The Hippopotamus

by Stephen Fry

  The pheasant continued its strut down the avenue, neck thrusting arrogantly backwards and forwards.

  Simon pushed the cartridges into the barrels and closed the gun.

  “Stops and beaters oft unseen, Lurk behind some leafy screen. Calm and steady always be, Never shoot where you can’t see.”

  The pheasant’s cheerful walk slowed. He peered doubtfully ahead and seemed slowly to become aware of a line of pink faces, of brown, green and russet tweed and of shining gunmetal ranged against him. He checked his swagger and set his neck forward in goggling disbe­lief, which reminded Simon of the cross-eyed barman in Laurel and Hardy films.

  Simon breathed hard through his nose and swallowed.

  “You may kill or you may miss,” he whispered to himself, “But at all times think of this, All the pheasants ever bred, Won’t repay for one man dead.”

  The pheasant threw a glance back into the spinney he had just left. Simon thought the bird had made some connection. With a rising note of outrage in his throat, as if trying to send some desperate warning signal to his family and friends back there in the wood, the pheasant rose.

  At the same time, Lord Logan brought to his lips a silver horn and blew. Deep within the woods a mighty roar went up and the beaters began to stamp and strike the ground.

  Simon licked his lips and banged his feet into a solid two o’clock position, weight forward on his left leg. His right thumb flicked the safety catch. The other guns rose from their shooting-sticks. Soda squared herself.

  All at once the air was filled with squadrons of rocketing pheas­ants. Gunshots sounded everywhere like harsh coughs, and little puffs of smoke blossomed in the air.

  Simon had practised this in his head so many times. The birds had to come high to clear the trees, which is why the guns were posi­tioned where they were. But they came so fast: three or four hundred flushed in one go. By the time Simon could sight they were already over his head. He followed one bird up from the cover and fired off the first barrel just before his gun reached the vertical. He brought the gun down fifty degrees, followed another bird and managed to loose off again, aiming for the beak.

  He had broken his gun and was scrambling to reload when a shout came from the woods.

  “Steady boys: whoa, whoa! Hold hard!”

  The last few pheasants fluttered past and Simon heard echoes of the closing volleys of gunshot rattle off the windows and brick-work of the house half a mile behind them. The first flush had taken per­haps forty seconds and he had only just managed to get off both bar­rels. Conrad had fired off fourteen rounds. There rose a barking and yelping through the trees.

  “Go on, Soda!” shouted Simon. “Go on, girl!”

  Soda sprang forward and dashed into the woods: Simon thought he might have downed a bird with his second barrel. Soda would have seen.

  A shout went up.

  “Look! Look!”

  Simon saw, now that the gun smoke had cleared, that the air ahead of them was full of what appeared to be falling petals. The pickers-up were standing in bewilderment, their dogs circling them and whim­pering as a coloured blizzard swirled about.

  Simon heard Aunt Rebecca’s voice behind him. “It’s . . . for God’s sake . . . it’s confetti!”

  “Bravo! Charming!” said Uncle Ted.

  “Bloody hell!” said Conrad.

  Soda trotted out of the spinney with a pheasant in her mouth which she dropped at her master’s feet.

  Simon looked down in disgust. “It’s a runner,” he said. The bird was still alive, its beak opening and closing, its crooked, wrinkled legs working frantically. Simon picked it up and twisted its neck until he heard a crack.

  The others gathered round.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “This is the only bloody kill!”

  Simon looked up in embarrassment as everyone crowded round him.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “We mean,” said Conrad, “that no one else has bagged a single sodding bird. That’s what we mean.”

  Simon didn’t understand. The first flush in a well-stocked cover like that should mean a kill of at least a hundred birds.

  Lord Logan took the pheasant out of Simon’s hands. Henry, the gamekeeper’s assistant, was hurrying forward towards them, an ex­pression both of wild fury and of complete puzzlement on his face.

  Lord Logan examined the pheasant. There were little silver balls caught up in its gorge.

  “Silver shot?” someone exclaimed. “That’s going it, even for you, Michael.”

  Simon saw his father’s eyes flash for a second under his heavy brows.

  “This is not shot,” he said, rolling a single ball between his thumb and forefinger. “Nor is it silver.”

  He put the ball in his mouth and crunched it between his teeth.

  “Sugar!” he said mournfully. “Just sugar.”

  Simon took a fresh cartridge out of his pocket and began to unpick the end. Into his father’s outstretched palm he poured out a heap of coloured hundreds and thousands, silvered sugar balls, rice and a wad of confetti.

  “Christ!” said Conrad. “Sabs. It’s the bloody sabs.”

  “Sabs?” said Simon. “They wouldn’t . . .”

  “Sabs! Sabs! We’ve been bloody sabbed!”

  The cry went up and gathered into a roar that mingled with the chuckling of the pheasants as they settled back in their roosts and mingled too with the weeping, squealing laughter of one of the beat­ers who had lagged behind the others and now lay on the ground, deep in the wood, wriggling with happiness and, true to his trade, beating and beating and beating the ground with small fists.

  CHAPTER 3

  I

  Dear Uncle Ted,

  This is just a note to thank you so much for your present. I’m very sorry you couldn’t make the service itself, but I do un­derstand that your life is immensely busy.

  Mr. Bridges, my English master, tells me that what you sent is a first edition, which is extremely valuable. I am very touched by your generosity. I have never read the Four Quartets before, although we did The Waste Land for GCSE which I en­joyed enormously, so I am looking forward very much to read­ing and understanding these new poems. Are they connected at all to Beethoven’s quartets, I wonder? My favourite poet is Wordsworth at the moment.

  The confirmation was magnificent. The Bishop of St. Alban’s spoke to us all beforehand and reminded us of the so­lemnity of the occasion. When the moment came for him to lay his hand upon my head I found myself crying. I hope you don’t think that was wrong of me. I think I was moved more by the idea of the apostolic succession than by anything else. Christ laid a hand on Peter’s head, Peter became Bishop of Rome and he laid a hand on the head of everyone else who became a bishop. Even though we broke with Rome in the sixteenth century, the bishops of the Church of England can trace themselves by a hand laid on the head, all the way back to Christ.

  When I bit the wafer I was surprised by how tasty it was. I had been told by everyone that it would be disgusting—like cardboard. Actually it reminded me of the rice-paper that you find on the underside of a macaroon. The wine was very sweet, but that’s how I prefer it anyway.

  You said that you hoped confirmation would live up to its name and that, as well as confirming my faith publicly, the ser­vice would confirm something in me privately. Well, I suppose it has, really. Everyone is agreed that the world is getting to be a worse place year by year. There is more crime, more poverty, more corruption, more distress. I think that Grace, which we talked about a lot in confirmation classes, is probably the only thing that can save the world. That’s very idealistic I know, but I think it makes more logical sense than anything else. Grace is about looking inwards not outwards. If everyone looked in­wards to their own souls, or psyches or whatever word you want to use, then all the sins in t
he world would disappear. If only we could all put up our hands and say “the problems are all my fault” there would be no problems.

  Simon has been made house captain this term and is in the first XV, so we are all very proud of him. He wants to go into the army after school, but Daddy wants him to try for Oxford. I’m not sure what I want to do, not the army anyway. I would truly love, more than anything else, to be a poet like you.

  After all, what else is worth doing?

  The world is too much with us; late and soon,

  Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:

  Little we see in Nature that is ours;

  We have given our hearts away . . .

  It’s now after prep and I’ve just found a very marvellous line in the Four Quartets that talks about how the stones of a building don’t reflect light, but actually absorb it. I think that is saying something about the love of God.

  I hope you will absorb my love and thanks for a wonderful present.

  Lots of love

  David

  XXX

  I tried my damnedest to recall whether myself at that age, I had been quite such a pi, punchable little shit as this. I remembered listening to illicit jazz and climbing ladders to catch the house-master’s daughter undressing; I remembered all the fights, farts and fidgets of a bog-standard, bog-quality British education; I remembered howling with injustice, roaring with passion and grunting with loneliness; I remem­bered talking about poetry, certainly, and pledging that the poets of the future would grab mankind by the balls and give such a vicious twist that the whole human race would scream for mercy. But wank­ing on about Grace and sin? Spraying out pissy dribbles of Words­worth sonnetry? I don’t think so. “The Bishop of St. Alban’s spoke to us all beforehand and reminded us of the solemnity of the occasion” indeed. Did the sanctimonious squirt think he was writing a letter to a godfather or an article for the school magazine? “I would truly love, more than anything else, to be a poet like you.” Did he mean he would love to be, like me, a poet? Or was he crawly (and idiotic) enough to mean that he wanted to be the kind of poet I was? Cold Christ and tangled Trinities, what an anus.

  4 Butler’s Yard

  St. James’s

  London SW1

  Dear David,

  What a remarkable letter. I am delighted that my little pre­sent has hit the mark so surely.

  I too was disappointed not to be amongst those present at your confirmation. I recall my own with exceptional clarity. Chichester, not the loveliest of our great cathedrals—squat and ugly as a toad if the truth be out—but holy in my memory. The service took place on one of those afternoons that occur only in the past. Sunlight kissed the altar-table, the chalices, patens and candlesticks, the bishop’s mitre and our young neophyte heads with a golden rim-light calculated to cause the sternest atheist among us to whinny with unconditional faith.

  Utter balls, naturally. The only thing gleaming with light that afternoon was the dew-drop depending from the bish’s nose.

  There is no doubt, whatever one’s perspective on these mat­ters, that the numen created by a gathering-together of people united in one common spiritual cause is as palpable as the ground they kneel upon. Whether this is truer in an Anglican cathedral than in a Buddhist temple or a front-parlour séance of crackpot spiritualists is not within my province to say. I am pleased, however, that you are getting something out of old Tom Eliot, whom I did indeed know. He published me at Faber and Faber when I was starting out. Said some rather nice things about me—then again, towards the end, he said nice things about a whole fleet of talentless ninnies, none of whom you would have heard of, nor ever will hear of again. There was a man called Botterill he was absolutely sold on. Who reads Botterill today? Why, even fewer people than read me, and that is saying something.

  However, that is neither here nor there. I wanted to say, principally, how impressed I was by the sentiments expressed with such courage and conviction in your letter. My only other godchild is your cousin Jane, and as you know, I am not on speakers with that side of your family, so I count myself very lucky in having an intelligent and interesting godchild with whom it is a pleasure to correspond. It’ll be your holidays soon, I suppose. It would be a great treat if we could get together and see if between us we can’t get to the bottom of this business of art and life. I wonder if it would be possible for me to come over some time in the summer and stay at the Hall? We would be able to read, think, talk, sip cordials and pick daisies to­gether, or as Burns prefers, we can “pluck the gowans fine.” My own son (you remember Roman?) will be with his respective and disrespectful mother over most of the summer holiday so I shall be alone and in sore need of some intellectual and spiri­tual stimulus.

  Outrageous. Ted, you fucker, is this what you’ve come to? Cadging country-house visits off your godchildren? Admit it, you sad old bug­ger, the only “intellectual and spiritual stimulus” you were ever in need of was a quick shag in the shrubbery with a domestic. I did need a way in to Swafford, however, if I was to earn my lovely lovely money. It was also possible that the company of a mooning romantic might disgust me enough to egg on some new and crunchy verse of my own.

  So why not mention the idea to your parents, old lad, and see what they think? It’s been an age since I’ve seen you and, dis­sipated and disgraceful as I may be, my promises at the font do mean something to me. Perhaps your youth will inspire me to write poetry again. I find that time and age have corrupted my powers and that, as your favourite poet observes, “the vision splendid” does indeed “fade into the common light of day.”

  Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

  Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

  P-U! I had to leap up and pace the room whistling and humming and kicking the wainscoting to take the taste of that one away.

  So, here’s looking forward to a summer of discovery and amusement,

  Your affectionate godfather

  Ted.

  Oh, you howling old hypocrite, what a beast you are, what a dread cruel beast. What a great, slavering, wicked and contemptible mon­ster. How can you hold up your head? How can you look yourself in the face? How can you sleep? You horrible, horrible man.

  Dear Uncle Ted,

  Your letter made me dance. Mummy or Daddy will be in touch soon. I hope you can stay at least a whole month!

  . . . neither evil tongues,

  Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

  Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

  The dreary intercourse of daily life,

  Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb

  Our cheerful faith that all which we behold

  Is full of blessings.

  Counting the days,

  Love

  David

  XXX

  II

  Swafford Hall

  Swafford

  Norfolk

  Sunday, 19th July 1992

  Dear Jane,

  Your first report, as promised, from within the walls of Troy. My letter to your cousin and god-brother, if there is such a thing, worked like a charm. Little Davey all but sent me his pocket-money to cover my train fare, so keen was he for me to come. Unless I poo things up horribly, I’m here for as long as I behave myself.

  Liverpool Street Station has been turned into a sinister and unacceptable mixture of an Edwardian amusement pier and a daytime television studio since last I looked. Absolutely dis­gusting. Since your cheque seems inexplicably to have been honoured, I travelled First Class. There’s only one smoking car on the whole train as far as I can see. In Britrail’s futile attempts to ape airlines (in itself a deranged project—about as sensible as going into a barber-shop and asking for a Lindsay Anderson cut) they litter the compartment with a laughable in-carriage glossy called “Executive” or “Top Traveller” or som
e such pukey garbage. Thank Jesus I’ll soon be dead. Sorry, that sounds a little callous in the light of your illness. You know what I mean.

  Anyway, after an hour and a half’s worth of scenery had streaked past my window, the train banged to a testicle-strangling halt at Diss Station and collapsed the little pyra­mid of Johnnie Walker miniatures I had been constructing on the table in front of me. I saw a youth on the platform, toss­ing and catching a bunch of car-keys like a gangster with a silver dollar. A glossy black spaniel sat by his side exposing its tongue to the air as is the custom of such creatures. The bungling manner with which I attempted to pull my suitcase widthways through a narrow compartment doorway must have told him who I was. It is unlikely he would have remem­bered me from four years ago, the last time I infested Swaf­ford.

  “Hello, sir,” he said, taking the case and deftly twisting it free. “I’m Simon Logan. Welcome to Norfolk.”

  “Good man. Ted Wallace.”

  “This is Soda. My spaniel.”

  “It’s an enormous pleasure, Soda,” I said, dropping a forefin­ger on to the animal’s muzzle by way of greeting.

  Simon led me to the exit.

  “David wanted to come too, but I thought you’d enjoy the two-seater.”

  A two-tone Austin-Healey stood in the car-park, ice-blue over ivory. A Rank Starlet car, I thought to myself, sort of thing Diana Dors would be photographed in, tossing back her scarfed head with a gleam of teeth and a glitter of winged sun-glasses. You’re probably too young to remember Diana Dors, but I put this in at no extra charge. I had been hoping for Michael’s well-stocked Rolls-Royce, of course, but the boy was clearly pleased with this machine, so I clucked appropriately.

  “I left the roof and window pieces at home to leave room in the boot for your luggage. So long as it doesn’t rain, eh?”

  I looked up at a huge East Anglian sky, innocent of clouds and blue as . . . my poetic powers have been sucked clean of simile. I can’t think what it was as blue as. As blue as blue. As blue as the Virgin’s panties. As blue as it was.

  Once the town of Diss was behind us, the Austin’s engine note and the unmarked lanes created the pleasing illusion of a mild and dusty Dornford Yates England. One half-expected to see horses rearing in shock at the unaccustomed sight of an au­tomobile and slack-jawed villagers nudging one another in wonder. In fact we saw no one. A sheet of stillness lay over ev­erything and we ripped through it like a speedboat across a lake. You probably haven’t heard of Dornford Yates either, but there you go.