The Hippopotamus

by Stephen Fry

  “No, well, I thought I ought to . . . you know, greet our guest and see if anyone else wanted to . . . but it’s probably not . . .”

  “Simon, old thing,” I said, “if you’ve room, I’d love to come along. That is, if it isn’t a bore for you?”

  David turned round, startled. Patricia gave me what writers used, inexplicably, to call a “level” look. Of . . . what? Scorn? Relief, possibly? Heaven knows. Anne looked pleased and Mi­chael, rather distracted that morning, nodded benignly. Simon, either out of courtesy or genuine feeling, expressed delight.

  “No! Not at all. Be a pleasure. We can go in the Austin- Healey if you like. Unless anyone else . . .”

  What on earth had possessed me I really cannot say. An ag­ricultural fair . . . in blazing July . . . in East Anglia. Rare breeds . . . Show-jumping . . . Fat pigs . . . Clay, in all probability, pigeon shooting.

  We left straight away, just Simon, Soda and myself. My hor­ror at the prospect of massed farmers aside, I found myself un­able to calculate whether I was pleased or piqued to see Patricia and Davey form such an instant bond of apparently mutual devotion. Naturally, I’ve known girlies form attach­ments to the younger male before now—there’s that icky media notion of the toyboy after all—but in the tennis score of the bedroom most girls in my experience would rather Love Thirty or Love Forty than Love Fifteen. Men, of course, are a whole other issue: they start at Love All and stay there until they’re dragged from the court.

  The East of England Show, I was disturbed to learn, takes places outside Peterborough, on the way to being a two-hour drive from Swafford. My face must have betrayed my misgiv­ings.

  “You should have come last month instead,” said Simon. “Last month was the Royal Norfolk Show. That’s only in Costessey, half an hour away.” Costessey, it became clear despite its spelling, is pronounced “Cossy.”

  Simon then embarked on a story that will be deeply familiar to you, Jane.

  “I took my cousin Jane to the Royal Norfolk,” he said. “Do you know Jane?”

  “My goddaughter,” I yelled above the wind-rush.

  “Ah. You probably know then that she’s not very well.”

  I nodded.

  “I had thought that perhaps a day out might be good for her. Unfortunately she collapsed during a baling demonstration. Terrible.”

  “Terrible,” I agreed.

  “I thought she was a goner, I’m afraid. You’ve never seen anyone so pale. The St. John’s Ambulance people wanted to take her to the Norfolk and Norwich. That’s a hospital.”

  “Sounds a reasonable idea. Probably more appropriate than a restaurant, say, or a football stadium.”

  “She came round a bit in the tent, though, and I took her back to Swafford. She didn’t want to see a doctor. Just went straight to bed. She was there for a couple of days. Davey read to her every afternoon and Dad hired a proper professional nurse. Dad’s her uncle.”

  “She seems quite well now,” I ventured. “I saw her in Lon­don.”

  “Yup, bit of a recovery. I’m not too surprised. You see that with pigs sometimes.”

  Cousinly affection takes strange forms.

  As we drove to Peterborough, I mused on the peculiar pro­nunciation of Costessey and entertained Simon and Soda by improvising a limerick.

  There was a young girl from Costessey

  Whose pubes were curly and glostessey

  Her thighs and her arse

  Were smooth as mown grass

  And her cunt was dark, dank and mostessey.

  “Brilliant!” Simon almost swerved off the road in joy. “That’s absolutely brilliant.”

  When we arrived at the show ground, he repeated and re­peated the limerick to his chums, of which there were many present. The poetic spirit, as you can see, is capable of flourish­ing in even the most barren and unpromising soil. Simon, for whom poetry is a closed book in a locked cupboard in a high attic in a lonely house in a remote hamlet in a distant land, kept saying to his friends, “This is Uncle Ted. He’s a famous poet. He actually made up a poem in my car as we were driving over!” And then he would recite it. The circumstance of being a “proper poet” seemed to transform the limerick and confirm upon it something approaching the status of Art.

  Reminded me of a trick we used to pull when hard up in the Dominion days. The Dominion was and still is a drinking club just round the corner from the Harpo, probably not your scene, dear. I used to wastrel there in the late fifties and early sixties with Gordon Fell, later “Sir” Gordon, the painter and cultural icon (or so he was described the other week in an article by my daughter Leonora). The ruse was to get Gordon absolutely tanked up on the syrupy Old Fashioneds that he favoured and then start him talking. As soon as he mentioned in the course of conversation someone who wasn’t actually a bosom-buddy of anybody in the room—let’s use the name Tiny Winters, for in­stance—we would ask:

  “Tiny Winters . . . Tiny Winters . . . Remind me, Gordie, who’s he?”

  And Gordon would splutter out some description of who this chap was. We would look puzzled and then firmly shake our heads.

  “Nope. Simply can’t place him.”

  This would enrage Gordon, as well it might, Tiny Winters or whoever being in fact perfectly well known to us. “You know Tiny! Tiny! Everyone knows Tiny!” Gordon would hoot indignantly.

  We would appear to struggle with our memories.

  “What does he look like?” someone would wonder at last.

  “Well, he’s . . . oh, give us a piece of paper for the Lord’s sake . . .”

  Tra-la! Victory. Out would come the charcoal and within five minutes we would be possessors of a genuine Fell. Even in those days you could get £50 for the crudest of sketches. The cruder the better, in fact.

  “Oh that Tiny! Gotcha. Yes, of course, how is old Tiny then?”

  One of us would slip the paper into a pocket and hurl off in a cab round to Cork Street and come back to share the spoils, old Gordon none the wiser.

  Of course that shite-arsed little weasel Crompton Day had to go and tell him all about it one afternoon. Next time we tried to scam, Gordon took extra care over his portrait, tongue out, eyes swimming in concentration. We were simply panting with pleasure, this looked like seventy-five quid in the bag at least. When he finished we went into our usual “Ah, now I know who you mean” routine, but before we could slip the portrait off the bar he had picked it up and was starting to tear it into narrow strips before our horrified eyes.

  “There you are, dears,” he said, handing out a thin ribbon to every one of us. “One each.”

  Sod. After that you could never get him to draw so much as a map to show you the way to a restaurant.

  Anyway, my limerick did the rounds of the show, much ag­grandised, as I say, by its status of being the work of a known poet. Not that it could be sold like a Fell sketch, of course. Po­etry doesn’t work like that, oh no. It just shoots straight into the public domain. Still, mustn’t mount that weary old hobby­horse again.

  You don’t really want to hear about “The Day I Went to the East of England Show,” so I will skip details of the gripping display of synchronised John Deere tractors, spare you the full story of the Suffolk Punch competition and save my descrip­tions of the titanic struggle between the Dereham and District Beet Growers and the Neane Valley Mange-Wurzel Breeders (Incorporating the North Cambridgeshire Tap Root Associa­tion) for another time.

  Simon, paucity of imagination and dullness of wit aside, is at least a civil figure and he never yielded to any temptation to abandon me to the depredations of the numerous hat-wearing ladies who skimmed and dipped from tea-tent to tea-tent like dragon-flies in August. In as much as agricultural fairs were a new experience for me, and every man in his sixties should take especial pleasure in any new experience however appar­ently grotesque, I cannot claim that it was th
e grisliest after­noon of my life. Simon allowed Soda and me numerous pit-stops in the beer-tents and sandwicheries and even sug­gested that we track down a Rothman’s bus which he knew would be in attendance. I stocked up on armfuls of free Rothies, filled in a questionnaire and charmed the sashes off a cou­ple of the heavily fucused popsies who were staffing the bus, a converted double-decker gaily trimmed in the Rothman’s liv­ery of blue, white and gold. Reminded me of my youth when cigarette girls were as common a sight at theatres, cinema pre­mières and nightclubs as charity-beggars are today. Thing is, the chances were you could shag a ciggie girl in the lavvies for a fiver in those days: I’ve a strong feeling that the sticker-vendors of the Save the Children Fund and the bucket-shakers of the Cystic Fibrosis Society would scream for the police and sue you for optical rape if you so much as flicked an eye below the level of their necks in today’s caring Britain. There has been a relentless and disturbing rise in moral standards over the years. It worries me.

  We left the jamboree at six, trailing many shiny floating bal­loons that bore the glamorous logos and exotic colourings of cattle-feed suppliers and manufacturers of slow-release fungi­cides—it would appear that Michael likes to sit round after dinner and giggle at helium-enhanced voices.

  As we drove back, Simon pestered me for more limericks. “Do one for Swafford,” he insisted.

  There was an old woman of Swafford

  Whose hair was gigantically coiffured

  When asked for the reason

  She said “In this season

  I need all the shade that is offered.”

  “Not bad. It wasn’t very rude, though, was it?”

  “Soda liked it,” I replied, wounded.

  “Now do a limerick on me.”

  “Hum . . .”

  There was a young man named Simon

  Who hated the art of rhyming

  He thought it a shame

  That his very own name

  Could only be mated with hymen.

  “You’re absolutely bloody right, there. Hymen was my nickname at school. Did you know?”

  “Let’s call it an inspired guess,” I said.

  “Okay, what about one for yourself?”

  There was an old lecher named Ted

  Who was known to be useless in bed

  When parting a bush

  He’d fumble and push

  And screw the poor mattress instead.

  Simon was fascinated by this concept. “Does that really happen?”

  “What, missing the opening, you mean? Certainly. All the time.”

  Not to have known that, it seemed to me, meant that the boy must either be a virgin or else have been seduced by a woman experienced enough to guide him in without so much as a moment of outslip. Lucky beggar.

  The homebound trek from Peterborough, as so often hap­pens, seemed appreciably shorter than the outward haul.

  Davey, in a replay of the moment of my arrival on Sunday, was drooping on the front steps.

  “Hello, young beast. And where’s your girlfriend?”

  He turned his head away to disclaim the appellation.

  “We bear gifts,” I said. “Look, for you a fat pig fashioned of rarest homespun and with finest kapok stuffed.”

  He took it. “It’s rather funny,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “The lady who sold it to me wondered if I had sat for the artist. This was a little rich as she herself favoured nothing so much as a common cormorant or shag struggling in an oil-slick. None the less, I think you will agree there is a more than pass­ing resemblance between this excellent pig and my wise and wicked self. If you were to stick a pin in it I should leap and yowl.”

  “I would have liked to have come, you know.”

  Ha! Where is an outreach counsellor with a diploma from the University of Dunstable and a government grant, when you need one? I waited until Simon and Soda were out of earshot, smoothed Davey’s ego with descriptions of how turgid and unamusing the afternoon had been and toddled into the house to dress for dinner. For tonight was to see the Logans playing host to the county, a black-tie event.

  No one else was about, so it wasn’t until we foregathered in the foregathery that I discovered Mother Mills was to be of our party.

  Oliver Mills. I don’t know if you’ve met him. He was padre of our regiment back in National Service days. He’s seen the dark since and defrocked himself. That at least is his story: it is my belief, founded in idle gossip, that he became frankly too hot for the army or the church to handle. His taste for butch subalterns and zesty young rankers knew no bounds. There was an episode I heard about in ‘59 that may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. A general, inspecting a pla­toon of glowing cadets, soon to be passed out, stopped in front of one especially doll-like ephebe.

  “You, sir! Name?”

  “Cyprian Manlove, sir.” (Or whatever)

  “You a gentleman of sound moral fibre?”

  No reply.

  “Well, sir?”

  Whereat the unfortunate boy burst into tears and scam­pered from the parade ground. Hanged himself by his Sam Browne, leaving a note that begged his mother’s forgiveness. Nothing proved, naturally, but he was known to serve at the altar in chapel and it wasn’t long before Oliver folded up his stole and plunged head first into the secular. The boy hadn’t been exactly Mother Mills’s type, but in those days buggers couldn’t be choosers.

  Oliver’s first lay billet was with the BBC, a haven for the bent and faithless if ever there was one, where he directed most of those dreary kitchen-sinkers that everyone pretends were the golden produce of the golden age of television, though frankly I’d rather watch John Major dry than sit through any of that self-righteous ullage ever again. Most of the playwrights responsible have died from alcohol poisoning and socialist disillusionment by now, thank God, and Oliver, as you know, specialises these days in rich and loving period adaptations of the classics and fuck the workers, though he wouldn’t thank you for saying so. You never knew such a one for writing prig­gish round robins to the press: “Sir, We the undersigned are horrified at the government’s attempts to cut the Arts Council grant/impose VAT on corduroy trousers/privatise Dickie Attenborough,” you know the sort of mealy-mouthed sludge I’m talking about: he’ll round up all the usual suspects at the Harpo Club and get them to agree to be set down as co-signatories. Once tried to get me to append my name to a screed wailing about the Net Book Agreement, whatever the badgery fuck that might be. Thoroughly amiable and amusing companion (if you like your wit tied in frilly bows) but, when the socialist bit’s clamped between his expensively capped pegs, as humourless a lump of dough as ever held a torchlight vigil out­side the South African Embassy or stuck an AIDS Awareness ribbon on an unwilling first-nighter.

  “Quid pro quo,” I had said. “First, you sign a letter I’m writ­ing that urges the government to bring back town-square flog­ging for graffiti and littering . . .” I had notably crabby views on that head just then, the wall opposite me in Butler’s Yard hav­ing recently been sprayed in lettering that looked like upside-down Arabic.

  Naturally, Mother Mills had stalked away baffled. For all that, he and I were on good terms and he greeted me heartily on Thursday night at Swafford when I pottered in, freshly tubbed and scrubbed, for my pre-dinner glass of the nasty.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Happy Hippo,” he said—Christ, I hate that old nick-name—“and beaten to the watering trough by a better man.”

  “Hello, Oliver,” I wheezed, “and what plucks you from Kensington?”

  “Same as you, angel. R&R. Mother’s been as busy as a big brown bee these last few months. She’s come to replenish her tissues.”

  “But still sucking up the vodka, we note.”

  “Not since Barbara Cartland described Fergie as vulgar have we heard such a grubby po
t have the Nigella Nerve to call such a Katie Kettle black.”

  I ignored him and poured myself a few fat fingers of the Ma­callan as he twittered on about his new love.

  “Dennis. A name as romantic as fly-spray, but so sweet and trusting and heavily cocked. I’ll take another voddie while you’re there.”

  “What does he do, this Dennis?”

  “Anything I ask.”

  “For a living.”

  “He’s a social-security clerk if you must know. I met him on a Pride march.”

  There are times when you envy faggotry, and times when you don’t. At least we plain old hetters never have to set up house with clerks and welders and shop assistants. Call me a snob and call me unkind, but how Oliver can bear the idea of ignorant dull-witted oafs from Clapham or Camberwell farting in his bed and scratching their balls in front of his cheval-glass, I cannot imagine.

  “And what about you, Ted? We understand you’ve been squiring love’s young dream about the lawns and meadows.”

  “Barely spoken to her.”

  “No, no. Not the breeder. I’m talking about the caramel- thighed Hylas of the fens. The Rupert Graves of the Iceni, as you very well know.”

  I did, but had affected to misunderstand.

  “Are you by any chance referring to my godson?”

  “Please, Ted. You’re a poppet when you’re yourself, but not fit for firewood when you’re all stiff and grumpy. Throw your mother some line or she’ll have a miserable time.”

  Well, put like that, a man can hardly in all charity keep up a chilly front.

  “You’ll find him a pretty little piece, I’ll not deny,” I conceded, easing myself into a chair. “Intense as all get out, mind you.”

  “Don’t I know it. While you and Simple Simon were dwile-flonking with the rough bumpkinry, he took me out on his little dinghy, much to the chagrin of the Patricia element, who was too scared or too high-heeled or too tightly stock­inged or too lah-di-Mayfair-dah to climb aboard, but wanted sinful Davey all for herself none the less. And we know why, don’t we?”