Ostrich Country

‘No.’

‘They’ve had a spot of bad luck. Did they tell you?’

‘Yes, they did.’

‘Hope you’ll be comfortable anyway.’

Did Tony suspect? Not that there was anything to suspect. Pegasus felt secretly attracted to his wife. He had felt secretly attracted to people’s wives before. It was part of being alive. He had foolishly dreamt that the wife … well, it wasn’t the first time he had foolishly dreamt that a wife … but she wasn’t. They never were. Nevertheless he wondered if Tony suspected anything.

He went home early, not wanting to seem like an alcoholic. Bill was there, short, wiry, grim, quiet, but seemingly benevolent. Like a jockey. He was invited in for cocoa, and felt obliged to go. They switched the telly off, which was a shame. Conversation not too bad, though, despite the dead boy. Facts. Population. Number of pheasants. Brief discussion of rodent life. A short anecdote concerning a badger. Brief character studies of Lord and Lady Noseby. Comparison of country and city life. Not too bad, but what of future conversations when the facts are exhausted? Must go to bed. Rather sleepy. Don’t want to be tired on my first day. Good night.

But sleep wouldn’t come. Everything was too familiar. The dead child was too real. He dreaded his first day’s work. He heard everything, even the sea, two miles away, hissing quietly to itself. At three the wind got up, and bangings and groanings began all over the cottage, magnified by the absence of traffic. The boy sleeping comfortably here in this bed that last of all his nights. At 3.15 a.m. an owl hooted, twice. At 3.17 the rain began, and it was the rain that eventually lulled him into an uneasy sleep.

6

Pegasus felt a sense of helplessness the next morning as he faced up to a great mound of lifeless vegetables. He had to prepare seventy portions of potatoes, forty portions of peas, twenty portions of cabbage, fifteen portions of carrots, ten portions each of parsnips and cauliflower. Vegetables which were not in season had to be unfrozen. There were fearsome slicing and peeling machines such as he had never encountered. Perhaps he ought to have insured his fingers. One day his fingers would be as valuable as Betty Grable’s legs.

The pans and stoves seemed very large after his saucepan and gas ring. Everything looked much more mechanical and less artistic than he had expected. This whole venture was absurd.

He was supposed to have previous experience, and the two chefs, Alphonse and his assistant Tonio, assumed that he knew how to begin. He had to be very careful.

‘I’m not used to machines of this sort,’ he told Alphonse, and Alphonse showed him how to use them. It was easy, really. The vegetables came out just as efficiently for him as they did for Alphonse.

‘I’m sorry. We never used carrots,’ he told Alphonse, after he had cut up some carrots the wrong way.

‘What kind of place have you been working from, with the extreme absence of carrots?’ said Alphonse.

‘A little place,’ said Pegasus. ‘The owner had a thing about carrots.’

‘Was he having the thing also about other foods?’ asked Alphonse.

‘One or two,’ said Pegasus non-committally, in case there should be other disasters.

He got his timings mixed up. Alphonse was cross.

‘I’m not used to these quantities,’ said Pegasus.

‘This place where you work, she was having no customers?’ said Alphonse.

‘Not many. The owner had a thing about customers,’ said Pegasus.

He needed quite a lot of help, he felt a bit of a fool, but lunch passed off without disaster. And no one sent their vegetables back.

He started early on dinner, and it all went much more smoothly. He began to lose his sense of absurdity. Here he was working alongside these true professionals. Alphonse, with his typical French moustache, and his lean, rather crooked, pimply face with a big nose and stick-out ears. Tonio, hairy and Italian, always either singing or swearing. Pegasus began to feel happy. He was too busy to think about Jane Hassett. Tonight he would sleep soundly. Tomorrow he would work still better. Soon he would be a great chef. And he still had all his fingers. He felt that he was coming to life, that he was starting to live his own natural, destined life. He began to sing, but silently, in case they should think him presumptuous.

7

Jane Hassett changed into an expensive, bottle green costume. She dressed swiftly, her movements charged with nervous energy. Her legs, which were so often heavy and lifeless, felt light, seemed eager to play their full part in the day’s activities.

She ran her left hand over her right breast and squeezed the nipple very gently, as if she was reassuring an old friend. The parts of her body often had an independent existence. Often as a child she had been a leg or an arm for several days, without anybody knowing. Never a breast. Not in those days.

Tony was out, gone to Norwich, to see about some new central heating equipment. All lies. Once again there was a woman. She sat down on the bed, lit a cigarette, smoked it urgently, practically devouring it, yet with elegance.

Four months they’d been here, and already it had started up again.

Tony had come into a big legacy last October when his rich Uncle James had been flambeed to death in brandy during a five course meal at an hotel in Berkshire. Tony went away on a business trip to Suffolk and bought the hotel he was staying in. He had said that the least they could do, in memory of his uncle, was to buy a hotel and never serve meals at the table. She had been presented with a fait accompli, as usual.

She had been nervous. She felt she was too thin to be taken seriously. Landladies were fat, autocratic women, with voluminous chins and loud voices, whose false hoarse laughter shook the mock-Tudor beams and set the antique swords rattling on the walls. Yet she had been a success. She thought she could count herself, to date, a reasonable success. It was Tony who had been the failure. Already he was bored. He’d found a new toy, a doll. The lies had begun again. The accusations and scenes would follow.

And it had all begun with a lie. She had seen his entry in the visitors’ book. Mr and Mrs Hassett. So much for his business trip to Suffolk.

She soaked her face-flannel in hot water and applied it to the spot above her lip. She held it there, feeling a sexual excitement in these preparations. Her throat was tickling, the approach of a cold. All his fault. Whenever the lies began she had some minor ailment. It was her system’s way of getting rid of the poison.

She took away the flannel and pressed a finger of each hand against the horrid little pimple. It popped and the white poison shot out. She wiped it off with her flannel. It was Tony. It was her husband, in suppurative form, and when it was gone she hated him less.

That was better. Nothing nauseous about a dull, red excrescence. Ready to go now.

She walked over to Rose Lodge, wondering if Tony had sent the poor boy there on purpose. It was sensible enough, on the face of it. There wasn’t room at the hotel. It would take their minds off their tragedy. And yet she felt sure that it was done in anger. He was annoyed because she had made the appointment on her own. Only he could do things on his own.

Brenda showed her up to Pegasus’s room.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said.

‘Oh good.’

‘Bill likes him.’

Pegasus opened the door and asked her in. She sat in the armchair and he sat in the hard chair. She had never once been unfaithful to Tony.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she said, offering her packet of tipped.

‘No, thanks, I don’t. I should offer you some but I haven’t any.’

‘I just came to see how you were getting on,’ said Jane.

‘All right, thank you.’

‘You heard about their tragedy, I suppose?’

‘Yes. They told me.’

‘They should have removed all these toys and things. It’s embarrassing for you.’

She stood up and went to the window.

‘At least you have a nice view,’ she said, instantly regretting the ‘at least’.

‘Yes. Very nice.’