Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

“Colonel Anstruther?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes,” he said. “Who’s that? Who’s that?”

“It’s, um..., my name is... Durrell,” I said. “I met you on the bus the other evening. You were kind enough to help me catch up my terrapins.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes. How are the little chaps?”

“Fine,” I said. “They’re... they’re doing fine. I wondered if, perhaps, I could... take you up on your kind offer of coming round to see you?”

“But of course, my dear chap. Of course!” he said. “Delighted! Delighted! What time will you be here?”

“Well, what time would be convenient?” I asked.

“Come round about six-thirty,” he said; “come to dinner.”

“Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

Bell Mews, I discovered, was a short, cobbled cul-de-sac with four small houses on each side. What confused me to start with was that I did not realise that the Colonel owned all four houses on one side which he had knocked into one, and he had, with a brilliant display of the military mind, labelled each door “ 47”. So after some moments of confusion I finally knocked on the nearest door marked “ 47” and waited to see what would happen. While I waited I reflected upon the stupidity of having four houses in a mews a hundred feet long all labelled “ 47”, and if it came to that, where were all the other numbers? They were presumably scattered round the various roads and other similar mews in the vicinity. The postman’s lot in London, I felt, must be a very unhappy one.

At that moment, the door marked “ 47” that I had knocked on was flung open and there stood the Colonel. He was dressed, to my consternation, in a bottle-green velvet smoking jacket with watered silk lapels, and he brandished in one hand a carving knife of prodigious dimensions. I began to wonder whether I had been wise to come after all.

“Durrell?” he said inquiringly, screwing his monocle into his eye. “By Jove, you’re punctual!”

“Well, I had a little difficulty,” I began.

“Ah!” he said. “The forty-seven foxed you, did it? It foxes them all. Gives me a bit of privacy, you know. Come in! Come in!”

I edged my way into the hall and he closed the door.

“Good to see you,” he said. “Come along.”

He led the way, at a brisk trot, through the hall, holding the carving knife in front of him as though leading a cavalry charge. I had a brief glimpse of a mahogany hatstand and some prints on the wail, and then we were in a large, spacious living-room, simply but comfortably furnished, with piles and piles of books everywhere and colour reproductions on the walls of various military uniforms. He led me through this and into the large kitchen.

“Sorry to rush you,” he panted. “But I’ve got a pie in the oven and I don’t want it to get burnt.”

He rushed over to the oven, opened it and peered inside.

“Ah, no, that’s alright,” he said. “Good... good.”

He straightened up and looked at me.

“Do you like steak and kidney pie?” he inquired.

“Eh, yes,” I said, “I’m very fond of it.”

“Good,” he said. “It’ll be ready in a moment or two. Now, come and sit down and have a drink.”

He led me back into the living-room.

“Sit you down, sit you down,” he said. “What’ll you drink? Sherry? Whisky? Gin?”

“You, er..., haven’t got any wine, have you?” I said.

“Wine?” he said. “Yes, of course, of course.” He got out a bottle, uncorked it, and poured me a glass full of ruby red wine which was crisp and dry. We sat chatting, mainly about terrapins, for ten minutes or so and then the Colonel glanced at his watch.

“Should be ready now,” he said, “should be ready. You don’t mind eating in the kitchen, do you? It saves a lot of mucking about.”

“No, I don’t mind at all,” I said.

We went into the kitchen and the Colonel laid the table; then he mashed some potatoes and heaped a great mound of steak and kidney pie onto them and put the plate in front of me.

“Have some more wine,” he said.

The steak and kidney was excellent. I inquired whether the Colonel had made it himself.

“Yes,” he said. “Had to learn to cook when my wife died. Quite simple, really, if you put your mind to it. It’s a wonder what you can do with a pinch of herbs here and there, and that sort of thing. Do you cook?”

“Well, in a rather vague sort of way,” I said. “My mother has taught me various things, but I’ve never done it very seriously. I like it.”

“So do I,” he said. “So do I. Relaxes the mind.”

After we had finished off the steak and kidney pie he got some ice-cream out of the fridge and we ate that.

“Ah,” said the Colonel, leaning back in his chair and patting his stomach, “that’s better. That’s better. I only have one meal a day and I like to make it a solid one. Now, how about a glass of port? I’ve got some rather good stuff here.”

We had a couple of glasses of port and the Colonel lit up a fine thin cheroot. When we had finished the port and he had stubbed his cheroot out, he screwed his monocle more firmly in. his eye and looked at me.

“What about going upstairs for a little game?” he asked.

“Um..., what sort of game?” I inquired cautiously, feeling that this was the moment when, if he was going to, he would start making advances.

“Power game,” said the Colonel. “ Battle of wits. Models. You like that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“Um..., yes,” I said.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Come on.”

He led me out into the hall again and then up a staircase, through a small room which was obviously a sort of workshop; there was a bench along one side with shelves upon which there were pots of paint, soldering irons, and various other mysterious things. Obviously the Colonel was a do-it-yourselfer in his spare time, I thought. Then he threw open a door and a most amazing sight met my gaze. The room I looked into ran the whole length of the house and was some seventy to eighty feet long. It was, in fact, all the top rooms knocked into one of the four mews houses that the Colonel owned. The floor was neatly parqueted. But it was not so much the size of die room that astonished me as what it contained. At each end of the room was a large fort made out of papier mâché. They must have been some three or four feet high and some four or five feet across. Ranged round them were hundreds upon hundreds of tin soldiers, glittering and gleaming in their bright uniforms, and amongst them there were tanks, armoured trucks, anti-aircraft guns and similar things. There, spread out before me, was the full panoply of war.

“Ah,” said the Colonel, rubbing his hands in glee, “surprised you!”

“Good Lord, yes!” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many toy soldiers.”

“It’s taken me years to amass them,” he said, “years. I get ’em from a factory, you know. I get ’em unpainted and paint ’em myself. Much better that way, Get a smoother, cleaner job... More realistic, too.”

I bent down and picked up one of the tiny soldiers. It was quite true, what the Colonel had said. Normally a tin soldier is a fairly botchy job of painting, but these were meticulously done. Even the faces appeared to have expression on them.

“Now,” said the Colonel. “Now. We’ll have a quick game — just a sort of run-through. Once you get the hang of it we can make it more complicated, of course. Now, I’ll explain the rules to you.”

The rules of the game, as explained by the Colonel, were fairly straightforward. You each had an army. You threw two dice and the one who got the highest score was the aggressor and it was his turn to start first. He threw his dice and from the number that came up he could move a battalion of his men in any direction that he pleased, and he was allowed to fire off a barrage from his field guns or anti-aircraft guns. These worked on a spring mechanism and you loaded them with matchsticks. The springs in these guns were surprisingly strong and projected the matchsticks with incredible velocity down the room. Where every matchstick landed, in a radius of some four inches around it, was taken to be destroyed. So if you could gain a direct hit on a column of troops you could do savage damage to the enemy. Each player had a little spring tape measure in his pocket for measuring the distance round the matchstick.