Fillets of Plaice, by Gerald Durrell (9 page)

The tank that I really desperately wanted to do was the enormous one that we had in the window. It was some four and a half feet long and about two foot six deep, and in it we had a great colourful mixed collection of fish. But I knew that I must not overstep the bounds of propriety at this stage. So I did several smaller fish tanks first, and when Mr Romilly had got thoroughly used to the idea of my doing them, I broached the subject of our big show tank in the window.

“Could I try my hand at that, Mr Romilly?” I asked.

“What? Our show piece?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “It's… it's in need of… of a clean, anyway. So I thought, perhaps, I could try my hand at redecorating it.”

“Well, I don't know…,” said Mr Romilly doubtfully. “I don't know. It's a most important piece that, you know. It's the centrepiece of the window. It's the one that attracts all the customers.”

He was quite right, but the customers were attracted by the flickering shoals of multi-coloured fish. They certainly were not attracted by Mr Romilly's attempts at decoration, which made it look rather like a blasted heath.

“Well, could I just try?” I said. “And if it's no good, I'll do it all over again. I'll even… I'll even spend my half day doing it.”

“Oh, I'm sure that won't be necessary,” said Mr Romilly, shocked. “You don't want to spend all your days shut up in the shop, you know. A young boy like you… you want to be out and about… Well, alright, you try your hand at it, and see what happens.”

It took me the better part of a day to do, because in between times I had to attend to the various customers who came to buy tubifex or daphnia or buy a tree frog for their garden pond or something similar. I worked on that giant tank with all the dedication of a marine Capability Brown. I built rolling sand dunes and great towering cliffs of lovely granite. And then, through the valleys between the granite mountains, I planted forests of Vallisneria and other, more delicate, weedy ferns. And on the surface of the water I floated the tiny little white flowers that look so like miniature water-lilies. With the aid of sand and rocks I concealed the heater and thermostat and also the aerator, none of which were attractive to look at. When I had finally finished it and replaced the brilliant scarlet sword-tails, the shiny black mollies, the silver hatchet fish, and the brilliant Piccadilly-like neon-tetras, and stepped back to observe my handiwork, I found myself deeply impressed by my own genius. Mr Romilly, to my delight, was ecstatic about the whole thing.

“Exquisite! Exquisite!” he exclaimed. “Simply exquisite.”

“Well, you know what they say, Mr Romilly,” I said. “That a good pupil needs a good master.”

“Oh, you flatter me, you flatter me,” he said, wagging his finger at me playfully. “This is a case where the pupil has surpassed the master.”

“Oh, I don't think that,” I said. “But I do think that I'm getting almost as good as you.”

After that, I was allowed to decorate all the tanks and all the cages. I think, secretly, Mr Romilly was rather relieved not to have to urge his non-existent artistic sense into this irksome task.

After one or two experiments I always used to take my lunch hour at a little cafe not very far away from the shop. Here I had discovered a kindly waitress who, in exchange for a little flattery, would give me more than my regulation number of sausages with my sausages and mash, and warn me against the deadly perils of the Irish stew on that particular day. It was one day when I was going to have my lunch that I discovered a short cut to the cafe. It was a narrow little alleyway that ran between the great groups of shops and the towering houses and flats. It was cobble-stoned and as soon as I got into it, it was as though I had been transported back to Dickensian London. I found that part of it was tree-lined and farther along there was a series of tiny shops.

It was then that I discovered that we were not the only pet shop in the vicinity, for I came across the abode of Henry Bellow.

The dirty window of his shop measured, perhaps, six feet square by two deep. It was crammed from top to bottom with small square cages, each containing one or a pair of chaffinches, green finches, linnets, canaries, or budgerigars. The floor of the window was inches deep in seed husks and bird excrement, but the cages themselves were spotlessly clean and each sported a bright green sprig of lettuce or groundsel and a white label on which had been written in shaky block letters “SOLD”. The glass door of the shop was covered with a lace curtain which was yellow with age, and between it and the glass hung a cardboard notice which said “Please Enter” in Gothic script. The reverse side of this notice, I was to learn, stated equally politely “We regret we are closed”. Never, in all the days that I hurried for my sausages and mash up this uneven flagged alley, did I ever see a customer entering or leaving the shop. Indeed, the shop seemed lifeless except for the occasional lethargic hopping from perch to perch of the birds in the window. I wondered, as the weeks passed, why all the birds in the window were not claimed by the people who had bought them. Surely the various owners of some thirty assorted birds could not have decided simultaneously that they did not want them? And, in the unlikely event of this happening, why had the “Sold” signs not been removed? It was a mystery that in my limited lunch hour I had little time to investigate. But my chance came one day when Mr Romilly, who had been dancing round the shop singing “I'm a busy little bee”, suddenly went down into the basement and uttered a falsetto screech of horror. I went and peered down the stairs, wondering what I had done or left undone.

“What's the matter, Mr Romilly?” I asked cautiously.

Mr Romilly appeared at the foot of the stairs clasping his brow, distraught.

“Stupid me!” he intoned. “Stupid, stupid,
stupid
me!”

Gathering from this that I was not the culprit, I took heart.

“What's the matter?” I asked solicitously.

“Tubifex and daphnia!” said Mr Romilly tragically, removing his spectacles and starting to polish them feverishly.

“Have we run out?”

“Yes,” intoned Mr Romilly sepulchrally. “How stupid of me! What negligence! How very, very remiss of me. I deserve to be sacked. I really am the stupidest mortal…”

“Can't we get some from somewhere else?” I asked, interrupting Mr Romilly's verbal flagellation.

“But the farm always sends it up,” exclaimed Mr Romilly, as though I were a stranger in need of an explanation. “The farm always sends up the supply when I ask for it, every weekend. And I, crass idiot that I am, never ordered any.”

“But can't we get it from somewhere
else
?” I asked.

“And the guppies and the sword-tails and the black mollies, they so look forward to their tubifex,” said Mr Romilly, working himself into a sort of hysterical self-pity. “They relish it. How can I face those tiny pouting faces against the glass? How can I eat my lunch while those poor little fish…”

“Mr Romilly,” I interrupted firmly. “Can we get some tubifex from somewhere other than the farm?”

“Eh?” said Mr Romilly, staring at me. “Other than the farm? But the farm always sends… Ah, wait a bit. I see what you mean… Yes…”

He climbed laboriously up the wooden stairs, mopping his brow, and emerged like the sole survivor of a pit disaster. He gazed round him with vacant, tragic eyes.

“But where?” he said at last, despairingly. “But where?”

“Well,” I said, taking the matter in hand. “What about Bellow?”

“Bellow? Bellow?” he said. “Most unbusinesslike chap. He deals in birds. Shouldn't think he'd have any.”

“But surely it's worth a try?” I said. “Let me go round and see.”

Mr Romilly thought about it.

“Alright,” he said at last, averting his face from the serried ranks of accusing-looking fish, “take ten shillings out of petty cash, and don't be too long.”

He handed me the key and sat down, gazing glumly at his highly polished shoes. I opened the tin petty cash box, extracted a ten shilling note, filled in a petty cash slip — “IOU 10/— Tubifex” — and slipped it into the box, locked it, and pushed the key into Mr Roniilly's flaccid hand. A moment later I was out on the broad pavement, weaving my way through the vacant-eyed throng of shoppers, making my way towards Bellow's shop, while the mountainous red buses thundered past with their gaggle of attendant taxis and cars. I came to the tiny alleyway and turned down it, and immediately peace reigned. The thunder of buses, the clack of feet, the honk and screech of cars became muted, almost beautiful, like the distant roar of the surf. On one side of the alley was a blank soot-blackened wall; on the other, the iron railings which guarded the precious piece of ground that led to the local church. Here had been planted — by someone of worth — a rank of plane trees. They leant over the iron railings, roofing the alley with green, and on their mottled trunks looper caterpillars performed prodigious and complicated walks, humping themselves grimly towards a goal about which even they seemed uncertain. Where the plane trees ended the shops began. There were no more than six of them, each Lilliputian in dimensions and each one forlornly endeavouring.

There was Clemystra, Modes for Ladies, with a rather extraordinary fur in their window as the
pièce de résistance
; a fur which, with its glass eyes and its tail in its mouth, would have curdled the heart of any anti-vivisectionist should one pass that way. There was the Pixies' Parlour, Light Luncheons, Teas and Snacks, and next door to it, once you had refreshed yourself, was A. Wallet, Tobacconist, whose window consisted entirely of cigarette and pipe advertisements, the predominant one being a rather Holman Hunt type of placard for Wills' Wild Woodbines. I hurried past all these and past William Drover, Estate Agent, with its host of fascinating pale brown pictures of desirable residences, past the shrouded portal, decorated rather severely and somewhat surprisingly by one rose-pink lavatory pan, of Messrs M. & R. Drumlin, Plumbers, to the end of the row of shops where the faded notice above the door stated simply and unequivocally: Henry Bellow, Aviculturist. At last, I thought, I had the chance of getting inside the shop and solving, if nothing else, the mystery of the birds with the “SOLD” notices on their cages. But as I approached the shop something unprecedented happened. A tall, angular woman in tweeds, wearing a ridiculous Tyrolean hat with a feather, strode purposefully down the alley and, a brief second before me, grasped the handle of the door marked “Enter Please” and swept in, while the bell jangled melodiously. I was astonished. It was the first time I had ever seen a customer enter any of the shops in the alley. Then, anxious to see what happened once she had entered the shop, I rushed after her and caught the closing door on the last jangle.

In an almost Lightless shop the woman with the Tyrolean hat and I were caught like moths in some dingy spider's web. The melodious chimes of the door, one felt assured, would have someone running to attend the shop. Instead of which there was silence, except for the faint cheeping of the birds in the window and the sudden shuffling of feathers from a cockatoo in the corner, a sound like un-ironed washing being spread out. Having shuffled its feathers to its satisfaction, it put its head on one side and said, “Hello, hello, hello,” very softly and with complete lack of interest.

We waited what seemed a long time but was probably only a few seconds. My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the gloom. I saw that there was a small counter and behind it shelves of bird seed, cuttle-fish and other accoutrements of the aviculturist's trade, and in front of it were a number of large sacks containing hemp and rape and millet seed. In one of these perched a white mouse eating the seeds with the frantic speed of a nervous person nibbling cheese straws at a cocktail party. I was beginning to wonder whether to open the door and make the bell jangle again when, suddenly, a very large and ancient retriever padded its way solemnly through the door at the back of the shop and came forward, wagging its tail. It was followed by a man I took to be Henry Bellow. He was a tall, stout man with a great mop of curly grey hair and a huge bristling moustache, like an untamed gorse bush, that looked as though it were a suitable nesting site for any number of birds. From under his shaggy eyebrows his tiny blue eyes stared out, brilliant as periwinkles, through his gold-rimmed spectacles. He moved with a sort of ponderous slowness rather like a lazy seal. He came forward and gave a little bow.

“Madam,” he said, and his voice had the rich accents of Somerset, “Madam, your servant.”

The Tyrolean hat looked rather alarmed at being addressed in this fashion.

“Oh, er…, good day,” she said.

“What may I get you?” inquired Mr Bellow.

“Well, actually, I came to get your advice,” she said. “Er…, it's about my young nephew. He's going to be fourteen soon and I want to buy him a bird for his birthday… He's very keen on birds, you know.”

“A bird,” said Mr Bellow. “A bird. And what kind of bird, what particular species of birds, have you got in mind, madam?”

“Well, I, er…, I don't really know,” said the lady in the Tyrolean hat. “What about a canary?”

“I wouldn't touch canaries at this time of the year,” said Mr Bellow, shaking his head sorrowfully. “I wouldn't touch them myself. And I would be a dishonest man if I sold you a canary, madam.”

“Why at this time of the year?” asked the lady, obviously impressed.

“It's a very bad time of the year for canaries,” said Mr Bellow. “Bronchial trouble, you know.”

“Oh,” said the lady. “Well, what about a budgerigar?”

“Now, I wouldn't advise those either, madam. There's a lot of psittacosis around,” said Mr Bellow.

“A lot of what?” inquired the lady.

“Psittacosis, madam. You know, the parrot's disease. Most of the budgerigars have got it at this time of the year. It's fatal to human beings, you know. I had an inspector from the Ministry of Health only the other day, come to check on mine. He said they were sure to get it sooner or later, so I couldn't possibly sell you one of mine.”

“Well, what bird would you suggest, then?” said die woman, getting rather desperate.