Fillets of Plaice, by Gerald Durrell (14 page)

“What you want is a wife, my boy,” I said in a fatherly tone. “Well, I do try,” said Martin, “every time I go on leave. But as soon as they hear where I am, they break off the engagement. In fact, there was an awfully nice girl called Molly whom I met on my last leave but, unfortunately, one of her uncles had been to Mamfe and the damned old fool told her about it in the worst possible terms and so it came to nothing.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Persevere. You might find a woman stupid enough to marry you in the first place and live here one day.”

We got Pious to examine the huge table and the chairs with great care. We both sat on each one of them and tested the table by standing on it and doing a sort of tango, but it was as firm and solid as rock.

“Now,” I said to Martin, “I want to put Pious in charge of your staff because by and large they seem a very inefficient lot whereas Pious is highly efficient.”

“Anything you say, dear boy, anything at all,” said Martin, “just mention it.”

“Pious,” I said.

“Sah,” he said.

“We have three days to get ready. During that time you go be half my steward and half the D.O.'s steward. You hear?”

“I hear, sah,” he said.

We went out onto the veranda and sat down.

“Now,” I said to Pious, “go tell the D.O.'s steward to pass us a drink. By the way, Martin, what is the name of your steward?” I asked.

“Amos,” he replied.

“Yes,” I said, “he looks like an Amos. Well, Pious, go tell Amos to pass drink and then you go bring the cook, the steward and the small boy here so we look 'um and have palava.”

“Yes, sah,” said Pious and with an almost military strut disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

“I think the question of the food can be safely left to Mary,” I said. “The others might have some suggestions of use, too, so what I think would be a good thing is to call a council of war this evening. If you send chits round to all of them they can come up and have drinks and we can discuss the whole matter.”

“You're really proving my salvation,” said Martin,

“Nonsense,” I said, “I am just orientating you a bit. You obviously aren't cut out for social life.”

Pious came in bearing a tray with beer, followed by Amos, who in his brown shorts and jacket looked like an amiable but mentally defective monkey; the small boy, who looked quite bright but was obviously completely untrained and — if Amos was supposed to be his trainer — never would learn a thing; and then, to my astonishment, an enormous, tall, thin Hausa who looked as though he was 110 years old, wearing a white coat and shorts and a huge chef's hat, on the front of which was embroidered in rather uneven lettering “BC”.

“Now,” I said in my firmest voice, “the D.O. is having the D.C. here in three days' time. The D.O. he want my steward to watch you all and make sure that everything is proper. If it is not proper, D.C. will be very angry with D.O. and D.O. and I will be very angry with you and we will kick you for larse.”

In spite of the sternness with which I spoke, they all grinned at me happily. They knew the importance of the visitor and they knew that my threat was quite genuine. But it was put in a joking form that they could understand.

“Now,” I said, pointing to Martin's steward, “you're named Amos.”

“Yes, sah,” he said, standing to attention.

“Now, what'ee your name?” I asked the small boy.

“John, sah,” he said.

“The cook,” said Martin apologetically, interrupting my dragooning, “is called Jesus.”

“Dear fellow,” I said, “you're in luck. With Pious and Jesus with us we can't go far wrong. By the way what is that extraordinary piece of embroidery on the front of his hat?”

Martin looked acutely embarrassed.

“He happened to cook a very good meal one day by pure accident,” said Martin, “and I had a magazine which had a picture of a chef in a London hotel and so to encourage him I told him that the next time I went on leave I would buy him one of those hats that only expert cooks wore.”

“It was a very kind thought,” I said, “but what's the embroidery in the front, the ‘BC'?”

Martin looked very shamefaced.

“He got his wife to embroider that on for him,” he said, “and he's very proud of it.”

“But what does it mean?” I insisted.

Martin looked even more embarrassed.

“It means Bugler's Cook,” he said.

“Does he realise the terrible confusion he could cause in some people's mind by being called Jesus and having BC on his hat?” I inquired.

“No, I've never tried to explain it to him,” said Martin. “I felt it would only worry him and he's quite worried enough as it is.”

I took a long soothing draught of beer. The whole thing appeared to be getting so religious one would have thought it was the Pope who was arriving instead of the D.C.

“Now, Pious,” I said, “you go get some furniture oil, you hear?”

“Yes, sah,” he said.

“And,” I said, “you go make sure that the dining-room is cleaned out and the chairs and table are polished proper. You hear?”

“I hear, sah,” he said.

“I want the table top to look like a mirror. And if you don't make sure that it does, I'll kick your larse.”

“Yes, sah,” he said.

“And then the day before the D.C. arrives, all the floors have to be scrubbed and made clean and all the other furniture polished too. You hear?”

“Yes, sah,” said Pious.

I could see by the proud look on his face that he was going to look forward immensely to overseeing this very important occasion and also having the opportunity of dominating some of his compatriots.

Martin leant forward and whispered in my ear.

“The small boy is an Ibo,” he said.

Now, the Ibos are an extremely clever tribe and were constantly wandering over from Nigeria, swindling the Cameroonians and wandering back again. So they were regarded by the Cameroonians with great loathing and distrust.

“Pious,” I said, “the small boy is Ibo.”

“I know, sah,” said Pious.

“So you go make him work hard but you no go make him work too hard because he is an Ibo. You hear?”

“Yes, sah,” said Pious.

“Alright,” I said as though I owned Martin's house, “pass more beer.”

The staff trooped off into the kitchen.

“I say,” said Martin in admiration, “you are good at this sort of thing, aren't you?”

“I've never done it before,” I said, “but it doesn't require much imagination.”

“No, I'm afraid I'm rather lacking in that,” said Martin.

“I don't think you are lacking in imagination,” I said. “Anybody who would have the brilliance to bring back a chef's hat for his cook cannot be completely insensitive.”

So we drank some more beer and I tried to think of any other calamity that could possibly happen.

“Does the lavatory work?” I asked suspiciously.

“It's working perfectly.”

“Well, don't, for God's sake, let the small boy drop a pawpaw down it,” I said, “because we don't want a repetition of the last episode you told me about. Now, you send the chits round to everybody and I'll come up here about six o'clock and we'll have a conference of war.”

“Wonderful,” said Martin. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it affectionately. “I don't know what I'd do without you,” he said. “Even Standish couldn't have organised things so beautifully.”

Standish was the Assistant D.O. and was at that moment sweating his way through the mountains north of Mamfe sorting out the problems of the remoter villages.

I hurried back to my marquee and my vociferous family. Having to help Martin had set me back in my routine work so the baby chimps were yelling for their food, porcupines were champing at the bars, and the bushbabies with enormous eyes, glared at me indignantly because, having roused themselves from their slumbers, they had found no pots of delicately chopped fruit in their cages.

At six o'clock I presented myself at the D.O.”s residence and found that Mary Standish, the A.D.O.'s wife, had already arrived.

She was a young and pretty woman, inclined to plumpness and had a great placidity of nature. She had been whisked by Standish from some obscure place like Surbiton or Penge and had been plonked down in the middle of Mamfe. She had only been there six months but so gentle and sweet was her nature that she accepted everything and everybody with such calmness and good nature that you felt that if you had a raging headache and she placed one of her plump little hands on your forehead, it would have the same effect as an eau de cologne-soaked handkerchief

“Gerry,” she squeaked, “isn't this exciting?”

“Well, it may be for you,” I said, “but it's a pain in the neck as far as poor Martin is concerned.”

“But the D.C!” she said again. “It might mean a promotion for Martin and it might even mean one for Alec.”

“If it's organised properly,” I said. “The reason we're having this council of war is to make sure that nothing goes wrong because, as you know, Martin is accident prone…”

Martin, thinking that I was going to tell her the hideous story of the D.C. and the latrine, made one of his windmill gestures to stop me and immediately knocked his glass of beer onto the floor.

“Sorry, sah,” said Amos. The Cameroonians had an endearing habit of saying “Sorry, sah” whenever arty accident befell you, as though it was their own fault. If, for example, you were following a line of carriers in the forest and you tripped over a root and grazed your knee, you would hear “Sorry, sah,” “Sorry, sah,” Sorry, sah,” “Sorry sah,” echoing back along the whole line of carriers.

“You see what I mean?” I said to Mary as Amos cleaned up the mess and brought Martin a fresh glass of beer.

“Yes, I do see,” she said.

“Well, we won't discuss it now,” I said. “We'll wait till the others arrive.”

So we drank our beer thoughtfully and listened to the hippos gurgling and roaring and snorting in the river some three hundred feet below us.

Presently McGrade arrived. He was a very impressive Irishman of enormous dimensions with almost pillar-box-red hair and vivid blue eyes, and he had one of those lovely Irish accents that are as soft as cream being poured out of a jug. He slumped his massive form onto a chair, seized Martin's glass of beer, drank deeply from it and said, “So you're being visited by royalty, then?”

“The nearest approach to it,” said Martin, “and kindly give me back my beer. I'm in urgent need of it.”

“Is he coming by road?” enquired McGrade anxiously.

“I think so,” said Martin, “Why?”

“Well, I wouldn't give that old bridge very much longer,” said McGrade. “I think if he came across that we might well have to bury him here.”

The bridge he was referring to was an iron suspension bridge that spanned the river at one point and had been built in the 1900s. I had crossed it many times myself and knew that it was highly unsafe but it was my one means of getting into the forest so I always used to get my carriers to go across one at a time. As a matter of fact, McGrade's prediction about the bridge was perfectly correct because not many months later a whole load of tribesmen came down from the mountain regions carrying sacks of rice on their heads and all crossed the bridge simultaneously, whereupon it collapsed and they crashed a hundred feet or so into the gorge below. But Africans, by and large, are rather like Greeks. They take these unusual incidents in their stride and so not one of the Africans was hurt, and the thing that annoyed them most was that they lost their rice.

“But he can't come across the bridge, can he?” said Martin, anxiously looking round at our faces, “Not unless he's coming with carriers.”

McGrade leaned forward and patted Martin solemnly on the head. “I was only joking,” he said. “All the roads and bridges that he will have to cross to get here are in perfect condition. When you want a job well done you get an Irishman.”

“Now,” I said, “we've got a Catholic in our midst as well as a Pious and a Jesus.”

“You,” said McGrade, smiling at me affectionately and rumpling his mop of crimson hair, “are just a bloody heathen animal collector.”

“And you,” I said, “spend more time in the bloody confessional than mending the atrocious roads and bridges that we have got round here.”

At that moment Robin Girton arrived. He was a small, dark man with a hawk-like nose, large brown eyes that always had a dreamy expression in them and gave you the impression that he wasn't really with you. But he was, in fact, like all the United Africa Company people I had come across, exceedingly astute. He never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary and generally sat there looking as though he was in a trance. Then, suddenly, in a soft voice that had a faint tinge of North Country in it, he would come out with a remark that was so pertinent and intelligent that it summed up so succinctly what everybody else had been arguing about for an hour and a half.

He arranged himself elegantly in a chair, accepted a glass of beer and then glanced round at our faces.

“Isn't it exciting?” said Mary with great enthusiasm.

Robin sipped his beer and nodded his head gravely.

“I gather,” he said, “that we have been summoned here to do Martin's work for him as usual.”

“Now, hold on,” said Mary indignantly.

“If you've come here in that sort of a mood, I'd rather you left,” said Martin.

“We'll leave when your beer runs out,” said McGrade.

“What do you mean,” said Martin, “doing my work for me?”

“Well,” said Robin, “I do far more good for the community by selling them baked beans and yard upon yard of Manchester manufactured cloth carefully embossed with aeroplanes than you do running around hanging them right, left and centre for murdering their grandmothers who probably deserved to die in the first place.”

“I haven't hanged a single person since I've been here,” said Martin.

“I'm surprised to learn it,” said Robin. “You administer the place so badly that I would have thought there'd be a hanging every week.”

To hear them you would think that they loathed each other but in actual fact they were the closest of friends. In such a tight little European community you had to learn to live with those people of your own colour and build up a rapport with them. This was not a colour bar. It was simply that at that time the numerous highly intelligent Africans who visited or lived in Mamfe would not have wished to mix with the white community because they would have felt, with their extraordinary sensitivity, that there would be embarrassment on both sides.