Gerald Durrell: Rosy Is My Relative

Mrs. Dredge pushed open the door and leant against it, gasping with all the vigour of a leviathan that had just zoomed up from several hundred fathoms. She was large-boned, like one of the better varieties of Shire horse, and on this stalwart framework there hung great, soft, voluptuous rolls of avoirdupois. A buttress-work of stays, linen and rubber was required to keep this bulk under control, so Mrs. Dredge’s body creaked and groaned alarmingly with each breath she took. Her black hair was piled high on her head and nailed in place with a forest of pins and round her massive neck hung a vast array of necklaces and pendants that tinkled and clattered as her massive bosom heaved.

This early morning appearance of Mrs. Dredge threw Adrian into a panic. What awful crime, he wondered, had he committed now? He distinctly remembered having wiped his boots last evening when he came in, so it could not be that. Had he forgotten to put the cat out? No, it could not be that. Had he cleaned the bath?

“Do . . . er . . . do you want to see me?” asked Adrian, thinking as he said it what a fatuous question it was. Mrs. Dredge would hardly have dragged her blubbersome body up three flights of stairs unless she had wanted to see him. However, such is the art of conversation in England, Mrs. Dredge admitted that, yes, she had wanted to see him. She then proceeded to wrinkle up her nose and upper lip and sniff loudly and ferociously, so that her well-developed moustache quivered.

“You ’aven’t, I ’ope, Mr. Rookwhistle, been smoking in ’ere?” she enquired ominously.

“No, no. Good heavens, no,” said Adrian, wondering if he had hidden his pipe successfully from those prying, black-currant eyes.

“I’m glad,” said Mrs. Dredge, giving a great sigh that produced the most musical creakings from her scaffolding. “Mr. Dredge never smokes in the ’ouse.”

Quite early on in his association with Mrs. Dredge, Adrian had learnt that her husband was dead (presumably smothered, Adrian imagined). But Mrs. Dredge, being a firm believer in the after-life, always referred to him as if he were still in residence. It was confusing, and one of Adrian’s private nightmares was that one day he would suddenly come face to face with Mr. Dredge—perhaps neatly stuffed with horse-hair and with glass eyes—occupying a position in the hall on the landing.

“I come up to call you,” Mrs. Dredge went on, “in case you ’ad slept in.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” said Adrian.

This sudden and unprecedented solicitude puzzled Adrian considerably.

“Also,” Mrs. Dredge said, fixing her little black eyes on him accusingly, “there’s a letter for you.”

Of all the things that Adrian might have expected Mrs Dredge to say, this was the least likely. Never, since the death of his mother and father, had he received a letter from anyone. What few friends he had were living in such close proximity to him that there was no need to communicate by letter.

“A letter? Are you sure, Mrs. Dredge?” asked Adrian, bewildered.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dredge firmly, “a letter addressed to you,” and added, as if to remove any doubt, “in an envelope.”

Adrian stared at her. Mrs. Dredge coloured and bridled under his glance.

“Mr. Dredge,” she said haughtily, “receives any number of letters, so I ’opes I knows what one looks like.”

“Oh yes, yes, I’m sure,” said Adrian quickly, “but how extraordinary. I wonder who’s writing to me? Thank you very much, Mrs. Dredge, for coming up to tell me. You really needn’t have bothered.”

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Dredge regally, swivelling her bulk round so that she faced more or less in the direction of the stairs. “Mr. Dredge always says you should do unto your neighbour the same as what ’e would do to you, only you’re given the chance and ’e probably isn’t.”

With these words she creaked heavily down the stairs, and Adrian closed the door and resumed his pacing. Who on earth, he wondered, could be writing to him? As he put on his collar and tie and shrugged himself into his coat he came to the conclusion that the only people who would waste a halfpenny stamp on him were Bindweed, Cornelius and Chunter, informing him that they no longer required his services. Full of foreboding he clattered downstairs and into the kitchen. Mrs. Dredge was performing her daily all-in wrestling match with saucepans, frying-pans and various other kitchen utensils which most women seem to regard as friends but which Mrs. Dredge regarded as the serried ranks of an implacable enemy. Adrian sat down and there, next to his plate, was an envelope with his name and address dearly written in a neat, bold copperplate hand. Mrs. Dredge waddled over from the stove, clasping in one large hand a frying-pan containing the incinerated remains of three quarters of a black pudding which she shovelled on to Adrian’s plate. They both coughed rather furtively over the pale blue smoke that rose from it.

“Mr. Dredge likes black pudding,” said Mrs Dredge with a faintly defensive air.

“Did he? I means does he?” said Adrian, stirring the charred remains on his plate with his fork. “I expect it’s awfully good for one.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dredge with satisfaction, “it’s what kept ’im going.”

Adrian inserted a forkful of red hot, tasteless, leather-like substance into his mouth, and tried to compose his features into an expression of delight.

“Good, eh?” said Mrs. Dredge, who was watching him like a hawk.

“Delicious!” said Adrian, who had burnt his tongue severely. Mrs. Dredge sat down heavily, and rested her massive bosom on the table-top.

“Well,” she asked, her little black eyes fixed on the letter, “aren’t you going to open it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Adrian, who had been overcome with reluctance to open the letter at all, “in a minute. This black pudding is really excellent, Mrs. Dredge.”

But Mrs. Dredge was not going to be led aside by any gastronomic exchanges.

“It might be important,” she said.

Adrian sighed and picked up the envelope. He would get no peace from Mrs. Dredge until he had read the letter and divulged its contents to her. Aware of her eyes upon him, he tore the letter open and unfolded the two sheets of paper it contained.

The very first words riveted his attention, for it began: “My dear Nephew.” He dimly remembered that when he was ten years old or so, his Uncle Amos had arrived, unheralded, at the vicarage accompanied by three morose-looking Collie dogs and a green parrot, whose command over the shorter and more virulent words in the language was complete.

He remembered his uncle as being a kindly and exuberant man, whose unannounced arrival and the linguistic abilities of whose parrot had tried even the Reverend Sebastian’s Christian charity to breaking point After staying a couple of days, Uncle Amos had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived. His father had told him later that Uncle Amos was the black sheep of the family, “lacking in moral fibre,” and as the subject was obviously painful. Adrian had never mentioned his uncle again.

He now read his uncle’s letter with staring eyes and a sinking sensation that convinced him that his entire stomach, including the black pudding, had been suddenly and deftly removed.

“MY DEAR NEPHEW,

You probably will not recall the occasion when, some years ago, I made your acquaintance at the rather repulsive vicarage which your father and mother insisted on inhabiting. Since then I have learnt of their demise—not, I must confess, with any great sorrow since, in the conversations I have had with both your parents over the years they always gave me to understand that their one desire in life was to leave it and be enfolded in the bosom of the Lord. However, these circumstances make it appear that you are my only living relative. From what I remember of you, you seemed a nice enough boy at the time, though whether in the intervening years your parents have managed to fill your head with a lot of flim-flam and nitty-water I have no way of knowing.