Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

It took me the better part of a day to do, because in between times I had to attend to the various customers who came to buy tubifex or daphnia or buy a tree frog for their garden pond or something similar. I worked on that giant tank with all the dedication of a marine Capability Brown. I built rolling sand dunes and great towering cliffs of lovely granite. And then, through the valleys between the granite mountains, I planted forests of Vallisneria and other, more delicate, weedy ferns. And on the surface of the water I floated the tiny little white flowers that look so like miniature water-lilies. With the aid of sand and rocks I concealed the heater and thermostat and also the aerator, none of which were attractive to look at. When I had finally finished it and replaced the brilliant scarlet sword-tails, the shiny black mollies, the silver hatchet fish, and the brilliant Piccadilly-like neon-tetras, and stepped back to observe my handiwork, I found myself deeply impressed by my own genius. Mr Romilly, to my delight, was ecstatic about the whole thing.

“Exquisite! Exquisite!” he exclaimed. “Simply exquisite.”

“Well, you know what they say, Mr Romilly,” I said. “That a good pupil needs a good master.”

“Oh, you flatter me, you flatter me,” he said, wagging his finger at me playfully. “This is a case where the pupil has surpassed the master.”

“Oh, I don’t think that,” I said. “But I do think that I’m getting almost as good as you.”

After that, I was allowed to decorate all the tanks and all the cages. I think, secretly, Mr Romilly was rather relieved not to have to urge his non-existent artistic sense into this irksome task.

After one or two experiments I always used to take my lunch hour at a little cafe not very far away from the shop. Here I had discovered a kindly waitress who, in exchange for a little flattery, would give me more than my regulation number of sausages with my sausages and mash, and warn me against the deadly perils of the Irish stew on that particular day. It was one day when I was going to have my lunch that I discovered a short cut to the cafe. It was a narrow little alleyway that ran between the great groups of shops and the towering houses and flats. It was cobble-stoned and as soon as I got into it, it was as though I had been transported back to Dickensian London. I found that part of it was tree-lined and farther along there was a series of tiny shops.

It was then that I discovered that we were not the only pet shop in the vicinity, for I came across the abode of Henry Bellow.

The dirty window of his shop measured, perhaps, six feet square by two deep. It was crammed from top to bottom with small square cages, each containing one or a pair of chaffinches, green finches, linnets, canaries, or budgerigars. The floor of the window was inches deep in seed husks and bird excrement, but the cages themselves were spotlessly clean and each sported a bright green sprig of lettuce or groundsel and a white label on which had been written in shaky block letters “SOLD”. The glass door of the shop was covered with a lace curtain which was yellow with age, and between it and the glass hung a cardboard notice which said “Please Enter” in Gothic script. The reverse side of this notice, I was to learn, stated equally politely “We regret we are closed”. Never, in all the days that I hurried for my sausages and mash up this uneven flagged alley, did I ever see a customer entering or leaving the shop. Indeed, the shop seemed lifeless except for the occasional lethargic hopping from perch to perch of the birds in the window. I wondered, as the weeks passed, why all the birds in the window were not claimed by the people who had bought them. Surely the various owners of some thirty assorted birds could not have decided simultaneously that they did not want them? And, in the unlikely event of this happening, why had the “Sold” signs not been removed? It was a mystery that in my limited lunch hour I had little time to investigate. But my chance came one day when Mr Romilly, who had been dancing round the shop singing “I’m a busy little bee”, suddenly went down into the basement and uttered a falsetto screech of horror. I went and peered down the stairs, wondering what I had done or left undone.

“What’s the matter, Mr Romilly?” I asked cautiously.

Mr Romilly appeared at the foot of the stairs clasping his brow, distraught.

“Stupid me!” he intoned. “Stupid, stupid, stupid me!”

Gathering from this that I was not the culprit, I took heart.

“What’s the matter?” I asked solicitously.

“Tubifex and daphnia!” said Mr Romilly tragically, removing his spectacles and starting to polish them feverishly.

“Have we run out?”

“Yes,” intoned Mr Romilly sepulchrally. “How stupid of me! What negligence! How very, very remiss of me. I deserve to be sacked. I really am the stupidest mortal...”

“Can’t we get some from somewhere else?” I asked, interrupting Mr Romilly’s verbal flagellation.

“But the farm always sends it up,” exclaimed Mr Romilly, as though I were a stranger in need of an explanation. “The farm always sends up the supply when I ask for it, every weekend. And I, crass idiot that I am, never ordered any.”

“But can’t we get it from somewhere else ?” I asked.

“And the guppies and the sword-tails and the black mollies, they so look forward to their tubifex,” said Mr Romilly, working himself into a sort of hysterical self-pity. “They relish it. How can I face those tiny pouting faces against the glass? How can I eat my lunch while those poor little fish...”

“Mr Romilly,” I interrupted firmly. “Can we get some tubifex from somewhere other than the farm?”

“Eh?” said Mr Romilly, staring at me. “Other than the farm? But the farm always sends... Ah, wait a bit. I see what you mean... Yes...”

He climbed laboriously up the wooden stairs, mopping his brow, and emerged like the sole survivor of a pit disaster. He gazed round him with vacant, tragic eyes.

“But where?” he said at last, despairingly. “But where?”

“Well,” I said, taking the matter in hand. “What about Bellow?”

“Bellow? Bellow?” he said. “Most unbusinesslike chap. He deals in birds. Shouldn’t think he’d have any.”

“But surely it’s worth a try?” I said. “Let me go round and see.”

Mr Romilly thought about it.

“Alright,” he said at last, averting his face from the serried ranks of accusing-looking fish, “take ten shillings out of petty cash, and don’t be too long.”

He handed me the key and sat down, gazing glumly at his highly polished shoes. I opened the tin petty cash box, extracted a ten shilling note, filled in a petty cash slip — “IOU 10/— Tubifex” — and slipped it into the box, locked it, and pushed the key into Mr Roniilly’s flaccid hand. A moment later I was out on the broad pavement, weaving my way through the vacant-eyed throng of shoppers, making my way towards Bellow’s shop, while the mountainous red buses thundered past with their gaggle of attendant taxis and cars. I came to the tiny alleyway and turned down it, and immediately peace reigned. The thunder of buses, the clack of feet, the honk and screech of cars became muted, almost beautiful, like the distant roar of the surf. On one side of the alley was a blank soot-blackened wall; on the other, the iron railings which guarded the precious piece of ground that led to the local church. Here had been planted — by someone of worth — a rank of plane trees. They leant over the iron railings, roofing the alley with green, and on their mottled trunks looper caterpillars performed prodigious and complicated walks, humping themselves grimly towards a goal about which even they seemed uncertain. Where the plane trees ended the shops began. There were no more than six of them, each Lilliputian in dimensions and each one forlornly endeavouring.