Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

My heart sank. “Well . . . yes,” I said, “but you must remember that it’s sort of a text-book really.”

“Yes,” went on Charlie. “It might be just wot I want. A textbook — like a school-book, you might say?”

“Oh, dear. Are you sure?”

“Well,” said Charlie confidentially. “Me an’ the missus ’aven’t been rubbin’ along too sharp recently. She’s been a bit depressed, like — an’ a bit naggy, if you get my meaning. Nothin’s right. She went to see one of those blue phonographic films a couple o’ weeks back, an’ now she says I don’t do it right. She says it’s the same old way every time and it’s drivin’ ’er mad. She says I ’aven’t got no imagination. I told ’er she wasn’t no Kama-bleedin’-Sutra, neither — but she says it’s all my fault.”

“Well, it could be.”

“Now, this book of yours . . . does it tell you about them things? You know, different ways, and such like?”

“Yes,” I said, cautiously.

“Well, then — can I borrow it for a bit?” he pleaded. “To improve me technique, like?”

How could I resist this pudgy, middle-aged man pleading for the text-book to improve his passionate overtures to his wife? It would have been sheer cruelty.

“All right,” I said, resignedly. “I’ll lend you volume two.”

“Thank you, sir.” He grinned. “Con I’ll bet this’ll liven the old girl up. I’ll bet she’ll be ever so pleased.”

He was wrong. Two days later, as I was having lunch, he limped out of the kitchen and came over to my table, carrying volume two. His right eye was half-closed and swollen and of an interesting series of colours ranging from purple on his cheekbone to scarlet and pink around his eyebrow.

“Hello,” I said. “What have you done to your eye?”

He laid Havelock on the table with care.

“I never done it,” he said. “It’s the old woman wot’s done it. After all that nag, nag about bleedin’ sex, she up and catches me a wollop like a bleedin’ pile-driver. And d’you know why, sir?”

“Why?” I asked, fascinated.

He sighed, the weary sigh of a man faced by a woman’s logic. “ ’Cos I brought a dirty book into the house, sir. That’s why,” he said.

I decided that Havelock had caused quite enough problems and so I would call in all the volumes I had out on loan. Besides, I was leaving in twenty-four hours and, such was the success of Havelock as light reading, I was afraid that I might not get all the books back.

I had just been round the hotel leaving messages for Dennis, Gavin and Stella (a chambermaid who was worried about her boy-friend: “All ’e ever thinks about is sex. Honest, ’e doesn’t even take an interest in football.”), when I ran into the manager, Mr Weatherstone-Thompson.

“Ah! Good afternoon, Mr Durrell,” he said. “I understand that you are leaving us the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes, alas,” I said, “I have to get back to Jersey .”

“Of course, of course, you must be so busy with all your gorillas and things,” he laughed unctuously. “But we have enjoyed having you here.”

“And I’ve enjoyed being here,” I replied, backing towards the lift.

“And the staff will all miss you,” said Mr Weatherstone-Thompson, adroitly getting between me and the lift, “and I they will even miss your little . . . Ha, ha! . . . library.”

I groaned inwardly, Mr Weatherstone-Thompson was an overweight, wheezing, always-slightly-moist fifty, who smelt strongly of whisky, Parma violets and cheap cigars. He was married to a suicide blonde (dyed by her own hand) some twenty-five years his junior. She did not just have an eye for the men, she had a seine net out for them. Mr Weatherstone-Thompson had problems, but I was not going to let him borrow Havelock to solve them. Skilfully, I got round him and in line with the lift again.

“Oh, yes, Havelock Ellis,” I said. “A most interesting series of volumes.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” said Mr Weatherstone-Thompson eagerly. “I was wondering if perhaps, when the rest of the staff have finished . . . er . . . drinking at this fountain of knowledge, if I might . . .”

“Oh, what a pity!” I said, remorsefully. “You should have told me before. I’ve just packed them up and sent them on ahead to Jersey .”

His disappointment was pathetic, but I hardened my heart. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, well. Never mind. It can’t be helped. What I always say is that that sort of book is interesting in its way, but really, if you’re an experienced man like you and I are . . . well, there’s not much it can teach us.”

“No, indeed,” I said, “I should think it would take more than a book to add to your knowledge.”

Mr Weatherstone-Thompson laughed and his eyes brightened as he mentally reviewed his imaginary prowess.

“Well, I’ll not deny I’ve had my moments,” he said, chuckling.

“I’m sure you have,” I agreed, as I got into the lift. “In fact. you should be writing the books, not reading them.”

I left him (Casanova, Mark Antony, Ramon Navarro rolled into one) laughing protestingly at my compliment to his powers as a seducer.

By the following morning I had retrieved all my Havelock Ellis except the one I had lent to Gavin. Havelock, I found, was still weaving his spell. Dennis confessed that he was now thoroughly confused. Before Havelock, he had always thought there was only one sort of sex and that was chaste and pure. Stella said that, instead of Havelock making her boy-friend take an interest in football, it made him worse than ever, and she had had a terrible time the previous night retaining her virginity.

It only remained to get back the volume I had lent Gavin. This was the one dealing with normal sex, since Gavin had been working his way steadily through all nine volumes. They told me that he had gone up to Sheffield for the week-end but was due back the Monday morning I was supposed to leave.

The morning of my departure dawned bright and clear and I was awakened by the door of the passage-way leading into the suite opening, followed by a thump. Then the door closed again. I thought perhaps they had brought my breakfast.

“Come in,” I called sleepily, but there was no response. I decided it was probably some over-enthusiastic chambermaid, waiting to do out the room at the crack of dawn, rolled over and went back to sleep again.

It was not until I got up later to go and have a bath that I saw the copy of Havelock Ellis lying just inside the doorway in the hall. So it had been Gavin I had heard, returning volume eight. As I picked it up, a note fell out.

“Thanks for book,” it said. “Wish I’d never borrowed the bloody thing. Lent it to Rupert and got back to find him in my bed with a girl. Am giving up sex. Yours truly, Gavin.”

Havelock, game to the last, had struck his final blow.

Many years ago, when I first started to travel in France, a kindly friend pressed a copy of the Guide Michelin into my hands, rather in the spirit that prompts the Gideon Society to fill lonely hotel bedrooms with copies of the Bible. The Guide Michelin (known affectionately as “the Mich ”) is to a traveller and gourmet what the Bible is to a Christian, the Koran to a Mohammedan or the sayings of Buddha to a large section of the world. It is your guide, mentor and friend when travelling in France . It is small, fat and red — like so many cheerful French peasants you see who have become well-padded and polished over the years by good food and wine. Within its scarlet covers are the dossiers of some two thousand hotels, pensions and restaurants, their innermost secrets revealed.

A glance at the Mich and you know every reasonable hostelry within a fifty-mile radius of your position. It tells you whether the hostelry in question allows dogs in your room, whether they are “ tout confort ” or dismissed as merely being acceptable; whether they have garages, telephones, private baths and other adjuncts of modem living; whether they are quiet (a red rocking chair as the inspired symbol) or whether they have a “ jardin fleuri ”.