Sculptor's Daughter (9 page)

D
ADDY LOVES ALL ANIMALS
because they don't contradict him. He likes ones that are furry best. And they love him, too, because they know that they can do just as they like.

But it's quite a different matter with Females.

If you make statues of them they become women but as long as they remain Females things are difficult. They can't even pose properly and they talk much too much. Mummy isn't a Female of course, and never has been one.

Once at twilight when Daddy was standing outside the house a bat flew straight into his arms. Daddy stood quite still and it crept inside his jacket and hung upside down and went to sleep. Daddy didn't move. We carried his dinner outside to him and he ate it very carefully. No one was allowed to speak. Then we took his plate away and Daddy stayed where he was until it got dark. Then the bat flew around for a while and came back to him again.
This time it only stopped for a moment – a kind of courtesy call.

The summer when Mummy made porridge or spaghetti for Pellura every day we didn't catch any fish in the nets at all. Daddy went out on to the rock and called: Pellura, Pellura, and the gull came to him. Sometimes it brought its children along.

There was a Female who maintained that Pellura wasn't a common gull at all but a herring-gull that ate up baby eiders and Daddy just hated that Female until she went away.

Pellura had flesh-pink legs and was actually a herring-gull and did eat baby eiders but after the Female had gone we still believed that he was a common gull.

He came when Daddy called, and you can never be taken in by a pet and you can never fool it either. It's more difficult in town but we do our best. Last spring we had nineteen canaries. I must tell you, once and for all, that canaries are very virulent birds.

It starts with the mother bird and the father bird. They have babies. And before the babies get a single feather on their bodies they have to leave home and the father bird sings again and the mother bird lays new eggs. That's how things go with canaries.

Daddy had a lot of trouble with them. They perched on the indoor aerial, singing and flapping their wings and splashing about and everything was
calm and peaceful and all of a sudden they started being rotten to each other and attacked the smallest and ugliest of them and plucked him bald.

Then Daddy tapped them on the head with his modelling stick and said: you little devils, and they calmed down and just sang.

Daddy went up to his modelling stand and put on some more clay and then stepped backwards again. The rabbits lolloped forward, one on each side of him, and back again. They never changed sides. They loved him. But sometimes it became too much for them and they fought behind his back because they were jealous of each other. Then Daddy tapped them on the head with his modelling stick. Sometimes he tapped me on the head.

But he never taps Poppolino. After Mummy, Daddy loves Poppolino better than anything in the world. Poppolino is even allowed to jump through today's newspaper because he's Daddy's friend. He lives in a big cage on Daddy's bunk but as soon as he hangs upside down by his tail he's allowed to come out.

They sit in front of the wireless together and Poppolino listens with one of the headphones and turns the knobs to find the crackling noises. Or else they go to the shop and buy herrings.

When Daddy goes to the shop he often has to tap Females on the head because they can never make up their minds and finger the food and talk politics in a silly way.

And he has to do the same thing every time we go to the cinema because they don't take their hats off. Females are difficult.

The fact is that on the whole they are asocial and wouldn't even obey orders during a war, but in any case they're scared when Daddy taps them on the head, which is always a good thing.

Mummy is no Female and she always takes her hat off.

Mummy looks at Daddy and says: yes, perhaps you're right, and when she's alone she does things her own way.

Once Daddy wanted to take Poppolino to see a jungle film but they weren't allowed in. Daddy is always having trouble with Poppolino. If it's not Females it's Poppolino.

On another occasion they went to Gambrini's Restaurant together to have a nice evening out and were sent home before eleven o'clock. Poppolino hadn't exactly behaved badly, just shown a little too much interest in a hat, which was the wrong colour anyway. Pets do complicate life.

Many times it happened that Poppolino ate up one of the canaries and each time Daddy was just as sad. But when he thought about it afterwards he realised that it was a good thing after all because there were far too many canaries anyway. Things even themselves out in nature. Anyway, they did their business all over Mummy's drawings, and – even worse – in her hair!

I know that Daddy adores Mummy's beautiful hair just as much as James Oliver Curwood adored Jeanette's hair in Alaska. He put his nose in it in front of the fire and sang softly together with his faithful dogs. Or perhaps he was just whimpering. James Oliver Curwood, I mean, not Daddy.

Daddy always talks about Mummy's hair when he's having a party and he goes on to talk about the sort of hair he doesn't like. There are Females who walk in the street with their hair hanging all over the place, even falling in their eyes. And they never wash it. Females of that kind have no natural dignity and know nothing about their role in society.

The saddest thing that can happen to a man is when his hair gets thin on top. It shows that his hat is too small and means that he is bourgeois and probably henpecked.

But to be bald is something quite different, that is if the skull is sculptural and preferably
dolichocephalic
like Cavvy's.

But Daddy has most trouble with Females, particularly if they are posing for him. They often have ugly knees although the torso is good and more often than not they have very tiresome toes. Daddy doesn't like modelling toes and wants Mummy to do it for him. But Mummy can't be bothered with toes either.

Poppolino has very pretty toes and fingers. He puts his arms round Daddy's neck and screams with affection. He comforts anyone who cries. When he
gets loose in the street and climbs up the wall of a house the only way of getting him down again is to sit on the pavement and burst into tears.

Silly children come up to Daddy and ask him if he's sitting crying because the monkey has bitten him. What an idea! Poppolino is always biting Daddy but Daddy never cries and he's never angry with Poppolino because they are such great friends.

Although they were eaten, the canaries multiplied until there were twenty-four of them. Then Mummy and Daddy put an advertisement in the paper which said that anyone could get a canary for nothing if they came to our house.

Females started to arrive at half-past seven in the morning and they went on coming all day until dark.

One Female had her own motor-car and another had her own servant who carried the bird-cage for her and they all said that we had terrible stairs and told us all about the canaries they had owned earlier, the ones that had died and the ones that had flown away. Some of the Females burst into tears and Daddy ran around catching canaries for them and when there weren't any more left then the Females were given an egg wrapped in cotton wool to take home, and when the eggs were finished they just came in and burst into tears.

Poppolino rattled his cage and didn't feel sorry for the Females because he could see that they were only crying because they liked crying.

No work got done that day and afterwards the whole place was very quiet and we regretted having got rid of the canaries.

But Mousey was still in his box. Mousey was Daddy's friend in a quiet almost secretive way. The box was full of turf and had a wall of glass. Behind the glass you could see an underground tunnel which Mousey had dug. But he hardly ever came out himself.

Daddy stood outside the box and waited and tapped with his modelling stick and said: come to Daddy little sweety. After a while a quivering little nose appeared out of the tunnel but never more than the nose. Then Daddy was happy and went back to work. When one is working it's a good idea sometimes to take an interest in something that's friendly but doesn't talk.

We shouldn't have let a charwoman into the studio, and we never shall again. She took a fistful of cotton waste and rubbed the glass and then threw the cotton waste into the box. Mousey didn't like the glass being cleaned and never showed his nose again. But he liked the cotton waste and made himself a nest out of it which none of us ever saw.

Daddy got depressed about it. For a time he threw fish out of the bedroom window to the gulls instead but it didn't feel as nice and could never be the same after Pellura. Anyway, the police came and made a fuss. We never understood why.

Daddy has had trouble with pets all his life. Take Midge for example, who died of food poisoning. Granny found him in a dustbin during the 1918 war. His tail had been cut off and he looked awful. He was so tiny and ghastly and everybody who saw him was upset and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. That was why Granny was given some beef stew for Midge whenever she took him to the kitchen door of a restaurant, which meant that the family had something to eat every day.

Daddy and Mummy always tell the story of Midge, sometimes several times over to the same people. Sometimes they say that Midge got some of the stew and sometimes they say that he didn't get any at all. I never tell the same story over again to the same person.

All dogs are loyal. They remind one a lot of men, with the exception perhaps of pug-dogs. There's something wrong about having a pug-dog. If a Female has a pug-dog you know at once that she's on the shelf. This happened particularly when Daddy was young. But it isn't a good thing to get married and desert the pug-dog, either. Many have done that and gone from the frying-pan into the fire, Daddy says. Even if one has a pug-dog, one must be loyal. It's all
very
difficult.

Actually, things are difficult for me, too. I don't think about Females very much because they only drive you out of your mind if you are a sculptor. But I think about Daddy's pets all the time. There have
been so many of them that it has been difficult to keep count of them all and there's always the same trouble with them whether they are furry or not. I get so tired thinking about them.

Poppolino is Daddy's friend once and for all just as much as Cavvy is. It's a fact and Mummy and I can't do anything about it. He'll live until he's a hundred years old.

But all the others! The sheep, for example. It walked on to the veranda without wiping its feet first. It stamped and banged around and got everything it took a fancy to. Then it took itself off again on its stiff legs and with its silly bleating and its silly dirty backside wobbling as it went down the steps and it had no idea of all the love that it had been given!

Cats! They didn't understand either. They were either podgy puddings that just slept or they were beautiful and wild and took no notice of Daddy at all.

And the squirrels! He was never allowed to stroke them. They snapped and were quick and independent. They just wanted to grab and grab and grab and then jump away and look pretty in peace and quiet on their own.

But I tell you that the worst of all was the crow. My goodness, that crow was artful! She knew all about Daddy and she liked being stroked. She was much more dangerous than Poppolino. Poppolino lives by his feelings and can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

But the crow knew. She worked things out and was calculating. She looked at Daddy and then she looked at me. You could see that she was sizing things up carefully. Then she croaked in a very deep voice, plaintively and tenderly and hung her head and went up to Daddy's legs. She rubbed herself against him, gently and helplessly, because she knew that that was what he liked.

But when she was alone with me she said caw! caw! suddenly and shamelessly, like the crow she was, and we stared at each other and never became reconciled, and I knew that she had fleas!