Ostrich Country

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‘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.