Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

The others, this not having been explained to them, looked slightly puzzled.

“You mean he makes a really good groundnut chop?” I inquired.

“Yes,” said Martin, “best I’ve ever tasted anywhere .”

Goundnut chop could only be described as a sort of Irish stew made with whatever meat was available and covered in a heavy sauce of crushed peanuts, served with a whole mass of tiny side dishes which the Africans called “small, small tings”. It could be delicious or it could be a disaster.

“Well, if Jesus can do the groundnut chop,” I said, “Pious is awfully good at doing the small, small things. So that settles that as the main course.”

“What confection can we have as a sweet?” enquired Robin. We thought for a moment and then looked at each other. “Well, really,” said Mary despairingly, “I think we’ll have to fall back on the old stand-by.”

“I know,” said McGrade, “flute salad.”

Flute salad was an inevitable part of our diet — so called because of the African’s inability to pronounce “f” and “r” together without lisping.

“Yes, I suppose it will have to be,” said Robin dismally.

“There are several quite nice fruits at the moment,” said Mary, “I think we could make something rather special.”

“Excellent,” I said, “now the whole thing is settled.”

“Then drinks and coffee on the veranda and we’ll get the old bastard into bed as quickly as possible,” said McGrade.

“I do hope,” said Martin earnestly, “that you will not drink too much and become your unpleasant Irish self. That could undo the whole evening.”

“I shall be a model of propriety,” said McGrade. “You’ll be able to see my halo very clearly shining over my head as I tell him about all the bridges that have fallen down and all the roads that need to be repaired.”

“Don’t say anything like that,” said Martin, “after all, I will have just been showing him how beautifully the place is run.”

“One often wonders,” said Robin pensively, “how England ever kept her Empire going if the English carried on in the imbecile way that we have been carrying on to-night. Anyway, I’m going back to chop and to attend to my candelabras.”

He got to his feet and wandered off, then suddenly rematerialised.

“By the way,” he said, “I haven’t got a white tie and tails. Does it really matter?”

“Oh no,” said Martin, “no, no, but if you come in a jacket and tie, after the first five minutes we all get so hot that we have to take them off. Just as long as you come in them, that’s the important thing.”

Oh, God, I thought. The only tie I possessed at that time was sitting in a suitcase some three hundred miles away. Still, that was a minor problem, which I dealt with the following morning.

When Pious brought me my sustaining early morning cup of tea and I had removed one squirrel, four mongooses and a baby chimpanzee from my bed — which they shared with me, from their point of view, out of love and affection but from my point of view simply because I didn’t want them to catch chills — I told Pious to go down to the market and buy me a tie.

“Yes, sah,” he said, and, having organised the rest of the staff about their duties, he strutted off into town to return some time later with a tie that was so psychedelic that I felt it would have a detrimental effect on the D.C.’s eyesight. However, Pious assured me that it was the quietest tie in the market and I tried to take his word for it.

Needless to say, the next couple of days were very trying on everybody’s nerves. McGrade, being very proud of his roads and bridges, had noticed to his horror that the drive up to Martin’s house had several large pot-holes in it and so he had borrowed all the convicts from the local jail to fill these in and regravel the whole drive so that the entrance began to look like a medium-sized but extremely elegant country house. I had gone down to see my old man, Joseph, and persuaded him to smoke the two porcupines for me, and I also contacted my hunter who promised that the day before the D.C.’s arrival he would go into the forest and get what flowers he could. Robin had ransacked the United Africa Company’s stores but was in despair at not being able to produce anything of real merit, for as the boat had been unable to go up-river he was running low on the sort of esoteric delicacies that we thought worthy of a D.C. However, his pride was immense when he announced to us that he had discovered — and God knows why they were there in the first place — three small tins of caviar which were left over from his predecessor.

“I don’t know what they’ll be like,” he said, looking at them glumly. “They must have been here at least three years. We’ll probably all die of ptomaine poisoning, but anyway it’s caviar.”

Mary, very cleverly, having discovered that Martin’s house did not contain a single vase for flower arrangements, had gone down to the market and bought five rather elegant calabashes. She had also worked out fifteen ways of trying to make soufflés with the aid of Jesus, all of which were totally impracticable and which we had to crush unmercifully underfoot.

As Pious was spending most of his time up at Martin’s house, I felt secure since I knew that he would do the job perfectly, even if it meant assaulting Jesus’ feelings.

The evening before the D.C.’s arrival we had another council of war to check on all our various activities, and everything appeared to be running like clockwork. The porcupines had been smoked and smelt delicious even though they were uncooked. My hunter friend had come back with an enormous array of forest orchids and plants which Mary was keeping in her lavatory as it was the coolest part of her house. As an experiment, we opened one of the tins of caviar and it proved to our surprise to be edible, and Robin had also unearthed a packet of small biscuits. This, together with peanuts, we felt, would be suitable for the drinks before dinner. Robin’s candelabras turned out to be extremely elegant pieces of brasswork, polished and gleaming, that would grace any dining-room. I coveted them myself. He also had sufficient candles, as McGrade sagely observed, to light up the whole of Vatican City.

We had all thrown ourselves into these tasks, partly because of our affection for Martin but also rather like children at Christmas time. I was probably the only one who had any excitement each day because I never knew what strange habit I might observe among my animals but, by and large, the others led dull, routine lives in a most unpleasant climate. So, although we all pretended that the arrival of the D.C. was a terrible bore and kept piling curses on his head, we all really rather enjoyed ourselves. That is, with the exception of Martin, who looked more and more shaky as the day approached.

When the fatal day actually arrived we were all quite casually standing under a sour-sour tree which commanded a convenient view of the entrance to Martin’s residence. We all talked nervously about animal behaviour, the rising cost of manufactured cloth, the difficulty of building a bridge, and Mary gave us a long lecture on the art of cookery. Nobody listened to anybody else for we were waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the D.C.

At last, to our immense relief, his large and elegant car arrived, swept up the drive and came to a halt in front of the house.

“By God, those pot-holes held,” said McGrade. “I was worried about them.”

We saw Martin come out and the D.C. emerged from his car. From a distance he looked like a small caterpillar emerging from a large black cocoon. Martin looked immaculate. Then he ushered the D.C. into the house and we all heaved sighs of relief.