Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

“You see, sur,” he confessed, blushing slightly. “I think she’s bloody wonderful. ’ Ur knows I do; ’ ur knows I want to marry ’ ur . But ’ ur won’ let me do it, sur. Not no which way. But ’ ur durn’t want me to do it with anyone else, see? Not tha’ I want to, understand? But what I say is, either she do it wi’ me, or I does it wi’ some’un else. Fair’s fair, sur, don’ you think?”

“She thinks abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” I said, and regretted it when he gave me a reproachful look.

“It’s no jokin’ matter, stir. It’s gettin’ me down, “onest. I wunnered if thur was anythin’ in your book, like, I could give ’ ur to read? Sort of, well . . . encourage ’ ur, I suppose.”

“I’ll lend you the volume on sexual education and abstinence,” I promised. “Though I don’t guarantee the results.”

“Of course not, sur. I unnerstand,” he said. “I jus’ want somethin’ to git ’ ur started, like.”

So I lent him volume six.

Next, I was approached by the auburn-haired Michael. He had exactly the same problem with his girl-friend. I reflected that we were supposed to live in a promiscuous and permissive society, and yet everyone in the hotel seemed to behave like early Victorians. Certainly the girls appeared to cling to their maidenheads with the tenacity of limpets.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in the queue, Michael,” I said. “I have just lent the volume you want to David.”

“Oh, him. Sure, he’s a bloody wash-out,” said Michael. “I didn’t even know he had a girl. He doesn’t even look as though he’d the strength for a pee, let alone anything else.”

“Well, he has a girl, and he’s suffering just as you are. So, show some sympathy.”

“It’s sympathy I’m needing,” he replied. “This girl’s driving me mad. She’s ruining me health. Even me religion is suffering and that’s a terrible thing to do to an Irishman.”

“How is she affecting your religion?” I asked, astonished by this revelation.

“Sure, an’ I’ve nothing to confess,” he said, indignantly.”And Father O’Malley won’t believe me. The other day, he asked me what I had to confess, and when I said ‘nothing, Father’, he told me to say fifty Hail Marys for lying. The shame of it!”

“I’ll give you the book the moment I get it back,” I promised. “With luck, it might help you and David.”

How was I to know that they were courting the same girl, since neither of them knew it either?

I had been for a walk along the cliffs, visiting that monstrously macabre monument to bad taste, the Russell Coates Museum and Art Gallery, and was taking my short-cut back into the hotel when I came upon an arresting tableau. Michael and David faced each other, each puce in the face, Michael with a bleeding nose and David with a cut on his forehead, being held back from attacking each other again by the rotund chef and his second-in-command. Face downwards on the ground lay my precious copy of Havelock, and nearby lay the trampled, blood-stained chef’s hat and the wickedly sharp meat cleaver. I rescued my book as the two antagonists still strained to get at each other and yelled abuse. I gathered, from the in-coherent mouthings of both of them, that Michael had been shown Havelock by his girl-friend and, knowing it could only have come from one source, had laid in wait for David and chased him with the meat cleaver. David, being agile, had dodged the cleaver, hit Michael on the nose, and run for it. Michael had flung a bottle at him and hit him on the forehead. Before they could get to grips, however, they had been pulled apart by the two chefs.

“Don’t you think you are behaving stupidly?” I enquired.

“Stupidly?” roared Michael. “With that creeping Protestant toad giving filthy books to my Angela!”

“ Your Angela!” snarled David. “ ’ Ur ’s not your Angela; ’ ur ’s as good as said she’ll marry me. An’ it’s not a filthy book, neither. It’s Mr Durrell’s.”

“She wouldn’t marry you, you Protestant carrion. And if that’s not a filthy book, may I never breathe again,” said Michael. “If you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, Mr Durrell, you ought to feel a wave of shame, so you ought, at having helped this conniving bastard to try and despoil one of the fairest and daintiest girls I’ve ever seen outside Ireland . May God strike me dead if it’s not the truth.”

“But you wanted to borrow the book to give to Angela yourself,” I pointed out.

“Sure! An’ it’s all right for me; I’m her fiancé,” said Michael.

I knew better than to argue with Irish logic.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t mind you fighting and killing each other; that’s your affair. You’re both equally guilty, since you both wanted the book for the purpose of getting Angela to bed. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I will not have my property flung about like this. If I report this to the manager, then you’d both get the sack and neither of you would be able to many Angela. Anyway, I don’t think either of you stand a chance. I saw her out at dinner last night with Nigel Merryweather.”

Nigel was a handsome young director of the hotel.

“Nigel Merryweather?” said Michael. “That swine! What’s she doin’ with him?”

“Merryweather?” said David. “She said ’ ur didn’t like ’im.”

“Yes,” agreed Michael. “She said he made her feel sick.”

“Well, there you are,” I concluded. “It looks as though you’ve both had it.”

“That settles it,” said Michael. “I’ve finished with women. Like a bleedin’ monk I’ll be livin’ from now on.”

“After all I did for ’ ur,” complained David. “To play me false with Merryweather, who makes ’ ur feel sick, like she told me.”

A strong smell of burning now started to emanate from the kitchen.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said Michael.

“My minestrone! My minestrone! You bloody bog Irish,” screamed the chef, and he grabbed Michael’s arm and hauled him back into the kitchen at a run.

The second chef, Charlie, a rubicund cockney from Hammersmith, relinquished his hold on the other heart-broken lover.

“I don’t know what to think about ’ ur, I really don’t,” said David.

“Don’t think,” I advised. “Go and have a drink and tell Luigi to put it on my bill.”

“You’re very kind, sur,” he said, brightening, as he moved towards the upper floors and the bar.

“Lucky you came along when you did,” said Charlie, when David had disappeared. “They were all set to kill each other, silly idiots — using a bleedin’ meat cleaver, an’ all.”

“Tell me,” I asked, “who is Angela?”

Charlie stared at me for a moment. “You mean to say.” he began. Then he started to laugh.

“Well, I had to say something ,” I explained, “or we’d have been here all day.”

“An’ I suppose you. never seen no Nigel Merryweather neither?” he chortled.

“I haven’t seen him,” I said, “but I was told he was the most handsome of the younger directors, with something of an eye for the girls, and no shortage of cash.”

“Quite right,” said Charlie. “A regular gun dog, ’e is.”

“Gun dog?” I asked, puzzled.

“Ah, yes, you know, always after the birds,”

“Yes,” I agreed. Gun dog. What a good description. Well, all’s well that ends well.”

“Tell me,” said Charlie. Wot was that book they was all so excited about?”

I explained. “It’s an excellent series of volumes when used properly,” I said, “but in this place, everyone who reads them seems to go berserk.”

“Would it give advice on marriage in wot one would call an . . . intimate way?” asked Charlie, a pensive look in his eye.