Fillets of Plaice, by Gerald Durrell (18 page)

The effect upon the party was considerable.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” screamed Mary, leaping to her feet, upsetting her gin and tonic and losing her normal pose of placidity.

“Why didn't you let me check it, you stupid bastard!” roared McGrade.

“There are times when I really despair of you, Martin,” said Robin with some asperity.

“I'm terribly, terribly sorry, sir,” said Martin to the invisible D.C. “I really don't know how to apologise.”

He was trembling from head to foot at the catastrophe. The palm fronds rustled and the D.C.s' head appeared. He emerged from the punka looking not unlike an albino African emerging from his hut. He opened his mouth to say something and then caught sight of a chocolate-coloured, very hairy spider the circumference of a saucer making its way along the punka towards him. Already the rich and happy little community that had been living in the fan undisturbed for years was starting to emerge. The D.C. pushed back his chair and leapt to his feet.

I knew this was a disaster of the worst sort from Martin's point of view, but I have always found in life that one should seize every opportunity. It seemed as though the punka was going to provide me with some interesting specimens.

“I suggest you all go into the other room,” I said, noticing a new species of gecko emerging from the palm fronds. “I'll fix things in here.”

The parts of the table that were still visible were rapidly becoming covered with indignant beetles and other specimens of lesser life who looked, even if they were not, extremely malevolent.

Mary pulled herself together and with great grace led the way out of the dining-room and onto the veranda and the others trooped after her.

The staff had been frozen solid because, as we had been sitting in our chairs, it would have been extremely difficult to remove the palm leaf fan and pretend that dinner was going on as normal. It was a situation they had not met with before and even Pious was incapable of coping with it.

“Pious,” I roared, startling him out of his horrified trance, “go bring bottles, boxes, anything for catch this beef.”

Beef is the all-important West African term meaning any animal that walks, flies or crawls. Pious, grabbing Amos and the two small boys by the scruff of the neck, disappeared.

By this time a number of other interesting inhabitants were appearing out of the punka to see why their community life had been disturbed. The first to emerge was a young and highly indignant green mamba, reputedly the most deadly snake in Africa. He was about two feet long, like a green and yellow plaited lariat, and you could tell from his attitude that the whole thing was very upsetting to his psyche. I tried to pin him down with a fork but he wriggled free and fell off the table onto the floor. It was only then that I realised that although all the others had fled to the veranda and left the disaster to me, the D.C. had stayed on. The green mamba, in that irritating way that snakes have, with the whole of the room to choose from, wriggled straight towards the D.C., who remained rooted to the spot, his face going a rather interesting shade of blue. I made another quick assault on the mamba and this time succeeded in pinning him down and picking him up by the back of the neck. By this time Pious had returned, having unearthed from the kitchen jars, boxes, bottles and other containers. I slipped the green mamba into a bottle and corked it up securely.

The D.C. was still regarding me with bulging eyes. I had to say something in an attempt to cover up the disaster and protect Martin. I smiled at the D.C. beguilingly.

“You see what I mean, sir?” I said airily, removing a large beetle from the groundnut chop where he was lying on his back waving his legs and uttering shrill mechanical whirrings. “The animals are all around you. It's merely a question of finding out where they live.”

He stared at me for a moment.

“Yes. Yes, I can see that,” he said, adding, “I think I need a drink.”

“It was extremely clever of you to stand still, sir,” I said.

“Why?” asked the D.C. suspiciously.

“Well, most people in those circumstances would have panicked, sir, but you kept your head admirably. If it hadn't been for you I doubt whether I'd have ever caught the mamba.”

The D.C. looked at me suspiciously again, but I was wearing my most innocent expression.

“Hah!” he said. “Well, let's go and have a drink.”

“Well, I think there are one or two more creatures here for me to catch and I'd better get Martin to organise things a bit. I'll join you in a minute, sir, if I may.”

“Certainly,” he said, “I'll send Martin to you.”

Martin staggered into the dining-room looking like the sole survivor of the Titanic.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “I never thought…”

“Look,” I said firmly, “just don't think. Do what I say.”

“It's worse than the lavatory!”

“Nothing could be worse than the lavatory. Now, just take things calmly.”

While we were talking Pious and I were busy collecting further denizens of the fan, which consisted of numerous geckos, eight tree frogs, a hysterical dormouse with its nest and young, three bats, a couple of irascible scorpions and an incredible number of beetles.

“What are we going to do?” said Martin in despair, almost wringing his hands.

I turned to Pious and I could tell from his expression that he was as worried by this awful catastrophe as Martin was. I, unfortunately, was suffering from an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh loud and long but I didn't dare to do so.

“Now,” I said to Pious, “you go go for Masa McGrade's house and you find chop. Then you go to Masa Girton's house and you find chop. Then you go to A.D.O.'s house and find chop, then you go for our place and find chop. I want chop in one hour, you hear.”

“I hear, sah,” said Pious and disappeared.

“God, I shall be sent back to Umchichi,” said Martin.

“That might well happen,” I said, “but judging by the D.C.'s reaction it will not.”

“But he couldn't have been pleased,” said Martin.

“I don't think anybody was, with the possible exception of me. I've got some nice specimens out of it.”

“But what are we going to do now?” said Martin, gazing at the wreckage of the table.

I sat him down in a chair.

“I sent the D.C. to call you because I said you could control the situation,” I explained. “Pious has gone to fetch the chop. What it'll be, God only knows, but at least it will be something to eat. In the meantime, you must try and fill the D.C. up with as much gin as possible.”

“I've got plenty of gin,” said Martin earnestly.

“Well, there you are,” I said soothingly. “The problem's almost solved.”

“But I don't see how…” Martin said.

“Look, just don't think about it. Leave it to me. The point is, you have to appear as though you are in control of the situation.”

“Oh. Yes, I see what you mean,” said Martin.

I called Amos and John from the kitchen.

“Clean up this table, polish it and put things for chop,” I said.

“Yes, sah,” they said in a chorus.

“Pious done go for chop. You tell Jesus and my cook they can make new chop.”

“Yes, sah.”

“But you go make the table look fine like before, you hear?”

“Please, sah,” said Amos.

“Whatee?” I asked.

“Masa done catch all de snakes from inside dere?” inquired Amos, pointing at the wreckage of the punka.

“Yes,” I said. “You no go fear. I done catch all the beef.”

“I don't know how you organise things so well,” said Martin.

“Listen,” I said, “as far as the D.C. is concerned, you've organised all this. Now, when we join them you assume an almost military pose. You've got to give the D.C. the impression that while I was more concerned with my animals you had everything else under perfect control. And don't apologise every five minutes! We'll get him well ginned up and Pious will have the food under control so don't worry about that. All you have to do is give the impression that although this is a disaster, it is a very minor one and you are quite sure that on thinking it over the D.C. will see the funny side of it.”

“The funny side of it?” said Martin faintly.

“Yes,” I said. “How long have you been in the Colonial Service?”

“Since I was twenty-one,” he said.

“Don't you realise that people like that pompous ass dine out on stories like this? You've probably done yourself more good than harm.”

“Are you sure?” said Martin doubtfully.

“You think about it,” I said. “Now let's go out onto the veranda.”

So we joined the D.C on the veranda and found that the others had been doing stalwart service. Mary had given the D.C. a long lecture on orchids and flower arrangements. McGrade had given him such a complicated discourse on bridge building and road maintenance that I don't think even he could have understood. And Robin had come in at just the right moment to discuss literature and art, two subjects about which the D.C. knew nothing.

I dug Martin in the ribs and he straightened up.

“I'm terribly sorry about that, sir,” he said. “Most unfortunate. I'm afraid my boy didn't check on the hooks in the ceiling. However, I have… er… organised everything and we should have chop in about an hour. Terribly sorry to keep you waiting.”

He subsided into a chair and mopped his face with his handkerchief.

The D.C. looked at him speculatively and drained his tenth gin.

“I don't usually,” he said acidly, “in the course of my duties have fans dropped on my head.”

There was a short but ominous silence. It was obvious that Martin could think of nothing to say, so I stepped into the breach.

“I must say, sir, that I was damned glad to have you there,” I said.

I turned to the others.

“Of course, you all didn't see it but there was a mamba in that fan. If it hadn't been for the D.C., I doubt whether I would have got it.”

“A mamba!” squeaked Mary.

“Yes,” I said, “and he was in a very nasty mood, I can assure you. But fortunately the D.C. kept his head and so we managed to catch it.”

“Well,” said the D.C., “I wouldn't go so far as to say that I helped very much.”

“Oh that's modesty, sir,” I said. “Most people, as I told you, would have panicked. After all, a mamba is supposed to be the most deadly snake in Africa.”

“A mamba!” said Mary. “Fancy that! Think of it, coiled there over our heads waiting to attack! I do think you were both awfully brave.”

“By Jove, yes,” said Robin smoothly. “I'm afraid I would have run like a hare.”

“So would I,” said McGrade, who was built like an all-in wrestler and not afraid of anything.

“Well,” said the D.C. deprecatingly, having found himself forced into the position of hero, “you get used to this sort of situation, you know, especially when you're trekking around in the bush.”

He embarked on a long and slightly incoherent story about a leopard he had nearly shot once and we all sighed with relief when Pious emerged out of the gloom and informed us that our second dinner was ready.

Cold baked beans and tinned salmon were not what one would call a gastronomic delight, but they served their purpose and by the end of dinner, full of gin, the D.C. was telling us some most improbable snake stories.

Fortunately, the flute salad had not been within range of the catastrophe and so this had been salvaged and after we had eaten it we all agreed that Mary, who had put her heart and soul into it, had done us proud and that it was the flute salad to end all flute salads.

When we finally left I thanked the D.C. once more for his courage in helping me catch the mamba.

“Nothing, my dear fellow,” he said, waving his hand airily. “Nothing, I assure you. Glad to have been of assistance.”

The following day, Martin, in spite of all our efforts, was inconsolable. The D.C., he said, had been rather frosty when he had left and he was convinced that his next posting would be back to the hellhole of Umchichi. There was nothing we could do but write polite notes to the D.C. thanking him for the disastrous dinner party. I did manage to insert in mine additional thanks for the considerable help that his D.O. had given me. I said that in my experience in West Africa Martin was one of the best and most efficient D.O.s I had come across.

Shortly after that I had to move my animals down-country to catch the ship back to England and the whole incident faded from my mind.

Then, some six months later, I got a brief note from Martin, In it he said,

“You were quite right, old boy, about this dining out on stories stuff. The D.C. is now telling everybody how he caught a green mamba for you on the dining-room table while you were apparently so petrified with fright that you couldn't do anything sensible. I've got a promotion and go to Enugu next month. I can't thank you all enough for making the dinner party such a success.”

THE family doctor shook his head mote in sorrow than in anger.

“Strain,” he repeated. “Over-work and over-worry. What you need is three weeks in Abbotsford.”

“You mean the loony bin?” I asked.

“It
isn't
a loony bin. It's a
highly
respectable nursing home that specialises in nervous complaints,” he said severely.

“In other words a loony bin,” I said.

“I thought that you would have known better,” said the family doctor sadly.

“A loose generic term,” I said. “Is it that sprawling Strawberry Hill Gothic edifice that looks like Dracula's castle — the thing straight out of Hollywood — on the way to Surbiton?”

“Yes, that's the place.”

“Well, I don't suppose that will be so bad,” I said judiciously. “I can nip up to town to see my friends and the odd show…”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” the family doctor interrupted firmly. “Complete rest and quiet is what you need.”

“Couldn't I have a going-in party?” I pleaded.

“A going-in party?”

“Well, debs have their coming-out parties. Why can't I have a going-in party? Just a select band of friends to wish me God Speed on my way to the padded cell.”

The family doctor winced and sighed.