David Nobbs
Ostrich Country

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by David Nobbs

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

‘A change of environment will bring you new business and personal interests,’ said Cousin Percy.

Pegasus was glad to hear this. He fancied a change of environment. He could do with some new business and personal interests.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Pegasus cherished a secret ambition — to be a chef in a country inn. He’d never told anyone, not even Paula, for fear they’d laugh. It had become, over the years, something almost shameful. Several times he’d been on the point of taking action, but always this fear of ridicule had held him back. Now, with Cousin Percy’s prediction to urge him on, it would be different.

‘You will star in a new musical,’ said Cousin Percy to Pamela Blossom, actress, singer, pin-up of the Atlantic weather ship S.S. Hailstone.

‘I could do with the money,’ said Miss Blossom.

He wanted to leave, to start his new life straight away, to go down to Kensington Gardens, to the seat, and say good-bye to Paula. He accepted another glass of the red wine and willed Cousin Percy to hurry up.

‘You will win a vast new export order in the Middle East,’ said Cousin Percy to Thomas Windham, the industrialist.

‘That would certainly be just the fillip we need, and I’m sure everyone at Articulated Tubes and Cartons, on both sides, will do their level best to make your prophecy come true,’ commented Thomas Windham.

Fifteen celebrities sitting in a circle, waiting for their predictions, waiting for the photographer to catch their modest smiles, all invited because they were tipped to be the big names in their chosen fields during the next decade. All except Pegasus, who was there because he was family.

‘You will operate on a royal personage,’ said Cousin Percy to Tarragon Clump, the kidney surgeon.

‘Well well,’ said Tarragon Clump, who wasn’t used to giving quotes.

Why had they all come? Vanity? Curiosity? Dipsomania? Agoraphobia? And why did Cousin Percy do it? Aged thirty-four. Ordained 1959. Suddenly lost his faith during the 1961 Cup Final, in the fifty-third minute. Became a free-lance journalist and designer. Pegasus had seen a play he’d designed — strong, spiky scenery. What had made him become the horoscopist for Clang and give this repulsive prediction party?

‘Will I do the double this year?’ said Edward Forrest, the cricketer, whom Pegasus had once seen bowled first ball at Lords.

‘It will be a rewarding time emotionally, and a plan will bear fruit,’ said Cousin Percy.

‘Stuff the bloody emotions,’ said Edwin Forrest. ‘Stuff a plan bearing fruit. Will I do the double?’

He would leave London, the dreary institute off the North Circular Road, the bad dreams, his Hampstead flatlet where an old woman died upstairs and three months later he found out.

There’d be no more dreams, not in the country. Dreamless sleep.

‘You will compere a new quiz programme between members of the dry-cleaning trade.’

At last the predictions were over. The circle broke up, conversation began. He could leave now.

He took a last glass of wine and drank it rapidly. Behind him someone said: ‘I suppose royalty would be much the same as everyone else as regards vital organs, would they, Mr Clump?’ but he didn’t stop to hear the reply. He said: ‘Good-bye. I must be off,’ and Cousin Percy said ‘Oh, are you off?’ and then the voices faded and he was breathing the cold, clammy February air and he was on his way to Kensington Gardens.

He must get away from his old haunts and his memories of Paula. He must stop hanging around the National Film Theatre on Jean-Luc Godard nights in the hope of seeing her. He must cease these visits to Kensington Gardens.

His heart quickened as he approached the seat — the fifth seat on the left of the Broad Walk going towards Bayswater. It was on this seat that he had first kissed her, and it had been there that they had usually met.

He sat on the seat now and thought about her. He thought about the smell of her flesh, that faint, earthy, rubbery emanation of warmth.

She had light fair hair and her eyes … he couldn’t remember the colour of her eyes.

His parents would be upset. They had made sacrifices. Weather forecasting wasn’t all that well paid. They saw him as a famous biologist. His mother had visions of the Nobel Prize. Stockholm. Steady, sincere, unemotional applause. It would be hard to tell them, especially after all these years, especially after it had grown into such a secret ambition.

A new leaf, blown on warm zephyrs. A new life. A new Pegasus. New business and personal interests. A limitless prospect. You’re going to miss out on all this, Paula.

The sky was heavy and colourless. Night would creep up unobserved. Pegasus sat on the seat, rather drunk, rather cold, thinking about Paula.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember her legs, slightly on the short side. She was a little round-shouldered but very desirable, unless his memory was playing him false. He thought of his lips flecking the inside of her arm just below the armpit, and of licking her left ear, in Academy One, during the Czech cartoon.

Soon his eyes filled with tears and his lips moved a little as he appealed to her.

Paula, Paula, how could you do it? I would have adored you for ever. Any impression you may have received to the contrary was caused by the tension which is inseparable from an intimate relationship between two tender and passionate souls. How could you leave me for anyone, let alone a man who translates Ogden Nash into Latin as a hobby? How could you make such a nonsense of my life, my darling rubbery lovely utterly …

Hell! A light silent rain was beginning to fall from the still, grey February sky. He was getting wet, because he had brought no raincoat, because his father had told him that the fine weather would continue.

2

Some of the slides had a man in them, and when one of these was shown the pigeons would find food. Some of them had no man in them. This meant that the pigeons would find only buttons and hard objects in the bowls.

When this pattern had been fully established, when man in slide equalled goodies even to the most retarded pigeon, Cummings would insert the algae. Some untreated, some flavoured, some mixed with pesticides, some from the outflow of nuclear power stations. Then Bradley and Pegasus would correlate the results.

Pegasus was merely a cog in all this. Miss Besant brought him his instructions from Mr Colthorpe, he got his results, Miss Besant took his results back to Mr Colthorpe. His little piece of work was fitted into someone else’s grand design.

Bradley passed through now.

‘Fantastic,’ said Bradley.

‘Yes?’

‘The cats given the fish-flavoured weed from the Yorkshire Ouse are doing fantastically well. Twelve per cent heavier than the cats fed on normal cat food.’

‘Fantastic.’

This was progress. Vast immovable growths of weed-guzzling cat. Must make the break today, while Cousin Percy’s prediction is fresh in my mind.

Pegasus had often alleviated the boredom and distastefulness of his work by trying to convince himself that it was in the national interest, that he was a dedicated man, patriotically resisting the brain drain.

At other times, when he was wanting to persuade himself to give up and become a chef, he’d tried to convince himself that it wasn’t in the national interest, or that the national interest wasn’t in the world interest, or something, anything helpful.

He had never yet convinced himself of anything.

He began to go through the arguments again, the same old arguments, so familiar that he thought of them in note form nowadays.

He thought: Food, research into new sources of. For: increased use of earth’s resources. Elimination of starvation. Against: increased depletion of earth’s resources. Elimination of starvation could lead to even worse population problems, hence to even worse starvation.

Conclusion as regards value for mankind of nutritional experiments: no conclusion.

Miss Besant was typing — smoothly, lightly, efficiently, by way of contrast with her plump figure and red legs. She lodged in Willesden with two friends, kept her personality in the bank and only withdrew it at week-ends.

The coffee came round. Have one on me, Miss Besant. Nice momentarily to feel generous. Vile coffee. Niceness gone. No air. Stifling. Poor old pigeons. Dancing helplessly to man’s absurd tune. Slides in one of the cages not coming through. Sort that out. Coffee now cold. Resume arguments.

To hell with the arguments. Make the break now.

‘Miss Besant?’

The clacking stopped.

‘Yes?’

‘Will you do me a favour? Go and get me a copy of the Caterer and Hotel Keeper, if you can find one.’

The decision had been made at last.

It was National Pig Week, and a display of pig products had been laid out in Reception. A double track model railway wended its way among the scenic gammon, and two pork pies rode slowly round and round, one in each direction, from nine till five-thirty.

Mr Prestwick, personnel manager of Wine and Dine Ltd, averted his gaze from this exhibit as he made his way back to his tiny, hot office high above the Euston Road.

‘Send Mr Baines in, Miss Purkiss,’ he said into the intercom.

His ulcer was playing him up, his rise hadn’t materialized, his wife had sent a van for all her furniture, he was living alone in half-empty rooms, he had never felt less like managing personnel.

Baines entered, with all the absurd hopes of youth. A tall, slim, quite good-looking young man with slightly stick-out ears and a surprisingly solid face.

‘So you want to work for us?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Baines, and Mr Prestwick envied him his steady unaffected middle-class voice. Something was going wrong with Mr Prestwick’s voice. It didn’t always stay tuned in quite right. Sometimes there was a low whistle, or a hum, or a crackle.

‘One or two questions, just make sure you know your French irregular herbs,’ said Mr Prestwick.

Baines managed some kind of a smile. They usually managed some kind of a smile.

‘Are you familiar with our organization?’

‘Not really.’

‘You’re aware that we’re synonymous with quality?’

‘I imagine you would be.’

‘Do you want bouillabaise in Barnsley or moussaka in Macclesfield? Then dine and wine at your nearest Wine and Dine house. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘Visit the Golden Galleon, Aylesbury, and enjoy the best of British Duck?’

‘No sir.’

Those idiots in 117 had been wasting their time. Mr Prestwick laughed inwardly, hurting his ulcer.

‘I want to work in the country, sir.’

‘You’re a graduate, Baines. Arts graduates …’ My God, I whined. I went off my wavelength. He hasn’t shown he’s noticed. ‘Arts graduates go either into management or to our scenic department at Hatfield, where all our décor and costumes are made. Science graduates go to our research department at Staines. You are a science graduate. You would be sent to Staines.’

‘But I thought I made it clear, sir. I want to be a chef.’

‘We sent a chap like you to Staines two years ago, and already he’s our chief macaroon consistency supervisor.’

‘But sir …’

‘You have a science degree. I don’t think the organization would let you waste your talents by becoming a chef.’

‘Well, if you can’t give me this job as chef in a country hotel, sir, I honestly think I’d better look elsewhere.’

Mr Prestwick followed Baines’s back as he walked away down the Euston Road. His own son had been a disappointment.

‘Miss Purkiss?’

Miss Purkiss entered with her long legs and notebook.

‘Take a letter, Miss Purkiss. Reference AB/47/32E. Dear Mrs Prestwick. Further to my letter of the twenty-sixth ult. I must report that the nest of tables was mine. It was left to me by Aunt … Miss Purkiss?’

‘Yes, Mr Prestwick?’

‘Is there anything at all odd about my voice?’

‘No, Mr Prestwick.’

‘My voice seems completely normal to you, does it?’

‘Oh yes, Mr Prestwick.’

Why did they all think he wasn’t capable of facing up to the truth?

He must seize the moment. If he waited until he’d got a job, he might never leave.

But ought he to leave? Wasn’t his true work here, with Bradley and Cummings?

Pegasus thought: Two. Will knowledge gained in methods of conditioning minds of living beings prove beneficial or harmful to mankind?

Disturbing thought: What can be done by Cummings to a pigeon can be done by a dictator to Cummings.

Unclassified thought: Scientific enquiry in itself neither good nor bad. A process.

Question: Can we ignore future applications?

Answer: No. Therefore we must ask ourselves the

Further Question: Is man good or bad?

Answer: No.

Supplementary Question: Is …

Bradley came through, looking rather sad.

‘Can’t understand it,’ he said.

‘No?’

‘All the Dungeness rats have died.’

Bradley’s sadness lay not in the ending of animal life but in the refusal of the rats to fulfil man’s predictions.

He must act now.

‘May I use your typewriter for a moment, Miss Besant?’

He began to type his notice. Then he hesitated.

He thought: Three. In favour of experiments with minds of birds and animals. Could help fight against mental illness. By helping to understand animal mind, could help to liberate human mind.

Against. Could be used by fascists, dictators, power-mad school prefects (Murdoch!) etc. By helping to understand animal mind, could help to enslave human mind.

Conclusion: no conclusion.

Always the same. It was impossible to decide anything by means of reason, either because he had an inferior mind or because it really was impossible to decide anything by means of reason.

The Dungeness rats had all died, poor sods. Life would be easier if he could hate rats, but he didn’t. He never wished anything any harm, rats, Paula, spiders, anything.

He resumed his typing. As he typed he could see Cummings, cooing to the pigeons, rapidly becoming one himself, inflated Cummings going through his courtship display. Coo coo. Conditioning himself when he thought he was conditioning others.

He finished typing his notice. He put it in an envelope. He addressed the envelope to Mr Colthorpe. He dropped the envelope into the internal mail tray. He felt wonderful.

‘Miss Besant?’

‘Yes.’

‘If your boy friend told you that he knew a place where you could get the best algae in the Home Counties, what would you say?’

‘I haven’t got a boy friend, Mr Baines.’

He had only thought of Paula once during the last hour. He was on the mend.

‘Why not, Miss Besant?’

‘Why not what, Mr Baines?’

‘Why haven’t you got a boy friend?’

‘What a question, Mr Baines.’

It was not Pegasus’s nature to be referred to as ‘Mr Baines’ by young women. He wanted Miss Besant to call him ‘Pegasus’. He wanted to share his happiness with someone, so he asked her out that evening. She wasn’t beautiful or intelligent, but she was nice, and wasn’t it selfish always to go for the beautiful and intelligent? He would choose this nice lonely Miss Besant, whom no one else had chosen.

As the evening wore on he grew terrified that Paula would see him with Miss Besant. He took her to the Classic, Tooting, in order to avoid being seen by anyone he knew.

His old head prefect Murdoch was sitting two rows behind them. What did it matter? Why on earth did he mind?

That night he dreamt that he was in a cage, being fed on seaweed and Cummings’s droppings. Twelve school prefects were waiting for him to do his sample. An electric recording device had been fitted to his head. Some of the slides showed traffic accidents. The others showed Miss Besant. Sometimes there was blood in the accident, and sometimes there was blood on Miss Besant. When there was blood he got an electric shock. It was hot, stifling. The sweat poured off him.

3

Easter Saturday, an early Easter in March. A cool strong wind buffeting the windows of the Goat and Thistle. The buds vulnerable on the trees round the fine Suffolk church. The village spreading away down all the lanes, out of the church’s grasp. Nearby the sea, the estuary, the bird sanctuary, the nuclear power station, and all the secret research establishments which are such a feature of the unspoilt East Anglian countryside. Peace and quiet, except for the traffic, the planes screaming overhead, a radio blaring in a garden. Manchester City’s greater attacking flair will just about see them through. This could be the year when they hit the proverbial jackpot. Saturday. Easter Saturday.

In the bar of the Goat and Thistle Jane Hassett was serving beer to two early bird-watchers and Mr Thomas, the milkman. In the dining-room people were lunching in undertones. From the windows you could see the marsh and the sea, but the power station was hidden by heathland. It was a backwater.

Tarragon Clump, the amateur naturalist, keen dinghy sailor, virgin and kidney surgeon, sat at a window table in the stark dining-room with its white tablecloths and clinical white walls. Its spirit of non-conformism weighed on him, and he ordered a half bottle of wine instead of a full one. He chewed his tiny piece of lukewarm sole in parsley sauce morosely. Vulgarians, thought Tarragon, the English, thinking of them as if they were foreigners, his own family even, the Clumps of Gloucestershire. He looked out over the marsh and tried to make out a bird that wheeled indolently over the distant woods. Too far. Binoculars not yet unpacked.

He turned his head to gaze greedily at Patsy’s legs as she bore inexpertly towards him a plate of devilled kidneys and five veg, all watery.

‘I wonder if I could have some mustard,’ said Tarragon, and he shifted in his seat, the better to look up Patsy’s legs as she leant over to reach the mustard.

I wonder if there’ll be any pochard on the marsh, he thought, to take his mind off Patsy’s saignant legs as she reached for the mustard.

‘You already have mustard,’ she said, blushing as she saw the mustard pot on Tarragon’s table.

‘So I have, Patsy.’ He smiled at her. Patsy with her country ways. Patsy, the potential haystack tumbler. Patsy and the other waitress, Brenda, trim like an air hostess.

Unmarried at thirty-seven, Tarragon had come to feel for the Goat and Thistle the sort of affection married men look for in mistresses — secret, temporal, understanding, no need to book in advance. His modest, domestic Jacobean mistress, plastered, three gables, thin wisps of pargetting. Unchanging.

And now once again it was under new management. Once again it had to be established that Tarragon Clump was a regular here, a popular figure with his ready money and manly binoculars, his thick pullovers and square-jawed, wide-nosed, narrow-foreheaded face. It had to be hinted that in London he was a success. A leading man in his field. A man who would one day operate on a royal personage.

He attacked his meal aggressively, trying not to gaze at Patsy or Brenda, feeling the excitement of the impending marsh, glad to be back. Four whole days, four gumbooted forceps-free days of bliss. A little sailing in his dinghy. A lot of bird-watching. A steady movement of his big, strong legs over squelching paths. Oh, Clump, there is health in you yet.

When this vile meal was over he would introduce himself to this new woman in the bar, he would sum her up over a brandy. Young, surprisingly young. Good thing too.

Over his brandy he said: ‘Well it’s nice to be back.’

‘You’re one of our regulars, are you?’

‘I manage the occasional weekend. Plus the odd week here and there. Odd’s the operative word.’

I must stop saying that, thought Tarragon. Odd’s the operative word. It doesn’t mean anything.

‘I’m Jane Hassett,’ said Mrs Hassett.

‘Clump,’ said Tarragon. ‘Tarragon Clump.’

‘Back again, then, Mr Clump,’ said Mr Crabbe the storekeeper.

She couldn’t be more than thirty. Long neck, bony white shoulders, curved nostrils, green eyes, one thing after another, several of his favourites among them. Cut it out, Clump.

Two young men entered the bar. One of them was vaguely familiar. They ordered pints.

‘Frankly, you want to do something about the cooking,’ said Tarragon.

‘I know,’ said Mrs Hassett. ‘We’ve got a man coming next month. A Frenchman.’

‘Ah, a Frenchman,’ said Tarragon.

‘I hope you won’t mind my asking,’ said the vaguely familiar young man. ‘But you don’t happen to have a vacancy, do you? In the kitchen, I mean.’

‘Well, we do need a vegetable chef,’ said Mrs Hassett.

The whole thing was fixed up in no time, and the vaguely familiar young man bought drinks all round.

‘You’re Tarragon Clump, the kidney surgeon, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘We call ourselves renal surgeons, but yes, I am.’

‘I met you at my cousin’s prediction party. I’m Pegasus Baines.’

‘I thought you were vaguely familiar.’

‘He’s never even been vaguely familiar with me,’ said the other young man.

‘This is my friend Mervyn,’ said Pegasus.

The tall, familiar one had apparently been driving around from hotel to hotel, begging for work.

Tarragon fixed his eyes on Mrs Hassett’s neck and said: ‘His cousin writes a horoscope. Old friend of mine.’

‘I never read them,’ she said. ‘Afraid, perhaps.’

‘Any operations on royalty yet?’ said Pegasus.

‘Not yet,’ said Tarragon.

‘A good year for kidneys, is it?’ said Mervyn.

‘The beer’s good,’ said Pegasus.

Tarragon felt annoyed. These people had come between him and Mrs Hassett. They had disturbed his afternoon.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll be off down the marsh. See if I can see the odd bird or two. Odd’s the operative word.’

Damn!

4

Pegasus sat with Morley and Diana on the back lawn of twenty-three Grimsdike Crescent, Uxbridge, waiting for Sunday lunch. Blackbirds sang, planes flew overhead, and the world stood still, waiting for Sunday lunch.

A faint breeze blew snatches of radio towards them, Two Way Family Favourites, the Critics. We’ve been to see the exhibition of Private Bob Norris of B.A.O.R. 17. I loved the way he captured the, the as it were, the at once transitory and yet eternal beauty of Mavis Bungstock, who lives at ninety-seven, Cratchett Lane, Axminster. She hopes to see you soon, Bob, and could well develop into the Francis Bacon of the 1970s.

They read the Sunday Times, each a different section, having nothing much to say to each other now. Diana was sixteen, still at school and too young for conversation. Morley was twenty-eight, a prematurely elder brother, serious, with slow movements and long anecdotes, a leader writer on a Yorkshire daily, a future pundit.

Pegasus felt nervous. He hadn’t told the family yet, and it would be hard. He was firmly expected to bring Grimsdike Crescent its first Nobel Prize. He wanted to tell Morley and Diana, but couldn’t begin.

‘Come and get it,’ said their father at the french windows.

They went and got it, Pegasus immediately, Morley gradually, Diana deliberately the last of all. There was wine — a rare treat.

‘After all,’ said his father, ‘it’s not often we’re all together.’

Pegasus was irritated by this apology. If the Shah of Persia had been there, what would he have thought? And he was irritated by his own irritation. A bottle of wine was an extravagance.

It had meant financial sacrifices bringing up the children. It had meant frayed carpets, a rusty lawn-mower, Radio Times but no T. V. Times, an old decrepit car. Pegasus felt that it was his irritation, not his father’s apology, of which the Shah of Persia would disapprove. And even now Paula was making love to a man who translated Ogden Nash into Latin. At this moment while Pegasus was chewing Yorkshire pudding she was biting gently at the thick dark hairs on that odious young man’s revoltingly hairy arms, while he mouthed sweet hexameters into her ear.

‘What’s wrong, Pegasus, aren’t you hungry?’

‘I was thinking.’

‘I hope you aren’t sickening for something.’

‘No, mother, I’m not sickening for anything.’

‘Well, anyway,’ said his mother, ‘it is nice, all being together like this.’

‘Quite a family,’ said his father.

‘I think Morley’s gone a lot more dour since he went up North,’ said Diana.

‘My library book’s set in the North,’ said his mother. ‘I can’t get into it. I don’t like sordid books.’ (Murmurs of dissent.)

‘There’s nothing sordid about the North,’ said Morley.

‘Except what the bosses plunged it into in the industrial revolution,’ said Diana.

‘The distinctions drawn between the North and the South are a romantic myth,’ said Morley. ‘We try to see in the North the kind of strength and simplicity we would like to have.’

‘There are some very nice parts of the North,’ said his mother. ‘Your father and I are very fond of Wensleydale, aren’t we George?’ (Uproar.)

‘We’re talking about the real North,’ said Diana.

I must join in. I must say something. I mustn’t put myself at a distance.

‘Anyway this Yorkshire pudding is very good,’ said Pegasus.

How old his mother was, he thought. Shrinking. Hardly more than five foot tall these days. Liable to disappear by 1990 at this rate. Beginning to call him Diana by mistake. She had aged at the same rate as him, and so he had never noticed it. She had been there, busy about the house, not sparing herself, a familiar landmark, twenty-five years older than he was. Now overnight she was old. She was a human being. She had been young. He knew nothing about her.

‘It’ll be warm enough to sit outside,’ said his father.

His father looked a little strained, a little haggard, a little baggy. His father too was very pleased about his scientific leanings.

‘The temperamental differences between Yorkshire and Lancashire people are considerably more radical than the difference between say Pontefract and Bedford,’ said Morley, droning on.

Short work was made of the washing up. It was found to be just possible to sit outside in the deck-chairs, in a sheltered corner of the garden.

They drank their coffee, while all around them the first lawn-mowers of spring whirred, and above them aeroplanes came in towards London Airport bringing carefree foreigners, and over the road Mr Munsford lovingly touched up his repulsive topiary with a very special pair of clippers. Suddenly, in a brief gap between planes, Pegasus took the plunge.

‘I’m leaving my job,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be a chef.’

He was ashamed. The Shah of Persia would never have been so embarrassed about so minor a matter.

‘You can’t mean it,’ said his mother.

‘A chef?’ said Morley incredulously.

‘Good God,’ said Diana.

‘This is a bit late for April fools,’ said his father.

‘I’ve taken a job as vegetable chef in a hotel in Suffolk.’

‘It’s a bit of a waste of a good second in science, isn’t it?’ said Morley.

‘It’s my life.’

‘You had a good career at the institute,’ said his father. ‘Aren’t you a bit of a fool to give all that up?’

‘Mad,’ said Morley.

‘Shut up!’ said Diana.

‘I found it grotesque,’ said Pegasus.

He longed to pass overhead in one of those planes.

‘But the catering trade,’ said his mother, wrinkling the nose of her voice in disgust.

‘You make it sound so sordid,’ said Pegasus.

‘I think food’s a jolly good thing to go into,’ said Diana.

‘You aren’t as old as he is,’ said their mother.

‘And you’re a girl,’ said their father.

It began to pour, a sharp gusty shower. There was a general rush indoors with rapidly folded deck-chairs. The business section of the Sunday Times floated off towards Hillingdon. The rain, which George Baines had not forecast, had saved the situation.

They all disappeared, his father to finish some graphs, his mother to bake a cake, Morley to pack, Diana to go over to Ursula’s to do some French. Pegasus recognized this ploy. He was now expected to do the rounds and be lectured by each in turn. If he didn’t, they would all come to him.

He followed Diana up to her room.

‘Thanks, Di, for backing me up,’ he said. ‘You know it’s rather nice in here.’

‘Naturally.’

She was busy with her face.

‘You like to be at your loveliest when you do your French, do you?’

‘Of course.’

She came up to him with swift movements and kissed him on the lips with her round rather jolly face.

‘You’re a sweetie,’ she said, and then slapped him hard on the bottom and left the room without turning round. He watched her swinging aggressively up the road with her broad hips and slightly muscular white-stockinged Sunday afternoon in Uxbridge legs.

He went out into the corridor.

‘Is that you, Pegasus?’ called Morley.

He went into the bedroom which he shared with Morley when they were both at home.

‘You aren’t doing this on the spur of the moment, are you?’

‘You’re off duty now, Morley. I’m your brother, not a public issue.’

He slammed Morley’s door behind him.

‘Is that you, Pegasus?’ his father called.

His father was at the bedroom window, watching the rain.

‘Have you really thought this out, old chap?’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Pegasus.

‘I wouldn’t like to feel you were wasting your life.’

‘Food isn’t wrong, you know, father.’

‘Well there you are, you see. Times change. Your mother and I can’t quite share your attitude to that. And it’s your mother I’m thinking of, Pegasus. This is a difficult time for her.’

‘Why?’

‘It just is. Take my word for it. Look at this dreadful rain, Pegasus.’

‘M’m.’

‘Well I’m sorry to be such a bore but that’s what parents are like. You’ll be one yourself one day.’

Pegasus went out on to the stairs without asking his father how he knew.

‘Is that you, Pegasus?’ said his mother.

She was busy in the kitchen with her mixture.

‘I hope you’re doing the right thing, Pegasus,’ she said.

‘Food isn’t wrong, you know, mother.’

‘Well there you are, you see. We saw the depression. And your father’s very set on your being a scientist.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, mother.’

‘Your father’s a good, sincere man, Pegasus. And good at his job, too. What he doesn’t know about warm fronts isn’t worth knowing.’

‘I’m sure.’

He saw her sniffing, from habit, to see if he was changing his socks often enough. She always did this. Not that he had antisocial feet.

‘If your father couldn’t forecast this rain, nobody could.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I don’t want him hurt, that’s all,’ said his mother. ‘We want success for you, Pegasus.’

He looked her straight in the face and what he saw there was love.

After tea he drove Morley to St Pancras. They hardly spoke.

He was longing to see Morley off on to his train. There would just be time to go down to Kensington Gardens before it got dark.

‘There’s no need to come on to the platform,’ said Morley.

‘I insist,’ said Pegasus.

He was irritated with Morley. He was irritated with his parents. He was irritated with Diana for not returning before he left. He was irritated with himself. And the showers had given way now to a soft, remorseless rain.

George Baines watched the rain morosely. They’d be returning now, wet and sad and bedraggled, from Brighton and Worthing and Bognor. George Baines saw their reproachful faces as they stood at the bottom of the garden. ‘You were wrong,’ they said. ‘You, with all your scientific apparatus, you were wrong.’

‘Come away from the window, dear,’ said his wife Margaret. ‘You won’t make it stop, you know.’

George Baines came away from the window and sat down opposite his wife.

‘Never mind,’ he said, and then he added, as if he was speaking about some modern phenomenon that he didn’t understand. ‘Food’s on the up and up, you know.’

‘I suppose so.’

George Baines stared at the Constable over the mantelpiece. Looked like a settled spell down there in Flatford.

‘Diana’s late,’ said his wife Margaret.

Diana was kissing Stephen in the back room of number 11, Honiton Drive. Stephen’s parents were in Paris, on business. They were often in Paris, on business. When his elder brother Peter had been left at home alone he had invited no less than sixty-three people to a party. Several of them had been drug addicts. Many had stayed all night, getting to know each other better in various parts of the house and garden. A Vlaminck lithograph had been pressed into service as a drinks tray, with deleterious results, and the crocuses had been trampled beyond recognition. Stephen’s parents believed that you had a moral obligation to trust your children, especially when cancelling a trip to Paris was the alternative.

Diana kissed Stephen’s gorgeous, angelic face. She loved boys with gorgeous, angelic faces.

The rain fell on Tarragon Clump’s bonnet as he drove home along the wet, dreary Sunday roads. He had been to see his family, the Clumps of Gloucestershire. He stopped off at Oxford and went to see a film in a huge, half empty cinema. It was a rotten film but it had Pamela Blossom in it, in scanty attire.

The rain fell on Pegasus as he sat on the seat in Kensington Gardens and watched the light beginning to fade from a dismal, featureless sky. In the distance, beyond the Round Pond, there was a woman. It could be Paula. She was coming nearer, a figure from the fieldcraft manual. At 800 yards Paula was a blur. At 700 yards Paula’s face was a blob, her legs matchsticks. At 500 yards, Paula’s attractive, slightly fleshy legs began to be visible. At 400 yards it was possible to make out Paula’s biteable narrow nose. At 300 yards it wasn’t Paula at all, but an elderly woman in thick, brown stockings.

He closed his eyes and tried to construct a half-dressed Paula in her suspenders. In vain. He tried to feel the old misery, the betrayal, the silent tears. Nothing.

He looked round the park, his oasis even in the rain. Here he was at dusk, drinking at his waterhole, leaving his Saxone hoof-prints in the wet grass. But this scene too aroused no emotion in him any more. He was cured. How sad life was.

He began to walk away, a little ashamed. You wouldn’t catch the Nawab of Pataudi hanging around a seat in Kensington Gardens.

He went into a pub and bought himself a pint of bitter. He didn’t feel like going back to Hampstead yet, if ever.

His flatlet was full of purple-sprouting broccoli. He had meant to devote the evening to it. He had bought three cookery books and had promised himself three hours’ practice a night.

His landlord, Mr Lal, had been furious. ‘What are all these good vegetables doing in my dustbins?’ he had said. ‘Don’t you know that in my country there is famine?’

So the next evening Pegasus had taken plate after plate of cooked vegetables to Mr Lal. Later that evening he had seen Mr Lal taking them to the dustbin.

He’d tried throwing them down the lavatory. It had blocked. The water had failed to run out properly after Miss Yarnold’s Thursday bath. Mr Waller had used the plunger on it, there had been a loud prolonged gurgle, and several pieces of diced parsnip had floated up into the bath. Miss Yarnold had looked embarrassed, as though she felt responsible for them. The plumber, coming to unblock the lavatory, and seeing all the vegetables, had said in surprise: ‘These haven’t hardly been digested at all.’ Mr Lal had gone steadily berserk.

It had all served to dampen Pegasus’s enthusiasm. He was beginning to fall behind. He would persist, but not tonight. He wouldn’t do his three hours tonight.

He took a large draught of beer, as if defying the world.

Simon was giving Paula dinner in his flat. He liked to give her dinner in his flat, after evensong.

‘I wish you’d let me cook for you,’ said Paula.

‘Plenty of time for that when we’re married,’ he said.

Four months. Four months before she was in his fine, manly, hairy arms. Simon knew that she wasn’t a virgin. He had forgiven her.

‘Lovely pâté, darling.’

‘A trifle coarse?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He didn’t like going to her flat and he didn’t like going out too often. Only occasionally did she manage to drag him to the pictures. He didn’t mind the films but he hated the intermissions. He was a merchant banker. Paula had rarely been to church before, but funnily enough she quite enjoyed it. Dark. Cool. Colour high up. Earl Grey Tea and Simon’s dark face bent over a sheet of paper. Small precise writing. Ink, of course.

‘Why Ogden Nash?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well I mean the whole point of Ogden Nash is the funny length of his lines. Isn’t all that lost when you put them in hexameters?’

‘But that’s the challenge. That’s the whole fun of it.’

‘I’m not criticizing. I’m just trying to get your point of view.’

‘Whatever the length of Nash’s lines I must turn each one into a hexameter. It’s a discipline. I’m not trying to reproduce his humour.’

‘No.’

‘I couldn’t, if I tried.’

‘No.’

‘Canon Mulgrave was on form tonight, I thought.’

‘Yes, very good. I wasn’t criticizing, Simon.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if you were.’

There were watercolours of hunting scenes on the walls. Simon hated hunting but liked watercolours of hunting scenes. A small thing, but irritating.

Pegasus drank on, thinking about the Goat and Thistle. She was an attractive woman. She had given him the job without references of any kind. He believed that this was because they had established an unspoken rapport. It looked a nice hotel. And he liked Suffolk. Though presumably she was married.

5

Pegasus arrived to find that he was staying not in the hotel but at Rose Lodge, a little early Victorian lodge cottage at the back of the village, on the entrance to Lord Noseby’s estate. In the car on the way over from the hotel Patsy explained that the staff quarters were full because there was Tonio, the assistant chef, living in and Bellamy the porter and Miss Coward the receptionist and part-time barmaid and also Patsy herself because her aunt had come to stay with them while her uncle was in hospital which looked likely to drag on for some time on account of his liver. Bill Gunter was Lord Noseby’s gamekeeper, but his wife Brenda was Patsy’s co-waitress, so it wouldn’t be like being with strangers.

Brenda Gunter greeted Pegasus warmly. She was a pretty woman with good sharp features, trim legs and a fine figure. She led him up the narrow stairs to his bedroom.

‘I hope this is all right,’ she said, embarrassed, turning red. ‘I was going to remove these books and toys, but I haven’t got round to it yet.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Gunter.’

‘Brenda, please. The bathroom’s straight opposite. You’ll have breakfast here and your meals over at the hotel. Come down and have some tea when you’re cleaned up.’

‘Thank you.’

Left to himself, Pegasus examined his room. It was small, and there was just one window, looking out over a lawn surrounded by masses of roses. There were roses everywhere. The cottage was grasped in innumerable rosy hands, whose colours softened but could not hide its Victorian earnestness.

The ceiling sloped sharply to the right so that there were only about eighteen inches of headroom above the bed on the side nearest the wall. On the other side of the room, where the ceiling was higher, there was a bookcase and three boxes of toys. Pegasus could see a Monopoly set, Snakes and Ladders, stumps and a cricket bat, a lorry, a bus, a few pieces of rail. The bookcase contained Winnie the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, a large number of very worn Biggles books, and three copies of Mr Midshipman Easy.

He went across to the bathroom, apprehensive now. The hot tap was noisy. He had expected to be a part of the hotel, wrapped in its busy ordered life. Now in this cottage he seemed very unimportant, his degree counting for nothing. The late April sky was hostile and windy, with high grey clouds and patches of cold, hard blue. The silence was deafening. When a car went past it was a wound, and a plane was a hysterical gash. He hadn’t realized how much he had been looking forward to seeing the landlady, how much he dreaded meeting the husband she was bound to have.

Soap under the armpits never failed to revive him at least a little, and he felt better by the time he went downstairs for his tea, in the small kitchen-cum-dining-room-cum-living-room. Brenda sat by the electric fire with her legs crossed, revealing a large amount of impersonal thigh, apparently unaware of this. Behind her was an ironing board on which stood a large pile of underclothes.

‘Bill isn’t back yet,’ she said. ‘I think the pheasants must be proving troublesome.’

‘I’m not turning a child out of his room, am I?’ said Pegasus, over his bread and jam and tea.

‘Oh no, that’s all right,’ said Brenda, reddening again, unevenly, blotchily. ‘No. You see, actually, I’m afraid our little boy was killed.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Well it was three weeks ago. We’re over the worst now.’

‘Yes, but still … I mean, are you sure …’

‘That we want to have you? Very much.’

‘Well, er …’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘No. No, I don’t mind.’

‘Have another cup of tea.’

‘Thank you.’

‘He was knocked down by a car. They didn’t stop. He was twelve.’

‘But honestly are you absolutely …’

‘Oh yes. Very much.’

‘Well, then, I … I’m sure I shall be very comfortable here.’

‘I must move all those books and toys.’

After his tea Pegasus sat in his room until it was past opening time. There was nothing else to do, so he glanced at some of the books, imagining the dead boy reading them. He was glad when it was time to go out.

He walked over to the Goat and Thistle, trying not to hurry, wandering round the village in the fading light. A few old houses, one shop, a pub. He hoped she would be alone, and that it wasn’t bad form for employees to drink in the bar.

A bat near him, horrible. Nobody about. The main road, relatively main anyway, hardly any traffic. There was the hotel. Nerves. Quite ridiculous. Excitement. Sex. Gables. Porch. Warmth. Light. Voices. Smoke.

A man was serving, presumably her husband. Slightly fat, big face, strong. Hot temper? Unreliable? Receding hair, ha, ha, sandy in colour. An ex motor cycle enthusiast? It was more than possible.

She entered the bar, slight and lovely. He felt as if he was on a big dipper. He must look casual.

‘You’ve arrived,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’ve arrived.’

‘This is my husband, Tony. Tony, this is the new vegetable chef.’

Greetings. Was he imagining a slight hostility?

He thought of Paula. She seemed so distant now, yet not so distant that he no longer thought of her. He had been to the seat, to say good-bye to it, to put all that behind him.

‘I hope you’ll be all right with the Gunters,’ said Tony.

‘Oh, I expect so.’

‘Brenda’s staff so it won’t be like being with strangers.’

‘No.’

‘They’ve had a spot of bad luck. Did they tell you?’

‘Yes, they did.’

‘Hope you’ll be comfortable anyway.’

Did Tony suspect? Not that there was anything to suspect. Pegasus felt secretly attracted to his wife. He had felt secretly attracted to people’s wives before. It was part of being alive. He had foolishly dreamt that the wife … well, it wasn’t the first time he had foolishly dreamt that a wife … but she wasn’t. They never were. Nevertheless he wondered if Tony suspected anything.

He went home early, not wanting to seem like an alcoholic. Bill was there, short, wiry, grim, quiet, but seemingly benevolent. Like a jockey. He was invited in for cocoa, and felt obliged to go. They switched the telly off, which was a shame. Conversation not too bad, though, despite the dead boy. Facts. Population. Number of pheasants. Brief discussion of rodent life. A short anecdote concerning a badger. Brief character studies of Lord and Lady Noseby. Comparison of country and city life. Not too bad, but what of future conversations when the facts are exhausted? Must go to bed. Rather sleepy. Don’t want to be tired on my first day. Good night.

But sleep wouldn’t come. Everything was too familiar. The dead child was too real. He dreaded his first day’s work. He heard everything, even the sea, two miles away, hissing quietly to itself. At three the wind got up, and bangings and groanings began all over the cottage, magnified by the absence of traffic. The boy sleeping comfortably here in this bed that last of all his nights. At 3.15 a.m. an owl hooted, twice. At 3.17 the rain began, and it was the rain that eventually lulled him into an uneasy sleep.

6

Pegasus felt a sense of helplessness the next morning as he faced up to a great mound of lifeless vegetables. He had to prepare seventy portions of potatoes, forty portions of peas, twenty portions of cabbage, fifteen portions of carrots, ten portions each of parsnips and cauliflower. Vegetables which were not in season had to be unfrozen. There were fearsome slicing and peeling machines such as he had never encountered. Perhaps he ought to have insured his fingers. One day his fingers would be as valuable as Betty Grable’s legs.

The pans and stoves seemed very large after his saucepan and gas ring. Everything looked much more mechanical and less artistic than he had expected. This whole venture was absurd.

He was supposed to have previous experience, and the two chefs, Alphonse and his assistant Tonio, assumed that he knew how to begin. He had to be very careful.

‘I’m not used to machines of this sort,’ he told Alphonse, and Alphonse showed him how to use them. It was easy, really. The vegetables came out just as efficiently for him as they did for Alphonse.

‘I’m sorry. We never used carrots,’ he told Alphonse, after he had cut up some carrots the wrong way.

‘What kind of place have you been working from, with the extreme absence of carrots?’ said Alphonse.

‘A little place,’ said Pegasus. ‘The owner had a thing about carrots.’

‘Was he having the thing also about other foods?’ asked Alphonse.

‘One or two,’ said Pegasus non-committally, in case there should be other disasters.

He got his timings mixed up. Alphonse was cross.

‘I’m not used to these quantities,’ said Pegasus.

‘This place where you work, she was having no customers?’ said Alphonse.

‘Not many. The owner had a thing about customers,’ said Pegasus.

He needed quite a lot of help, he felt a bit of a fool, but lunch passed off without disaster. And no one sent their vegetables back.

He started early on dinner, and it all went much more smoothly. He began to lose his sense of absurdity. Here he was working alongside these true professionals. Alphonse, with his typical French moustache, and his lean, rather crooked, pimply face with a big nose and stick-out ears. Tonio, hairy and Italian, always either singing or swearing. Pegasus began to feel happy. He was too busy to think about Jane Hassett. Tonight he would sleep soundly. Tomorrow he would work still better. Soon he would be a great chef. And he still had all his fingers. He felt that he was coming to life, that he was starting to live his own natural, destined life. He began to sing, but silently, in case they should think him presumptuous.

7

Jane Hassett changed into an expensive, bottle green costume. She dressed swiftly, her movements charged with nervous energy. Her legs, which were so often heavy and lifeless, felt light, seemed eager to play their full part in the day’s activities.

She ran her left hand over her right breast and squeezed the nipple very gently, as if she was reassuring an old friend. The parts of her body often had an independent existence. Often as a child she had been a leg or an arm for several days, without anybody knowing. Never a breast. Not in those days.

Tony was out, gone to Norwich, to see about some new central heating equipment. All lies. Once again there was a woman. She sat down on the bed, lit a cigarette, smoked it urgently, practically devouring it, yet with elegance.

Four months they’d been here, and already it had started up again.

Tony had come into a big legacy last October when his rich Uncle James had been flambeed to death in brandy during a five course meal at an hotel in Berkshire. Tony went away on a business trip to Suffolk and bought the hotel he was staying in. He had said that the least they could do, in memory of his uncle, was to buy a hotel and never serve meals at the table. She had been presented with a fait accompli, as usual.

She had been nervous. She felt she was too thin to be taken seriously. Landladies were fat, autocratic women, with voluminous chins and loud voices, whose false hoarse laughter shook the mock-Tudor beams and set the antique swords rattling on the walls. Yet she had been a success. She thought she could count herself, to date, a reasonable success. It was Tony who had been the failure. Already he was bored. He’d found a new toy, a doll. The lies had begun again. The accusations and scenes would follow.

And it had all begun with a lie. She had seen his entry in the visitors’ book. Mr and Mrs Hassett. So much for his business trip to Suffolk.

She soaked her face-flannel in hot water and applied it to the spot above her lip. She held it there, feeling a sexual excitement in these preparations. Her throat was tickling, the approach of a cold. All his fault. Whenever the lies began she had some minor ailment. It was her system’s way of getting rid of the poison.

She took away the flannel and pressed a finger of each hand against the horrid little pimple. It popped and the white poison shot out. She wiped it off with her flannel. It was Tony. It was her husband, in suppurative form, and when it was gone she hated him less.

That was better. Nothing nauseous about a dull, red excrescence. Ready to go now.

She walked over to Rose Lodge, wondering if Tony had sent the poor boy there on purpose. It was sensible enough, on the face of it. There wasn’t room at the hotel. It would take their minds off their tragedy. And yet she felt sure that it was done in anger. He was annoyed because she had made the appointment on her own. Only he could do things on his own.

Brenda showed her up to Pegasus’s room.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said.

‘Oh good.’

‘Bill likes him.’

Pegasus opened the door and asked her in. She sat in the armchair and he sat in the hard chair. She had never once been unfaithful to Tony.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she said, offering her packet of tipped.

‘No, thanks, I don’t. I should offer you some but I haven’t any.’

‘I just came to see how you were getting on,’ said Jane.

‘All right, thank you.’

‘You heard about their tragedy, I suppose?’

‘Yes. They told me.’

‘They should have removed all these toys and things. It’s embarrassing for you.’

She stood up and went to the window.

‘At least you have a nice view,’ she said, instantly regretting the ‘at least’.

‘Yes. Very nice.’

She turned away from the window and smiled at him. He was still seated. She wanted to touch him. She felt a sneeze coming on, turned away politely, sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ he said.

When she turned round again he looked embarrassed. Why? He seemed tense too, but it wasn’t enough to go on. All this was in her imagination. She was in danger of making a fool of herself.

She sat down and took a deliberate puff at her cigarette, keeping herself calm.

‘Is the bed comfortable?’ she said.

‘Very, thank you.’

She crossed her legs, felt this to be a little theatrical, and uncrossed them.

‘I must say I wouldn’t like having those books and toys there,’ she said.

‘I would be happier if they were moved,’ said Pegasus, ‘but I don’t like to mention it.’

‘No. It’s difficult. Well I’m glad to see that apart from that you’re very comfortable.’

‘Yes. Very. And the view is very nice.’

A hiatus.

‘It must seem quiet after London?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Even with all the planes?’

‘We get those in London too.’

What a conversation! She must go, and it would be quite wrong anyway to use him as a pawn in her battle with Tony. She had never used anyone in that way. He might even be engaged.

‘How did you get on with Alphonse?’ she said.

‘Very well, I think.’

‘We’ve only had him three weeks. He’s very gallic.’

‘Yes.’

She decided it was stupid not to cross her legs, just because if done self-consciously it might seem theatrical. So she crossed her legs. Then she sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ he said, and then he looked embarrassed. Why?

‘If you ever have any problems, let me know,’ she said.

‘Yes, I will.’

She must go. She stood up abruptly and to her surprise found herself not at the door but at the window, looking out over the fields and woods of Lord Noseby’s estate. He joined her there and they stood side by side, looking out over Lord Noseby’s estate. She could feel his body, touching hers ever so slightly, either by accident or deliberately but made to seem like an accident.

‘At least you have a nice view,’ she said.

‘I’m sure I shall be very comfortable,’ he said.

There was a knock at the door. Both of them turned away from the window and returned to their chairs.

‘Come in,’ she said, forgetting it was not her room.

Brenda entered with three cups of coffee and three huge portions of iced chocolate cake.

‘I was thinking you might like some coffee,’ said Brenda.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Pegasus.

‘Very thoughtful,’ said Jane.

The sun came out. Jane as employer sat in the easy chair. Brenda as landlady sat in the hard chair. Pegasus as Pegasus sat on his bed.

‘I hope he likes the room,’ said Brenda.

‘I’m sure he does,’ said Jane.

‘I do,’ said Pegasus.

‘It has a nice view,’ said Brenda.

‘Yes, it does,’ said Jane.

‘Little Johnny liked this room,’ said Brenda.

‘Did he?’ said Pegasus.

They took bites of their cake and washed the cake down with draughts of hot coffee.

‘We must move all these books and toys,’ said Brenda.

8

‘Look after yourself,’ said Bill.

‘Take care,’ said Brenda.

They continued waving until he was out of sight. Where do they think I’m going, he thought. Round the world? All I’m doing is going home for the week-end.

He hadn’t realized what a relief it would be to get away even for two days, away from the nightly cocoa sessions, the constant plans for a picnic, the ‘Wednesday Play’ being switched off the moment he came in, as if it was considered quite unsuitable for him.

He’d taken to reading Johnny’s books, in order to avoid conversation. Rather childish, on the whole, but there were no others. And Bill seemed to expect it. ‘You’ll find plenty of books up there,’ he said.

It was a lovely Saturday morning. Pegasus felt like singing, would have sung if he’d had the talent.

Forget Rose Lodge. Think how well the work’s going. Alphonse likes you. ‘Ah, Pegasus, you and you alone do I entrust to my beloved asparagus’ he had said. ‘You will go on a long road. You are my prodigy. You have the respect for the ingredient.’

On the Ipswich By-Pass Pegasus slowed down as he passed two girls. He opened the window and shouted: ‘I’ll go on a long road. I have the respect for the ingredient.’ The girls giggled.

Nothing had happened with Mrs Hassett. All that had been an illusion. When she came to his room he had been so near to grabbing hold of her, and when she sneezed he had said ‘Bless you’ more like a lover than an employee, but she hadn’t noticed. He had entirely misconstrued her reason for coming to his room.

He was glad, for Paula’s sake, that nothing had happened with Mrs Hassett.

‘I’m sorry, darling. I just don’t feel like going out,’ said Simon.

‘But it’s so nice,’ said Paula.

‘The sun’s shining in the window,’ said Simon. ‘That’s nice, too.’

‘It’s so nice out,’ said Paula.

‘You go out, then, if you want to.’

‘There’s not much point in my coming round to see you if I go out the moment I’ve arrived.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Simon. He was writing, at his desk, in his small neat hand.

‘I tell you what I do fancy,’ said Paula. ‘A bath.’

‘Good idea. Have one.’

Simon’s bathroom was in a different class from hers. Hers was shared.

‘You can have the wireless if you want to,’ said Simon.

Paula thanked him. It was a sacrifice. He didn’t really like exposing his radio to all that steam.

He came over to her and kissed her in that leisurely way of his.

‘We’ll make a real night out of it tonight,’ he said.

They probably would. He was always true to his promises.

‘Do you need the loo before I have my bath?’

‘No.’

He never did. A small thing, but irritating.

Pegasus sat on the seat and closed his eyes.

How could you, Paula?

Nothing.

Oh, Paula, Paula, Paula.

Nothing.

He opened his eyes again and looked out towards the bandstand with its pretty curved green roof. Old men were flying kites. One of the kites was a painted eagle, a lectern in the sky. He couldn’t see the surface of the Round Pond but he could see the miniature sailing boats sliding across the grass. In the foreground were the sharp cries of children. Behind them, far away, restful from this distance, the hum of traffic, like canned music.

Once more he tried to rebuild Paula, but he couldn’t remember her, only his memories of her. Remembrance of Paula past. ‘Paula darling’ meant ‘I remember what a darling you were, Paula, in the days when I used to say to you “Paula darling”.’

There is no one else, Paula. If I no longer have you I have no one.

Oh, Paula, Paula. Nothing.

Tarragon walked happily over the duckboards towards his favourite of all the hides, with the best view of the bearded tits and marsh harriers. He was on his own. Occasionally he brought friends to Suffolk, but never to the bird sanctuary.

There was somebody else there, in his favourite of all the hides. A woman, a square woman.

‘Plenty of beardies,’ said the square woman. ‘Gadwall to port, avocet’s nest straight ahead, three little stint to starboard.’

Damn the bitch. The pleasure of it was finding the things, spotting them in the far distance, pitting your wits against them, forgetting the banalities. The ability to speak was the curse of mankind, and more especially womankind, and most especially of all, square-jawed authoritative womankind.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Don’t mench.’

Damn all square-jawed women. Damn all women. Damn all unsatisfied sexual feelings and all pathetic painful maladjustments. Damn his bloody family, the Clumps of Gloucestershire, and their inhibiting Cotswold seat. Damn all interruptions which spoilt the perfection of the pale filtered sunlight of May by the sea, the magical stillness of a morning without wind, of trees hardly stirring and of mists slowly clearing, and of thin films of white cloud drifting harmlessly overhead.

‘Beardies straight ahead. Quick. To the right. Gone.’

‘Never mind.’

Focus, Clump. Focus on beautiful creatures marred by cruelty but untouched by malice.

There was a great therapeutic calm in the drawing of his binoculars slowly over the stones and puddles and rank grass.

‘Two redshank copulating in line with that upturned rowing boat,’ said Tarragon. He looked the square-jawed woman in the face. ‘Nice morning for it,’ he said.

The square-jawed woman left the hide, and a weight was lifted from him. He had a splendid day, after that. Marsh harriers winging with lazy beats over the marsh, two girls sunbathing on the dunes, swallows and martins swooping and diving, a kestrel hovering, two girls sunbathing, a solitary shoveller flying purposefully towards its mate, two girls sunbathing.

Late in the afternoon, as the wisps of cloud grew thicker and a light wind began to disturb the unnatural stillness, Tarragon set off for the hotel. He began to feel excited. He hurried into a small copse on the edge of the marsh.

Sitting with his back against a tree he had a good view of the hotel. He scanned the upper windows through his binoculars.

I suppose this is voyeurism, he thought, without surprise. A new departure. It was true that he’d often hung around outside underground stations to see the pretty girls returning home from work, and had even followed them, admiring their legs and bottoms, but that was not voyeurism, since it had been his firm intention to speak to them, to invite them to a concert at the Festival Hall, and later to marry them. It wasn’t his fault that it hadn’t turned out like that.

But this was different, looking at girls from the protection of a bird sanctuary, watching out for Mrs Hassett, squinting through his binoculars, 8 × 35, a good magnification for bird-watching and not too bad for voyeurism. He felt ashamed, yet continued. And was rewarded. At 5.45 he saw her, changing in preparation for the evening’s duties. He fancied he could see her breasts—small, neat breasts. He was almost certain that she was applying powder to her armpits. He saw a flash of something pale, her back perhaps, as she twisted into a dress.

‘You find Mrs Hassett attractive, no?’

Tarragon jumped and scrambled guiltily to his feet. He blushed.

‘I startled you?’

It was Alphonse.

‘Yes, you — er — you did. I think there’s a swallow’s nest under the eaves.’

‘Now to me, Mrs Hassett, she has not my sort. She is a little, how you say, not so enough effeminate. A little what I would say Parisian.’

‘I thought I saw a hawk of some kind flying past the hotel.’

‘Me, I like more the country girl, yes? In my native Provence, there they have the roundness, how you say, swollen. Oh, monsieur, you should see them.’

Tarragon had no wish just then to see the swollen girls of Alphonse’s native Provence. He set off towards the hotel, with Alphonse at his heels.

‘The swallows were rather early this year,’ he said.

‘You are a coal mine of interesting information, Mr Clump,’ said Alphonse. ‘I think perhaps my information also to Mrs Hassett and your family will be quite interesting, too.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I see you by the wood. I think “he is up to some bad”. I am very interesting. I watch. I think, this is a man with pictures of the excellent Miss Blossom in his portmanteau.’

‘How the devil …’

‘One of the chambermaids, she is not so discreet. What a shame.’

‘All lies. I shall report you.’

Tarragon stalked angrily to his room and opened his suitcase. His pictures of Miss Blossom had gone.

The rain belt drifted in unexpectedly from Northern France and reached Uxbridge during tea.

‘George,’ said his mother. ‘We forgot to show him Edgar’s book.’

‘Oh yes,’ said his father. ‘You know your Great Great Uncle Edgar lives in Suffolk.’

‘I didn’t even know I had a Great Great Uncle Edgar.’

‘He’s the brother of your father’s grandfather, and he lives in Suffolk. And we quite forgot until the other day that we’ve got a book of his, all about Suffolk.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Suffolk.’

Diana snorted.

‘Well anyway,’ his mother continued, ‘it’s got quite a long passage about your hotel in it.’

‘Big deal,’ said Diana.

‘Well it’s interesting,’ said Pegasus.

‘Oh bloody fascinating,’ said Diana. ‘Far more interesting than Vietnam or the under-developed countries or non-proliferation or neo-Nazism, which is building up in this country too, you know, or you would if you had eyes to see, or whether organized religion has any relevance to modern life, or the function of the artist in a bourgeois, materialist society. Far more bloody interesting.’ And she stormed out, slamming the door.

Try though he did Pegasus thought, thank goodness Tom Graveney isn’t here to see all this.

‘She’s going through a phase,’ said his mother.

‘I’d like to see that book,’ said Pegasus.

His mother fetched it for him. Suffolk, by E. Newton Baines.

‘The Goat and Thistle came by its name in the following somewhat unusual fashion. It was the custom of the vicar, one Arnold Holyoake, M.A., in an effort to combat the robust heathenism of his flock, to visit the tap rooms of the several alehouses in his parish.

‘So easy-going was the nature of the good divine, and so enfeebled his memory, that he invariably forgot the purpose that lay behind his visit. The gentle man of God, therefore, would appear to have learnt more of “Skittle-bowls” and “shove the penny” than his parishioners did of the Almighty.

‘One evening, his habitual amnesia heightened by a moderate consumption of strong liquor, he left his coat at the tavern and, wandering home in his shirt sleeves, had the misfortune to trip over an alder sapling and break his leg. He died of pneumonia but two days later.

‘When the coat was noticed by Mine Host Will Arnscott, an ancestor of the Big Tom Arnscott whose immense cricket hit was referred to on page 623, a small copy of the Bible fell from the pocket and opened at the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians. The inn became known as the Coat and Epistle, a name which soon became corrupted to Goat and Thistle.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Pegasus.

‘I thought you’d find it interesting,’ said his mother.

It was still raining when Tarragon Clump got up on Sunday morning but soon the rain moved out over the sluggish oily sea. Tarragon went down to the river for a sail.

The tide was out, and the river was at its best, secret down there below its rims of mud. Tarragon’s spirits rose. He handled the little dinghy well. He got everything he could out of the wind, the wind and he were friends, his face was salty, he would go back and have a drink in the bar, and invite Mrs Hassett up to London for dinner one evening. There would be time to ask her while she was serving him.

He walked up the lane and then across the heath. Tony Hassett served him.

‘Nice morning,’ he said amiably.

After their Sunday dinner his father suggested a car trip. They went to the National Gallery.

‘Rotten luck that chap Turner had with his weather,’ said his father.

Tarragon Clump had a puncture less than a mile from the hotel. Damn damn damn.

He drove back aggressively, taking it out on the car, sweating freely, cursing the Sunday drivers with surprisingly violent oaths.

Simon and Paula went to evensong. Canon Mulgrave was on form.

Through Brentford and Shenfield and Chelmsford and Ipswich sped Pegasus towards the beckoning sea, past filling stations and drab dead houses, past grimy cafés and fields full of dead old cars, thinking that this time there was no need to feel excited about seeing Mrs Hassett, from now on he would devote himself solely to the learning of his art, and the last thing you wanted to do was to get tangled up with a married woman.

He looked forward to it all. The steady routine, the heat, the moments of furious activity when the orders came thick and fast, the hearty swearing of his colleagues. Alphonse, convinced that all the English were pigs. Tonio, convinced that all the English were pigs. Pegasus, the Englishman who would prove them wrong and one day outshine them both.

So far he had performed only routine tasks, flexing his taste buds. Soon he would create a great masterpiece — his own. He was so eager to get back to work that he didn’t even dread Rose Lodge.

They had some cake for him, and some tinned pears.

‘What sort of a time did you have?’ said Bill.

‘What did you do?’ said Brenda.

‘Tell us all about it,’ said Bill.

There wasn’t much to tell, but what there was he told. They listened as if it was the most exciting story they had ever heard.

‘I expect you were sorry to leave,’ said Brenda.

‘Though glad to get back,’ said Bill.

‘Yes,’ said Pegasus.

‘We’ll have that picnic soon,’ said Bill.

9

Even the faint scratching of his nail on her hand or the touch of her lips rubbed across his had been vibrant and thrilling. It had been lovely to live through that thrill. Now these same gestures were already memories, mere expressions of gratitude. And although he knew that this was how it always was, he asked himself whether his desire had all been an illusion.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

It was broad daylight in her bedroom. The sun shone in through the window. The afternoon was alive with sunshine and the possibility of unexpected window cleaners.

Tony had gone off for the day, ostensibly to an exhibition of ventilating equipment at Earls Court. He had announced last night, in the bar, that he was going. Mr Thomas, the milkman, had smiled at Mr Block the chandler as if he was a ferret let loose in a warren of innuendo. ‘He’ll be ventilating his equipment all right, but not at Earls Court,’ he had murmured. Pegasus had felt angry.

‘Feeling guilty?’ said Jane.

‘Just reflective,’ said Pegasus.

Guilt, you could easily mistake it for guilt. It was a vague sense of absurdity, nothing more. You were in bed, naked together, impelled there by impulses which already belonged to the past. It was impossible to go on without a sense of surprise. And in this case there were added dangers. A married woman. An employer employee relationship.

‘I hope all this isn’t against union rules,’ he said.

‘It’s a productivity bonus,’ said Jane.

‘An incentive.’

Jane sighed.

‘I’m complicated,’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Married, for one thing. And I’m complicated in myself, too.’

‘Well aren’t we all?’

He held her cheek firmly to his, and she shrank away a little, either from his breath or from the patronizing nature of his gesture. This was one of the things Paula had objected to. He had found it delightful and clever that she managed to catch the train, managed to select the right platform, managed to put one foot in front of the other, organized so successfully the circulation of her blood. Paula had resented this.

These things he must not do with Jane. Nor must he think of Paula.

‘In what way?’ he said.

‘I need careful handling.’

‘You’ll get it from me, darling,’ he said.

He fingered her breasts absent-mindedly.

‘I’m glad you came in that day,’ said Jane.

‘I hope you always will be,’ said Pegasus.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It sounded sinister. Like a premonition.’

‘You’re imagining things.’

‘Well there you are, you see. I need careful handling.’

Pegasus had been having a drink in the bar. They had gazed at each other and then they had realized that the gaze was a declaration of intent. Now here they were in bed.

‘What I meant,’ said Pegasus, ‘if I meant anything, is that so far we’ve only done the easy bit. To agree what you want out of sex is easier than agreeing what you want out of almost anything else — unless one of you is some kind of a pervert, of course.’ He ran his hand slowly up her slim, widening thigh, feeling an echo of his past desire. ‘I mean you’d be far more likely to argue over what to have for dinner than about sex.’

‘There’s more choice.’ Her sudden smile was warm, wide and white.

‘Sex only becomes a problem between you when you don’t want it. Then it suddenly seems unimportant what you have for dinner.’

‘You’re very talkative.’

‘I’ve never heard of any totally satisfactory way of behaving after making love. Smoking strikes me as repulsive, falling asleep as worse, kissing as an anti-climax. I become talkative.’

He ran his hands over her gently curved, almost boyish, hips.

‘Why have you been faithful for so long?’ he asked.

‘Well I kept hoping things would get better between us. You do. You don’t let yourself admit that it could possibly be permanent.’

He held her more tightly, as if by hurting her he could convince her of his power to help. Then he let go, sat back and looked at her. She drew her knees up like someone much younger and he held her right knee firmly, enjoying its knobble.

‘I’m frightened of running this place,’ she said.

‘But I think you do it very well.’

‘I’m too thin,’ she said.

‘You’re not thin. You’re slim.’

She was a little thin. Arms, legs, hips. Not thin, but on the thin side. Nice.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

As he kissed her he felt that she was a little stiff and distant. He wanted to get up, to walk outside, to drink fruit juice. He kissed her arm, and drew gently up his nose her particular range of scents, which reminded him of a tin full of broken biscuits and grass, not that he had ever smelt a tin full of broken biscuits and grass. He pulled the sheet over their heads to make a dark secret place, wanting as he did so to watch cricket, to loll against a gate, to drink fruit juice. Feeling as he wanted that he must seek an explanation of her sudden slight stiffness, of her withdrawal symptoms. And as he sought his explanation still wanting, wanting the sun, laughter, fruit juice.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes. Something is. Tell me.’

‘It’s just me, being me,’ said Jane.

‘Tell me.’

‘No. Quick. Talk about yourself. Tell me all about yourself.’

He was astonished at the urgency of her appeal. But he obeyed. It was nice to be told to talk about oneself.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m a fairly ordinary person.’

‘Rub me gently while you talk,’ she said.

While he talked he rubbed her gently. His eyes were looking at the soft white clouds. Part of his mind was thinking solely of fruit juice.

He told her about his Uxbridge childhood. School. University. Nostalgic trivia. Selected anecdotes. Humorous self-deprecation. Himself seeing his own life in a wry light. Paula, the only other woman he had ever slept with. A few snatches of self-truth.

‘Thank you. That’s better,’ she said when he had finished.

‘Good.’

She explained about her symptoms. Something about seeing herself as something outside herself, therefore being a void looking at herself. Undoubtedly true, yet difficult to believe in. Difficult to comprehend the experience.

‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.

‘Of course not.’

There was a knock on the door. They both sat up, alarmed.

‘Are you there, Mrs Hassett?’ came a comfortingly unconcerned voice.

‘Yes. What is it, Patsy?’

‘There’s been a bit of trouble, Mrs Hassett, over light bulbs. There’s two gone and we can’t find …’

‘Just a moment. I’ll come and see to it.’

Thank God. It wasn’t him.

‘Time to get up anyway,’ said Jane. ‘And you’re due back on duty, aren’t you? I’m your employer, don’t forget.’

‘I hope I give every satisfaction, ma’am.’

She jumped out of bed, tip-toed rapidly to her clothes, shy now of her nudity, pale, a few veins showing, her breasts themselves light bulbs, her buttocks superb. She dressed rapidly, kissed him and left the room, locking the door behind her.

Ugh, the necessity for stealth.

This was their bedroom, hers and Tony’s. But he didn’t feel an intruder, perhaps because it was part of the hotel, or perhaps because there were no photos of smiling innocent children on the dressing table.

He began to dress, keeping well away from the window. Mrs Hassett! He repudiated the Hassett. Did this mean that he was repudiating her past life. ‘You won’t accept that my whole life before we met has actually happened,’ Paula had said. ‘You’re jealous of my having a past.’ Unfair. No, it was just that it was Hassett. Now if it was … but he couldn’t think of any name that he would have been happy to find her already bearing.

And he must stop thinking of Paula.

Well, Paula dear, we are free of each other and I see now that it is all for the best. Anyway, Paula, I’m sorry that I was such a bore, sending all those awful unfair letters, and visiting the seat in Kensington Gardens like that, though of course you didn’t know I was doing that. I only hope that you and Simon will be happy, and that his translations of Ogden Nash are coming along well. Correction — I hope that you and Simon will bust up and that he will find it impossible to continue with his translations of Ogden Nash, but that you will find someone else and be very happy. Thank you for everything, and good-bye.

Duck with honey? Jugged woodcock? You would need either a very large woodcock or a very small jug.

The key scraped in the lock and he had to resist the temptation to hide. The door opened. It was Jane.

‘You go downstairs first, looking natural,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’

‘It’s so sordid. Things are going to be a little awkward.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t really think my place is the answer. We shouldn’t broadcast the fact to Brenda,’ said Pegasus.

‘No.’

‘Besides, it wouldn’t exactly be the ideal love nest. Not with all those books and toys.’

‘Not with Wol and Piglet and Eeyore.’

‘Not to mention Major James Bigglesworth, better known to all his friends as Biggles.’

10

Mervyn arrived unexpectedly on the day before the picnic. He came unheralded as always, on the Ipswich bus, just in time to get the last room at the hotel. It was his half-term. He seemed surprised that Pegasus didn’t give up all his duties the moment he arrived. Mervyn was the most demanding of all his friends, and the closest. More a mutual need than a friendship.

Tony was present this week-end so Mervyn’s presence suited Pegasus and Jane. But it was a pity about the picnic. Mervyn was the last person you wanted on an occasion of that sort.

‘Your mind is not over the job,’ said Alphonse, noting Pegasus’s absent-minded attack on the unfreezing of some fresh spinach.

Pegasus made no reply. He was beginning to think less highly of Alphonse. He was uninspired. No finesse. And lazy. ‘Please to open for me a tin of pâté maison. Well, I am not making my own. They are not appreciating it, English pigs.’ Pegasus felt that he had drifted into catering simply because he was French, just as, if he was Panamanian, he’d be Sparks on some rusty coaster. He was just doing a job, rather than expressing his essential Alphonseness. But Pegasus remained outwardly respectful, not wanting to get in the man’s bad books, and be kept on this routine work for ever.

Steam rising, Tonio swearing, trout sizzling. Enter Jane, busy supervising. Hotel moving towards success. All comments favourable. A special smile from Jane, concealed in an ordinary smile. A rising leap in Pegasus, a salmon leaping, hollandaise sauce spawning. Spurt of water. Tiny pains of hot water alighting on face. Part of great band of men and women creating pleasure and sustenance for others. Romantic brotherhood. Three visits to her room now. Ripening summer, rain and sun. Time for a few pints before closing time. Mervyn in good form, happy in his work. Nostalgia. Sudden access of gloom, feverishly dispelled.

Careful feet on cottage steps, exaggerated care of the drunk. Falling into bed. Soon asleep.

Five hours later he awoke, suffering. He had been dreaming. His dreams had begun again.

The dream had been set at the Ministry of Insemination. The official in Room 511 was Cousin Percy. He was seated at the head of a large round table with twenty-four seats. Pegasus sat at the foot.

‘What’s your complaint, Baines?’ said Cousin Percy.

Pegasus felt instantly servile.

‘Well, sir, fifteen years ago I ordered a son.’

‘What sort of a son, Baines?’

‘A test cricketer, sir.’

Cousin Percy consulted a form. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Quite correct. You ordered a test cricketer, who would go in number six, bowl a well-concealed Chinaman, and win the Nobel Prize for left-arm bowling. What is a well-concealed Chinaman?’

‘It’s the left-arm bowler’s off-break, sir.’

‘I see. And what went wrong?’

‘He isn’t what I ordered, sir.’

‘You mean he isn’t a test cricketer?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Fourteen, sir.’

Cousin Percy leant forward, his face stern, his eyes flashing orbs of controlled fury. The room stretched huge and dark in all directions. Pegasus was afraid.

‘You’re not giving him much time, are you, Baines?’ said Cousin Percy.

‘He’ll never be a test cricketer, sir. He isn’t the sort.’

‘What sort is he?’

‘He’s non-co-operative, sir.’

Non-co-operative! Nothing could describe the agony of being a parent to such a child.

‘In what way?’

‘He throws things, sir.’

‘What things, Baines?’

‘Anything, sir.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, sir, just anything.’

‘I meant does he do anything else apart from throw things?’ Cousin Percy was getting annoyed.

‘Yes, sir. He says “sweet and sour pork”.’

‘I don’t see anything so terrible in that,’ said Cousin Percy.

Pegasus felt that he wasn’t explaining it very well.

‘But he says it all the time, sir,’ he said.

‘Oh.’

‘And he’s Chinese.’

‘What’s his cricket like?’

‘He refuses to play. He just throws all the stumps at the umpire and says “sweet and sour pork”. He’s not the sort of thing we had in mind at all, sir.’

‘Fetch him in.’

His wife walked listlessly, her spirit broken. Johnny looked so nice in his school uniform, a round jolly contented Chinese face. He sat on Pegasus’s right, with his mother beyond him.

‘What’s your name?’ said Cousin Percy, not unkindly.

Pegasus had a wild hope that the boy would tell him.

‘Sweet and sour pork,’ said Johnny.

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘Sweet and sour pork,’ said Johnny.

‘What’s your favourite meal?’

‘Sweet and sour pork,’ said Johnny.

‘You see,’ said Cousin Percy. ‘He answers sensibly enough in the end, if you just show a bit of patience.’

Johnny jumped up, picked up his chair, and threw it across the table towards Cousin Percy. It didn’t reach him.

‘Why did you do that?’ said Cousin Percy.

‘Sweet and sour pork,’ said Johnny.

‘Take him away,’ said Cousin Percy.

The mother led the boy from the room, an innocent smile on his chubby little Chinese face.

‘Johnny Chinaman doesn’t always take to cricket all that easily. You haven’t been forcing it down his throat, have you?’ said Cousin Percy to Pegasus.

‘No, sir.’

‘On balance, Baines, I am inclined to think that this is just a phase he’s going through — a phase of being Chinese and throwing things and only saying “sweet and sour pork”.’

‘But, sir …’

‘Yes?’

‘I wanted an English boy.’

‘You aren’t a racialist, are you?’

‘No, sir, I’ve got nothing against the Chinese as a race. Only as my son. It seems so inconvenient.’

‘Are you suggesting that the Ministry has made a mistake?’

Courage, Pegasus.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, it’s possible. Computers are only machines.’

‘I was wondering, sir …’

‘Yes?’

‘I was wondering if the word Chinaman had confused the computer.’

Cousin Percy sat in thoughtful silence for some minutes. His eyes were dark pools, in which his thoughts leapt like trout at dusk. Pegasus could hear a clock ticking high up in the dark, endless room.

‘We’re always ready to admit our mistakes,’ said Cousin Percy at length. ‘But we must be sure. I think we ought to wait and see, and if after another twenty years he still isn’t a test cricketer, file a PXC 138b/9/7c/X3a/111359R for compensation.’

‘But, sir …’

‘If he stops being Chinese, or shows any sign of going in number six, let us know.’

‘But, sir …’

‘Yes, Baines?’

‘Don’t you remember me?’

‘Remember you? What do you mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter, sir.’

‘The week-end is a very good time for sporting activities and you should consider a business proposition very carefully.’

Pegasus knew that he was dismissed.

He stumbled into the door in his confusion. The shock woke him. He was lying on the floor, unable at first to account for the little room in which he found himself. Then he realized that he was at Rose Lodge, that he had been dreaming, that he had fallen out of bed. 6.25 a.m. A fine morning. Birds singing, none of them with hangovers. He sat in the easy chair, feeling sick. They mustn’t begin again, those dreams. There was no need for them, down here.

He began his recovery programme, cold water on the head, liver salts, gradual dressing, one garment at a time, with rests in between, and then some fresh air. With these aids he managed to eat his breakfast without being sick. Bill gave him comics to read, and he felt obliged to glance at them. Bang. Cra-a-ck. Filthy Boche. Stinking Viet Cong. Kids’ stuff. Mustn’t offend Bill, though, not with the unspoken shadow always inside the house, however much the sun shone in.

‘You were late last night,’ said Bill.

‘A little.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to bring your friend with you on the picnic,’ said Brenda. She looked like an air hostess and a hangover was an aphrodisiac.

Oh God, the picnic. Why couldn’t it rain, today of all days?

Before going on lunch duty Pegasus walked in the sun with Mervyn. Insects were humming insectily, larks were singing larkily, and Pegasus said to Mervyn: ‘I’ve got to go on a picnic with my landlord and landlady this afternoon. I sort of promised.’

‘Oh.’

‘There’s no need for you to come.’

‘Oh.’

‘It won’t be much fun. Don’t feel obliged to come if there’s anything you’d rather do.’

‘I’ll come,’ said Mervyn.

They took the picnic things out of the boot and went down a path where the cliffs fell away towards the estuary. Pegasus looked across towards the river winding up its broad, empty valley, white sails in the distance. Beyond the river lay the village and the Goat and Thistle and he longed to be back there now, saw a mirage of himself there. Mervyn made no effort to carry anything.

First they bathed. This raised no serious problems. The water was cold, hard, North Sea water. Then they played French cricket. Bill and Brenda ran around with astonishing verve, falling in the sand, laughing at their own wild incompetence, ungainly, unnatural, urging Pegasus and Mervyn to show similar high spirits.

Then they sank into the sand, exhausted. Pegasus gazed at the long, gradual curve of the sea, the sandy cliffs, fishing boats dotted over the sea, two coasters further out. Suddenly a fistful of sand was hurled over him. Bill and Brenda roared with laughter. Then tea began, slowly at first with tomato and egg sandwiches, gathering pace with sticky buns and chocolate cake, finally overflowing in a riot of jelly and bottles of pop.

‘O’oh. Jelly and bananas. Pegasus’s favourite,’ said Mervyn sarcastically.

‘Jolly good,’ said Bill.

‘Jelly good,’ said Mervyn, and Bill and Brenda laughed.

Pegasus kicked out at Mervyn when no one was looking.

‘Ow,’ said Mervyn, looking accusingly at Pegasus.

‘That’s no way to treat your friend,’ said Bill to Pegasus.

Mervyn grinned. Pegasus fumed.

‘Yum yum,’ said Bill, of the jelly.

Pegasus mumbled.

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ said Brenda.

Pegasus looked helplessly at Mervyn, but there was no help from that quarter.

‘Are you enjoying yourself, Mervyn?’ said Brenda.

‘I’m having the time of my life,’ said Mervyn.

‘Jolly good,’ said Bill, measuring his length on the sand and yawning contentedly.

They all measured their lengths on the sand and yawned contentedly. Above them the sky was blue, with white lines where aeroplanes had been. And the great sea teeming with fish. And beyond it the Baltic. And boats rocking gently on the summer breeze in the Baltic, with the rhythmic waters lapping against their hulls, and the long-legged summer girls. Another fistful of sand landed in Pegasus’s face.

‘Let’s go and dam up a stream,’ said Bill. ‘That’s always fun.’

A quick search revealed a complete absence of streams. They played ducks and drakes instead. Neither Pegasus nor Mervyn could equal the flair shown by their host and hostess.

Then they drove home.

‘Look,’ said Mervyn with mock excitement. ‘Cows.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Bill and Brenda.

‘Horses,’ said Mervyn.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Look, a traction engine.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Look, an Early English church tower.’

Pegasus felt drained by the nervous tension. Silence was even worse than conversation, because it made him fear what would be said next. But at last they were back. The ordeal was over.

‘Thank you very much indeed for a lovely time,’ said Pegasus.

‘Simply super,’ drawled Mervyn, crooking his hand. ‘I haven’t you know, let myself go so much in years.’

‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ said Bill.

Brenda rushed over to the hotel to serve dinner. Pegasus, whose evening off it was, went for a drink with Mervyn. They drove away from the village, into the heart of agricultural Suffolk, away from the sea.

At first they didn’t mention the picnic. Then Pegasus said: ‘I’d say I was sorry I let you in for it, except that you didn’t do much to make things any better.’

‘Can’t you move?’ said Mervyn.

Pegasus hesitated. ‘I don’t like to,’ he said.

‘You mean you like it there?’

‘It’s not that. But, you know, I’m all they’ve got.’

Mervyn bought another round of drinks. The bar was shady and cool. The beer was hoppy, woody, a country beer. Not so many left. The beer at least they could enjoy.

‘By the way,’ said Mervyn. ‘I saw Paula.’

‘Good God, where?’

‘Kensington Gardens.’

Despite everything Pegasus felt a flicker of excitement.

‘With her Simon?’

‘She wasn’t with anyone.’

‘Did she see you?’

‘No. I turned away, for some reason.’

‘How did she look?’

‘I had the impression she was sad. But I’m no judge of women.’

‘No.’

‘I gather you’re having an affair with the landlady,’ said Mervyn.

‘What makes you think that?’ said Pegasus.

‘You,’ said Mervyn.

‘Well yes I am,’ said Pegasus. ‘In a way.’

‘I think I’ll hang around till tomorrow afternoon, if that’s all right,’ said Mervyn.

‘That’s fine,’ said Pegasus. ‘In what way did you think she was sad?’

Mervyn grinned.

Bill and Brenda were still up when Pegasus got home.

‘You’re a bit late, aren’t you?’ said Bill.

‘Well?’

‘It’s becoming a bit of a habit, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve got a friend down here, haven’t I?’

Bill and Brenda gave each other meaningful looks.

‘You think he’s a bad example, is that it?’ said Pegasus.

Brenda nodded, blushing in her blotchy way.

‘I’m not a bloody child, you know,’ said Pegasus.

He ran up the stairs and slammed his door behind him. Downstairs he could hear tears. He picked up Biggles Sweeps The Desert and flung it into the garden.

11

The next fortnight was glorious. Summer burst into flower ready to welcome its longest day. Mr Thomas sang in Welsh as he delivered the milk and remembered the hills. There were bags under his eyes, from too much drinking too late at night. He sang softly as he delivered three pints at Rose Lodge, that great milk-drinking household. Bill was up, shaving, tetchily, bags under his eyes too, off in a few moments to check on those lazy, stupid pheasants, many of whom he talked to by name.

Soon Jane’s mother got up too and complained that it was Wimbledon weather a fortnight too early. Jane’s father grunted, and she went downstairs to prepare breakfast for Jane’s father. It had really been rather unfair of Jane to dislike tennis, thought Jane’s mother. Jane’s father read the Daily Telegraph, while Jane’s mother opened Jane’s letter and commented: ‘Reading between the lines, Jane’s marriage is on the rocks.’ Jane had made a bad marriage. If only she had persisted with her analysis. Angela Curvis had persisted with her analysis, and she had married a barrister. Jane’s mother sighed, and Jane’s father, hearing the sigh, grunted.

Each day the sun rose higher, and twice Mr Thomas had punctures. Each time he found sharp nails in his tyres. The Baineses breakfasted at 8.30 in their Cotswold Guest House, and planned which villages they would visit. Alone in Uxbridge Diana luxuriated in a series of ludicrously eccentric breakfasts. Cousin Percy and his friend Boris ate honey with their rolls on the terrace of their Bavarian hotel. Tarragon Clump rolled back his sleeves and began to operate. He was the master here.

Morley Baines sat in the hot dusty newspaper office with the typewriters clacking and wrestled with his feature. Are dogs intelligent? Morley Baines conducts an enquiry into the canine mind. Stacks of letters from readers.

‘The moment the TV comes on our West Highland Terrier goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up until the end of the epilogue. If that isn’t intelligence I don’t know what is.’

Hot. Pity he hadn’t a car. Holidays soon, to Norway with Tim. Pity he couldn’t go down to see Pegasus this week-end. Pain that Pegasus had not written, nor invited him. Much love in this relationship, well hidden.

Day after glorious day Pegasus helped prepare lunch and dreamt about his future masterpieces. He had a feeling that he would invent the first masterpiece any day now.

Every morning Mr and Mrs Baines drove through the pleasant Cotswold lanes. One morning they passed a particularly pleasant old house and Margaret Baines exclaimed: ‘Oh look, a wedding’ and it reminded them of their own wedding and they didn’t know whether to be sad or happy.

And Tarragon Clump, dressing for the wedding of his sister Parsley, took out the letter in his bedroom in the particularly pleasant old house and read it once again. It was made up of printed letters taken from various newspapers and periodicals in the traditional manner.

‘Dear Mr Clump,’ it read. ‘If I am not receiving £100 before 10 days of this day I am sending then my next letter to Mrs Hassett, your family also. Please to leave monies to that extent withinside the old woodpecker’s nest in the blited oak tree in Blounce Copse beyond the gate with five planks holding to N of copse’.

Tarragon put the letter back in his pocket, thinking that it was all too idiotic to be true. And then in the church he looked at his father, encrusted in eccentric style and benevolent prejudice, a vintage port to whose friendship only those who could identify the year were ever admitted; at his mother, busily idle, proud, domineering, living for the social life that she had entwined around herself in this her corner of England; at his sister Parsley, a long, tall cumbersome girl of thirty-four, all elbows and knees and good intentions, radiant and unembarrassed at the altar with the dull but wealthy Martin Smith-Peters; at his brother Basil, forty, solid, a farmer, with five radiantly dangerous children who indulged in an inordinate amount of outdoor activity and always had at least two broken legs between them. When Basil was two his parents had found a delightfully novel egg cup for him, marked with his own name, Basil. It came in a set of six. The other five were marked Tarragon, Parsley, Mace, Thyme and Sage. But they only had three children.

Tarragon looked at them all in the quiet church and he thought, ridiculous it may be, but I can’t risk their knowing. It would be incomprehensible, absurd, worse than a thumping great traditional scandal. He knew then that he would endure the humiliation, next week-end when he visited Suffolk with his friend Henry Purnell, of depositing £100 in the old woodpecker’s nest in the blighted oak tree in Blounce Copse beyond the gate with five planks holding to N of copse. Of course if there were further demands after that, that would be a different matter.

In the afternoons the sun was really hot and a pall of dirty heat hovered over the city.

‘Our Alsatian always carries my purse when I go shopping. Recently I have suspected our Pakistani shopkeeper of giving me “short change”, but I said nothing as I didn’t want to cause “trouble”. Then last month the dog fell ill and the vet found £14 7s. 9½d. in his stomach. My dog has opened my eyes to the dangers of racialism. Count me among the keenest supporters of our friends from the sub-continent from now on.’

Perhaps it was his fault there had been bad feeling between himself and Pegasus last time. Perhaps he ought to write.

And Pegasus, preparing vegetable after vegetable as the evenings wore on, thought sometimes of Morley and the keen edge of their past affection, and thought, perhaps I ought to write to him, though he hasn’t written to me.

Tarragon Clump excused himself shortly before dinner, left his friend Henry Purnell, the up-and-coming society dentist, walked the half mile to Blounce Copse, found the five-barred gate and the blighted oak, made sure no one was watching, and slipped the money into the old woodpecker’s nest. There was no sign of the Hassett husband that week-end but he couldn’t talk to Mrs Hassett because of his friend. Next time, when he came alone, he would take action.

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