There Is No Dog Read online

  When Mr B opens his eyes once more, he is calm. He exhales a long hiss of breath. Estelle puts her hand on his arm. Her expression suggests that this is not so bad an outcome as it might seem.

  ‘What about Lucy?’ Mr B cannot resist the temptation to ask.

  Bob’s face drops, but only for an instant. ‘I’ll go and fetch her! I’ll take her with me!’ he cries.

  They all freeze. And then Mr B exercises his first genuine act of earthly omnipotence. For an instant he concentrates very hard.

  There is a hollow boom and quite suddenly, Bob is gone. One moment he stands among them. The next moment, poof! Nothing. Silence. A long silence.

  ‘Well,’ Mr B says at last, very softly, with an air of bemusement.

  Estelle smiles at him, the most admiring of smiles. ‘Well done,’ she says.

  Outside the window, the fish continue to swim through the air. I have my work cut out for me, he thinks. Cleaning up after Bob, after his idiot inspirations, the ones that everyone thinks are so brilliant but which achieve precisely nothing. Mr B wonders how much time he has before the fish begin to die and fall from the sky, to smack and kill people on the way down, and then to lie and rot and stink in their hundreds of thousands and create a public health hazard of such proportions that the Black Death will seem as insignificant as a sore toe.

  In the morning, he will think of all that must be done. He will go to his desk, push aside the piles of prayers that await him and return the fish to the seas. But right now, something far more urgent requires his attention. He turns to Estelle.

  ‘Will you stay?’ he asks, a little tentatively.

  ‘Of course,’ she says.

  Of course. His heart soars.

  For now, this makes him God enough.

  48

  Luke catches the bus to work. Like everyone else, his eyes remain glued to the sky – to the glorious spectacle, the strangeness, the inversion of everything he has always expected. The miracle is only a few hours old, and he cannot imagine a time when it will appear less magical, less hopeful than it does now.

  I wonder what will happen next, he thinks, impressed and a little frightened by the spectacle. He would like to have stayed in his tower to watch the world reveal its next miracle. It is difficult for him to contemplate a continuation of real life, but there are animals to be cared for. An image of Lucy appears to him, as it has begun to do nowadays when he thinks of … almost anything. Above him, beautiful flashes of fishes fly.

  Damn. He’s missed his stop and the bus continues down to the bottom of the hill. When it stops again, he can see the aqua concrete walls that contain the penguin pools up the long slope above him. He leaps off the bus and begins to walk briskly uphill, feeling the stretch in his Achilles tendons and the backs of his knees. The day is clear and fresh, and, despite the unexpected climb, he feels optimistic, particularly when he sees Lucy (ah, to feel the perfect synchronicity of the planet, if only for an instant!) walking ahead of him. If he hurries, he will catch her up. Whoever would have thought? he will say to her, and then, But why not? We are living in an age of miracles!

  The hill is steep and he begins to run. She stops when he says her name. He leans on her shoulder for a second to get his breath back.

  ‘What a weekend!’ he says to her.

  Lucy shakes her head, her face transfigured by grief. ‘I never want to think about it ever again as long as I live.’

  ‘But the fish!’ protests Luke, wrong-footed by the strength of her unhappiness. ‘The fish are magic!’

  Lucy thinks of the boyfriend she imagined she had and all that she is unable to understand. Who is Bob? What did he mean about fixing the oceans? And the strange, awful behaviour of the fish? A coincidence?

  Luke reaches out his arm and snatches a tiny wriggling perch from the air. He holds it tickling in his hand for a heartbeat, grasps Lucy’s wrist and places the fish in her palm, folding her fingers gently round it. Despite herself, she giggles and tosses it up into the sky. It swims off.

  She sighs. ‘Yes, the fish are magic. A great and terrible magic.’ The moment is over. Her face turns blotchy and her eyes blink rapidly. She turns away so he won’t see, and they walk in silence till they reach the gates, show their employee passes and are clicked through the turnstile.

  Out of delicacy, he pretends not to notice her distress, but he keenly desires to look into her eyes and state with conviction that all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

  A flash of jealousy, triumph and righteous ire rises up in him, and at the same time he feels a great rush of gratitude to Bob, for being so obviously the wrong man.

  She turns away from him, but he is quicker. He takes her arm. ‘I found your capybara,’ he whispers close to her ear. ‘He set up camp on a little island half a mile away. Happy as Larry. A bit hungry, maybe. Pleased to be home.’

  Lucy’s face transforms and lightens, quick as a child’s. ‘Oh, clever you,’ she cries. For an instant her unhappiness evaporates. It will return, but for now she throws her arms round him, wondering how it is possible that she is doing such a thing. The sun, which has already gilded the edges of the day, seems to settle on the two of them like a kiss.

  He pulls free and grabs her hand, his brain struggling to retain the brief imprint of her body on his. He experiences a moment of sudden, glorious clarity and breaks into a trot, pulling her along behind him. By the time they reach the enclosure she is laughing. He does not let go of her hand. And so they stand, while the impossible fish float overhead, gazing at Lucy’s capybara and (a little unbelieving) at each other, wondering at the state of miracles.

  They are flooded with hope.