Ostrich Country. David Nobbs
itself neither good nor bad. A process.
Question: Can we ignore future applications?
Answer: No. Therefore we must ask ourselves the
Further Question: Is man good or bad?
Answer: No.
Supplementary Question: Is …
Bradley came through, looking rather sad.
‘Can’t understand it,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘All the Dungeness rats have died.’
Bradley’s sadness lay not in the ending of animal life but in the refusal of the rats to fulfil man’s predictions.
He must act now.
‘May I use your typewriter for a moment, Miss Besant?’
He began to type his notice. Then he hesitated.
He thought: Three. In favour of experiments with minds of birds and animals. Could help fight against mental illness. By helping to understand animal mind, could help to liberate human mind.
Against. Could be used by fascists, dictators, power-mad school prefects (Murdoch!) etc. By helping to understand animal mind, could help to enslave human mind.
Conclusion: no conclusion.
Always the same. It was impossible to decide anything by means of reason, either because he had an inferior mind or because it really was impossible to decide anything by means of reason.
The Dungeness rats had all died, poor sods. Life would be easier if he could hate rats, but he didn’t. He never wished anything any harm, rats, Paula, spiders, anything.
He resumed his typing. As he typed he could see Cummings, cooing to the pigeons, rapidly becoming one himself, inflated Cummings going through his courtship display. Coo coo. Conditioning himself when he thought he was conditioning others.
He finished typing his notice. He put it in an envelope. He addressed the envelope to Mr Colthorpe. He dropped the envelope into the internal mail tray. He felt wonderful.
‘Miss Besant?’
‘Yes.’
‘If your boy friend told you that he knew a place where you could get the best algae in the Home Counties, what would you say?’
‘I haven’t got a boy friend, Mr Baines.’
He had only thought of Paula once during the last hour. He was on the mend.
‘Why not, Miss Besant?’
‘Why not what, Mr Baines?’
‘Why haven’t you got a boy friend?’
‘What a question, Mr Baines.’
It was not Pegasus’s nature to be referred to as ‘Mr Baines’ by young women. He wanted Miss Besant to call him ‘Pegasus’. He wanted to share his happiness with someone, so he asked her out that evening. She wasn’t beautiful or intelligent, but she was nice, and wasn’t it selfish always to go for the beautiful and intelligent? He would choose this nice lonely Miss Besant, whom no one else had chosen.
As the evening wore on he grew terrified that Paula would see him with Miss Besant. He took her to the Classic, Tooting, in order to avoid being seen by anyone he knew.
His old head prefect Murdoch was sitting two rows behind them. What did it matter? Why on earth did he mind?
That night he dreamt that he was in a cage, being fed on seaweed and Cummings’s droppings. Twelve school prefects were waiting for him to do his sample. An electric recording device had been fitted to his head. Some of the slides showed traffic accidents. The others showed Miss Besant. Sometimes there was blood in the accident, and sometimes there was blood on Miss Besant. When there was blood he got an electric shock. It was hot, stifling. The sweat poured off him.
3
Easter Saturday, an early Easter in March. A cool strong wind buffeting the windows of the Goat and Thistle. The buds vulnerable on the trees round the fine Suffolk church. The village spreading away down all the lanes, out of the church’s grasp. Nearby the sea, the estuary, the bird sanctuary, the nuclear power station, and all the secret research establishments which are such a feature of the unspoilt East Anglian countryside. Peace and quiet, except for the traffic, the planes screaming overhead, a radio blaring in a garden. Manchester City’s greater attacking flair will just about see them through. This could be the year when they hit the proverbial jackpot. Saturday. Easter Saturday.
In the bar of the Goat and Thistle Jane Hassett was serving beer to two early bird-watchers and Mr Thomas, the milkman. In the dining-room people were lunching in undertones. From the windows you could see the marsh and the sea, but the power station was hidden by heathland. It was a backwater.
Tarragon Clump, the amateur naturalist, keen dinghy sailor, virgin and kidney surgeon, sat at a window table in the stark dining-room with its white tablecloths and clinical white walls. Its spirit of non-conformism weighed on him, and he ordered a half bottle of wine instead of a full one. He chewed his tiny piece of lukewarm sole in parsley sauce morosely. Vulgarians, thought Tarragon, the English, thinking of them as if they were foreigners, his own family even, the Clumps of Gloucestershire. He looked out over the marsh and tried to make out a bird that wheeled indolently over the distant woods. Too far. Binoculars not yet unpacked.
He turned his head to gaze greedily at Patsy’s legs as she bore inexpertly towards him a plate of devilled kidneys and five veg, all watery.
‘I wonder if I could have some mustard,’ said Tarragon, and he shifted in his seat, the better to look up Patsy’s legs as she leant over to reach the mustard.
I wonder if there’ll be any pochard on the marsh, he thought, to take his mind off Patsy’s saignant legs as she reached for the mustard.
‘You already have mustard,’ she said, blushing as she saw the mustard pot on Tarragon’s table.
‘So I have, Patsy.’ He smiled at her. Patsy with her country ways. Patsy, the potential haystack tumbler. Patsy and the other waitress, Brenda, trim like an air hostess.
Unmarried at thirty-seven, Tarragon had come to feel for the Goat and Thistle the sort of affection married men look for in mistresses — secret, temporal, understanding, no need to book in advance. His modest, domestic Jacobean mistress, plastered, three gables, thin wisps of pargetting. Unchanging.
And now once again it was under new management. Once again it had to be established that Tarragon Clump was a regular here, a popular figure with his ready money and manly binoculars, his thick pullovers and square-jawed, wide-nosed, narrow-foreheaded face. It had to be hinted that in London he was a success. A leading man in his field. A man who would one day operate on a royal personage.
He attacked his meal aggressively, trying not to gaze at Patsy or Brenda, feeling the excitement of the impending marsh, glad to be back. Four whole days, four gumbooted forceps-free days of bliss. A little sailing in his dinghy. A lot of bird-watching. A steady movement of his big, strong legs over squelching paths. Oh, Clump, there is health in you yet.
When this vile meal was over he would introduce himself to this new woman in the bar, he would sum her up over a brandy. Young, surprisingly young. Good thing too.
Over his brandy he said: ‘Well it’s nice to be back.’
‘You’re one of our regulars, are you?’
‘I manage the occasional weekend. Plus the odd week here and there. Odd’s the operative word.’
I must stop saying that, thought Tarragon. Odd’s the operative word. It doesn’t mean anything.
‘I’m Jane Hassett,’ said Mrs Hassett.
‘Clump,’ said Tarragon. ‘Tarragon Clump.’
‘Back again,