Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘I tell you what,’ I said, ‘have you ever tried smoked porcupine?’

  ‘No,’ they all said in unison.

  ‘Well, it’s delicious if it’s done properly. And I have a hunter who’s constantly bringing me porcupines which he hopes that I will buy from him. As they have been caught in those awful steel snares that they use, the porcupines are always too badly damaged. I buy them and put them out of their misery and feed the meat to my animals. However, occasionally I send a bunch of them down to an old boy I know called Joseph – this is beginning to resemble an ecclesiastical conference – and he smokes the porcupine over special wood and herbs which he refuses to reveal to me. The result is quite delicious.’

  ‘You Protestant swine,’ I said McGrade, ‘you’ve been concealing this from us.’

  ‘Only because there’s not enough porcupine to go around,’ I said. ‘However, I had two brought in today that had been so badly savaged by the trap that I had to kill them. I was going to feed them to my animals but in view of this dire emergency I could send them down to Joseph and have them smoked and we could then have them on toast for what Mary so prettily calls the entry.’

  ‘I’m becoming more and more convinced,’ said McGrade, ‘that you’ve got real Irish blood in you. I think it’s a masterly idea.’

  ‘But you can’t give the D.C. porcupine,’ said Mary in horror.

  ‘Mary dear,’ I said, ‘you don’t tell him it’s porcupine. You tell him it’s venison. It’s so subtly smoked that anybody who’s got a palate like a D.C. could not possibly tell the difference.’

  Martin now checked his notebook.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what are we going to have for afters?’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t keep using that vulgar phrase,’ said Robin, ‘it takes me straight back to Worthing, where I had the misfortune of being brought up. What you mean is “what are we going to have for the next two courses?” ’

  ‘Well, that’s what he said,’ said Mary. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t keep picking on him. We’re here to help him.’

  Robin raised his glass in solemn salute to Mary.

  ‘Saint Mary, I am devoted to you for many reasons, the principal one being that I want to plumb, before we part company, the depths of your ignorance.’

  ‘Really, you men are so stupid,’ said Mary crossly. ‘I thought we were supposed to be discussing what else we were going to eat.’

  ‘Can we work on the assumption,’ said McGrade, ‘that he will probably die after the smoked porcupine and so it’s not worth considering the other two courses?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Martin, taking him literally, ‘we must have something else to follow.’

  ‘A wake,’ said McGrade, ‘there’s nothing like a good Irish wake for getting everybody in a mood of frivolity.’

  ‘Now, look. Shut up and listen to me,’ I said. ‘We start with some smoked porcupine. I then suggest groundnut chop.’

  Everybody groaned.

  ‘But we always have groundnut chop,’ said Robin, ‘it’s the one thing we all live on. It’s our staple diet.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Martin excitedly, ‘that’s the reason I bought Jesus’s hat.’

  The others, this not having been explained to them, looked slightly puzzled.

  ‘You mean he makes a really good groundnut chop?’ I inquired.

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin, ‘best I’ve ever tasted anywhere.’

  Groundnut chop could only be described as a sort of Irish stew made with whatever meat was available and covered in a heavy sauce of crushed peanuts, served with a whole mass of tiny side dishes which the Africans called ‘small, small tings’. It could be delicious or it could be a disaster.

  ‘Well, if Jesus can do the groundnut chop,’ I said, ‘Pious is awfully good at doing the small, small tings. So that settles that as the main course.’

  ‘What confection can we have as a sweet?’ inquired Robin. We thought for a moment and then looked at each other.

  ‘Well, really,’ said Mary despairingly, ‘I think we’ll have to fall back on the old stand-by.’

  ‘I know,’ said McGrade, ‘flute salad.’

  Flute salad was an inevitable part of our diet – so called because of the African’s inability to pronounce ‘f’ and ‘r’ together without lisping.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it will have to be,’ said Robin dismally.

  ‘There are several quite nice fruits at the moment,’ said Mary, ‘I think we could make something rather special.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said, ‘now the whole thing is settled.’

  ‘Then drinks and coffee on the veranda and we’ll get the old bastard into bed as quickly as possible,’ said McGrade.

  ‘You’ll be able to see my halo very clearly shining over my head as I tell him about all the bridges that have fallen down and all the roads that need to be repaired.’

  ‘Don’t say anything like that,’ said Martin, ‘after all, I will have just been showing him how beautifully the place is run.’

  ‘One often wonders,’ said Robin pensively, ‘how England ever kept her Empire going if the English carried on in the imbecile way that we have been carrying on tonight. Anyway, I’m going back to chop and to attend to my candelabras.’

  He got to his feet and wandered off, then suddenly rematerialised.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I haven’t got a white tie and tails. Does it really matter?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Martin, ‘no, no, but if you come in a jacket and tie, after the first five minutes we all get so hot that we have to take them off. Just as long as you come in them, that’s the important thing.’

  Oh, God, I thought. The only tie I possessed at that time was sitting in a suitcase some three hundred miles away. Still, that was a minor problem, which I dealt with the following morning.

  When Pious brought me my sustaining early morning cup of tea and I had removed one squirrel, four mongooses and a baby chimpanzee from my bed – which they shared with me, from their point of view, out of love and affection but from my point of view simply because I didn’t want them to catch chills – I told Pious to go down to the market and buy me a tie.

  ‘Yes, sah,’ he said, and, having organised the rest of the staff about their duties, he strutted off into town to return some time later with a tie that was so psychedelic that I felt it would have a detrimental effect on the D.C.’s eyesight. However, Pious assured me that it was the quietest tie in the market and I tried to take his word for it.

  Needless to say, the next couple of days were very trying on everybody’s nerves. McGrade, being very proud of his roads and bridges, had noticed to his horror that the drive up to Martin’s house had several large potholes in it and so he had borrowed all the convicts from the local jail to fill these in and re-gravel the whole drive so that the entrance began to look like a medium-sized but extremely elegant country house. I had gone down to see my old man, Joseph, and persuaded him to smoke the two porcupines for me, and I also contacted my hunter who promised that the day before the D.C.’s arrival he would go into the forest and get what flowers he could. Robin had ransacked the United Africa Company’s stores but was in despair at not being able to produceanythingof real merit, for as the boat had been unable to go upriver he was running low on the sort of esoteric delicacies that we thought worthy of a D.C. However, his pride was immense when he announced to us that he had discovered – and God knows why they were there in the first place – three small tins of caviar which were left over from his predecessor.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ll be like,’ he said, looking at them glumly. ‘They must have been here at least three years. We’ll probably all die of ptomaine poisoning, but anyway it’s caviar.’

  Mary, very cleverly, having discovered that Martin’s house did not contain a single vase for flower arrangements, had gone down to the market and bought five rather elegant calabashes. She had also worked out fifteen ways of trying to make soufflés with the aid of Jesus, all of which wer
e totally impracticable and which we had to crush unmercifully underfoot.

  As Pious was spending most of his time up at Martin’s house, I felt secure since I knew that he would do the job perfectly, even if it meant assaulting Jesus.

  The evening before the D.C.’s arrival we had another council of war to check on all our various activities, and everything appeared to be running like clockwork. The porcupines had been smoked and smelt delicious even though they were uncooked. My hunter friend had come back with an enormous array of forest orchids and plants which Mary was keeping in her lavatory as it was the coolest part of her house. As an experiment, we opened one of the tins of caviar and it proved to our surprise to be edible, and Robin had also unearthed a packet of small biscuits. This, together with peanuts, we felt, would be suitable for the drinks before dinner. Robin’s candelabras turned out to be extremely elegant pieces of brasswork, polished and gleaming, that would grace any dining-room. I coveted them myself. He also had sufficient candles, as McGrade sagely observed, to light up the whole of Vatican City.

  We had all thrown ourselves into these tasks, partly because of our affection for Martin but also rather like children at Christmas time. I was probably the only one who had any excitement each day because I never knew what strange habit I might observe among my animals but, by and large, the others led dull, routine lives in a most unpleasant climate. So, although we all pretended that the arrival of the D.C. was a terrible bore and kept piling curses on his head, we all really rather enjoyed ourselves. That is, with the exception of Martin, who looked more and more shaky as the day approached.

  When the fatal day actually arrived we were all quite casually standing under a sour-sour tree which commanded a convenient view of the entrance to Martin’s residence. We all talked nervously about animal behaviour, the rising cost of manufactured cloth, the difficulty of building a bridge, and Mary gave us a long lecture on the art of cookery. Nobody listened to anybody else for we were waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the D.C.

  At last, to our immense relief, his large and elegant car arrived, swept up the drive and came to a halt in front of the house.

  ‘By God, those potholes held,’ said McGrade. ‘I was worried about them.’

  We saw Martin come out and the D.C. emerged from his car. From a distance he looked like a small caterpillar emerging from a large black cocoon. Martin looked immaculate. Then he ushered the D.C. into the house and we all heaved sighs of relief.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll like the avocados,’ said Mary. ‘Do you know I went through forty-three of them to pick out the best.’

  ‘And my potholes held,’ said McGrade proudly. ‘Takes an Irishman to do a job like that.’

  ‘You wait till he gets to the caviar,’ said Robin, ‘that, as far as I’m concerned, will be the highpoint of the evening.’

  ‘What about my smoked porcupine?’ I said indignantly.

  ‘And what about my flower arrangements?’ said Mary. ‘One would think that you’d done everything, Robin.’

  ‘Well, I have, virtually,’ said Robin. ‘I have contributed my brain.’

  Then we all went our separate ways to our late breakfasts. We could do nothing further until the evening. The rest was in Martin’s hands and we knew that, being the person that he was, the D.C. would find very little wrong in the way Martin was handling the district.

  At five o’clock Pious materialised at my elbow just as I had been bitten in the thumb by an indignant pouched rat whom I had been inspecting to see whether she was pregnant.

  ‘Sah,’ said Pious.

  ‘Na what’ee?’ I said, sucking the blood off my thumb.

  ‘Barf ready, sah.’

  ‘Why the hell are you passing me a bath at this time of the day?’ I asked, having completely forgotten what an auspicious occasion it was.

  Pious looked at me with surprise. ‘You got to be at D.O.’s for six o’clock, sah,’ he said.

  ‘Damn,’ I said, ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Have you organised my clothes?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ said Pious. ‘Small boy has ironed your trousers. Clean shirt, sah. Your jacket is ready and your tie.’

  ‘God in Heaven,’ I said, suddenly struck by a thought. ‘I don’t think I’ve brought any socks with me.’

  ‘I buy you socks, sah, for market, sah,’ said Pious. ‘I done clean your shoes.’

  Reluctantly leaving investigations into the possible pregnancy of my pouched rat, I went and had my bath, which was rather like a canvas coffin into which they had poured lukewarm water. In spite of this and the hour of the day, I was dripping with sweat and bath water in equal quantities. I flopped into a chair in a vague endeavour to cool off and thought about the evening that stretched before me. The thought was so appalling that it made me shudder.

  ‘Pious,’ I shouted.

  ‘Sah,’ he said.

  ‘Pass me a drink,’ I said.

  ‘Beer, Sah?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘a very big whisky with water.’

  I drank this sustaining liquid and began to feel in a merrier mood. I dressed with care, though because of the heat and the sweat the beautifully laundered pearl-white shirt that I put on became grey and damp almost immediately. The socks that Pious had purchased for me were apparently the hunting colours of one of the remoter Scottish clans and clashed abominably with my tie. I did not put on my jacket but slung it over my shoulder for I knew that in my short climb up to Martin’s house, if I wore the jacket, I would end up meeting the D.C. looking like a seal newly emerged from the ocean. Pious walked up with me.

  ‘Are you sure everything’s all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sah,’ he said. ‘But the D.O.’s boys, sah, they not really good boys.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘That’s why I put you in charge.’

  ‘Yes, sah. Please, sah, Jesus goes funny.’

  Dear God, I thought, what can happen now? ‘What do you mean, he goes funny?’

  ‘He’s a good man,’ said Pious earnestly, ‘but he’s an old man and so when he go make dis sort of ting he go funny.’

  ‘You mean he gets frightened?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, sah,’ said Pious.

  ‘So you think he might make a bad chop?’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ said Pious.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do about that?’ I asked.

  ‘I done send our cook up, sah,’ said Pious. ‘E go help Jesus and then Jesus go be all right.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘a very good idea.’

  Pious beamed with pride. We walked on for a bit in silence. ‘Please, sah.’

  ‘What’ee?’ I asked irritably.

  ‘I send our small boy too, sah,’ said Pious. ‘Dar small boy is good boy but Amos never teach urn.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said, ‘I’ll have you recommended for the New Year’s Honours List.’

  ‘Tank you, sah,’ said Pious, not understanding but judging from the way I spoke that these decisions which he had made and carried out on his own met with my full support.

  When we got to Martin’s place Pious, who had done himself up in his best uniform – for which I had paid an exorbitant amount of money and added brass buttons too – and which he so seldom had an opportunity to display, dematerialised from my elbow and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  The front door was open and on one side of it stood my own small boy. His shorts and tunic had been laundered and ironed with such care that they looked like a Swiss ski slope before the beginning of a season.

  ‘Iseeya, sah,’ he said, beaming at me.

  ‘Iseeya, Ben,’ I said, ‘and make sure that you work hard tonight or I go kill you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sah,’ he said smiling.

  I found that, owing to my dilatoriness in taking a slow bath, a slow whisky and a slow and reluctant entry into clothes that were totally unsuitable for the climate, the others had arrived before me and were all sitting on the veranda.

  ‘Ahhh,’ said
Martin, leaping to his feet and coming to greet me, ‘I thought perhaps you weren’t coming.’

  ‘Dear boy,’ I whispered, ‘I would not let you down in your hour of need.’

  ‘Let me introduce you,’ he said, pushing me into the crowd on the veranda. ‘Mr Featherstonehaugh, the District Commissioner.’

  He was a smallish man whose face closely resembled a badly made pork pie. He had thinning grey hair and pale blue but penetrating eyes. He rose from his chair and shook hands with me, and his handshake was surprisingly strong because he looked at first glance to be rather vapid.

  Ah, Durrell,’ he said, ‘delighted to meet ye.’

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ he said, ‘sit ye down. I’m sure Bugler here has the odd drink hidden away which he can give you, eh, Bugler?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes, sir,’ said Martin. He clapped his hands and chorus of ‘Yes, sah’s came from the kitchen.

  To my relief Pious appeared, with his gilt buttons glittering in the lamplight.

  ‘Sah?’ he said to me as though he had never met me before.

  ‘Whisky and water,’ I said, adopting the cold attitude that so many people used towards their servants. I felt that coming from Nigeria the D.C. would appreciate my falling into the right sort of British habits. I took a swift glance round at the circle of faces. Mary, round-eyed, was hanging on the D.C.’s every word. If she had had a neon sign above her head saying ‘I hope for a promotion for my husband’ it couldn’t have been more obvious. Robin gave me a swift glance, raised his eyebrows and then went into one of his dream-like trances. McGrade had a rather smug look on his face and beamed at me benevolently.

  The long couch on the veranda was littered with coats and ties and there was a semi-cool breeze blowing up from the river.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, to the D.C., ‘do you mind if I adopt the local custom and take off my tie and jacket?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the D.C., ‘all informal here. I was just explaining to Bugler here. Really a matter of routine. Just come through once or twice a year to keep an eye on you chaps. Make sure you’re not getting up to any mischief.’