Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  She paused for a moment and blew her nose vigorously.

  ‘It must have been a great shock to you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, it was. It was a tremendous shock. It was like taking away part of my life, because, as I said to you, ever since my husband died he’d really been my only companion.’

  I wasn’t quite sure how to continue this conversation because it was obvious that if Emma went on talking about Bow-wow she would break down and I didn’t know how we could cope with that situation. But at that moment Ursula, as it were, unveiled her guns.

  ‘Darling Emma,’ she said. ‘It’s because of the way you treated Bow-wow . . . the way that you looked after him and gave him such a happy life . . . it’s for that reason that I want to . . . I want to ask you a very great favour. Now please say no, but I do wish that you’d consider it.’

  ‘A favour, Miss Ursula?’ said Emma. ‘Of course I’ll do you a favour. What do you want?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ursula, prevaricating like mad, ‘this friend of mine has got this puppy. Unfortunately, owing to illness in the family – his wife is desperately, desperately ill – he can’t give it the attention that it really deserves, and so – just for a week or so – he wants somebody to look after it. Somebody who’ll love it and give it the affection it needs. And immediately I thought of you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Emma, ‘a puppy? Well, I . . . I don’t know. I mean, after Bow-wow . . . you know, you don’t seem to want another dog, somehow.’

  ‘But this is only a puppy,’ said Ursula, her eyes brimming. ‘Only a tiny, tiny little puppy. And it’s only for a week or so. And I’m sure that you could look after it so marvellously.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Miss Ursula,’ said Emma. ‘I . . . I wouldn’t like to have another dog.’

  ‘But I’m not asking you to have it,’ said Ursula. ‘I’m just asking you to look after it for this poor man whose wife is terribly, terribly ill. He’s torn between his wife and his dog.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Emma. ‘Just as I was when Bill was ill. I remember it now. I sometimes didn’t know whether to take Bow-wow out for a walk or stay with Bill, he was that sick. Well, what sort of a dog is it, Miss Ursula?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Ursula. She bent down and opened the basket. The pekinese was lying curled up, exhausted by his cultural afternoon at the Pavilion, sound asleep. She picked him up unceremoniously by the scruff of his neck and held him before Emma’s startled eyes.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Ursula. ‘Poor little thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Emma. ‘Oh, poor little thing.’ She echoed Ursula unconsciously.

  Ursula attempted to cradle the puppy in her arms and he gave her, to my satisfaction, a very sharp bite on the forefinger.

  ‘Look at him,’ she said, her voice quivering, as he struggled in her arms. ‘A poor little dumb animal that doesn’t really know whether he’s coming or going. He’s been wrenched away from the family life that he is used to. Surely you will take pity on him, Emma?’

  I began to feel that the whole scene was taking on the aspect of something out of Jane Eyre, but nevertheless I was so fascinated by Ursula’s technique that I let her go on.

  ‘This tiny waif,’ she said, extricating her finger with difficulty from his champing jaws, ‘this tiny waif wants only a little bit of companionship, a little bit of help in his moments of strife . . . As, indeed, does my friend.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you that he’s very, very nice,’ said Emma, obviously moved.

  ‘Oh, he is,’ said Ursula, clamping her hand firmly over his mouth so that he couldn’t bite her again. ‘He’s absolutely charming, and I believe – I’m not sure, but I believe – he’s house trained . . . Just for a week, dear Emma. Can’t you possibly see your way to . . . to . . . to putting him up, as it were, as though he was a paying guest or something like that?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do it for everybody,’ said Emma, her eyes fastened, mesmerised, on the wriggling fat-tummied, pink-tummied puppy with his great load of white fur and his bulbous black eyes. ‘But seeing as he seems a nice little dog, and as it’s you that’s asking . . . I’m . . . I’m . . . willing to have him for a week.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Ursula. ‘Bless you.’

  She whipped the puppy hastily back into his hamper because he was getting out of control. Then she rushed across and threw her arms round Emma and kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘I always knew,’ she said, peering into Emma’s face with her brilliant blue searchlight gaze that I knew could have such devastating effect. ‘I knew that you, of all people would not turn away a tiny little puppy like this in his hour of need.’

  The curious thing was that she said it with such conviction that I almost got out my handkerchief and sobbed into it.

  So eventually, refusing the offer of another cup of tea and another slice of indigestible cake, we left. As we walked down the road towards the station Ursula wrapped her arm round me and clutched me tight.

  ‘Thank you so much, darling,’ she said. ‘You were a great help.’

  ‘What do you mean, a great help?’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘No, but you were there. Sort of . . . a sort of a force, a presence, you know?’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, interested, ‘why you want to inflict this poor woman with that vindictive little puppy when she obviously doesn’t require one?’

  ‘Oh, but you don’t know about Emma,’ said Ursula. Which was quite true because I didn’t.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ she began. ‘First of all her husband got ill and then they got Bow-wow and then her attention was divided between the husband and Bow-wow, and then the husband died and she channelled all her recuperance, or whatever you call it, into Bow-wow. And then Bow-wow got knocked down and since then she’s been going steadily downhill. My dear, you could see it. Every time I came to visit her I could see that she was getting more and more sort of, well – you know, old and haggish.’

  ‘And how do you think the puppy is going to help her?’ I inquired.

  ‘Of course it’s going to help her. It’s the most savage puppy of the litter. It’s bound to bite the postman or the greengrocer or somebody who delivers something, and it’s got very long hair for a peke and it’s going to shed that all over the place, and it’s not house trained so it’s going to pee and poo all over the place, dear.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said, interrupting. ‘Do you think this is a very wise gift to give a fragile old lady who’s just lost her favourite Bow-wow?’

  ‘But my dear, it’s the only gift,’ said Ursula. She stopped, conveniently under a street lamp, and her eyes gazed up at me.

  ‘Bow-wow used to be exactly the same. He left hair all over the place, and if she didn’t let him out he’d pee in the hall, and she’d complain for days . . . Gives her something to do. Well, since her husband died and Bow-wow died she’s got nothing to do at all and she was just going into a sort of . . . a sort of grey decline. Now, with this new puppy, he’ll bite her and he’ll bite everyone else. They’ll probably have court cases and he’ll put his hair all over the place and he’ll pee on the carpet and she’ll be as delighted as anything.’

  I gazed at Ursula and for the first time I saw her for what she was.

  ‘Do you know,’ I said, putting my arms round her and kissing her, ‘I think you’re rather nice.’

  ‘It’s not a question of niceness,’ said Ursula, disrobing herself of me, as it were. ‘It’s not a question of niceness. She’s just a pleasant old lady and I want her to have fun while she’s still alive. That puppy will give her tremendous fun.’

  ‘But you know, I would never have thought of that,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you would, darling,’ she said, giving me a brilliant smile. ‘You’re so clever.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said as I took her arm and walked her down the street. ‘Sometimes I begin to wonder whether I am.’

  The next few months had many hal
cyon days for me. Ursula possessed a sort of ignorant purity that commanded respect. I very soon found that in order to avoid embarrassment it was better to take her out into the countryside rather than confine her to a restaurant or somewhere similar. At least in the countryside the cuckoos and larks and hedgehogs accepted her for what she was, a very natural and nice person. Take her into the confines of Bournemouth society and she dropped bricks at the rate of an unskilled navvy helping on a working site.

  However, even introducing Ursula to the wilds was not without its hazards. I showed her a tiny strip of woodland that I’d discovered which had, at that time, more birds’ nests per square inch than any other place I knew. Ursula got wildly excited and peered into nests brim full of fat, open-mouthed baby birds or clutches of blue and brown eggs, and ooo’d over them delightedly. Nothing would content her but that I had to visit the place every day and phone her a long report on the progress of the various nests. A few weeks later I took her down to the place again and we discovered, to our horror, that it had been found, presumably by a group of schoolboys, and they had gone systematically through the whole of the woodland and destroyed every nest. The baby birds werelyingdead on the ground and the eggs had all been taken. Ursula’s anguish was intense. She sobbed uncontrollably with a mixture of rage and grief and it was a long time before I could comfort her.

  She was still racked with occasional shuddering sobs when I ushered her into the spit and sawdust bar of the Square and Compass, one of my favourite pubs in that region. Here, in this tiny bar, all the old men of the district would gather every evening, great brown lumbering shire horses of men, their faces as wrinkled as walnuts, their drooping moustaches as crisp and white as summer grass with frost on it. They were wonderful old men and I thought to meet them would take Ursula’s mind off the ravaged nests. I was also interested to see what sort of reaction her presence would create.

  To begin with, they sat stiff, silent and suspicious, their hands carefully guarding their tankards, staring at us without expression. They knew me but now I had introduced an alien body into their tiny, smoke-blurred bar and, moreover, a very attractive and feminine body. This was heresy. The unwritten law was that no woman entered that bar. But Ursula was completely unaware of this or, if not unaware, undaunted by it. She powdered her nose gulped down a very large gin in record time, and turned her brilliant melting blue eyes on the old men. Within a few minutes she had them relaxed and occasionally, half guiltily, chuckling with her. Then she spied the blackboard in the corner.

  ‘Ooooh!’ she squealed delightedly. ‘Tiddleywinks!’

  The old men exchanged looks of horror. Then they all looked at the oldest member of the group, an eighty-four-year-old patriarch who, was, I knew, the local champion of this much beloved game.

  ‘No, Miss,’ he said firmly, ‘that’s shove ha’penny.’

  ‘Do teach me to play it,’ said Ursula, gazing at him so adoringly that his brown face went the colour of an overripe tomato.

  ‘Yes, go on, George, teach the Miss,’ the other old men chorused, delighted that George was colouring and shuffling like a schoolboy.

  Reluctantly, he lumbered to his feet and he and Ursula moved over to the table where the shove ha’penny board lay in state.

  As I watched him teaching her I realised, not for the first time, the deviousness of women in general and of Ursula in particular. It was perfectly obvious that she not only knew how to play shove ha’penny but probably could have beaten George at it. But her fumbling attempts to learn from him and the sight of him patting her shoulder with his enormous carunculated hand as gently as though he were patting a puppy was a delight to watch. Ursula lost gracefully to him and then insisted on buying drinks all round – for which I had to pay since she had no money.

  By now, the old men, flushed and enthusiastic, were practically coming to blows over who should play her next. Ursula, armed with her indispensable evening newspaper, disappeared briefly into the Ladies before coming back to challenge all comers.

  George, wiping the froth off his magnificent moustache, lowered himself onto the oak trestle beside me and accepted a cigarette.

  ‘A fine young woman, sir,’ he said, ‘a very fine young woman, even though she’s a foreigner.’

  The curious thing is that he did not use the term foreigner in the way that most villagers in England would use it to describe somebody who had not actually been born in the village. He was firmly convinced by Ursula’s particular brand of English that she must indeed come from the Continent or some savage place like that. I did not disillusion him.

  I had known Ursula for about a year when one day she phoned me and dropped a bombshell.

  ‘Gerry!’ The voice was so penetrating that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. It could only be Ursula.

  ‘Yes,’ I said resignedly.

  ‘Darling, it’s me, Ursula.’

  ‘I never would have guessed it,’ I said. ‘You’re so much quieter, so much more dulcet. That soft voice, like the cooing of a sucking dove . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. I phoned you up because I’ve the most wonderful news and I wanted you to be the first to know,’ she said breathlessly.

  What now, I wondered? Which one of her numerous friends had achieved some awful success due to her Machiavellian plottings?

  ‘Tell me all,’ I said, resigning myself to at least half an hour of telephone conversation.

  ‘Darling, I’m engaged,’ said Ursula.

  I confess that my heart felt a sudden pang and a loneliness spread over me. It was not that I was in love with Ursula; it was not that I wanted to marry her – God forbid! – but suddenly I realised that I was being deprived of somebody who could always lighten my gloom, and who had given me so many hours of pleasure. And now she was engaged, doubtless to some hulking idiot, and all this, our lovely friendship, would change.

  ‘Darling?’ said Ursula. ‘Darling? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘But, darling, you sound so glum. Is anything the matter? I thought you’d be pleased.’ Her voice sounded plaintive, uncertain.

  ‘I am pleased,’ I said, trying to cast away selfishness, trying to cast away the remembrance of Ursula telling me of a friend who’d gone to Venice and who’d had a gondolier every night. ‘Really, my love, I’m as pleased as Punch. Who is the unlucky man?’

  ‘It’s Toby,’ she said. ‘You know Toby.’

  ‘But I thought he was an incoherent?’ I said.

  ‘No, no, Silly. Not that Toby, a completely different one.’

  ‘I’m glad of that. I thought that if he was an incoherent he would have had difficulty in proposing.’

  ‘Darling, you don’t sound a bit like you,’ she said, her voice worried and subdued. ‘Are you angry with me for getting engaged?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said acidly. ‘I’m delighted to know that you’ve found somebody who can stop you talking long enough to propose, I never could.’

  ‘Oooo!’ said Ursula. ‘You’re jealous! Darling, how wonderful! I never knew you wanted to propose to me. When was it?’

  ‘Frequently,’ I said, tersely, ‘but fortunately I managed to stamp the desire underfoot.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I am sorry. Are you going to go all silent and withdrawn and morass?’

  ‘I’ve not the slightest intention of turning myself into a bog for your benefit,’ I said with some asperity.

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t be so silly. I thought you’d be pleased. As a matter of fact I was hoping we could meet . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  What a cad I was being, I reflected. What a monstrous, inhuman cad. Here was the girl virtually asking me to set the seal on her nuptials and here was I behaving like a fifteen-year-old. I was contrite.

  ‘Of course we can meet, my sweet,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I was rude. Its just that I can’t get used to the idea of you being engaged. Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘Oh, darling
, that’s better. Why don’t we dance away the evening? Let’s go to the Tropicana . . . Do lets, darling!’

  Dance away the evening until ten o’clock, I thought to myself.

  The Tropicana was a particularly revolting nightclub of the sort that blossom suddenly like puffballs, have their brief moment of contributing to human misery and then mercifully disappear into obscurity. Of all the places she could have suggested Ursula could not have picked one that I disliked more.

  ‘Right,’ I said with enthusiasm, ‘but can we have dinner first?’

  ‘Oh darling, yes. Where?’

  ‘How about the Grill Room? I’ll book a table.’

  ‘Darling!’ breathed Ursula. ‘The first place we had lunch together. Darling, you are romantic.’

  ‘Not particularly. It’s just the only place that serves good food,’ I said austerely.

  ‘Darling, I love you . . . Even if you are oppressive. Lovely food, and then dancing. Oh, I’ll meet you at the Grill at eight, darling, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’re pleased. I love you and love you forever.’

  I put the phone back and realised what I’d lost. I realised what I’d lost even more when I met her, for she brought her fiancé with her. He was a handsome young man, quite obviously besotted by Ursula, with a very limited vocabulary.

  But he seemed nice enough. The Grill Room, as I rather suspected, was packed and so the three of us had to sit uncomfortably at a table designed for two. Toby didn’t have much to say for himself but that scarcely mattered as Ursula talked quite enough for two of them. When we’d finished dinner we went on to the Tropicana where the band was blaring. Here, Toby and I solemnly took it in turns to propel Ursula, chattering madly, round and round the floor. It was a thoroughly miserable evening from my point of view. After that, I didn’t see Ursula for a long time. I’d heard that she’d eventually got married and that she’d had a baby. I felt that now she was safely ensconced on her wedding bed that she would drift out of my life altogether. But again I was wrong. One day the phone rang, and it was Ursula.