Noah's Heart Read online

  Title Page

  NOAH’S HEART

  Neil Rowland

  Publisher Information

  Published in 2014 by

  Acorn Books

  www.acornbooks.co.uk

  An imprint of

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Copyright © Neil Rowland 2014

  The right of Neil Rowland to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Cover design by Alex Colbourne

  www.behance.net/alexcolbourne

  Dedication

  To my parents John and Maureen Rowland

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks due to Alex Colbourne for designing the cover.

  My publisher Paul Andrews for backing this title.

  To Elizabeth Grainger and Janet Davis for proofing. All ‘first readers’ of the script for their advice and comments.

  To all those family members, friends and fellow writers who have offered their encouragement and camaraderie. I couldn’t thank you enough.

  Gratitude for the fantastic support and backing expressed by readers of The City Dealer.

  Part One

  All Tomorrow’s Parties

  Chapter 1

  Bristol, England.

  I’m Noah Sheer, just shy of forty nine. I’m a kite maker, a champion balloonist, a former student radical, a devoted father and, contrary to all rumours, still in love with my wife. It’s public knowledge that my private life is in bad shape.

  But these details lost impact when my damaged heart put me into a grip. I believe that my own version of Bob Dylan’s “Never ending tour” may be finally rumbling to a halt. My wife and I used to enjoy talking about individual destiny, yet lately I’ve just been riding my luck. You could say I’ve been struggling to keep myself to myself.

  The other week I was going about my business, when there was a further heart incident. I hardly dared to breathe another. I collapsed against a wall holding my chest. I could feel moisture beginning to come out, bubbling up into each pore of my skin. My limbs turned to ice and began to break apart. My heart was sending out warnings about a complete meltdown. The novel of my life was coming to an end. There’s something wrong with the pump again, I chastised myself; something lethally amiss, despite an allegedly successful major heart operation.

  “You look much better. An amazing transformation,” my best buddy had remarked, merely echoing the general reception of family and friends. “We can hardly recognise you,” they said.

  “From now or from then?” I enquired.

  At the time of my hospital release I might have agreed with them. But my x-ray will soon be slapped back on to the lighted backdrop, after a relapse. I’m no more than a salacious image under the radiologist’s red light.

  I’d set off for town this morning to get a new pair of jeans: Which is the kind of optimistic freedom a guy in my position attempts to enjoy. The sun was bowling across the morning sky and the birds were whooping it up like Martha and the Vandellas circa 1967.

  Our kids had apparently gone away for the weekend. They hadn’t left any messages, or clues, behind. After getting back into the groove of life my idea was to get fixed for some new sounds, as well as find a party shirt to match my new pair of Levi’s. When I say “new music” I mean the latest albums from Young and Dylan (note the importance of that ‘and’). To quote Charles Mingus, mercurial jazz genius, it was time to let my children hear some music. They resist the idea of good taste but the terrible truth is hard to face.

  Then, as I strolled along Broadgate, the breeze began to whip up, the sky blackened like the interior of a biker’s jacket. To escape a drenching from a violent downpour I scrambled into the Old Galleries, one of our covered shopping malls here in Bristol.

  The heart squeeze came on unexpectedly. When the symptoms began I became rigid with fear and shock. It forced me back against the shiny marble wall between shop fronts. I clutched my heart like Buster Keaton spotting the marshmallow face of his heroine. Shoppers continued to bustle along their course, perfectly in step with the rhythm-free shopping-mall musak. The tinkling melodies of the suburban Seventies amplified between my ears, in a jingle at the mouth of hell. No power on earth was capable of saving me.

  “Are you all right, love?” trembled a female voice.

  I just stared ahead, locked into a grimace.

  “Are you sure?” asked the elderly lady.

  “Don’t worry,” I wheezed.

  “You poor boy, you look dreadful,” she observed.

  “Only need to catch my breath,” I replied.

  She examined me with sympathetic scepticism. “Can’t I do anything for you?”

  I groaned imploringly.

  “Anything at all?” she urged.

  “That’s kind, but no.” Everything was rocking and rolling; the final encore.

  “Do you want me to call an ambulance?” she asked, pressing my arm.

  “They can’t help me,” I replied.

  “Then can I get you a cup of tea?” she wondered.

  “A cup of tea?” I replied.

  “Yes, there’s a cafeteria next door.”

  Scrap the National Health Service, I thought, build a tea-urn the size of St Paul’s Cathedral. Cure all.

  Reluctantly the kindly lady left me. She thought that I was ungrateful and ignoring her. She took a grip of her deep handbag, gave me a hard critical look for rudeness and shuffled off. The other shoppers barely spared me a second look. I probably gave the impression of being a middle aged and middle class alcoholic, or even a drug addict. They had no intention of getting mixed up with a deranged idiot, slumped to the side. They didn’t know there was a counter revolution going on in my beat box.

  But thank god, I didn’t pop my clogs. The squeezing grip began to slacken, the radiation of death to recede. Then I levered myself away from the marble surface that resembled an unaffordable gravestone. I was released again, even if I didn’t know for what purpose. There was no desire for a cup of tea or anything stronger as, recuperating, I staggered away. I swallowed down the bitter oily residue of mortality and struggled to walk upright. I could feel mercury slowly withdrawing from my veins. I took out a wrinkled grey handkerchief and wiped my face.

  Nevertheless my heart was gyrating like a cocktail shaker, shifting a mixture too bitter to drink. I was shaking; my legs wobbled; my head was scrambled. No doubt I didn’t present such a wholesome sight to fellow citizens: even less the well-honed guy who used to bounce out of the gym every week.

  How terrible the prospect of kicking the bucket in a shopping centre. Wounded pride didn’t enter my thoughts at the time; just massive, overwhelming relief at having survived. So what the hell had gone wrong? What had triggered the latest malfunction? I had some leisure to consider these critical questions as I escaped the mall - my near final resting place. It couldn’t have been the dash for cover out of the rain. I was supposed to be making a
good recovery. Surely more than a jog was required to plunge me over the abyss, they’d insisted. Death had taken me to match point but I’d managed to fight back into the tie-break. To endure a heart attack at the age of forty-something had been the worst trip imaginable. You have to create some powerfully positive karma to survive that one. You can’t afford to be negative and look back on terrible experiences. Therefore I was determined to encourage positive radiation.

  The internal cardiology unit was all working quietly again, as I stepped off an escalator back to ground level. But there had been another coronary incident. The involuntary muscle had thrown another tantrum. That’s a dangerous place to hesitate. So how close had I got to complete silence?

  I drew the deep breaths of an escapologist who’d misjudged by a few seconds. I was bloody relieved, but I’d been terrifyingly close to a complete blackout, yet again. And according to the wise men and women, this was never supposed to happen. There was plenty of angst as I battled against the crowds, trying to find my car. My cheerful future evaporated like a drop of whiskey on the salt flats outside of Utah.

  But maybe I’d just had another bad experience.

  Chapter 2

  I’m not ready to talk about my life in the past tense.

  Trouble with my heart first erupted while I was away on a last-minute break. My dream girl Corrina accompanied me on that anticipated holiday to Crete. The island had been already been devastated by a legendary earthquake tsunami in ancient times. That antique catastrophe, passed down through generations, should have served as a precautionary warning. Instead we surrendered deliriously to our romantic lust and visited the nearest branch of ‘Cooked’ holidays for a rapid getaway. In hindsight I know that something was bound to go wrong with the trip. But hindsight’s like a successful career in show business.

  After everything I’ve been through, I know that the ocean of my manhood is very different to the gentler sea of my youth, as far as I recall - at least by comparing the snaps.

  “I need to blow out of town for a while,” I told her. “Get some breathing space. What do you say?”

  “Not sure if I have that much free time, Noah,” she admitted.

  “Come along, Corrina, we can make the time,” I persuaded her.

  My girlfriend squeezed her lips into an irritated reluctant pout.

  There has to be a catch when you sign up to a money slashing scheme. There has to be a hitch when there are only hours remaining before take-off. But then some people say it was no more than I deserved. My divorce hadn’t long gone through and not even the dust in England had properly settled. I had to leave our kids to fend for themselves, this was one issue. I couldn’t always be watching over them: they were beginning to have their own lives. How were they ever going to discover themselves, if I never gave them any space? Corrina and I intended to get away from all my problems for a fortnight. But we barely escaped for a week. As it turned out, the near loss of my life had the effect of cutting the holiday short.

  The resort airport resembled an isolated military outpost. I felt that if we walked too quickly from the aircraft steps we would be cut down by machine-gun fire. After a body search we picked up a hired motorbike; strapping two suitcases to the sides, as Corrina flipped her wrist again. That was a wise decision, to travel light, given the manner of my departure from the island. Corinna burnt a line down the roads leading to our rented vacation villa. She whipped that machine so fast that hot scented air scorched the interior of my nostrils. I gripped around her waist in neat role reversal; as she hurtled us forward on this Suzuki chariot, unaware that my own wings were about to be clipped.

  “Hold tight, Noah!” she yelled, letting out a whoop as she slashed around another tight corner. By then I could feel dying insects congregating at the back of my throat. I was pulverising their external skeletons with every terrified swallow. I tried to imagine myself as Peter Fonda. I even had a new pair of azure wraparound shades for the trip: only slightly thinning hair streaming behind my ears. Don’t tell me this was a clichéd male fantasy, as it was very real at the time. With a dangerous machine you need to keep a tight grip.

  We’d rented a villa with superb Olympian views over the Aegean coastline. We even had a slice of the beach to ourselves, except for parties of local youths, as well as an academic German couple around the bay. Somebody offered us the use of a powerful launch at a reasonable rental, to dash us between the islands when we wished. Everything looked set for a great holiday: everything was in place. My only job was to learn how to take an afternoon siesta. After the holiday, I considered, I would feel rejuvenated with a new lease on life. There was no need to relive the horrors of a divorce; my regrets about a teenage marriage turned sour in middle age; or concern myself too much about teenage children of our own. Just lie back on the lounger and secure my eyes against solar flares.

  By then I’d known Corrina for almost three months and she made me happy. She works for a world music company that has its HQ and recording studios at a large farm outside Bath. One fateful afternoon I drove over to the place, struggling with a local map and mental directions, bringing on destiny. I went there to sell them some of my balloons for an outdoor music festival. That’s what we produce at my company - high-tech hot air balloons and competition standard kites. I’ve been keeping this business alive for over twenty years. On the whole we’ve done well, with a steady rise, if you’ll excuse the pun; although we’ve had a number of uncomfortable zigzags in the accounts this year. Great timing, eh? So I drove over personally one day to talk dirigibles to this music company.

  I’ll never forget the first time I blew into Corrina. She emerged at reception holding out a delicate arm and introducing herself as company rep and guide for the day. She’d kept me waiting; I was sunk into a rush-woven sofa couch. She was wearing a Malaysian sarong, it was later explained. We freeze dried into our previous posture on sight of each other. It was one of those moments. Our encounter was supposed to be a formal business matter yet, though she didn’t neglect her duties, she’d suffered this emotional collision with me. But I was my old self back then.

  “Oh, hi! Noah Sheer?” Her smile was miraculous.

  “How’d you do? That’s right, that’s me... pleased to meet you,” I blabbed.

  We spent a long interesting afternoon exploring the music complex. I gave her my pitch for aerostat fabrics and fuel efficient burner units. We drank down a whole urn of spice tea with suspicious aromas, to chill out the heat wave. There were panoramic views across the landscape, as we sat together in an eco-compound, which was constructed from sourced Congolese hardwood, I recall. Then, while she guided me around a converted oak barn, transformed into a hostel for overseas musicians (who came to put down tracks at the studio) she gave me a high bounce into the eiderdown. She was confident, assertive in her needs, but an intelligent princess, with mineral pink aureoles to her breasts, like the planet Mercury observed through a double telescope.

  Corrina had been impressed by my authentic knowledge of music. Working for a music company she was the type of girl who was likely to be interested. I’d witnessed numerous legendary rock performances over the years, right from the Aeroplane, up to the Byrds and through to the Dead. I’m a Bob fan rather than a Dead-head though.

  Her smile could have illuminated an entire rock festival - still could. So after we got straightened out again I invited her to a party the following week. I didn’t waste any time, and at this point she wouldn’t let me. Our relationship grew more intense and committed from there. She radiated beauty under the lights, a sparkling if teasing intelligence; she was a total Venus. She was the best thing to ever happen to me. She allowed me to find myself again, to think that life wasn’t just one bad trip after another; just a helter-skelter slide to oblivion. She represented a new beginning, something brilliant in the future: you get the picture.

  As you may suppose, we couldn’t wait to fly o
ff into our idyll in the Aegean. I didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. Yet my world was already in peril; the clocks in my world had stopped ticking already. Before we set off on the journey I got the classic symptoms of coronary heart disease; tightness across my chest, unexpected aches and pains and inexplicable sweats. One morning, a few weeks before our flight, I dashed into the newsagents around the corner, only to feel that I had rowed across the Pacific, as I staggered back into the house.

  “Where the hell’ve you been, Dad?” commented my daughter. “What’s the matter with you?”

  My arteries were clogged like old drains, my bloody thickening like cheap sausage meat, but I was still determined to make our quick getaway. We had booked a relaxing romantic holiday together, but actually I was living on the San Andreas Fault Line. I’d been living with disaster for months. I didn’t have to look any further than the inside of my ribcage.

  When did these symptoms begin to first show? Well, I’ve got to explain because events were extraordinary and, for the sake of other coronary victims, not typical. After rowing back across the Pacific, from the newsagents, I decided to make an appointment with my GP. After an examination and a line of probing questions, he put his earpiece back on my chest for a second listen.

  “There’s no need to worry too much about this, Noah. This is just a bit of wind, you’re suffering from,” he argued, taking away the device.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, fastening my shirt and sinking into his club chair.

  “Gave you a bit of a shock, didn’t it,” he returned.

  Homer Timpson was the name of our original family doctor. The near namesake was a matter of hilarity for the kids. But the laughter soon died in my throat. His father, Douglas Timpson, had been an eminent scholar of ancient civilisations, well known at the university. Homer and I attended the same school together and sat many of the same exams too. Later we were students together at Bristol University, at the end of the Sixties. He was a medical student of course, while I was taking literature with history and philosophy. But it really should have been the other way round.