AI. He’ll need to get it in the mail.’
    ‘All right,’ she said. She drove him, once he was clothed, to the railway station, with Daniel in the back seat in his cap and striped pyjamas. On the platform they held hands till the train came in. Ali stepped back and looked at him objectively, as she sometimes did in public, wanting the pleasure of seeing him with public eyes. ‘I like your looks,’ she said. Noah was broad and stocky. Heavy in the jaw and short in the leg, which was why his trousers always needed taking up. He had a head of thick but receding grizzle hair which had used to be dark brown before Ali knew him. He had about him an air both of substance and good sense from which his wholehearted indifference to fashionabledress did nothing to detract. It contributed instead the implication that his mind was concerned with more important things.
    ‘Good,’ Noah said, ‘Eat properly, AI, won’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, knowing as well as he did that she would lapse into slovenly orgies of tinned