Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

He paid off the taxi, and walked into the house ahead of us, carrying his suitcase. He was wearing a deer-stalker hat in a dog-tooth tweed, and a suit in a singularly unattractive tartan, the ground colour of which was dog-sick green with a dull red stripe over it. He looked like a diminutive and portly Sherlock Holmes.

“Mercifully, we are cold-free,” said Mother, following him into the house. “It’s this lovely fine weather we’ve been having. Would you like some tea, dear?”

“I’d rather have a large whisky and soda,” said Larry, taking a half empty bottle out of the capacious pocket of his coat. “It’s better for colds.”

“But you said you hadn’t got a cold,” pointed out Mother.

“I haven’t,” replied Larry, pouring himself out a large drink. “This is in case I get one. It’s what is called preventive medicine.”

It was obvious that he had been using preventive medicine on the way down, for he grew more and more convivial as the evening drew on; so much so that Mother felt she could broach the subject of the picnic.

“We though,” she said, “since the Air Ministry’s roof is emphatic about the terribly hot weather, that we might take the Rolls out and go for a picnic tomorrow.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit churlish, going off and leaving me after a ten-year exile?” asked Larry.

“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Mother. “You come too.”

“Not a picnic in England,” protested Larry, brokenly. “I don’t think I’m up to it. How I remember it from my youth! All the thrill of ants and sand in the food, trying to light a fire with damp wood, the howling gales, the light snowfall, just as you’re munching your first cucumber sandwich . . .”

“No, no, dear. The Air Ministry roof says we’re having an unprecedented ridge of high pressure,” said Mother. “Tomorrow’s going to be very hot, it said.”

“It may be hot on the Air Ministry roof, but is it going to be hot down here?” enquired Larry.

“Of course,” insisted Mother stoutly.

“Well, I’ll think about it,” promised Larry as, carrying the remains of the whisky in case germs attacked him in the nigh; he made his way to bed.

Next morning dawned blue and breathless, the sun already warm at seven o’clock. Everything augured well. Mother, in order to leave no stone unturned in her efforts to keep Larry in a good mood, gave him his breakfast in bed. Even Margo, in the interests of peace, refrained from giving us our normal excruciating half-hour when she sang the latest pop tunes in the bath, without the benefit of knowing either the tune or the lyric with any degree of certainty.

By ten o’clock, the Rolls had been loaded up and we were preparing to go. Jack made some last-minute slight but important adjustment to the engine, Mother counted the food packages for the last time, and Margo had to go back into the house three times to get various items that she had forgotten. At last we were ready and assembled on the pavement.

“Don’t you think we ought to have the roof down, since it’s such a nice day?” suggested Jack.

“Oh, yes, dear,” said Mother. “Let’s take advantage of the weather while we’ve got it.”

Between them Leslie and Jack lowered the canvas roof of the Rolls. We entered the car, and were soon bowling along through the English countryside, as lush and as green and as miniature as you could wish for, full of birdsong. Even pieces of woodland on the rolling Purbeck hills were set in bas-relief against the blue sky in which, high and faint, like the ghosts of minnows, a few threads of cloud hung immobile. The air was fragrant, the sun was warm and the car, purring softly as a sleepy bumblebee, slid smoothly between tall hedges, breasted green hills, and swept like a hawk down into valleys where the cottages clustered under their thatched roofs so that each village looked as though it was in need of a haircut.

“Yes,” commented Larry, musingly, “I’d forgotten how Victorian dolls’ house the English landscape could look.”

“Isn’t it lovely, dear?” said Mother. “I knew you’d like it.”

We had just swept through a hamlet of white-washed cottages, each with a thatch that looked like an out-sized piecrust on top, when Jack suddenly stiffened behind the wheel. “There!” he barked suddenly. “Didn’t you hear it? Distinctly. Tickety-tickety-ping, and then a sort of scroobling noise.”

There was a pause.

“I would have thought,” Larry observed to Mother, “that this family was quite unbalanced enough without adding insanity by marriage.”

“There it goes again. The scrooble! The scrooble! Can’t you hear it?” cried Jack, his eyes gleaming fanatically.

“Oh, God!” said Margo bitterly. “Why is it we can’t go anywhere without you wanting to take the car to pieces?”

“But it might be serious,” said Jack. “That tickety-tickety-ping might be a cracked magneto head.”

“I think it was just a stone you kicked up,” said Leslie.

“No, no,” said Jack. “That’s quite a different ping. That’s just a ping without the tickety.”

“Well, I didn’t hear any tickety,” said Leslie.

“Nobody ever hears his tickety except him,” complained Margo, angrily. “It makes me sick!”

“Now, now, dear — don’t quarrel,” said Mother, peaceably. “After all, Jack is the engineer of the family.”

“If he’s an engineer, it’s a curious sort of technical language they are teaching them now,” commented Larry. “Engineers in my day never discussed their tickety-pings in public.”

“If you think it’s serious, Jack,” said Mother, “we’d better stop and let you have a look at it.”

So Jack pulled into a lay-by, flanked with willows in bloom, leapt out of the car, opened the bonnet, and flung himself into the bowels of Esmerelda, as a man dying of thirst would throw himself into a desert pool. There were a few loud groans and some grunts, and then a high nasal humming noise that sounded like an infuriated wasp caught in a zither. It was our brother-in-law humming.

“Well,” said Larry, “since it seems that our postillion has been struck by lightning, how about a life-giving drink?”

“Isn’t it a bit early, dear?” asked Mother.

“It may be too early for the English,” observed Larry, “but don’t forget that I’ve been living among a lot of loose-moraled foreigners who don’t think that there’s one special time for pleasure, and who don’t feel that you’re putting your immortal soul in danger every time you have a drink, day or night.”

“Very well, dear,” said Mother. “Perhaps a small drink would be nice.”

Leslie broached the boot and passed us out the drinks.

“If we had to stop, this is quite a pleasant spot,” said Larry, condescendingly, gazing round at the rolling green hills, chess-boarded by tall hedges, and patterned here and there with the black and frothy green of woodland.

“And the sun really is remarkably hot,” put in Mother. “It’s quite extraordinary for the time of year.”

“We shall pay for it in winter, I suppose,” said Leslie, gloomily. “We always seem to.”

Just at that moment, from beneath the bonnet of the car, came a loud reverberating sneeze. Larry froze, his glass halfway to his mouth.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Jack,” answered Leslie.

“That noise?” exclaimed Larry. “That was Jack?”

“Yes,” said Leslie. “Jack sneezing.”

“Dear God!” cried Larry. “He’s brought a bloody germ with him. Mother, I’ve spent a week avoiding infection by every means known to the British Medical Association, only to be transported out here into the wilderness without a medical practitioner within fifty miles, to be bombarded by cold germs by my own brother-in-law. It really is too much!”