Marrying Off Mother

by Gerald Durrell

  Reluctantly, I finished my drink and went outside into the cold. I paused for a moment, uncertain where to go. The only improvement I could see to Bournemouth was that now it had become almost a university town and so whilst, in my day, all you saw in the streets were portly brigadiers and elderly ladies, now you were greeted and warmed by the sight of woolly-headed, chocolate-brown Africans, dark, sloe-eyed Iranians and clusters of beautiful Chinese and Japanese girls, like flocks of butterflies or enchanting pale amber birds, their hands, finely boned as fans, doing ballets of explanation as they trotted along.

  I decided I was cold and lonely, so I would go back to the hotel and write until it was time for lunch. I sat in the cocktail bar, all glitter and chrome, and had another Guinness. I wrote assiduously for a while, then I read the paragraph I had written. It leered evilly at me in the way first paragraphs do, when all the words have got together and are telling you that no matter what you do they are going to make sure you don’t like them; nor are you going to be any more successful with the next paragraph. Mentally I ran through my fairly extensive repertoire of bad language in English, Greek, Spanish and French — my only claim to being quadrilingual. Then I ordered a double brandy. It was a mistake. Lager, Guinness and brandy are uplifting things on their own but consumed, as it were, in an omelette, they have a depressant effect. The handsome Italian barman, Luigi (whom I was to get to know better later on), took one look at my gloomy face and moved tactfully down to the other end of the bar and polished glasses assiduously. He had known the brandy was a mistake. I was just wondering which form of suicide was the least painful when Ludwig materialized at my elbow.

  ‘Did you have a pleasant morning, sir?’ he asked, looking at me anxiously.

  I laid down my pen and drained my brandy.

  ‘If,’ I said carefully, ‘you mean did I enjoy revisiting the scenes of my youth and being made to feel approximately eighty years old, the answer is no.’

  ‘You are not eighty years old?’ he queried in astonishment. ‘You look much younger.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, if I avoid mirrors, I can pretend I am a handsome and well-preserved forty, whereas honesty compels me to admit that I am in a much older and more decrepit condition.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ludwig, determined to repair any damage he might have done to my morale, ‘you do not look it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will have a gin.’

  I ordered a gin and, in a spirit of bonhomie, another brandy. We toasted each other.

  ‘Gin,’ I observed, ‘is very bad for you. Why do you risk certain death by drinking it?’

  A worried look spread over Ludwig’s face.

  ‘Gin? Is bad?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t you read the Lancet?’ I asked in simulated astonishment.

  ‘What is lancet?’ he asked.

  ‘The greatest medical journal in the world,’ I said. ‘Tells you everything . . . every new discovery . . . gives instructions to doctors. You know, how to pour boiling pitch over an amputated leg stump . . . that sort of thing. All the doctors read it.’

  ‘So,’ said Ludwig, ‘it is a sort of doctors’ magazine?’

  ‘You could call it that,’ I said, wondering what the BMA would think of this description. ‘But of course, it only has pictures of arteries and glands and leprosy and so forth. No nudes or pornographic stuff, really, except that some of the text goes pretty close to the knuckle, if you’ll pardon the anatomical allusion.’

  ‘What does the magazine say about gin?’ asked Ludwig, regarding his glass with suspicion.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it tends to make you bald, for one thing.’

  His hand fluttered nervously up to stroke his carefully cultivated widow’s peak.

  ‘And then it gives you bad breath, it rots your teeth, and you get severe attacks of housemaid’s knee,’ I concluded.

  ‘What is housemaid’s knee?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, housemaids would get that,’ I said. ‘You would probably get under-manager’s knee, which is the same but more painful.’

  ‘When did you discover this?’ asked Ludwig.

  ‘Quite recently. Have another drink.’

  ‘Thank you. I will have a lager,’ he said. ‘Lager is good, no?’

  I sighed. My German had not a sense of humour or, if he had, it was lying dormant. Perhaps I could, by careful dowsing, uncover the bubbling springs of merriment.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of me,’ I said. ‘I like to joke a lot.’

  ‘Joke,’ said Ludwig seriously, as if it was a word that he was unfamiliar with. ‘Ah, yes, it is good to joke; one cannot be serious all the time. Joking makes one laugh.’

  I sipped my brandy and contemplated my new acquaintance. He was not unattractive looking, with wide, soft, earnest blue eyes but with the faint air of a nervous rabbit. He gave me the impression that, without actually doing so, he was constantly looking over his shoulder for an imaginary enemy, or, perhaps, a germ.

  ‘May I call you Ludwig?’ I asked. ‘I am called Gerry.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ he said, and smiled at me beguilingly and gave a tiny bow. I decided to test him out.

  ‘Tell me, Ludwig,’ I asked, ‘who, in this hotel, do I complain to?’

  A look of consternation spread over his face.

  ‘Complain?’ he asked. ‘You want to complain?’

  His fingers twitched round his glass as though his worst fears had been realized.

  ‘I mean,’ I explained, ‘if I want to complain, who do I complain to?’

  ‘You tell me your complaint,’ he said eagerly. ‘I will do what you want.’

  ‘Look,’ I said patiently, ‘suppose I don’t like the colour of the carpet in my room, who would I complain to?’

  ‘I can change the furniture,’ he said, eagerly, pacifyingly. ‘But the carpet is fixed to the floor. But I could move you to a room with a different coloured carpet tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want to change. I like the colour of my carpet.’

  ‘But you said . . .’ he began.

  ‘I was joking about the carpet,’ I explained.

  He had the look of someone who has just escaped from under the wheels of a fast-moving vehicle.

  ‘Joking,’ he said. ‘Ah, yes, joking.’ He laughed with nervous relief.

  ‘However,’ I said, ‘there is the shower.’

  His relief evaporated and his nervousness returned. ‘The shower? What is wrong with the shower?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘I am not insured against being blinded by a jet of scalding hot water every time I turn it on,’ I explained. ‘Also, it only points in one direction, and it is tedious to have to stand out in the hallway to get the full benefit of it.’

  ‘This is another joke?’ he enquired hopefully.

  ‘Alas, no,’ I said, mournfully. ‘This morning I was hit between the eyes with a jet of hot water of such ferocity and heat that I almost telephoned reception for a guide dog to get me down to breakfast.’

  ‘I will have it fixed immediately,’ he said and, gulping down his drink, he sped away like a tumbleweed of exposed nerve endings.

  I did not see him again until late that evening. Unwisely, perhaps, I was celebrating the eve of my birthday with brandy, a liquid which can make your brain crystal clear, as though illuminated by some strange fire, but it can also make your tongue loquacious and unwise. I was sitting in the gigantic lounge, silent and deserted, endeavouring to write, when he suddenly materialized in an unnerving way in front of me, the thick, soft carpets having muffled his footsteps like snow.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, gazing at me earnestly. ‘You are sitting up late.’

  ‘I can’t sleep and so I am writing,’ I said. ‘Press the bell and a strange night porter will appear like a genie out of a bottle, bearing brandy for me and whatever you want.’

  He pressed the bell and sat down opposite me,
regarding me with a slightly worried expression.

  ‘You write a lot,’ he observed.

  As I had been scowling at the one sentence I had written in the last half hour, while trying to think what to follow it with, I greeted this observation with exasperation. I slammed my notebook shut.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I write a lot. Unfortunately, the number of foreigners in Bournemouth is affecting my style.’

  ‘Style? What is?’ he enquired.

  ‘My writing.’

  ‘It is affected by foreigners?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘Any proper Englishman is affected by foreigners, don’t you know that? Why the Almighty didn’t make everyone an Englishman defeats me.’

  ‘But how foreigners affect you?’ he asked enquiringly.

  ‘Just because they’re not English,’ I said. ‘Look here, I go out into the streets, and what do I see? English men and women? No, a lot of Japs and Chinese, Iranians, Abyssinians and Basutolanders. Then I come back to the hotel and what do I discover? Englishmen? No. A filthy Italian barman named Luigi, who looks as though his great-great-grandfather was Machiavelli. A cohort of waiters who are all filthy Spaniards or filthy Italians or filthy Portuguese — and I have no doubt that there is a filthy French frog lurking somewhere, reeking of garlic.’

  ‘But I am a foreigner,’ said Ludwig.

  ‘Just what I mean,’ I said. ‘You’re a filthy Hun. It’s carrying this Common Market thing too far. Soon Britain will be so full of filthy foreigners that I’ll be forced to go abroad to enjoy the English.’

  He gazed at me for a long moment, and then laughed.

  ‘Filthy Hun,’ he repeated, smiling broadly. ‘Now I know you joke.’

  I sighed.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I am joking.’

  ‘What kind of books do you write?’ he asked.

  ‘Sexy novels,’ I explained. ‘Novels about sex maniacs raping and plundering their way through hotels like this.’

  There was a moment’s pause and then he smiled.

  ‘You are again joking, I can tell,’ he said, with satisfaction.

  The night porter appeared, and before Ludwig could say anything, I ordered two large brandies. He looked shocked and was about to protest, when I held up my hand.

  ‘Celebration,’ I said, glancing at the clock.

  ‘Celebration?’ he asked. ‘What for?’

  ‘In one minute, it will be midnight,’ I said, ‘and then it will be my birthday. Jollity, gaiety, and all that sort of stuff. I should stand well back if I were you; in all probability, I shall turn into a pumpkin or a werewolf, or something.’

  ‘Your birthday?’ said Ludwig. ‘Really? You are not joking?’

  ‘No, in one minute’s time I will have fifty-one glorious misspent years lying behind me.’

  The porter brought the drinks. Ludwig and I raised our glasses, and as the hands of the clock reached the twelve, Ludwig rose to his feet and toasted me.

  ‘Congratulations and many other times,’ he said.

  Thank you,’ I said, ‘and the same to you.’

  We drank.

  ‘You look worried,’ he said, looking worried for me.

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you be?’ I enquired.

  ‘But why?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, here I am, fifty-two and so far nothing has happened to me.’

  ‘But you have only just become fifty-two,’ said Ludwig earnestly. ‘You can’t expect things to happen at once.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Why shouldn’t a dark and voluptuous lady in a see-through nightie suddenly rush into the lounge and ask me to save her from a mad bull?’

  ‘In the hotel?’ asked Ludwig. ‘How would a bull get in?’

  ‘By the lift,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it could sneak in, disguised as a chambermaid, and lurk in the lady’s bedroom ready to attack her.’

  ‘You are joking again,’ said Ludwig, with immense satisfaction, as though he had caught me out cheating at cards. I sighed.

  ‘Tell me, Ludwig,’ I asked, ‘what made you leave all the bubble and gaiety in Germany to come to Bournemouth? Is the money better?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘but in Germany all they do is work, all day, and in the evening they are too tired to do anything. They have no fun.’

  ‘No joking?’ I asked, amazed.

  ‘No,’ said Ludwig, ‘they are too tired.’

  ‘So you escaped to England?’

  ‘Yes, I like England very much,’ said Ludwig.

  We sat in silence for a bit while I thought moodily of the piece I was writing, which refused to come right.

  ‘You are looking worried again,’ said Ludwig, anxiously.

  ‘No. Only my bloody writing won’t come right,’ I explained. ‘That’s all. It’s called author’s constipation. It will pass.’

  He looked at me in a slightly embarrassed fashion.

  ‘Tomorrow is my day off,’ he said. ‘I have a Mercedes car.’

  I pondered this apparently disconnected statement and wondered which of us had drunk the most brandy.

  ‘So?’ I asked, cautiously.

  ‘I thought that perhaps, since it was your birthday and you are alone in the hotel, you might like a drive,’ he explained, blushing slightly.

  I sat up.

  ‘What a splendid idea! Do you really mean it?’ I asked, touched by his kindness.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, his eyes shining at my obvious enthusiasm.

  ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘You come and have lunch with me and then we’ll zoom off. Have you ever seen Corfe Castle or the Purbecks?’

  ‘No,’ said Ludwig. ‘Since my girlfriend, Penny, left, I don’t go out much.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘it’s a date. You come and pick me up at twelve and we’ll go and have a drink and a good meal and then go and beat up the Purbecks.’

  So, punctually at twelve, we met in the hall. Ludwig looked somehow undressed in an open-necked shirt without his bow tie, and a gay sports jacket instead of his formal black coat, but this flamboyant disguise made him no whit the less earnest. We walked down through the Pleasure Gardens to the hotel which, in my opinion, served the nearest approach to good French food in Bournemouth, the Royal Bath Buttery. En route, we went into a pub where the barman, an Irishman, with a bland face but whose dark eyes held the faintest glow in their depths, like a firefly in a velvety black night, had led me to believe that he had found the world a humorous place.

  Ludwig took a long time to choose a drink. He wouldn’t have gin, for as he explained to the barman, it gave one housemaid’s knee. The barman’s eyes flicked over me briefly, and I winked. The glow in his eyes deepened and he became appreciative.

  Sherry, he said in a deep Irish brogue, gave one gout, so did port.

  Beer, I said earnestly, made one fat and, therefore, affected the heart, as did brandy if taken at midday. The barman said that some of his customers who insisted on drinking whisky had their arteries harden up so quickly that they had become quite immobile and stiff all of a sudden, like statues. I said that I’d known this happen with rum, only they became a sort of sticky heap, like molasses. Not to be outdone, the barman said that vodka ate through the intestines and stomach wall; only the other day he’d had a customer pass away because his whole stomach had fallen out on the floor. A terrible mess he’d had to clean up, he sighed, and the poor fellow had been eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. I gave the barman full marks. It is the little artistic touches like this that make a good Irish lie. Ludwig had listened to this exchange with care. Now he examined my face carefully.

  ‘You are both joking?’ he asked, so pathetically that I had to admit that we were, so we ordered lagers and the barman joined us.

  Soon, Ludwig was telling me how much he was looking forward to his holiday.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘I would like to go to the south of France,’ he said, ‘but I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ I as
ked. ‘You’ve got a fast car and the roads are good. You can get down to Cannes in one day.’

  ‘But I must see my family.’