Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘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?’ inquired 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 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.

  I felt it was high time to call the meeting to order so, seizing a beer bottle, I banged it on the table. A chorus of ‘Yes, sah,’ ‘Coming, Sah’ came from the kitchen.

  ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done since I arrived,’ said Robin.

  Pious appeared carrying a tray of liquid sustenance and when all our glasses had been replenished I said, ‘I now call this meeting to order.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Robin mildly, ‘how dictatorial.’

  ‘The point is,’ I said, ‘that although we all know Martin is a splendid sort of chap in his way, he is an extremely bad D.O. and, even worse, has no, social graces whatsoever.’

  ‘I say,’ said Martin plaintively.

  ‘I think that’s a very fair assessment,’ said Robin.

  ‘I think you’re being very cruel to Martin,’ said Mary. ‘I think he’s a very good D.O.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said hastily, ‘we won’t go into that. The reason for this council of war is so that while Martin is making sure that his district is in order we can take over the entertainment side of the thing so that there’s no hitch and the whole thing runs smoothly. Now, I have inspected the house and I’ve got Pious in control of Martin’s staff for a start.’

  ‘There are times,’ said McGrade, ‘when you have strange flourishes of genius which I can only attribute to the tiny drop of Irish blood you’ve got in your veins. I’ve long envied you that steward.’

  ‘Well, envy away,’ I said, ‘you’re not pinching him from me. He’s too valuable. It now comes to a question of food. And this is where I thought that Mary could help.’

  Mary glowed like a rosebud.

  ‘Oh, but of course,’ she said, ‘I’ll do anything. What have you got in mind?’

  ‘Martin,’ I said, ‘I assume that he’s only here for one day so we only have three meals to consider. What time will he be arriving?’

  ‘I should think probably about seven or eight o’clock,’ said Martin.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘what do you suggest, Mary?’

  ‘Well, the avocados are absolutely perfect at the moment,’ said Mary. ‘And if you stuffed them with shrimps and did a sort of mayonnaise sauce which I’ve got the recipe for . . .’

  ‘Mary dear,’ interrupted Robin, ‘I have no tinned shrimps in the store and if you think I’m going to spend the next two days wading round in the river with a shrimp net, being attacked by hippos, you’ve got another think coming.’

  ‘Well, let’s just settle on avocados,’ I said. ‘Does he like tea or coffee?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Martin. ‘You see, the last time we didn’t get on very intimate terms and so I couldn’t find out his preferences.’

  ‘Well then, provide both tea and coffee,’ I said.

  ‘And then,’ said Mary excitedly, ‘something simple – scrambled eggs.’

  Martin solemnly wrote this down on his pad.

  ‘That should keep him going for a bit,’ I said. ‘I suppose you have to show him round the place and so on?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin, ‘that’s all organised.’

  We all leaned forward and peered into his face earnestly. ‘Are you sure?’ I inquired.

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ said Martin, ‘honestly, I’ve got everything organised from that point of view. It’s just this bloody entertaining business.’

  ‘Well, presumably he’ll want to go and look at some of the outlying areas?’ I inquired.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Martin, ‘he always likes to poke his nose in everywhere.’

  ‘Well then, I suggest a picnic lunch. After all, if you have a picnic lunch you don’t expect the Ritz standards, do you?’

  ‘As in this remote place,’ said Robin, ‘we spend our lives living on picnic
lunches and dinners and breakfasts, I don’t think it would come as a great surprise to him.’

  ‘I’ll do the picnic lunch,’ said Mary. ‘I’ll get a haunch of goat and you can have that cold. And I think there are two lettuces that I can give you. That poor dear boy forgot to water them for four days and so I’ve lost almost all of them but I think these two will be alright. They’re a little withered but at least they’re lettuce.’

  Martin wrote this solemnly down on his pad. ‘And for afters?’ he said, looking up anxiously.

  ‘Why not sour-sour?’ I suggested. This was an extraordinary fruit that looked like a large, deformed melon with knobs on, the contents of which were white and pulpy but, whipped up and served, had a delicious lemony sort of flavour which was very refreshing.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Mary, ‘what a good idea.’

  ‘Well, that’s taken care of breakfast and lunch,’ I said. ‘Now we come to dinner and I think this is the most important thing. I’ve discovered that Martin has got a very elegant dining-room.’

  ‘Martin’s got a dining room?’ said McGrade.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘an extremely elegant one.’

  ‘Well, why is it then,’ said McGrade, ‘on the rare occasions when this parsimonious bastard asks us up here to chop, we’re forced to eat on the veranda like a set of gipsy Protestants?’

  ‘Never mind the why’s and wherefore’s,’ I said, ‘come and look at it.’

  We all trooped in solemnly and examined the dining room. I was glad to see that in the interim – though how he had found time for it I didn’t know – Pious had had the table and chairs polished so that they glowed. Peering at the table top you could see your face reflected in it as though you were looking into a brown pool of water.

  ‘Oh, but it’s delicious,’ said Mary. ‘Martin, you never told us you had a room like this.’

  ‘It’s certainly a marvellous table,’ said McGrade, bashing his enormous fist down on it so that I feared that it would split in two.

  ‘But you can have a simply splendid dinner here,’ said Mary.

  ‘What an absolutely marvellous setting. I only wish we had some candelabras.’

  I was just about to suggest that she did not complicate the issue when Robin unexpectedly said, ‘I have four.’

  We all looked at him in complete astonishment.

  ‘Well, they’re not silver or anything as posh as that,’ he said, ‘but they are rather nice brass ones that I bought up in Kano. They need a bit of polishing, but I think they’d look pretty good.’

  ‘Oh splendid,’ said Mary, her eyes shining. ‘Dinner by candlelight. He couldn’t resist that.’

  ‘If an honest Irish Catholic is allowed to get a word in edgeways with a lot of jabbering heathens,’ said McGrade, ‘could I ask you all a question?’

  We all looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Where are we going to get the candles?’

  ‘Dear, yes, I didn’t think of that,’ said Mary ‘You can’t very well have candelabras without candles.’

  ‘I don’t know why it is that people always tend to underestimate my intelligence,’ said Robin. ‘I bought the candelabras because I liked them and I intended to use them. The house I’m occupying at the moment doesn’t lend itself to such medieval splendour but I did, however, take the precaution of importing a considerable quantity of candles which have been steadily melting away in a cupboard since I was moved to Mamfe. If they have not congealed into a solid mass, we might be able to salvage one or two. However, leave that part of the thing to me.’

  Knowing Robin as we did, we knew that the candles would not be a horrid sticky mess as he implied, for I was sure he would have checked on them four times a day.

  ‘Well now, Mary,’ I said, ‘will you do the flower arrangements?’

  ‘Flower arrangements?’ said Martin, startled.

  ‘But of course,’ I said, ‘a few bunches of begonias or something hung around the place always tart it up a bit.’

  ‘Well, it’s rather difficult,’ said Mary, ‘at the moment. There’s not really much in bloom. There’s hibiscus, of course . . .’

  ‘Holy Mary,’ said McGrade, ‘we’re surrounded by bloody hibiscus all the time. That’s not a flower arrangement. That’s just bringing the jungle into the house.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a hunter who’s extremely good at climbing trees, and as well as bringing me some animals the other day he brought me a rather beautiful orchid which he’d got from the top of a tree. I’ll contact him and get him to go out into the forest and see what orchids and other things he can get. And then, Mary dear, you do the flower arrangements.’

  ‘Oh, I love arranging flowers,’ said Mary, ‘and if they are orchids it will be absolutely marvellous.’

  Martin scribbled frantically on his pad.

  ‘Now,’ I said to him, ‘what have we got organised so far?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve checked on the beds and furniture, we’ve got the staff under control, we’ve organised the breakfast. Mary is organising the picnic lunch and the flower arrangements and that’s really as far as we’ve got.’

  ‘Drinks,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said Robin. ‘Being in charge of the only emporium that supplies you with the stuff, I know that Martin is a complete dipsomaniac and I could tell you almost down to the last bottle how much he’s got here.’

  He glanced down into his empty glass pensively.

  ‘Parsimoniousness is a thing that I could never suffer gladly.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,’ said Martin. ‘If you want another drink, call Amos.’

  ‘Hush, children,’ I said, ‘let’s go back onto the veranda and, raising our voices above the mating cries of the hippos, let us discuss the most important thing.’

  We trooped back onto the veranda, refilled our glasses and sat for a brief moment listening to the lovely sounds of the African forest at night. Fireflies as green as emeralds were flashing past us, cicadas and crickets were playing complicated Bach melodies, and occasionally there would be a belch, a grunt or a roar from the hippos at the bottom of the gorge.

  ‘If I’ve understood your devious, heathen, Protestant mind correctly,’ said McGrade, draining his glass and putting it on the table in the obvious expectation that somebody would refill it for him, ‘I take it that what you consider to be the most important thing is the dinner in the evening.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin and I simultaneously.

  In an outpost as remote as Mamfe when anybody as exalted as the D.C. came, it was automatic that all the white residents were invited to dinner.

  ‘This is where I thought Mary would come into her own,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mary, ‘now here I can be of some help. Do you think four or five courses?’

  ‘Holy Mary,’ said McGrade, ‘with that indolent Protestant in charge of the stores, how the hell do you think we are going to get enough for five courses?’

  ‘Leaving aside the rather offensive Catholic attack upon me,’ said Robin, ‘I must admit that as the river is at its lowest ebb and the boat hasn’t managed to get through, I am rather short of supplies. However, if McGrade is going to come to this dinner, I suggest we simply give him a plate of boiled sweet potatoes, which is, I believe, the diet on which most Irish Catholics are reared.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, then, that I am obese?’ said McGrade.

  ‘No, just obscene,’ said Robin.

  I banged my bottle on the table. ‘I call the convention to order,’ I said. ‘We do not at this juncture want to discuss the physical attributes or failings of anyone. We are discussing a menu.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘I think we ought to start with an entry!’

  ‘In France,’ said Robin, ‘they generally describe it as an entrée, which can be taken both ways, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mary, ‘what I mean is that we ought to start off with something succulent
to . . . to titillate the palate.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said McGrade, ‘I’ve been here now three years and I haven’t had anything titillated, least of all my palate.’

  ‘But if you’re going to have candelabras and things,’ said Mary, ‘you’ve got to have the food to go with it.’

  ‘Love of my life,’ said McGrade, ‘I agree with you entirely. But as there isn’t the food here, I don’t see really how you can go about producing five courses when that inefficient bastard from the United Africa Company has got his boat grounded and has probably only got a couple of tins of baked beans.’

  I could see that the situation was getting out of hand so I banged again with my bottle. There was another chorus of ‘Yes, Sah’ from the kitchen and more beer was produced.

  ‘Let’s settle on three courses,’ I said, ‘and let’s make them as simple as possible.’

  ‘Well, the first one,’ said Mary excitedly, ‘could be a soufflé.’

  ‘Jesus can’t do soufflés,’ said Martin.

  ‘Who?’ said Mary, astonished.

  ‘Jesus, my cook,’ Martin explained.

  ‘I never knew that your cook was called Jesus,’ said McGrade. ‘Why didn’t you let the world know he’d risen again?’

  ‘Well, he’s risen in the most extraordinary shape,’ said Robin, ‘as a nine-foot-six Hausa with heavily indented tribal marks on his cheeks, looking as though he’s ready for the grave, and cooking appallingly.’

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ said Martin, ‘so we can’t have soufflés.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary, disappointed, ‘I’d be willing to do them but I don’t suppose I ought to be in the kitchen when the D.C.’s here.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Martin firmly.

  ‘What about a spot of venison?’ said Robin, looking at me interrogatively.

  ‘Although I wish to help Martin,’ I said, ‘I have no intention of killing off any of my baby duiker in order to give the D.C. venison.’

  ‘How about poached eggs on toast?’ suggested McGrade, who was now on his fifth bottle of beer and not really concentrating on the important matter at hand.

  ‘I don’t think somehow that that’s really posh enough,’ said Mary. ‘You know, D.C.s like to be cosseted.’