LITMIR.BIZ

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       Stark’s Zoo

      A cool stream ran between the poplars, waiting to balm and soothe my skin. Beyond the water-meadow there were yachts and power cruisers moored along the river-banks. For ten minutes I had been following the perimeter road, waiting for the right moment to make a second attempt to escape from Shepperton. Lined with chestnut and plane trees, the quiet streets of bungalows and small houses formed a series of green arbours, the entrances to a friendly labyrinth. Here and there a diving board rose above the hedges. Small swimming pools sat in the gardens, water sparkling flintily as if angry at being confined within these domesticated tanks, confused by these obsessively angled floors into which it had been lovingly decanted. I visualized these pools, plagued by small children and their lazy mothers, secretly planning their revenge.

      It was plainly not by chance that I had crash-landed my burning aircraft into this riverside town. On all sides Shepperton was surrounded by water – gravel lakes and reservoirs, the settling beds, canals and conduits of the local water authority, the divided arms of the river fed by a maze of creeks and streams. The high embankments of the reservoirs formed a series of raised horizons, and I realized that I was wandering through a marine world. The dappled light below the trees fell upon an ocean floor. Unknown to themselves, these modest suburbanites were exotic marine creatures with the dream-filled minds of aquatic mammals. Around these placid housewives with their tamed appliances everything was suspended in a profound calm. Perhaps the glimmer of threatening light I had seen over Shepperton was a premonitory reflection of this drowned suburban town?

      I had reached the hotels near the marina. High above the St Clouds’ Tudor mansion the tailplane of the Cessna hung from the dead elm, signalling intermittently as if already bored with its message.

      I crossed the road and approached the untended ticket kiosk of the amusement pier. The freshly painted gondolas of the Ferris wheel, the unicorns and winged horses of the miniature carousel gleamed hopefully in the afternoon light, but I guessed that the only people who came to this dilapidated funfair were a few midnight couples.

      Behind the kiosk were the almost empty cages of a modest zoo. Two threadbare vultures sat in their hutch, ignoring a dead rabbit on the floor, dreams of the Andes lost behind their sealed eyes. A marmoset slept on his shelf, and an elderly chimpanzee endlessly groomed himself, sensitive fingernails searching his navel as if trying to pick the combination of this umbilical lock, ever-hopeful internal émigré.

      As I gazed consolingly at his gentle face a large and flamboyantly dec- orated vehicle emerged from the gates of the film studios, set off rapidly down the road in a dusty clatter and swerved into the forecourt by the ticket kiosk. A hearse converted to carry surf-board and hang-gliding equipment, it was emblazoned with winged emblems and gilded fish. The blond-haired man who had been painting the gondolas stared at me in a self-conscious way from behind the steering wheel, then pulled off an antique flying helmet. He stepped from the vehicle and busied himself in the ticket kiosk, affecting not to notice me.

      However, when I walked out to the end of the pier I heard his feet ringing on the metal slats.

      ‘Blake … be careful there!’ He waved me away from the flimsy rail, fearing that his rusting hulk might collapse under us. ‘Are you all right? This is where you came down.’

      He looked at me with some sympathy, but at the same time he stood well back from me, as if at any moment I might do something bizarre. Had he watched my attempt to cross the motorway?

      ‘That was a spectacular landing …’ He stared at the strong current flowing below our feet. ‘I know you’re a stunt pilot, but you must have been rehearsing that for years.’

      ‘You’re a fool!’ I wanted to hit him. ‘I nearly killed myself!’

      ‘Blake, I know! I’m sorry – but I suppose we rehearse that too …’ He played with the antique goggles and helmet, suddenly embarrassed by this rival show of flying gear. ‘I’m working on a picture at the studios – the remake of Men with Wings. I play one of the test pilots.’ He gestured deprecatingly at the Ferris wheel. ‘All this is a long-term investment, or was meant to be. It needs something to give it a lift. In fact, I’m surprised more people aren’t here this afternoon. It’s rather funny, Blake, that you’re the only one who’s come …’

      He reached up to one of the gondolas and swung himself into the air, showing off his muscular physique not so much to intimidate me – I could have knocked him down without any effort – as to win some kind of physical respect. His manner was aggressive but ingratiating, his mind already hard at work trying to think up some means of putting my crash to his advantage. As he gazed wistfully at the river, at the vanished traces of my accident swept away by the sunlit back of the Thames, I could see that he regretted being unable to exploit the derelict pier’s chance proximity to my crash-landing.

      ‘Stark, tell me – you saw me swim ashore?’

      ‘Of course.’ As if to forestall any criticism of his lack of action, he explained hurriedly: ‘I was going to dive in, Blake, but suddenly there you were, somehow you’d climbed out of the plane.’

      ‘Father Wingate helped me on to the beach. Did you see anyone try to revive me? Mouth to mouth respiration …?’

      ‘No – why do you ask?’ Stark was peering at me with a surprising look of intelligence in his actor’s face. ‘Don’t you remember, Blake?’

      ‘I’d like to thank him, whoever it was.’ Casually, I added: ‘How long was I in the aircraft?’

      Stark was listening to the restive vultures in their cage. The huge birds were clambering around the bars, trying to seize a piece of the sky. I studied Stark’s unsettled eyes, the fine hairs that stood like needles around his lips. Had he revived me? I visualized his handsome mouth locked against my own, strong teeth cutting my gums. In many ways Stark resembled a muscular, blond-haired woman. I felt attracted to him, not by some deviant homosexual urge the crash had jerked loose from my psyche, but by an almost brotherly intimacy with his body, with his thighs and shoulders, arms and buttocks, as if we had shared a bedroom through our childhoods. I was the younger but stronger brother, the yardstick against which Stark would for ever measure himself. I could embrace him whenever I chose, force his hands against my bruised ribs to see if he had tried to attack me, test the bite of his mouth.

      Confused by my stare, Stark turned his back on the river. ‘How long were you under? Three or four minutes. Perhaps more.’

      ‘Ten minutes?’

      ‘That’s a long time, Blake. You’d hardly be here.’ His composure returned, he watched me shrewdly, curious to see what I would do next. He played with the antique flying helmet, dangling this film prop in front of me as if toying with the suspicion that we were both actor-pilots. Yet I had flown a real plane against the sky, a powered aircraft, not one of his passive hang-gliders collaborating with the wind.

      Along the perimeter road the police car approached, headlamps inflaming the afternoon sunlight. When it stopped by the kiosk I saw that Father Wingate was sitting in the rear seat behind the two policemen. He stared at me through the closed window with the pensive gaze of someone who had quietly turned himself in to the police.

      As I waited for him to point me out to the officers Stark took my arm. ‘Blake, I’m driving to London – I’ll give you a lift across the river.’

      I sat in the passenger seat of the hearse, wearing my funeral mute’s costume, hiding my face behind the folded canopy of the hang-glider. I listened to the chittering of the marmoset, the guttural screeching of the vultures. For some reason my arrival had frayed their nerves. In the rear-view mirror I could see Father Wingate watching me from the back seat of the police car, like a fellow conspirator keeping his own counsel, careful to give away nothing of his involvement with me.

      Stark stood by the kiosk with the two policemen, warning them away

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