Marrying Off Mother (25 page)

I kept my face grave, but inside I was filled with unholy glee at the mental picture her story presented.

‘Well, we got into the room and thank goodness Moses stopped singing. He just eyed the manager for a moment and then called him the offspring of a jig-a-jig girl. Darling, what's a jig-a-jig? I never heard of it. Is it like a tango?'

‘Somewhat,' I said, it was invented in Port Said to — to — to take sailors' minds off the fact that they were far away from their wives.'

‘Oh,' she said, pondering this improbable story. ‘Well, anyway, the manager was perfectly
sweet.
He said he didn't mind my having Moses in my room, it was all the swearing and singing. He'd had so many complaints from his other customers, he'd have to ask me to remove the bird. So I brought him to the Dorchester. What else could I do? He sang all the way here and called the taxi driver something I won't repeat. He was very rowdy in the reception hall and so I got them to give me a vodka and tonic and while he was drinking that we covered his cage with napkins and rushed him in here and put him under the table. He's been as good as gold ever since.'

‘Darling,' I said, ‘I think your idea of giving the Reverend Penge a parrot was a very sweet thought. But don't you think that the sooner the reverend takes delivery of his present the better for all of us?'

‘Oh, I do,' she said. ‘That's what I was doing when you arrived, phoning Pengey — that's what he likes to be called — and I told him we'd bring his present round this afternoon and he was delighted.'

‘Well, thank God for that. You didn't tell him what it was, I hope.'

‘Oh, no, darling. I want it to be a surprise,' she said.

‘It'll certainly be that,' I agreed.

We had a somewhat nervous lunch, since there was a lady two tables away who was possessed of a shrill and penetrating laugh. Every time she was amused and gave vent to this bugle-like bray, both of us jumped under the impression that it was Moses bursting into song. Ursula got hiccoughs and had to ask for a wineglass of vinegar which was, according to her, the only known cure for this malady. When we had finished, we faced the problem of getting Moses and his cage out of the restaurant. Two waiters, overseen by Sebastian, crouched under the table, wrapping napkins around the cage. I fancy one or two of the diners wondered what was happening. Finally they had the cage wrapped in linen. They lifted it up and we started on our way in their wake, looking somewhat like a funeral cortege following a dome-shaped coffin draped in white. All went well until one of the waiters caught his toe on a chair leg, stumbled and two of the napkins slipped and fell to the floor. Moses surveyed the assembled diners with a jaundiced eye.

‘You greedy lot of buggers,' he observed in a penetrating voice that made every occupant of the room cease whatever they were doing and fasten their attention on us.

‘Greedy bastards,' said Moses, just to show he had not exhausted the second letter of the alphabet.

‘Get him out of here — quick,' Sebastian hissed. We all fled precipitately, just as Moses started to sing. In reception, I found a copy of
The Times
someone had left, divided it, crossed it, punched a hole in the middle for the cage's rings, and plastered it over Moses just as he started on the second verse of ‘Judy O'Kelly'.

‘He seems a bit of a problem as a pet, sir, if you don't mind my remarking,' said Sebastian, smiling.

Moses had fallen silent.

‘He's going to a good home,' I said. ‘He's going to live with a vicar.'

‘I had no idea the Church was getting so liberal-minded,' he said. ‘It must be a sign of the times.'

Ursula appeared from the ladies' room, bearing two large carrier bags.

‘Thank you for your tolerance and help,' I said to Sebastian.

‘Any . . .' he began, and then stopped.

‘If you were going to say “any time”, don't,' I said. ‘Once in a lifetime is enough.' I bundled Ursula and Moses into a taxi and gave the address of the Reverend Penge.

‘Darling, that was a scrumptious lunch, thank you so much,' she said, kissing me, ‘and thank you for being so good about poor Moses.'

As she spoke she was shuffling about in her carrier bags, examining things.

‘What have you got in there?' I asked.

‘Oh, just a few goodies for the poor old man,' she said. ‘A couple of bottles of Scotch because I know he likes his little noggin and I'm sure he can't afford it. Then there's some food for Moses and his favourite drink, and some reading matter for Pengey, poor old duck.'

She pulled out
The Times,
the
Telegraph,
the latest
Vogue,
a copy of
Punch
and, to my incredulous gaze, a copy of
Playgirl.

‘What,' I asked, ‘did you get him
that
for?'

‘Well, darling, it's part of my plan for redebilitating him, making him mend his ways. He should start thinking more about the opposite sex and less about his own. So I got him
Vogue
and this, so that he could see what he was missing.'

‘Have you looked inside
Playgirl?'
I asked.

‘No,' she said. ‘It's the usual girlie magazine, isn't it?'

‘Take a look,' I said, grimly.

It was perhaps unfortunate that she opened it at the centrefold, which showed a very nude, very virile and very large young man in all his glory.

‘Oh, my God,' she said, appalled. ‘Oh,
my
God.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Hardly the thing to give old Pengey to redebilitate him, is it?'

‘Oh, darling, thank
heavens
you noticed. Of
course
I can't give it to him. But what am I going to
do
with it?'

‘Take it back to Claridge's and give it to the manager,' I suggested.

She did not speak to me for the rest of the journey and she left the offending magazine in the taxi.

The Penge residence — if I may call it that — was one of those splendid old houses like an upended shoebox, with two rooms to a floor. The reverend, we discovered, occupied the two attic rooms and so we toiled up four flights of stairs to get to his abode, Ursula's carrier bags and Moses's cage becoming heavier at every step. Eventually, panting, we stopped outside a door on which, rather pathetically, was pinned a card which said: ‘The Reverend Mortimer Penge XXX English lessons given, also Bible lessons (Church of England)'.

Ursula knocked and the door was thrown open by the Reverend Penge. He was not what I expected. He looked rather like a French bean that has been deprived of light during its formative years. He bent in the same way and had the same troglodyte greenish-white colouring. He wore large horn-rimmed glasses, a roll-top pullover with purple and white stripes and grey flannel trousers. His white hair was in wild disarray and he held his hands in front of him like a rabbit sitting up, his hands dangling as if both wrists were broken.

‘Ursula!' he exclaimed. ‘My dear child, how simply divine to see you.'

He kissed her chastely on the cheek.

This is Gerry,' said Ursula.

‘Gerry — what an attractive name and
what
an attractive person,' he said, fluttering his eyelids at me. ‘You are a lucky, lucky girl. But do come in. Come into my humble abode.'

His humble abode consisted of two rooms, one divided into a minute kitchen and shower, the other acting as a sitting-cum-bedroom, with two lumpy chairs, a threadbare carpet, a narrow divan bed and under it, to my delight, a huge Victorian chamberpot, decorated tastefully with garlands of pansies and forget-me-nots. Looking out of the window, I saw the reverend had a nice view over a small park, with plane trees, beds of spring flowers, a pond with ducks on it and benches for reclining on.

One by one, Ursula produced her presents, and with each one the reverend got more and more delighted and tearful with joy. Finally, Ursula mixed an extra large vodka and tonic, lifted a corner of
The Times
and slipped it into Moses's drinking vessel. She let a few moments pass and then, like a conjuror doing a trick, she whipped off
The Times
and revealed to the reverend's amazed gaze Moses slaking his thirst.

‘A parrot!' gasped the reverend. ‘Oh, I've always wanted a parrot. Does it talk?'

By way of answer, Moses left off imbibing the heavenly Russian liquid to stare at the Reverend Penge.

‘Hello, you old bugger,' said Moses, and then once again set to the task of drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor. The Reverend Penge laughed and laughed and laughed — till he cried.

‘Oh, my darling Ursula, you could not have brought me anything better,' he crowed.

‘Well,' said Ursula, obviously delighted, ‘you said you wanted someone to talk to.'

‘You're a saint, my dear, a real saint,' said the reverend. I thought grimly that if he had suffered as I had suffered since meeting Ursula at the station that morning, he might have had second thoughts about her saintliness. We chatted for a while and drank a Scotch (which the reverend insisted on broaching) out of a glass, a cracked cup and a tin mug, then we took our leave.

The next two days were blissful London in those days was a wonderful city, war-torn though it was. To be there in the spring with an enchanting girlfriend was every young man's dream, but few achieved it. I went back to Bournemouth well satisfied.

Ten days later the phone rang.

‘Darling, it's
me,
Ursula.'

‘How are you, sweetheart?' I asked, with no sense of impending doom.

‘Oh, I'm fine. But, darling, I want you to do something for me, will you please? It's terribly, terribly important. Do say yes, darling, and then I'll tell you what it is. Promise?'

I should have known Ursula by now.

‘Of course,' I said, visualizing some trivial errand.

‘Well,' she said slowly, ‘d'you remember Moses?'

I went cold all over.

‘No,' I shouted into the phone. ‘No. I will not be involved with that bloody bird again. No, no,
no.'

‘There's no need to swear, darling,' she said, ‘and in any case, you've promised now, so you must. Let me tell you what's happened. Pengey's in prison.'

‘In prison? What for?'

‘Well, I'm afraid it's partly Moses's fault,' she said. ‘You see, Pengey used to take him out in his cage to that nice little park and sit on a bench. And then Moses would start talking and all the young boys would gather round.'

I groaned.

‘And then Pengey would ask one of the boys if he would like to see the parrot do acrobatics, and of course the boy would say yes. So Pengey would say well you must come up to my flat because I can't let him out of the cage here in case he flies away. So the boy would go up to Pengey's flat with him. And you can imagine what happened.'

‘Only too vividly,' I said. ‘How long did he get?'

‘Eighteen months,' said Ursula, ‘and, darling, I'm so upset about poor Pengey, but I'm so worried about Moses, poor thing. He's got no one to talk to and love him and give him food and vodka. The landlady says she won't keep him any longer as his language is so foul it embarrasses her husband.'

‘What's her husband? A bishop?'

‘A docker, I think,' said Ursula, ‘but that's not the point. Moses must be rescued and that's where you come in.'

‘Now look here . . .' I began.

‘Darling, you promised, and if you break your promise I will never speak to you again. I would go myself only I can't as I'm organizing a fête.'

I sighed.

‘All right, I'll go,' I said, ‘but it's the last time I promise you anything.'

‘Darling, I love you to bits. You're the most scrumptious man I know.'

‘I'm the most foolish man you know,' I said.

So I went. I had a hectic journey by train with Moses. I'd forgotten his vodka, so he was in full voice, so much so that the guard of the train, a strict Methodist, had the police waiting for me at Bournemouth Central Station. It took a lot of explaining, but I managed to get some vodka from the dining car and while I was arguing with the guard and the police, Moses sucked up this heavenly nectar as fast as I could pour it. I kept wondering how much alcohol it would take to kill a parrot, and hoping that I had bought enough.