‘It’s a six-foot python, but harmless,’ Gerald replied carelessly.
‘My God! We can’t have it in this house, Gerald!’ Mother said, in her attempted firm voice that meant that he could. ‘You’ll have to keep it hidden from your lodgers,’ she whispered aside to me, sweetly compromising, trying to pacify my obvious scowling displeasure. It was unusual for Mother to take the Lord’s name in vain.
‘Too true, I’ll keep it hidden,’ I replied with considerable feeling, and wondering if I couldn’t off-load Gerald on to Leslie’s girlfriend. After all, if she could take one Durrell, why not another? I put the idea to Mother tentatively, as Gerald turned to organize his affairs.
‘No dear,’ Mother was kind but firm. ‘There’s no room. I’m afraid you’ll just have to be patient, dear, and hope for the best.’
‘Well, can’t he go and sit in the house across the road?’ I asked unfeelingly.
‘Oh no, dear,’ Mother replied. ‘The poor boy would be lonely. Besides, Leslie has practically sold the house to some solicitor or other, and we couldn’t have Gerald making a mess in there if that’s the case, could we?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ I agreed, my hopes diminishing as the noise of reorganization amidst the excited and delighted chatter of Nelson and the children told me that all was lost.
Paula, returning from a day spent like an alabaster castaway behind a softly lit shop-counter, coaxing customers to spend money, advising her own sex on beauty and helping rich passé women to camouflage their drooping eyelids, stopped as she saw the general confusion in the drive. She noted the female interest glued to the window and turned her attention back to the centre of attraction. He looked like a happier proposition than the one that awaited her, coming home tired from work to cope with her precarious married life. If she had to do the breadwinner’s job, surely Barry could cultivate a few feminine virtues as Edward did?
Olwen, also having made tracks for home after a tiring day of hectic persuasion in the footwear department and hungry for the comforting aromas manufactured by Edward, joined Paula in the garden.
Gerald, though he appeared absorbed in the safe housing of his animals, had in no way missed either the faces at the window or the entrance through the gate of the two most attractive women. Through a blaze of clamour he noted with an appreciative eye, strangely akin to Mr Beetle, the Rubens proportions of Olwen, which even the business-like black and grey outfit failed to disguise, and the slim girl with legs from the first row of the chorus, hair like the brush of a fox and strange eyes crinkling up at the corners in a welcome smile.
‘It’s some of the women, the ones that go out to work,’ Nelson informed him. ‘The place is full of women.’
Gerald beamed. ‘Any good?’ he asked, treating Nelson as an equal. It was a strange thing, we often did with Nelson.
‘Some,’ was the reply, and he shrugged composedly as though unwilling to give away any secrets. In fact, though enthralled by the nurses’ glamour, he treated the rest of us women, with the exception of my mother, with a healthy boyish scorn. We were an army of hags in our twenties and he preferred to save his ditties for the ranks of the lime-green crocodiles that passed, feeling no doubt that his humour was better appreciated in that quarter.
Then Barry returned from his fifth day of job-hunting, and Paula had to postpone the interest that Gerald had aroused in her.
Mr Budden’s entrance, cocky (for he behaved as if he had been responsible for the birth of a Messiah) in a pair of grimy overalls, carrying a dejected paper carrier bag which had housed his lunch, made a down-to-earth picture and sent the watching Jane to her room for safety; if anyone struck terror to her heart it was the coarse, gangling bricklayer, who cursed his wife when displeased and dabbled at unconventional hours with groaning copulation, appearing blatantly with bloodshot eyes and swollen face and the satisfied look of a mated bull, which left us all with the limp feeling that we had been witness to a crime and that he should be given notice.
I greeted each of my lodgers in a different way, camouflaging the rough sack, my hand uncomfortable against what felt like a thick coil of rope, conscious that it was actually a python.
Barry turned to tell me, without great joy, that he had taken a temporary job down on the beach, starting immediately. He followed Paula indoors with the usual look of disdain at the working man entering the gate, not stopping to indulge in their usual squalls on political policy.
Edward’s sarcastic enquiry if his wife intended to linger in the garden all evening, made from the vantage point of the nurses’ window, where they were sustaining their curiosity with cups of hastily brewed tea, sent an alarmed Olwen scurrying indoors to protect her mate.
The way now clear, I pulled the sack out from beneath its protective covering, laying it to rest behind the garage door, and there, I thought, it was going to stay if I had anything to do with it. Mother had disappeared. I heard her on the telephone, spreading the good news of Gerald’s arrival to Doris and Leslie, delighted at the prospect of another family gathering; she had a short memory.
Darkness found Leslie speeding up to join us, laden with drink and good humour and by his side, the big-hearted, big-voiced, laughing Doris. The drawing room, fully alive for the first time, vibrated with laughter, discussion and reminiscences. Soft lights cast grotesque shadows across the high walls; outside the moon hung in the sky like a white lantern; in the distance of Miss Brady’s garden the stray cat moaned softly, for he was in love again … And because no family reunion, however small, was complete without argument, eventually there was a heated discussion, as I urged Mother in a determined whisper to speak to Gerald about causing trouble. Mother, taking Dutch courage from a double gin, spoke.
‘Now Gerald,’ Mother’s voice rose firmly above the general noise: we all turned to look at her. ‘I do hope you are not going to cause Margo a lot of trouble with your animals. We’ve had one or two nasty little experiences you know, and we don’t really feel up to coping with any more.’
I urged Mother on silently, glad that she had at last broached the subject.
‘Was that the time the dangerous rattlesnake escaped, or the baboon?’ Doris asked tactlessly, having heard the story from Leslie.
‘And neighbourly goodwill was severed for life,’ Leslie added with pleasure. Doris, framed in empty bottles, gave her good-natured bubbling laugh. I laughed too, in spite of my hidden fears of losing all of my tenants with one of Gerry’s visits.
‘I don’t know anything about a baboon, but the snake was as harmless as a newborn babe – a gorgeous specimen.’ Gerald’s blue eyes gleamed fondly, in the way Mother’s did when she looked at her grandchildren.
I enlarged on our displeasure at having once been saddled with a baboon, while Mother looked grieved at her own memories: she had been in the midst of an over-forty ladies’ tea party with a few remnants of her past, when Gerald, with the deftness of a conjurer, had produced from out of a small bag a three-foot snake – no one knew the snake was harmless. Screams had brought the tea party to a close and the snake, taking fright, had slithered in a fluid movement to the floor and made a cunning escape to the next door shrubbery, Miss Brady’s, while a party of well-bred Bournemouth ladies, gathering up their belongings, had swept down the drive.
‘Shows you don’t know anything about newborn babies,’ Leslie joined the debate heatedly, after a moment’s thought on babies and snakes. ‘The bloody thing was definitely poisonous. I saw a fang about six foot long hanging out of his mouth – if I could have reached for my gun I’d have put a bullet between his eyes.’
‘Leslie, you really must be more tolerant; the fangs couldn’t have been six feet long,’ Doris complained, in a tone of voice that suggested she knew Leslie very well indeed.
‘Yes, let’s stick to facts,’ Gerald said icily. ‘No snake has fangs of six foot, however extraordinary.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Leslie dear. It’s not fair to your brother to make it sound worse than it really w
as.’ Mother usually ended by turning to defend the one who was attacked, even if they were in the wrong.
‘Gerald is either saying “gorgeous” to some animal or to some female: I’m sick of him. Leslie’s quite right, a bullet would take care of either,’ I said wickedly, feeling daringly voluble, now sustained by liquor.
Mother interrupted me nervously. ‘Don’t encourage Leslie to murder please: shooting someone between the eyes is not a matter for joking. You’d better pour me another gin: how I’ve managed to live so long with you children is a miracle. Your dear father would turn in his grave if he could see you arguing and fighting without an atom of sense.’
‘Well, Gerald shouldn’t say gorgeous to everything. Last time he called something tangible gorgeous, it was that droopy blonde who sat about with her hair flowing in a silvery cascade of abandon down her neck, while we were left to do the housework. Do you remember, Mother?’
But Mother refused to take sides.
‘She was a natural blonde, however dumb – that was one thing in her favour,’ Leslie said reflectively.
Ignoring Mother’s pleas and encouraged by Leslie’s ribald remarks, I resumed the topic cheerfully: ‘Mother and I had endless councils of war behind closed kitchen doors as to the best method of saving you from a fate worse than death.’ I chuckled heartily. ‘Didn’t we, Mother?’ Mother didn’t answer.
‘Yes a lucky escape, my dear boy,’ Leslie agreed, with a broad smile and a wink at me.
Gerald, a small smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, remained thoughtful, twirling the glass gently in his hand, his eyes watching the brown liquid intently. It was inevitable that we should attack one another with sarcastic verbal comment; not physically as we had done as children belabouring the enemy with the nearest object able to cause harm.
‘Then there was that policeman’s daughter from Whipsnade …’
‘A dozy wench, I remember her. A female Friar Tuck with bosoms like a battleship,’ Leslie ended the description that I was about to start. ‘I well remember her!’
Gerald, his smile turning to a grin which lit up his eyes, gave a slow, teasing look. ‘Ah, but what about your boyfriends,’ he interrupted. ‘In your time you’ve had some swooning around you, God knows why. You’ve practically killed off one husband, who is recuperating in a monastery, Larry wrote to say.’
‘Well, Larry’s a liar,’ I retorted quickly.
‘No, no, Gerald, that’s not true,’ Mother insisted hastily, hovering to see fair play.
‘Not to mention,’ Gerald went on, determined to finish, ‘that bull-necked English Lord Something-or-other with a permanently constipated look, a detestable bore; a rag and bone merchant. And Leslie says she’s had a blond beast in tow whose face resembles a street accident.’ He turned to Mother. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t put your foot down.’
‘Gerald, dear, you are going too far. Margo’s friends are really very nice.’
‘That’s not what you said before, Mother. You were moaning on about how foul they were.’
‘Mother!’ I said accusingly. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘And now,’ Gerald went on mercilessly, ‘I hear from the delectable Nelson that there seems to be jostling for first place in your affections, some fool with a trombone, who is either dashing in or out, or lurking in the shadows, constantly blowing flat notes from a fungus-infected instrument – a sort of street musician as far as I can gather.’
I looked around indignantly. How dare the family discuss my private life? How dare my lodgers gossip? I thought furiously. I would strangle Nelson in the morning.
And we drifted into another argument.
The moon, streaking down in a narrow glimmer, brought an exclamation of the late hour to Mother’s lips, and the family prepared to go. Gerald, of course, stayed. The hall, wrapped in the atmosphere of night, like a jungle was full of light noises: the creaking agony of an unoiled spring; heavy nasal snoring, followed by a groan; the wafting scent of bath salts, mixed with Nelson’s fish and chips. I urged the family to tiptoe as we crept to the outside door.
‘It strikes me,’ Gerald remarked, whispering loudly and looking around the shadowy hall with interest, ‘that there might be a spook or two in this place.’
‘Now that’s very interesting.’ Mother was immediately on the alert before I could add a bitter comment. ‘And the same thought has passed through my mind more than once, especially out here in the dark. Edward and I have already tried to communicate with them with the glass method – you know, dear – with no result yet, unfortunately. I must say it’s heartening to have a second opinion.’
Leslie’s voice rose up behind us: ‘The only spooks you’ll get around here are wolves disguised in sheep’s clothing, intent on rape – I should think.’
I pulled the door open to bundle the grinning face out and bumped into Roger, a thoughtful tired-eyed figure, blundering in; remarkably quiet in spite of his heavy boots, cradling his precious instrument beneath his arm. He was followed by a tall figure muffled to the eyes, a trombone swinging lightly. My heart stirred oddly as we exchanged silent greetings.
‘Really, dear, I don’t think you should have men creeping in like this, it might give the house a bad name,’ Mother remarked almost silently, alarmed at the passage of dim male figures.
‘It’s too late,’ I murmured instantly, thinking of the rumour and smiling to myself in the dark.
The rumour of men creeping in to despoil our wares was nothing to the worry of Gerald’s presence: crates of monkeys, possibly dehydrated specimens; white mice breeding in the back lavatory, like Communist China, creating a stench that would grow steadily worse no doubt, widening a rift between Mrs Briggs and myself to insurmountable proportions. Unconcerned by suburbia, Gerald would most probably sink into a peaceful slumber while I spent a night of restless thought. In the kitchen, and against my moaning complaints, a six-foot python, having gorged on white mice, browsed contented and tested his sack for escape: Nelson’s pockets already jangled at his first sale to Gerald, however gruesome, for he said ‘nature fed on nature’, so his Pa had told him. He had fought for the honour of a night with the python, but the collapse of his mother at the thought decided the question. Which was the far greater menace? Nelson or Gerald? It was a debatable point indeed!
Gerald’s arrival went down better than I had expected. He stayed a few days, charming the household into submission and acceptance of his eccentricities; attended his dentist; organized the children on zoological expeditions. Alarmed at the possible mutilation of that evil-smelling amphibian on the bathroom cupboard across the road, he retrieved it and presented it to Nelson as a memento. Hearing the tappings that Mother had referred to, he diagnosed them as the death-watch beetle attacking the foundations, panicking the household into journeys of inspection with Rentokil.
Succumbing in typical male fashion to the charm of the local ‘glamour’, he tried a little light seduction on Blanche during Gordon’s absence, competing with bald heads and money and winning easily. He teased Jane mildly with the ancient Chinese proverb, ‘if rape is inevitable, lie down and enjoy it’, leaving her a figure of anticipating emotion, her love for Edward on the turn, convinced that she had now reached the peak of true womanhood by her brief encounter with one of even greater experience than Edward.
He exchanged recipes with Edward, dabbled a brush with Roger, drank with Andy, flirted outrageously with all the married matrons, festering the germs of discontent, listened to Barry’s symptoms, quarrelled with Mr Budden who stubbornly refused to yield to his charm and admit his superior intellect, and who objected strongly to the python, which he referred to as ‘venomous’ and whose exercising period coincided with his trips to the dustbin – a job normally performed by his patient wife.
Disorganizing the entire household, Gerald collected up his python with a showy tenderness and, putting me in unwilling protesting charge of the monkeys in the garage, he left me with the unhappy thought that he would be
back soon, the only consolation being that so far none of my lodgers had given notice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The weekends so far had brought their own atmosphere to the house; a complete unit of its mixed population as the throng of regular workers who, in the week, disappeared so smartly, stayed at home to enjoy the leisure of time to spare. A feeling of luxury prevailed as bodies lingered late into the morning reluctant to leave the cosy warmth of a slept-in bed, or rising to potter with deliberate aimlessness, flaunting time with careless intent.
Suddenly circumstances spoilt the pattern with Gordon off to attend his funeral and Mrs Budden departing for medical aid and returning home, missing my brother Gerald by minutes, still large but carrying a brawling bundle of child, and a new pram – a chariot – filled the hall. The master bricklayer, rejoicing in his offspring’s homecoming, was determined to enjoy every waking moment on show with his son and heir. He stalked the house triumphant, awaiting applause, a superior gleam in his eye which made us all tremble afresh for his martyred wife.
Barry, too, was to forfeit his lazy weekends: in his new job with the local council he now found himself in hectic seven-day employment, organizing the hiring of floats to the milling motley holiday-makers. Hectic because the work, which in theory represented an easy beachcomber’s life, idling away the summer hours as bathing belles frolicked tantalizingly in the surf, was, in reality, a monstrous regularity of tickets and the pushing and pulling of wooden floats, heavy with sea water, while snotty-nosed boys gazed in envy, pleading their inevitable question: ‘Mister, can I help?’ The first daydreams of seducing luscious brown maidens evaporated and became a myth – there was simply no time – and Barry, unaccustomed to long hours and facing the elements clad only in bathing trunks, withered before the unusually hot sun. The first few days were spent in the tortured tensions of sunburn, forcing him to work in Wellington boots and covered like a veiled woman. He would return eagerly to the shady house at nightfall, as if it was a balm. We sympathized with consolatory hints, Jane especially, delighted with a case of what she kept referring to officiously as ‘first degree burns’ as she readied herself for action, while Paula, with her professional knowledge of skincare, thought he must have been a fool to get sunburnt. But after the first harrowing days, with the agony of sunburn over, Barry emerged from his cocoon. The salmon-pink skin turned to a mellow earthy colour, his sex appeal increased and, with a hopeful Neapolitan song escaping from between his pure white teeth, he threw himself back into his job with gusto and enjoyed it.
Whatever Happened to Margo? Page 10