Marrying Off Mother: And Other Stories Read online

  By the same author

  MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS

  THE BAFUT BEAGLES

  THE DRUNKEN FOREST

  ENCOUNTERS WITH ANIMALS

  MENAGERIE MANOR

  THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

  THE WHISPERING LAND

  A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE

  THE NEW NOAH

  TWO IN THE BUSH

  BIRDS, BEASTS AND RELATIVES

  FILLETS OF PLAICE

  ROSY IS MY RELATIVE

  BEASTS IN MY BELFRY

  THE STATIONARY ARK

  THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

  THE MOCKERY BIRD

  CATCH ME A COLOBUS

  GOLDEN BATS AND PINK PIGEONS

  THE PICNIC AND SUCHLIKE PANDEMONIUM

  HOW TO SHOOT AN AMATEUR NATURALIST

  THE ARK’S ANNIVERSARY

  THE AYE-AYE AND I

  Copyright © 1991, 2011 by Gerald Durrell

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-605-9

  This book is for

  Teeny and Hal

  T.B.M.I.L. and T.B.F.I.L.

  I.T.W.

  from Gerry

  T.B.S.I.L.I.T.W.

  With all my love

  Bride —

  a woman with a fine prospect of

  happiness behind her.

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  The Devil’s Dictionary

  Contents

  Esmeralda

  Fred — or A Touch of the Warm South

  Retirement

  Marrying Off Mother

  Ludwig

  The Jury

  Miss Booth-Wycherly’s Clothes

  A Parrot for the Parson

  A Word In Advance

  All of these stories are true or, to be strictly accurate, some are true, some have a kernel of truth and a shell of embroidery. Some were my own experiences, others were told to me and I appropriated them for my own purposes, which bears out the saying: ‘Never talk to an author if you don’t want to appear in print’.

  Which of these stories is true and which is semi-true I have, of course, not the slightest intention of telling you, but I hope this will not detract from your enjoyment of them.

  Gerald Durrell

  Esmeralda

  Of all the many regions in La Belle France, there is one whose very name adds a lustrous glitter to the eye of a gourmet, a flush of anticipation to his cheeks, that drenches his taste buds with anticipatory saliva, and that is the euphonious name of Périgord. Here the chestnuts and walnuts are of prodigious size, here the wild strawberries are as heavily scented as a courtesan’s boudoir. Here the apples, the pears and the plums have sublime juices captured in their skins, here the flesh of the chicken, duckling and pigeon is firm and white, here the butter is as yellow as sunshine and the cream on top of the churns is thick enough to balance a full glass of wine upon. As well as all these riches, Périgord has one supreme prize that lurks beneath the loamy soil of her oak woods, the truffle, the troglodyte fungus that lives beneath the surface of the forest floor, black as a witch’s cat, delicious as all the perfumes of Arabia.

  In this delectable part of the world I had found a small and charming village and had put up at the tiny local hostelry called Les Trois Pigeons. Here, mine host, Jean Pettione, was a jovial fellow whose face had been turned by wine to the russet colour of a pippin. At this period in autumn the woods were in their prime, a rich tapestry of colours from gold to bronze. Wishing to enjoy them, I got M. Pettione to do me a picnic lunch and drove into the countryside. I parked the car and walked off into the forest to enjoy the panoply of colours and the strange and magical shapes of the toadstools that grow everywhere. Presently, I sat down on the sturdy carcase of an elderly oak to enjoy my lunch and just as I had finished there was a rustling in the dead ginger-coloured bracken and an enormous pig appeared. She was as surprised to see me as I was to see her. We gazed at each other with interest.

  She weighed, I guessed, somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixteen stone. She was sleekly pink with a peach bloom of white hair and a few decorative black spots placed by Nature as carefully and seductively as the dark patches that ladies in the 1600s used to adorn themselves with. She had small golden eyes full of wisdom and mischief, her ears drooped down each side of her face like a nun’s habit and then there, jutting out proudly, was her snout, delicately wrinkled, the end of it looking like one of those splendid Victorian instruments you use for clearing blocked drains. Her hooves were elegant and polished, and her tail a wonderful wind-up pink question mark, propelling her through life. She had about her an aura not, as one would assume, of pig but a delicate fragrant scent that conjured up spring meadows ablaze with flowers. I had never smelt a pig like her. I searched my mind as to where I had last encountered this magical romantic perfume and at last I remembered. I had got into the lift in the hotel I was staying at and the delicious lady who was travelling downwards with me also had wafted this delectable aroma to me as the pig was now doing. I had asked the lady in the lift if she would mind vouchsafing to me the name of her exquisite perfume, and she told me it was called Joy.

  Now, I have had many strange experiences in life, but until then I had never been privileged to meet, in an oak forest in Périgord, a large and amiable pig wearing this particular and expensive scent. She moved slowly up to me, placed her chin on my knee and uttered a prolonged and rather alarming grunt, the sort of noise a Harley Street specialist makes when he is about to tell you the disease you are suffering from will be fatal. She sighed deeply and then commenced to chomp her jaws together. The sound was like the noise made by an extraordinarily agile group of Spanish dancers with an abundance of castanets. She sighed again. It was obvious the lady wanted something. She nosed at my bag, uttering small squeals of delight when I opened it to see what was exciting her. All I could see was the remains of the cheese I had been eating. I took it out, circumnavigated her efforts to seize the whole thing and cut her off a slice. It slid into her mouth and there, to my astonishment, she let it lie, enjoying the fragrance as a wine expert will let a wine lie along his tongue, breathing its perfume, tasting its body. Then slowly and carefully she started to eat it, uttering tiny mumbling noises of satisfaction. I noticed that she wore around her portly neck, as a dowager would wear a waterfall of pearls, a very elegant collar of gold chain and dangling from it was a length of chain which had been snapped in half. So elegant was she that it was obvious that my new found friend was a pig that someone valued, and had lost. She took some more cheese, uttering little grunts of thanks and pleasure, l
etting each fragment lie for a moment on her tongue like a true connoisseur. I saved one piece of cheese as a lure and with it got her out of the wood and alongside my station-wagon. She was obviously quite used to this form of transport and she climbed into the back and settled herself down comfortably, staring around in regal fashion, her mouth full of cheese. As I drove back towards the village which I felt sure was her home, the pig rested her chin on my shoulder and went to sleep. I decided that the mixture of the scent of Joy with that of ripe Roquefort was not a combination guaranteed to attract a member of the opposite sex. I stopped at Les Trois Pigeons, removed the redolent pig’s head from my shoulder, gave her the last bit of cheese and went inside in search of the redoubtable Jean. He was busily polishing glasses with great precision, breath-ing heartily on each one to get the required shine.

  ‘Jean,’ I said, ‘I have a problem.’

  ‘A problem, monsieur, what problem?’ he asked.

  ‘I have acquired a pig,’ I said.

  ‘Monsieur has purchased a pig?’ he asked in astonishment.

  ‘No, I did not purchase it, I acquired it. I was sitting in the forest eating my lunch when this pig suddenly appeared and offered to share my food with me. I believe it to be an unusual pig since it not only has a passion for Roquefort cheese, but it was wearing a gold chain collar and smelled strongly of perfume.’

  The glass he was polishing slipped through his fingers and fell to the floor, shattering into a multitude of fragments.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘You have Esmeralda!’

  ‘There was no name on the collar,’ I said, ‘but there can’t be many pigs answering to that description trotting about, so I suppose she must be Esmeralda. Who does she belong to?’

  He came round the counter, glass scrunching under his feet, taking off his apron.

  ‘She belongs to Monsieur Clot,’ he said. ‘Mon Dieu! He will go mad if he has lost her. Where is she?’

  ‘In my car,’ I replied, ‘finishing off a slice of the Roquefort.’

  We went out to the station-wagon and saw that Esmeralda, finding that a cruel fate was denying her any more cheese, had philosophically fallen asleep. Her snores made the whole vehicle tremble as if the engine was still running.

  ‘Oh! la la!’ said Jean, ‘It is Esmeralda. Oh, Monsieur Clot will be out of his mind. You must take her back to him at once, Monsieur. Monsieur Clot thinks the world of that pig. You must take her back immediately.’

  ‘Well, I will be happy to do that,’ I said, a trifle testily, ‘if you tell me where Monsieur Clot lives. I don’t want my life encumbered by a pig.’

  ‘A pig!’ said Jean, looking at me in horror. That is not just a pig, monsieur, it is Esmeralda.’

  ‘I don’t care what her name is,’ I said, crossly, ‘at the moment she is in my car, smelling like a Parisian tart that’s been on a cheese jag, and the sooner I get rid of her the happier I will be.’

  Jean drew himself up and stared at me.

  ‘A tart?’ he said. ‘You call her a tart? Esmeralda, as everyone knows, is a virgin.’

  I began to feel that my mind was becoming unhinged. Was I really standing next to my station-wagon in which slept a highly aromatic pig called Esmeralda and discussing her sex life with the owner of a hotel called the Three Pigeons? I took a deep breath to steady myself.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t care about Esmeralda’s sex life. I don’t care if she has been raped by all the boar pigs in Périgord.’

  ‘Oh! Mon Dieu! She hasn’t been raped, has she?’ croaked Jean, his face going white.

  ‘No, no, no, not to the best of my knowledge. She has not been deflowered or whatever it is you do to a pig. In any case, it would take a particularly lascivious boar and one with no olfactory senses left, to attempt to rape a sow pig smelling like a high class whore on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Please, please, monsieur,’ said Jean, in agony, ‘don’t say things like that — particularly in front of Monsieur Clot. He treats her with all the reverence you would accord a saint.’

  I was about to say something irreverent about St Gadarene, but checked myself for Jean obviously took the whole thing very seriously.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if Monsieur Clot has lost Esmeralda he will be worried, won’t he?’

  ‘Worried — worried? He’ll be insane.’

  ‘Well, then, the sooner I get Esmeralda back to him the better. Now, where does he live?’

  Having been brought up in Greece where distance was to be measured in cigarettes — of little use to me at the age of ten — I had become fairly adept at extracting directions from local people. One had to approach it with all the dedication of an archaeologist brushing away the dust of ages to reveal an artefact. The chief problem was that people always assumed that you had their intimate knowledge of the surrounding terrain and so it took time and patience. Jean, as a direction giver, surpassed anything I had come across before.

  ‘Monsieur Clot lives in “Les Arbousiers”,’ he said.

  ‘And where is that?’ I asked.

  ‘You know, his land joins on to Monsieur Mermod’s.’

  ‘I don’t know Monsieur Mermod.’

  ‘Oh, but you must know him, he’s our carpenter. He built ail the tables and chairs for Les Trois Pigeons. And the bar, and I think he put the shelves up in the larder, but I’m not sure — that might have been Monsieur Devoir. He lives down in the valley by the river.’

  ‘Where does Monsieur Clot live?’

  ‘Well, I just told you, next door to Monsieur Mermod.’

  ‘How does one get to Monsieur Clot’s house?’

  ‘Well, you drive through the village . . .’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘That way,’ he said, and pointed.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You turn left at Mademoiselle Hubert’s house and . . .’

  ‘I do not know Mademoiselle Hubert or her house. What does it look like?’

  ‘It is brown.’

  ‘All the houses in the village are brown. How can I recognize it?’

  He thought deeply.

  ‘Ah,’ he said at last, ‘today is Thursday. So she will be cleaning. So, enfin, she will hang her little red mat out of the bedroom window.’

  ‘Today is Tuesday.’

  ‘Ah, you are right. If it is Tuesday she will be watering her plants.’

  ‘So I turn left at the brown house where the lady is watering her plants. What then?’

  ‘You drive past the war memorial, past Monsieur Pelligot’s house and then, when you come to the tree, you turn left.’

  ‘What tree?’

  ‘The tree at the turning where you turn left.’

  ‘The whole of Périgord is filled with trees. The roads are lined with trees. How can I distinguish this tree from the others?’

  Jean looked at me in astonishment.

  ‘Because it is the tree against which Monsieur Herolte killed himself,’ he said, ‘and it is where his widow goes and lays a wreath in his memory on the anniversary of his death. You can tell it by the wreath.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘It was in June 1950, sixth or seventh, I can’t be sure. But certainly June.’

  ‘We are now in September — will the wreath still be there?’

  ‘Oh, no, they clear it away when it fades.’

  ‘So is there any other way of identifying the tree?’

  ‘It is an oak,’ he said.

  ‘The countryside is full of oaks — how will I know this particular one?’

  ‘It has a dent in it.’

  ‘So there I turn left. Where is Monsieur Clot’s house?’

  ‘Oh, you can’t miss it. It is a long, low, white building, a real old-style farmhouse.’

  ‘So I just look for a white farmhouse.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t see it from the road.’

  ‘Then how will I know when I am there?’

  He thought about this carefully.

 
‘There is a little wooden bridge with one plank missing,’ he said. ‘That is Monsieur Clot’s drive.’

  At this point, Esmeralda turned over and we were enveloped in a miasma of perfume and cheese. We moved away from the station-wagon.

  ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Let me see if I have this straight. I go down there and turn left where a lady is watering her plants. I drive past the war memorial and Monsieur Pelligot’s house and continue straight until I come to the oak tree with a dent and then I turn left and look for a bridge with a missing plank. Is that right?’

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Jean in admiration, ‘you could have been born in the village.’

  I did find my way at last. At Mademoiselle Hubert’s house, she was not watering her plants, nor was her little red mat in evidence. She was in fact sitting in the sun, asleep. Reluctantly, I woke her to ascertain the fact that she was indeed Mademoiselle Hubert at whose house I was supposed to turn left. The oak tree did have a dent in it, a considerable one, so I judged that Monsieur Herolte must have imbibed an inordinate quantity of pastis before plunging his Deux Chevaux into the bark. The bridge when I found it did have a plank missing. The countryman’s instructions are always accurate even if they may appear somewhat mysterious when they are vouchsafed to you. I drove down the rutted road on one side of which was a green meadow, bespeckled with a small herd of cream-coloured Charolais cattle, and on the other side was a glittering field of sunflowers, their beautiful yellow and black faces all upturned in adoration of the sun. I drove through a small wood and there, in a clearing, stood Monsieur Clot’s house, long and low and white as a dove’s egg, its roof made from ancient tiles as thick and dark as bars of chocolate, each emblazoned with the insignia of golden lichens. There were two cars parked outside, one a police car and one a doctor’s, and so I slid the station-wagon alongside them. The moment I switched off the engine, rising above Esmeralda’s snores I could hear a strange cacophony from the house — shouts, bellows, screams, weepings and wailings and the general gnashing of teeth. I assumed — quite rightly as it turned out — that Esmeralda’s disappearance had not gone unnoticed. I went to the front door — which was ajar — and, seizing the Freudian brass knocker representing a hand clasping a ball, I banged loudly. The uproar inside the house continued unabated. I banged again and still no one came. Taking a firm grip on the knocker, I beat the door so ferociously that I feared it might come off its hinges. For a brief moment the bedlam in the house ceased and presently the front door was flung open by one of the most beautiful young women I had ever seen. Her long hair was in disarray, but this only added to its charm, for it was the rich sunset hue that every autumn leaf endeavours to achieve and seldom does. Her skin had been touched and lit by the sun so it had the quality of peach-coloured silk. Her eyes were enormous, a wonderful mixture of green and gold under dark brows like the wings of an albatross. Her pink mouth was of the shape and texture that makes even the most faithful of husbands falter. Tears the size of twenty-two carat diamonds were flooding from her magnificent eyes and pouring down her cheeks.