“Oh, hello, Mummy,” she drawled, while Gunn stood to sudden attention with the deference of a young man towards a prospective mother-in-law.
Mrs. Partridge was short and slight, with greying hair carefully waved back from a centre parting, and eyes as brown and soft as a doe’s. She was dressed for walking in a short tweed skirt, tailored coat, woollen oversocks, and brogue shoes of chrome leather. She carried a strong ash walking-stick, and looked healthy, neat, and businesslike. In colouring, in character, and in looks, she was the very antithesis of her daughter.
“Pussy dear,” she said, “you’re coming for a walk with me. We’ll take sandwiches, and get a cup of tea somewhere. Breakfast in bed and reading over the fire first thing in the morning will do you no good. You’re too young to be lazy. Besides, you’ll lose your figure.”
Pussy pulled a face, and ran to close her book before her mother could read the title. She had tucked it under her arm, and was about to go upstairs to put on her walking shoes, when Mr. Weston walked down, carrying the usual accoutrements of trout fishing.
Pussy greeted him with her most genuine smile. She admired Mr. Weston, much as she had admired Douglas Fairbanks, because of his athletic build and charming manners. If his breeches and sports coat gave the impression of having been cut by a theatrical tailor, at least he had the figure which could wear them, and he was altogether such a kind, unassuming man that a slight exaggeration in clothes and manner did not disturb anyone who met him.
There was a certain awkwardness about his movements which was due to the fact that he used his left hand too frequently, and at first sight, one did not perceive that the right one was so crippled as to be little more than a sleeping partner to its fellow.
“We’re blithering mugs to go out day after day like this,” he remarked after he had greeted them all. “Any fool can see that we’re going to have another flat calm, with the sun blazing down on the lake as if it were midsummer instead of October. My son and I have been here for over a fortnight, and we’ve caught four sea-trout between us, on an average, every other day. That’s pretty bad for the best sea-trout lake in Wales. This place doesn’t seem to understand the weather forecasts! When it isn’t blowing a gale, it’s a flat calm. Yet we all go out every morning, full of hope that it’s going to be better than yesterday, and it’s always worse instead. Blithering mugs, that’s what we are!”
“I think it’s pretty much the same everywhere,” said Gunn. “It’s the uncertainty of it all that entices us out day after day, and the perpetual hope that we shall eventually strike a perfect fishing day, and bring in a trout big enough to be stuffed and kept in a glass case, like the one upstairs on the landing which Mr. Winkley caught. That’s fishing, that was!”
“The Fisherman’s Prayer,” remarked Pussy. “It’s all right, Mother, it’s quite proper,” she laughed, as Mrs. Partridge looked apprehensive.
“Lord, send a fish that even I when telling of it may tell no lie!” supplemented Gunn.
“I think all this talk of exaggerating their catches is rather a libel on fishing people,” said Mrs. Partridge. “I’ve always found them very honest and rather modest, too. When anyone tells you about having hooked two fish at the same time, for instance, and one getting away, well, that does happen, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, certainly,” replied Mr. Weston, “especially the part about one of ’em getting away. After all, no one knows why salmon and sea-trout take a fly or a bait in fresh water. Old Walton seemed to have got as near the truth as anyone when he said they take them for sheer wantonness.”
“But surely it’s because they’re hungry,” protested Pussy.
Mr. Weston shook his head.
“No,” he said, “they never feed in the fresh water; they only come back to spawn. They stoke up when they’re in the sea, and live on their humps like camels until they get back again – if they do. Their flesh is pink through eating shrimps.”
“But why do they ever leave the sea?” asked Pussy. “It seems so silly to run away from food.”
Gunn guffawed.
“Of course, you would find that difficult to understand,” he mocked, “but the answer is that they can’t help themselves. If a sea-trout or salmon was hatched out in one of the little lakes beyond the big one here, and then went out to sea to grow up, some instinct would bring it back again to that same little lake when it wanted to spawn.”
Pussy didn’t believe him.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she asked, “that because I was hatched out” – Mrs. Partridge looked hurt – “in the Isle of Wight, I shall have to return...” She broke off abruptly as a dark, flying shape hurtled through the air towards her.
“Omigod!” she screamed, and clutched at Gunn with one hand while with the other she attempted to dislodge the thing from her shoulder.
“Ha, ha!” came a deep, sepulchral voice from behind them. “I likes to make yer flesh creep.”
“Claude, you devil!” yelled Pussy. “Take your fiendish monkey off me! Take it off, I say! You know I can’t bear monkeys. Dirty, flea-bitten things. Ugh!”
Claude Weston bowed gracefully from his slender hips. “Madam, it shall be as you command. To hear is to obey.” He clicked his tongue at the little marmoset which sat rolling its eyes and gibbering on the girl’s shoulder. It immediately sprang over to him, and he caught it in his arms, whence it swung itself up to crouch on his head, and proceeded to investigate his thick hair. Claude struck the conventional attitude of an acrobat who has safely landed on the ground after a successful hazard on a trapeze, and cried “Allez – oop!”
As he stood poised almost on his toes, he looked too slight and pretty for a boy of eighteen. His hair, the colour of newly burnished copper, was parted in the centre and curled back on either side like the horns of a faun. Faun-like, too, was his slim, graceful figure, his satirical smile, and the pale freckles sprinkled over his creamy skin. His hands were white, long-fingered, and supple.
He drew the monkey to his shoulder.
“She is unkind to you, my Petkins,” he said, addressing the monkey. “It is strange in one who has a heart of gold.” He made a sudden play with his hands towards Pussy, and repeated, “A heart of gold,” while, miraculously, there appeared in his fingers a heart of gilded metal. He then produced pieces of gold from her ear, her hair, her book, and finally knelt down and tumbled a clinking stream of them from what the Americans call the “cuffs” of her trousers.
“Up to your tricks again, Claude,” she laughed, as he tipped the whole collection into her pocket, which she found empty immediately afterwards. “Are you never still?”
“He can’t allow himself to be,” smiled Mr. Weston, his whole face expressing pleasure and pride in his son’s performance. “As soon as this holiday is over he has an engagement to appear on a provincial stage. It is the beginning of his career. I think he has a great future.”
Claude struck another attitude.
“Ecco!” he cried. “Behold Claude, the Great Claustrophobia!”
They all laughed at his foolishness.
“I wish you’d give an entertainment tonight,” suggested Mrs. Partridge. “It’s very dull after dinner here, and everyone would love it. Can’t you persuade him, Mr. Weston?”
“He won’t need persuading,” replied Mr. Weston. “He brought all his outfit with him so that he could keep in practice. It will be an excellent opportunity to try out some of his new tricks. How about it, Claude?”
“To hear is to obey,” Claude said again. “Do you hear that, Petkins? Tonight we work.”
“I hope your tricks don’t include any monkey business,” said Pussy. “I know that you’re fond of the little beast, but for God’s sake, don’t let it come near me again.”
Claude addressed the monkey again.
“The lady doesn’t like you,” he said. “But never mind, my precious, all ladies are not alike. Come down and I will whisper a secret in your ear before we go a-fishing.”
He sa
t down on a chair and held the monkey on his knee. They appeared to converse together.
“You’re surely not going to take that little brute out fishing with you,” remarked Gunn, putting his arm around the girl’s shoulders.
“Don’t stop him,” said Pussy, rubbing her head against his chest like a sensuous kitten. “It will catch cold, and die on his hands, thank goodness.”
“No, no!” cried Claude, making great pantomime with his hands. “Behold, the good magician thwarts the wicked witch. Lo! Here is a woolly coat knitted for thee, my Petkins, by the kind, fat hands of Mother Mumsby!”
With all the concentration of a child dressing a favourite doll, he proceeded to thrust the arms of the chattering monkey through the top of a blue-and-scarlet knitted coat.
Again they laughed at Claude’s absurdities, but Mr. Weston did not laugh with them. The smile had passed from his lips, and the twinkle from his eyes. With a muttered exclamation, he turned on his heel and strode out of the hotel. They gazed after him without comment, but Pussy, for the second time that morning, wondered what there could be in the name of Mrs. Mumsby to cause people to act in so strange a manner.
As if he sensed her thoughts, Claude looked up and smiled. “Don’t take any notice of Dad,” he said. “He’s like Grumpy. He thinks ‘all females is p’ison’.”
Chapter 5
At first sight there was little to attract you to The Fisherman’s Rest, standing, as it did, directly on the main road, with its front rooms protected only by spiked iron railings from the curious glances of passers-by. Tourists, were they motorists, hikers, or cyclists, frequented the larger Lakeside Hotel, which stood, as its name implied, where the big lake lay like a gigantic octopus and stretched its streamy tentacles through the mountain passes to smaller lakes more wild and bleak than itself. But people who visited Aberllyn for fishing always stayed at The Fisherman’s Rest.
The reason was not far to seek.
Your true fisherman is a creature who likes to be understood, and it is not easy to understand him. He will turn out of a warm bed at seven o’clock on a bitterly cold morning, and will fish continuously until seven o’clock at night in conditions of acute discomfort as long as it is light enough to see his cast. He will sit in a boat, his cramped limbs little eased by the latest design in rubber boat-cushions, and will exist all day on a few sandwiches and a flask of tea. He will suffer being buffeted by gales and soaked to the skin by rain, or will sweat in the heat and have his skin blistered by the sun’s rays reflected from the still water. He will do all this, and return day after day with an empty creel, grumbling at the fish, the weather, the water, the light, and yet will feel exhilaratingly happy.
But as soon as he enters his hotel, he demands immediate and endless comforts. Hot water, warm fires, dry clothes, a comfortable bed, good drink, a pleasing variety of food, and a goodly company of fishing folk, to whose ready ears he may recount the prize catches of past days, and with whom he may commiserate upon the atrocious scarcity of fish in the present.
When such a fisherman, unrecommended, looked for accommodation in Aberllyn, he invariably chose the Lakeside Hotel. To his unknowing eyes, it was a bigger, brighter, and better hotel. And why, he would argue, should he choose to walk or drive half a mile to the lake every morning when he could stay at a hotel where his boat would await him only a hundred yards away?
But by the end of a week, he would be inventing excuses for leaving the hotel of his choice and would beg for a room, however small and poorly furnished, at The Fisherman’s Rest.
The bedrooms at the Lakeside Hotel were bright and large, but while visitors to The Fisherman’s Rest were sleeping snugly beneath warm, cotton-covered eiderdowns, clasping hot-water bottles, and were awakened by a hot cup of tea provided free by the management, those at the Lakeside Hotel shivered beneath inadequate blankets under a silk bedspread, and drank luke-warm tea for which they were charged sixpence extra. While wainscots in the hall at The Fisherman’s Rest were peppered with power plugs for electric fires which visitors could move about at their will, and the lounge was heated by two generous coal fires, one at either end, the “Lakeside” lounge held a feeble fire which barely warmed the five people who could first make a circle around it, and the hall was not heated at all.
The Fisherman’s Rest had two bars: one within the hotel itself, complete with high stools, foot rails, and elbow room, and another with rough sawdust-strewn floor and an outer door for the village people. At the Lakeside Hotel, whisky and cocktails were referred to as “alcoholic liquor”, and were kept in a locked cupboard in the dining-room, whence they were abstracted in a furtive way by the waiter, who had first obtained the key from the office.
The manageress of the Lakeside Hotel was a touchy woman who took offence at the smallest suggestion of criticism, but Mrs. Evans of The Fisherman’s Rest was a most admirable hostess, with capable hands and an attentive ear.
In figure she was not unlike Mrs. Mumsby, save that her thighs were longer and her carriage thereby rendered graceful, so that where Mrs. Mumsby waddled, she sailed along as if she wore a dignified crinoline. While Mrs. Mumsby visited a hairdresser each fortnight in order to keep a tell-tale streak from the parting of her hair, Mrs. Evans’ hair was unashamedly grey. While Mrs. Mumsby’s complexion was applied, layer by layer, out of innumerable bottles, Mrs. Evans’ cheeks were rouged only by bending over the kitchen range, and her nose was dull or shiny according to the slack or busy part of the season. Nor was Mrs. Evans a widow, although she might well have been one for all that the visitors saw of her husband. Occasionally they might glimpse a wizened, grey-moustached man flitting about the kitchen quarters in shirt-sleeves, but for the most part he had become a person whom Mrs. Evans kept about the hotel for the same purpose as a nervous spinster keeps a man’s hat hanging in the hall. Whether he took a place in the background because of her stronger character, or whether she had been forced to develop her abilities on account of his weakness, was a thing which no one had yet succeeded in discovering. But everyone agreed that she ran the hotel with inspired ability, and that her greatest inspiration had been the hall.
Now the hall at the Lakeside Hotel was merely a hall and nothing else – a draughty entrance through which you must of necessity pass in order to reach any other part of the hotel. But the hall at The Fisherman’s Rest was so important that most of the fishing visitors believed that the hotel had been built round it.
In the hall, you became acquainted with your ghillie on the evening before your first day on the lake; in the hall, you waited for the luncheon-basket which would sustain you until late evening; in the hall, you took a last look at your flies and casts to ensure the success of the day; in the hall, you left coats and fishing tackle until the precise moment of your departure; in the hall, you deposited your catch on your return, while an ever-growing group of fellow-fishermen stood around, admiring, weighing, measuring, and criticizing each fish as it was laid tenderly, every tail straight, by the ghillie who had netted it; in the hall, at nine p.m. precisely, Taffy, the patient porter, gathered each catch on to its labelled tin tray, and wiped down the scaly tiles; and in the hall, little clans of otherwise ill-assorted people talked over their after-dinner coffee, while the faint odour of the departed fish arose to remind them of the day’s sport.
When visitors returned from dinner that evening, however, the hall had assumed yet another aspect. The fish had been cleared away, and the blue-and-gold loom chairs had been arranged in rows facing an alcove cut off by black velvet curtains. In front of these stood three small square tables covered in black baize, their edges braided with gold.
Claude, who had dined early, could be seen flitting in and out of the curtains, arranging the paraphernalia for his display of magic. He was dressed in an outfit which matched the colouring of the tables; black, tight-fitting trousers with harlequin pockets, and a wide-sleeved tunic of gold, edged with black. He looked like some gay, handsome troubadour who had stepped straight out o
f the illustrated pages of a child’s fairy book.
He paused for a moment beside one of the tables, and flexed his wrists, making graceful little passes in the air with his long, white fingers. After the long, sunny days on the lake, he had had to supplement their whiteness by the application of theatrical lotion so that their effect against the dark curtains should not be spoiled.
As they all entered the hall, he moved to a chair in the front row, and patted the blue silk cushion.
“Come along, Mrs. Mumsby,” he said, with his most charming smile. “You are the guest of honour. Without you, I cannot perform. I’ve saved this front stall specially for you.”
“Claude, you dear boy...!”
Mrs. Mumsby, wearing a pale-blue satin dress which looked as if it might collapse at any moment and pour her fat, white body in a heap on to the floor, moved down the aisle between the chairs towards him, bridling with smiles. She tapped his cheek with a playful finger, and squatted down on the chair he had indicated.
Claude settled the cushion behind her broad back.
“Comfortable?” he asked, and raised her fingers to his lips.
“Magician?” growled Major Jeans. “Damned gigolo, I should say. Oh, I beg your pardon,” he added as Claude’s father brushed heavily against him and walked towards his son.
Mrs. Mumsby looked up and smiled as he joined them, but Mr. Weston was in too much of a hurry to respond.
“All ready, Claude?” he asked. “How about starting now?”
“Okay.” Claude clicked his heels together and gave his graceful little bow which his present costume showed off to greater advantage than usual, and disappeared behind the curtains.
The rest of the audience arranged themselves in the chairs, and, try as he would, Mr. Weston could not jolly them into the front seats, so that Mrs. Mumsby, seated in the chair on the extreme left, remained in isolated possession of the front row until Mr. Weston himself took the corresponding chair on the right aisle – an arrangement in which no one perceived any significance.
Bleeding Hooks Page 3
