Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

“Thank you, dear,” said Marjorie, sipping her wine, “but I prefer to cook for a small audience of gourmets rather than a large audience of gourmands.”

“She’s right, there’s no gainsaying it,” agreed Paul, splashing wine into our glasses with gay abandon. A sudden prolonged roar of thunder directly overhead precluded speech for a long minute and was so fierce and sustained that even the canaries fell silent, intimidated by the sound. When it had finished Marjorie waved her fork at her spouse.

“You mustn’t forget to give Gerry your thingummy,” she said.

“Thingummy?” asked Paul, blankly. “What thingummy?”

“You know ,” said Marjorie, impatiently, “your thingummy . . . your manuscript . . . it’s just the right sort of night for him to read it.”

“Oh, the manuscript . . . yes,” said Paul, enthusiastically. “The very night for him to read it.”

“I refuse,” I protested. “Your paintings and sculptures are bad enough. I’m damned if I’ll read your literary efforts as well.”

“Heathen,” said Marjorie, good-naturedly. “Anyway, it’s not Paul’s, it’s someone else’s.”

“I don’t think he deserves to read it after those disparaging remarks about my art,” said Paul. “It’s too good for him.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a very curious manuscript I picked up . . .” Paul began, when Marjorie interrupted.

“Don’t tell him about it, let him read it,” she said. “I might say it gave me nightmares.”

While Marjorie was serving helpings of guinea-fowl wrapped in an almost tangible aroma of herbs and garlic, Paul went over to the corner of the kitchen where a tottering mound of books, like some ruined castle, lay between two sacks of potatoes and a large barrel of wine. He rummaged around for a bit and then emerged triumphantly with a fat red notebook, very much the worse for wear, and came and put it on the table.

“There!” he said with satisfaction. “The moment I’d read it I thought of you. I got it among a load of books I bought from the library of old Doctor Lepître, who used to be prison doctor down in Marseilles . I don’t know whether it’s a hoax or what.”

I opened the book and on the inside of the cover found a bookplate in black, three cypress trees and a sundial under which was written, in Gothic script “ Ex Libras Lepître ”. I flipped over the pages and saw that the manuscript was in longhand, some of the most beautiful and elegant copperplate handwriting I had ever seen, the ink now faded to a rusty brown.

“I wish I had waited until daylight to read it,” said Marjorie with a shudder.

“What is it? A ghost story?” I asked curiously.

“No,” said Paul uncertainly, “at least, not exactly. Old Lepître is dead, unfortunately, so I couldn’t find out about it. It’s a very curious story. But the moment I read it I thought of you, knowing your interest in the occult and things that go bump in the night. Read it and tell me what you think. You can have the manuscript if you want it. It might amuse you, anyway.”

“I would hardly call it amusing,” said Marjorie, “anything but amusing. I think it’s horrid.”

Some hours later, full of good food and wine, I took the giant golden oil lamp, carefully trimmed, and in its gentle daffodil-yellow light I made my way upstairs to the guest room and a feather bed the size of a barn door. The bulldog had followed me upstairs and sat wheezing, watching me undress and climb into bed. He now lay by the bed looking at me soulfully. The storm continued unabated and the rumble of thunder was almost continuous, while the dazzling flashes of lightning lit up the whole room at intervals. I adjusted the wick of the lamp, moved it closer to me, picked up the red notebook and settled myself back against the pillows to read. The manuscript began without preamble.

* * * *

March 16th 1901. Marseilles .

I have all night lying ahead of me and, as I know I cannot sleep — in spite of my resolve — I thought I would try to write down in detail the thing that has just happened to me. I am afraid that setting it down like this will not make it any the more believable, but it will pass the time until dawn comes and with it my release.

Firstly I must explain a little about myself and my relationship with Gideon de Teildras Villeray so that the reader (if there ever is one) will understand how I came to be in the depths of France in mid-winter. I am an antiquarian bookseller and can say, in all modesty, that I am at the top of my profession. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I was at the top of my profession. I was even once described by one of my fellow booksellers — I hope more in a spirit of levity than of jealousy — as a “literary truffle hound”, a description which I suppose, in its amusing way, does describe me.

A hundred or more libraries have passed through my hands, and I have been responsible for a number of important finds; the original Gottenstein manuscript, for example; the rare “Conrad” illustrated Bible, said by some to be as beautiful as the Book of Kells the five new poems by Blake that I unearthed at an unpromising country house sale in the Midlands; and many lesser but none-the-less satisfying discoveries, such as the signed first edition of Alice in Wonderland that I found in a trunk full of rag books and toys in the nursery of a vicarage in Shropshire and a presentation copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese , signed and with a six-line verse written on the fly-leaf by both Robert and Elizabeth Browning.

To be able to unearth such things in unlikely places is rather like water divining, either you are born with the gift or not; it is not something you can acquire, though most certainly, with practice, you are able to sharpen your perceptions and make your eye keener. In my spare time I also catalogue some of the smaller and more important libraries, as I get enormous pleasure out of simply being with books. To me the quietness of a library, the smell and the feel of the books, is like the taste and texture of food to a gourmet. It may sound fanciful, but I can stand in a library and hear the myriad voices around me as though I was standing in the middle of a vast choir, a choir of knowledge and beauty.

Naturally, because of my work, it was at Sotheby’s that I first met Gideon. I had unearthed in a house in Sussex a small but quite interesting collection of first editions and, being curious to know what they would fetch, had attended the sale myself. As the bidding was in progress I got the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched. I glanced around but could see no one whose attention was not upon the auctioneer. Yet, as the sale proceeded I got more and more uncomfortable. Perhaps this is too strong a word, but I became convinced that I was the object of an intense scrutiny.

At last the crowd in the saleroom moved slightly and I saw who it was. He was a man of medium height with a handsome but somewhat plump face, piercing and very large dark eyes and smoky-black, curly hair, worn rather long. He was dressed in a well-cut dark overcoat with an astrakhan collar, and in his elegantly gloved hands he carried the sales catalogue and a wide-brimmed dark velour hat. His glittering, gypsy-like eyes were fixed on me intently, but when he saw me looking at him the fierceness of his gaze faded, and he gave me a faint smile and a tiny nod of his head, as if to acknowledge that he had been caught out staring at me in such a vulgar fashion. He turned then, shouldered his way through the people that surrounded him and was soon lost to my sight.

I don’t, know why but the intense scrutiny of this stranger disconcerted me, to such an extent that I did not follow the rest of the sale with any degree of attention, except to note that the items I had put up fetched more than I had anticipated. The bidding over, I made my way through the crush and out into the street.