Fillets of Plaice

6 Ursula

BETWEEN the ages of sixteen and twenty-two quite a number of personable young ladies drifted in and out of my life and none of them made a very deep impression upon me with the exception of Ursula Pendragon White. She popped in and out of my life for a number of years with monotonous regularity, like a cuckoo out of a clock, and of all the girlfriends I had I found that she was the only one who could arouse feeling in me that ranged from alarm and despondency to breathless admiration and sheer horror.

Ursula first came to my attention on the top of a number 27 bus that was progressing in a stately fashion through the streets of Bournemouth, that most salubrious of seaside resorts, where I then lived. I occupied the back seat of the bus while Ursula and her escort were at the front. It is possible that my attention would not have been attracted to her if it had not been for her voice which was melodious and as penetrating and all-pervading as the song of a roller canary. Looking around to find the source of these dulcet Roedean accents I caught sight of Ursula’s profile and was immediately riveted.

She had dark, naturally curly hair, which she wore short, in a sort of dusky halo round her head and it framed a face that was both beautiful and remarkable. Her eyes were enormous and of that deep blue, almost violet colour, that forget-me-nots got in the sun, fringed with very dark, long lashes and set under very dark, permanently raised eyebrows. Her mouth was of the texture and quality that should never, under any circumstances, be used for eating kippers or frogs’ legs or black pudding, and her teeth were white and even.

But it was her nose that was breath-taking. I had never seen a nose like it. It was long, but not too long, and combined three separate styles. It started off by being Grecian in the strict classical sense, but at the end the most extraordinary things happened to it. It suddenly tip-tilted like the nose of a very elegant pekinese and then it was as though somebody had delicately sliced off the tip of the tilt to make it flat. Written down badly like this it sounds most unattractive, but I can assure you the effect was enchanting. Young men took one look at Ursula’s nose and fell deeply and blindingly in love with it. It was a nose so charming and so unique that you could not wait to get on more intimate terms with it.

So entranced was I by her nose that it was some moments before I came to and started eavesdropping on her conversation. It was then that I discovered another of Ursula’s charms, and that was her grim, determined, unremitting battle with the English language. Where other people meekly speak their mother tongue in the way that it is taught them, Ursula adopted a more militant and Boadicea-like approach. She seized the English language by the scruff of the neck, shook it thoroughly, turned it inside out, and forced words and phrases to do her bidding, making them express things they were never meant to express. Now she leant forward to her companion and said, apropos of something they had been discussing when I had got on the bus:

“And Daddy says it’s a half a dozen of one and a dozen of the other, but I don’t think so. There’s fire without smoke and I think somebody ought to tell her. Don’t you?”

The young man, who looked like a dyspeptic bloodhound, seemed as confused at this statement as I was.

“Dunno,” he said. “Ticklish situation, eh?”

“There’s nothing funny about it, darling. It’s serious.”

“Some people,” said the young man with the air of a Greek philosopher vouchsafing a pearl of wisdom, “some people never let their right hand know what their left hand is doing.”

“My dear!” said Ursula, shocked. “I never let either of my hands know what I’m doing, but that’s not the point. What I say is... Ooooo! This is where we get off. Darling, hurry up.”

I watched her as they threaded their way down the bus. She was tall, carelessly but elegantly dressed, with one of those willowy, coltish figures that turn young men’s thoughts to lechery, and she had long and beautifully shaped legs. I watched her get down onto the pavement and then, still talking animatedly to her companion, disappear among the crowds of shoppers and holiday-makers.

I sighed. She was such a lovely girl that it seemed cruel of fate to have given me a tantalising glimpse of her and then to whisk her out of my life. But I was wrong, for within three days Ursula had been whisked back into my life where she remained, intermittently, for the next five years.

I had been invited to a friend’s house to celebrate his birthday, and as I entered the drawing-room I heard the clear, flute-like voice of the girl on the bus.

“I’m just a natural voyeur,” she was saying earnestly to a tall young man. “Travel is in my blood. Daddy says I’m the original rolling moss.”

“Happy birthday,” I said to my host. “And in return for this extremely expensive present I want you to introduce me to the girl with the extraordinary nose.”

“What, Ursula?” he asked in surprise. “You don’t want to meet her, do you?”

“It’s my greatest ambition in life,” I assured him.

“Well, on your own head be it,” he said. “If she takes you up she’ll drive you mad. The local asylum is already bursting with her various boyfriends.”

We moved across the room to the girl with the ravishing nose. “Ursula,” said my friend, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice, “Here’s somebody who wants to meet you. Gerry Durrell... Ursula Pendragon White.”

Ursula turned and enveloped me in a blue stare of prickling intensity, and gave me a ravishing smile. Her nose, seen full-face, was even more enchanting than in profile. I gazed at her and was lost.

“Hallo,” she said. “You’re the bug boy, aren’t you?”

“I would prefer to be known as an elegant, handsome, witty, devil-may-care man-about-town,” I said regretfully. “But if it is your wish that I be the bug boy, then the bug boy I shall be.”

She gave a laugh that sounded like sleigh-bells.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me. But you are the person who likes animals, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Then you’re just the person I want to talk to. I’ve been arguing with Cedric for days about it. He’s terribly stubborn, but I know I’m right. Dogs can have inhibitions, can’t they?”

“Well...” I said judiciously, “if you beat them seven days a week...”

“No, no, no!” said Ursula impatiently, as to a dimwitted child, “inhibitions. You know, they can see ghosts and tell when you’re going to die, and all that sort of thing.”

“Don’t you mean premonitions?” I suggested tentatively.

“No, I don’t,” said Ursula sharply. “I mean what I say.” After we had discussed the noble qualities of dogs and their sooth-saying prowess for some time, I cunningly steered the conversation on to music. There was a concert on at the Pavilion for which I had managed to acquire seats and I thought that this would be a very dignified and cultural way of beginning my friendship with Ursula. Did she, I asked, like music?

“I simply adore it,” she said, closing her eyes blissfully. “If music be the bowl of love, play on.”

She opened her eyes and beamed at me.

“Don’t you mean...” I began unguardedly.

From being warm and blurred as Love-in-the-mist Ursula’s eyes suddenly became as sharp and angry as periwinkles under ice.

“Now don’t you start telling me what I mean,” she said mutinously. “All my boyfriends do it and it makes me wild. They go on correcting and correcting me as though I was an... an exam paper or something.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” I said blandly. “I was about to say, ‘don’t you mean that your love of music is so great that you would accept with delight an invitation to a concert at the Pavilion to-morrow afternoon’?”

“Ooooo!” she exclaimed, her eyes glowing. “You haven’t got tickets, have you?”

“It’s the accepted way of getting into a concert,” I pointed out.

“You are clever. I tried to get some last week and they were sold out. I’d love to come!”

As I left, feeling very pleased with myself, my host asked me how I had got on with Ursula.

“Wonderfully,” I said, elated with my success. “I’m taking her out to lunch to-morrow and then to a concert.”

“What?” exclaimed my host in horror.

“Jealousy will get you nowhere,” I said. “You’re a nice enough chap in your humble, uncouth way, but when it comes to attractive girls like Ursula you need a bit of charm, a bit of the old bubbling wit, a touch of the je ne sais quoi. ”

“I cannot do it,” said my host. “In spite of your appalling arrogance, I cannot let you, a friend of mine, rush headlong into one of the blackest pits of hell without stretching out a hand to save you.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, genuinely interested, for he seemed serious.

“Listen,” he said, earnestly. “Be warned. The best thing would be for you to phone her up this evening and tell her you’ve got flu or rabies or something, but I know you won’t do that. You’re besotted. But for heaven’s sake, take my advice. If you take her out to lunch, keep her away from the menu, unless somebody’s just died and left you a couple of hundred pounds. She has an appetite like a particularly rapacious python, and no sense of money. As to the concert... Well, don’t you realise, my dear fellow, that the Pavilion authorities go pale and tremble at the mere mention of her name? That they have been trying for years to think of a legal way of banning her from attending concerts?”

“But she said she was very fond of music,” I said uneasily.

“So she is, and it has a horrifying effect upon her. But not nearly as horrifying an effect as she has on music. I’ve seen the leader of the orchestra in tears, gulping Sal volatile like a baby sucking its bottle, after a performance of the Magic Flute. And it’s rumoured, I think quite rightly, that the conductor’s hair went white overnight after she’d attended a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Don’t you realise that when Eileen Joyce gave a recital here and Ursula attended she had such a detrimental effect upon that unfortunate pianist that she forgot to change her dress between pieces?”

“It... it could have been an oversight.” I said.

“An oversight; an oversight? Tell me, have you ever known Eileen Joyce to run out of dresses?”

I must confess he had me there.

He propelled me with the gentleness of a kindly hangman to the front door.

“Don’t forget,” he said in a low voice, squeezing my arm with sympathy, “I’m your friend. If you need me, phone me. Any hour of the day or night. I’ll be here.”

And he shut the front door firmly in my face and left me to walk home, curiously disquieted.

But the following morning my spirits had revived. After all, I thought, Ursula was an exceptionally lovely girl and I was quite sure that anyone as attractive as that could not behave in the boorish manner that my friend had described. Probably he had tried to date her and she, being wise as well as beautiful, had given him the brush-off. Comforting myself with this thought I dressed with unusual care and went down to the railway station to meet her. She had explained that living out in Lyndhurst in the New Forest, she had to come into Bournemouth by train because “Daddy always uses the Rolls when I want it”. On the platform I awaited the arrival of the train anxiously. Whilst I was rearranging my tie for the twentieth time I was accosted by an elderly lady, a pillar of the local church, who was, unaccountably, a friend of my mother’s. I stood, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, wishing the old harridan would go away, for when meeting a new girlfriend for the first time the last thing one wanted was a sanctimonious and critical audience. But she clung like a leech and was still telling me about her latest jumble sale when the train dragged itself chunting and grimy into the station. I was giving scant attention to her story of what the vicar said; I was too busy looking at the opening carriage doors to try and spot Ursula.

“And the vicar said, ‘I, myself, Mrs Darlinghurst, will tell the bishop about your selfless dedication to the organ fund’. He has no need to say it, of course but I thought it was most Christian of him, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes... yes... Most, er, perceptive of him.”

“That’s what I thought. So I said to him, ‘Vicar,’ I said, ‘I’m only a humble widow...’ ”

What other secrets of her private life she had vouchsafed to the vicar I was never to learn, because from behind me came an earsplitting scream of recognition.

“Darling! Darling, I’m here,” came Ursula’s voice.

I turned round, and only just in time for Ursula flung herself into my arms and fastened her mouth on mine with the avidity of a starving bumble bee sighting the first clover flower of the season. When I finally managed to extricate myself from Ursula’s octopus-like embrace I looked round for Mrs Darlinghurst, only to find her retreating along the platform, backwards, with a look on her face of one, who having led a sheltered life, is suddenly confronted with the more unsavoury aspects of a Roman orgy. I smiled feebly at her, waved good-bye, and then taking Ursula firmly by the arm steered her out of the station while endeavouring to remove what felt like several pounds of lipstick from my mouth.

Ursula was dressed in a very smart blue outfit that highlighted her unfairly enormous eyes, and she wore elegant white lace gloves. Over her arm she carried a curious basket like a miniature hamper with a large handle, which presumably contained sufficient cosmetics to withstand a siege of several years.

“Darling,” she said, peering raptly into my face, “I am going to enjoy this. Such a lovely day! Lunch alone with you, and then the concert... Uuummm! Paradise!”

A number of men in the ticket hall, on hearing her invest the word “paradise” with a sort of moaning lechery that had to be heard to be believed, looked at me enviously, and I began to feel better.

“I’ve booked a table...” I began.

“Darling,” interrupted Ursula, “I simply must go to the loo. There wasn’t one on the train. Buy me a newspaper so I can go.”

Several people stopped and stared.

“Hush!” I said hurriedly, “Not so loud. What do you want a newspaper for? They have paper in the loos.”

“Yes, but it’s so thin, darling. I like a nice thick layer on the seat,” she explained, in a clear voice that carried like a chime of bells on a frosty night.

“On the seat?” I asked.

“Yes. I never sit on the seat,” she said. “Because I knew a girl once who sat on a loo seat and got acme.”

“Don’t you mean acne?” I asked, confused.

“No, no!” she said impatiently. “Acme. You come out all over in the most hideous red spots. Do hurry and buy me a newspaper, darling. I’m simply dying.

So I bought her a paper and watched her disappear into the ladies, flourishing it as a deterrent to germs, and I wondered if any one of her numerous boyfriends had ever described her as the acne of perfection.

She emerged, several minutes later, smiling and apparently germ-free, and I bundled her into a taxi and drove her to the restaurant where I’d booked a table. When we got to the restaurant and had established ourselves the waiter unfurled two enormous menus in front of us. Remembering my friend’s advice I removed the menu deftly from Ursula’s hands.

“I’ll choose for you,” I said. “I’m a gourmet.”

“Are you really?” said Ursula. “But you’re not Indian, are you?”

“What has that got to do with it?” I inquired.

“Well, I thought they came from India,” she said.

“What? Gourmets?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes,” she said. “Aren’t they those people that spend all their time looking at their tummy?”

“No, no. You’re thinking of something quite different,” I said. “Anyway, be quiet and let me order.”

I ordered a modest but substantial lunch and a bottle of wine to go with it. Ursula chattered on endlessly. She had an enormous variety of friends, all of whom she expected you to know, and whose every concern was of interest to her. From the stories that she told it was obvious that she spent the greater part of her life trying to re-organise the lives of her friends, whether they wanted her to or not. She babbled on like a brook and I listened entranced.

“I’m very worried about Toby,” she confided to me, over the prawn cocktail. “I’m very worried about him indeed. I think he’s got a secret passion for someone and it’s just eating him away. But Daddy doesn’t agree with me. Daddy says he’s well on the way to being an incoherent.”

“An incoherent?”

“Yes. You know, he drinks too much.”

So rich is the English language, I reflected, that this word could, in fact, with all fairness, be used to describe a drunk.

“He ought to join Incoherents Anonymous,” I said without thinking.

“What are they?” asked Ursula, wide-eyed.

“Well, they’re a sort of secret society of... of... um... incoherents, who try and help each other to... well, to give it up and become... um... become...”

“Become coherents!” said Ursula with a squeak of delight.

I must confess this end result had escaped me.

Later on, over her filet mignon, she leant forward and fixed me with her blue, intense stare.

“Do you know about Susan?” she hissed. Her hiss was more clearly audible than her normal voice.

“Er... no,” I confessed.

“Well, she became pregnant. She was going to have an illiterate baby.”

I pondered this news.

“With modem methods of education...” I began.

“Don’t be silly! She didn’t use anything,” hissed Ursula. “That’s what’s so stupid, and her father, naturally, said he wasn’t going to have a lot of illiterates darkening his hearth.”

“Naturally,” I said. “It would turn it into a sort of Do-the-girls Hall.”

“Exactly!” she said. “So her father said she must have an ablution.”

“To wash away sin?” I inquired.

“No, silly! To get rid of the baby.”

“And did she have it?” I asked.

“Yes. He sent her up to London. It cost an awful lot of money and the poor dear came back looking terrible. I do think her father was unfair.”

By this time most of the other tables in the restaurant were listening to our conversation with bated breath.

Over coffee Ursula was telling me a long and very involved story about some friend of hers, who was in dire distress, that she had wanted to help. I hadn’t listened with any great attention until she suddenly said,

“Well, I couldn’t do anything about it then, because Mummy was in bed with a cold and Daddy wanted me to cook him an early lunch because he was taking the bull to the vet to have him castigated... And so...”

“Your father was doing what?” I asked.

“Taking the bull to the vet to have him castigated. He was getting terribly fierce and dangerous.”

How, I wondered, enraptured by the thought, did one castigate a fierce and dangerous bull? But I was too wise to ask Ursula.

“Look, hurry up and finish your coffee,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll be late for the concert.”

“Oooo, yes,” she said. “We mustn’t be late.”

She gulped down her coffee and I paid the bill and ushered her out of the restaurant. We walked through what are laughingly called the Pleasure Gardens of Bournemouth among the faded rhododendrons and the paddling pool and came eventually to the Pavilion.

As we made our way to our seats Ursula insisted on taking her miniature hamper with her.

“Why don’t you leave it in the cloakroom?” I asked, for it was a fairly bulky object.

“I don’t trust cloakrooms,” said Ursula darkly. “They do strange things in cloakrooms.”

In order to save embarrassment I didn’t inquire what strange things they did in cloakrooms, and we got into our seats and wedged the hamper between our legs.

Gradually the Pavilion filled with the normal crowd of earnest music lovers that attended the concerts. When the leader of the orchestra appeared, Ursula joined in the clapping with great vigour. Then she leaned across to me and said,

“I think he’s such a handsome conductor, don’t you?”

I didn’t feel that at that moment I should correct her. Presently the conductor came on and again Ursula threw herself into the applause with great enthusiasm and settled back with a deep sigh. She glanced at me and gave me a ravishing smile.

“I am going to enjoy this, darling,” she said.

The concert was a hotch-potch of Mozart, a composer that I am very fond of. I soon discovered what my friends had meant about Ursula’s distressing effect upon music. Should there be the slightest pause for one brief second in the music, Ursula’s hands were up and clapping. Soon, after people had been hissing and shushing us, I became quite adroit at catching her hands as they came up to clap in the middle of a piece. Each time she would turn anguished eyes on me and say,

“Darling, I’m sorry. I thought he’d finished.”

It was, I think, after the fourth piece when I felt the basket move. At first I thought I was mistaken but I pressed my leg against it, and, sure enough, it was vibrating. I looked at Ursula who had her eyes closed and was waving her forefinger in the air in time to the music.

“Ursula!” I whispered.

“Yes, darling,” she said, without opening her eyes.

“What have you got in your basket?” I asked. She opened her eyes, startled, and looked at me.

“What do you mean?” she said defensively.

“There is something moving in your basket,” I said.

“Hush!” came a chorus of angry voices around us.

“But it can’t be,” she said, “unless the pill’s worn off.”

“What have you got in your basket?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just a present for somebody,” she said. She leant down and fumbled at the lid, raised it, and then lifted out of it a minute, snow-white pekinese, with enormous black eyes.

To say I was shocked would be putting it mildly. After all, the concert-goers in Bournemouth took their music very seriously, and the last thing that they wanted or, indeed, would have allowed, was a dog in the sacred precincts of the Pavilion.

“Oh, damn!” said Ursula, looking at the pekinese’s rather charming little snub nose. “The pill’s worn off.”

“Look, put him back in the basket!” I hissed.

“Hush!” said everybody around us.

Ursula bent down to put the puppy back into the basket. He yawned voluptuously into her face and then gave a sudden and unexpected wiggle. She dropped him.

“Oooo!” she squeaked. “I dropped him! I dropped him!”

“Shut up!” I said.

“Hush!” said everyone around us.

I reached down to try and find the puppy but, obviously exhilarated by the fact that he had been released from his prison, he had trotted down the row through the forest of legs.

“What are we going to do?” said Ursula.

“Look, just shut up! Shut up and leave it to me,” I said.

“Hush!” said everybody around us.

We hushed for a minute while I thought frantically. How could I possibly find a pekinese puppy in amongst all those seats and legs without disrupting the entire concert?

“We’ll have to leave it,” I said. “I’ll look for him after everybody’s gone, after the concert.”

“You can’t!” said Ursula. “You simply can’t leave him, poor little thing. He might get trodden on and hurt.”

“Well, how do you expect me to find him?” I said.

“Hush!” said everybody around us.

“He’s got all tangled up in the seats and the legs and things,” I said.

“But darling, you must find him. He’ll get terribly, terribly lonely,” she said.

There must have been all of seven hundred people in the hall.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll pretend I’m going to the loo.”

“What a good idea,” said Ursula, beaming. “I think he went down that way.”

I got to my feet and ran the gauntlet of outraged faces and mumbled profanity as I worked my way down the row and out into the aisle. There, I saw, just ahead of me, the pekinese puppy, squatting down as dog puppies do before they’ve learnt to cock their leg, and decorating the red carpet with a little sign of his own. I went forward cautiously and grabbed at him. I caught him, but as I lifted him up he uttered a loud and piercing scream that was clearly audible even above the rather exuberant piece of music that the orchestra was playing. There was a great rustle as people turned round indignantly to look in my direction. The puppy continued his screams. I stuffed him unceremoniously under my coat, and, almost at a run, I left the concert hall.

I went to the cloakroom where, fortunately, I knew the girl in charge.

“Hallo,” she said. “You leaving already? Don’t you like the concert?”

“No... it’s... it’s a question of force of circumstances,” I said. I pulled the puppy out from my jacket and held it up in front of her.

“Would you look after this for me?” I asked.

“Oh, isn’t he sweet!” she said. “But you didn’t have him in there, did you? Dogs are not allowed you know.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “He just got in by mistake. He belongs to a friend of mine. Would you look after him till after the concert?”

“Of course I will,” she said. “Isn’t he sweet?”

“He’s not terribly sweet when he’s in a concert hall,” I said.

I handed the puppy over to her tender care and went back and stood quietly in the shadows until the orchestra had finished the piece that they were playing. Then I made my way back to Ursula.

“Have you got him, darling?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I put him in charge of the cloakroom attendant. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Are you sure he’ll be all right?” she said, obviously with dark thoughts about what they did in cloakrooms to pekinese puppies.

“He’ll be perfectly all right,” I said. “He’ll be loved and cherished until after the concert. I can’t think what induced you to bring a dog to a concert.”

“But, darling,” she said. “I meant him as a present for a friend of mine. I... I meant to tell you only you talked so much that I couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I want to take him after the concert.”

“Well, don’t, for heaven’s sake, do it again,” I said. “The Pavilion is not a place for dogs. Now let’s relax and try and enjoy the rest of the concert, shall we?”

“Of course, darling,” she said.

When the concert was over and Ursula had, as she put it, clapped herself hoarse, we extricated the puppy from the cloakroom and put it back in its basket and made our way out through the throngs of music lovers avidly discussing the prowess of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

“Darling, I did enjoy that,” said Ursula. “It’s all those archipelagoes. They go running up my spine. There’s nothing like Beethoven, is there?” she asked loudly and clearly, hanging on my arm like a fragile maiden aunt, gazing earnestly into my eyes and clasping in one hand the programme, which had embossed in large letters on the front, “A Concert of Mozart.”

“Absolutely nothing,” I agreed. “Now, what about this puppy?”

“Well,” she said. “I want to take him to a friend of mine who lives on the outskirts of Poole. Her name is Mrs Golightly.”

“I’m not at all surprised,” I said. “But why do you want to take the puppy to Mrs Golightly?”

“She needs it,” said Ursula. “She needs it desperately. You see, she’s just lost her own Bow-wow.”

“She’s lost her what?” I asked.

“Her Bow-wow,” said Ursula.

“You mean her dog?” I said.

“Yes,” said Ursula. “That’s what he was called. Bow-wow.”

“And so she needs another one?” I said.

“Of course,” said Ursula. “She doesn’t want one, but she needs one.”

“Are you, um, giving her this puppy because you think she needs one?” I enquired.

“But of course! Anyone with half an eye could see she needs one,” said Ursula.

“It strikes me,” I said, “that you spend most of your time interfering in your friends’ affairs when they don’t really want it.”

“Of course they want it,” said Ursula earnestly. “They want it but they don’t realise that they want it.”

I gave up.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go to Poole.”

So we went. When we got to Poole, Ursula dived immediately into the back streets and eventually ended up at one of those tiny little houses, two up and two down, that stare frostily at each other across streets. This one had a highly polished brass doorknob and I noticed that the step was a beautiful white as evidence of hard scrubbing on someone’s part. Urusla banged vigorously with the knocker and presently the door was opened by a tiny, grey, frail, old lady.

“Why, Ursula!” she said. “Miss Ursula, it’s you!”

“Emma, darling!” said Ursula and enveloped this fragile wisp of a person in a vast embrace.

“We’ve come to visit you,” she said, unnecessarily. “This is Gerry.”

“Oh, do... do come in,” said the little old lady, “but I do wish you’d let me know. I’m all untidy and the house is in such a mess.”

She ushered us into a living-room full of the most ugly furniture I have ever seen in my life, that glowed with love and polish. It spoke of the most impeccable bad taste. It was a room which had been cherished as things are cherished in a museum. Nothing was out of place; everything glittered and gleamed and the air smelt faintly of furniture polish and antiseptic. Carefully arranged on the upright piano, that didn’t look as though it had ever been used, were a series of photographs, two of them portraits of a heavily moustached gentleman standing rigidly, and the rest of a fluffy mongrel in various attitudes. Most of them were blurred and out of focus, but it was obvious that the moustached gentleman took second place to the dog. This, I suspected, must have been Bow-wow.

“Do sit down. Do sit down,” said the little old lady. “I must make you a cup of tea. I’ve got some cake. What a merciful thing, I made a cake only the other day. You will have a slice of cake and a cup of tea?”

My one desire at the precise moment was for several very large pints of beer, but I said that I would be delighted with tea.

Over tea and a slice of sponge cake that was as light and frothy as a pound of lead, Ursula chattered on. It was obvious that Emma Golightly had, at some time, been somebody in her father’s household for whom she quite obviously had a great affection. It was extraordinary to watch the effect of Ursula’s exuberance on Emma. When she had opened the door to us her face had been grey and gaunt, now it was flushed and smiling and she was obviously injected with some of Ursula’s enthusiasm.

“Yes, yes!” she kept saying, “and do you remember the time...”

“But of course!” Ursula said.

“And then do you remember that other time when...” And so it went on interminably.

Eventually, with masterly adroitness, Ursula steered the subject on to Bow-wow.

“Er, Gerry doesn’t know about Bow-wow,” she said, looking at Emma commiseratingly. “You tell him.”

Emma’s eyes filled with tears.

“He was a wonderful dog,” she said. “A wonderful dog. Really. you know, he could almost speak... almost speak, he really could. And then, one day, I let him out and some bloke in a car came down here and knocked him over. Didn’t even stop... he didn’t even stop. I took him to the vet... he was all covered in blood. I took him to the vet, and I said... I’ll pay anything, anything to keep him alive. ’Cos, you see, after my husband died, he was all I had. And he was a lovely dog, he really was. You would have loved him if you’d known him. And he was all covered with blood and he didn’t seem to be suffering much, but they said there was nothing they could do. They said the kindest thing would be to put him out of his misery. Well, now, he’d been my companion ever since my husband died. For... for years I’d... I’d had him... For nearly twelve years. And so you can imagine it was a bit of a shock to me. So as they said it was the only thing to do, I said, ‘Well, all right, well — go ahead and do it.’ And so they... they put him down.”

She paused for a moment and blew her nose vigorously.

“It must have been a great shock to you,” I said.

“Oh, it was. It was a tremendous shock. It was like taking away part of my life, because, as I said to you, ever since my husband died he’d really been my only companion.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to continue this conversation because it was obvious that if Emma went on talking about Bow-wow she would break down and I didn’t know how we could cope with that situation. But at that moment Ursula, as it were, unveiled her guns.

“Darling Emma,” she said. “It’s because of the way you treated Bow-wow... the way that you looked after him and gave him such a happy life... it’s for that reason that I want to... I want to ask you a very great favour. Now please say no, but I do wish that you’d consider it.”

“A favour, Miss Ursula?” said Emma. “Of course I’ll do you a favour. What do you want?”

“Well,” said Ursula, prevaricating like mad, “this friend of mine has got this puppy. Unfortunately, owing to illness in the family — his wife is desperately, desperately ill — he can’t give it the attention that it really deserves, and so — just for a week or so — he wants somebody to look after it. Somebody who’ll love it and give it the affection it needs. And immediately I thought of you.”

“Oh,” said Emma, “A puppy? Well, I... I don’t know. I mean, after Bow-wow... you know, you don’t seem to want another dog, somehow.”

“But this is only a puppy,” said Ursula, her eyes brimming. “Only a tiny, tiny little puppy. And it’s only for a week or so. And I’m sure that you could look after it so marvellously.”

“Well, I don’t know, Miss Ursula,” said Emma. “I... I wouldn’t like to have another dog.”

“But I’m not asking you to have it,” said Ursula. “I’m just asking you to look after it for this poor man whose wife is terribly, terribly ill. He’s torn between his wife and his dog.”

“Ah,” said Emma. “Just as I was when Bill was ill. I remember it now. I sometimes didn’t know whether to take Bow-wow out for a walk or stay with Bill, he was that sick. Well, what sort of a dog is it, Miss Ursula?”

“I’ll show you,” said Ursula. She bent down and opened the basket. The pekinese was lying curled up, exhausted by his cultural afternoon at the Pavilion, sound asleep. She picked him up unceremoniously by the scruff of his neck and held him before Emma’s startled eyes.

“Look at him,” said Ursula. “Poor little thing. ”

“Oh,” said Emma. “Oh, poor little thing.” She echoed Ursula unconsciously.

Ursula attempted to cradle the puppy in her arms and he gave her, to my satisfaction, a very sharp bite on the fore-finger.

“Look at him,” she said, her voice quivering, as he struggled in her arms. “A poor little dumb animal that doesn’t really know whether he’s coming or going. He’s been wrenched away from the family life that he is used to. Surely you will take pity on him, Emma?”

I began to feel that the whole scene was taking on the aspect of something out of Jane Eyre, but nevertheless I was so fascinated by Ursula’s technique that I let her go on.

“This tiny waif,” she said, extricating her finger with difficulty from his champing jaws, “this tiny waif wants only a little bit of companionship, a little bit of help in his moment of strife... As, indeed, does my friend.”

“Well, I’ll give you that he’s very, very nice,” said Emma, obviously moved.

“Oh, he is,” said Ursula, clamping her hand firmly over his mouth so that he couldn’t bite her again. “He’s absolutely charming, and I believe — I’m not sure, but I believe — he’s house trained... Just for a week, dear Emma. Can’t you possibly see your way to... to... to putting him up, as it were, as though he was a paying guest or something like that?”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it for everybody,” said Emma, her eyes fastened, mesmerised, on the wriggling fat-tummied, pink-tummied puppy with his great load of white fur and his bulbous black eyes. “But seeing as he seems a nice little dog, and as it’s you that’s asking... I’m... I’m... willing to have him for a week.”

“Darling,” said Ursula. “Bless you.”

She whipped the puppy hastily back into his hamper because he was getting out of control. Then she rushed across and threw her arms round Emma and kissed her on both cheeks.

“I always knew,” she said, peering into Emma’s face with her brilliant blue searchlight gaze that I knew could have such devastating effect. “I knew that you, of all people would not turn away a tiny little puppy like this in his hour of need.”

The curious thing was that she said it with such conviction that I almost got out my handkerchief and sobbed into it.

So eventually, refusing the offer of another cup of tea and another slice of indigestible cake, we left. As we walked down the road towards the station Ursula wrapped her arm round me and clutched me tight.

“Thank you so much, darling,” she said. “You were a great help.”

“What do you mean, a great help?” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“No, but you were there. Sort of... a sort of a force, a presence, you know?”

“Tell me,” I said, interested, “why you want to inflict this poor woman with that vindictive little puppy when she obviously doesn’t require one?”

“Oh, but you don’t know about Emma,” said Ursula. Which was quite true because I didn’t.

“Tell me,” I said,

“Well,” she began. “First of all her husband got ill and then they got Bow-wow and then her attention was divided between the husband and Bow-wow, and then the husband died and she channelled all her recuperance, or whatever you call it, into Bow-wow. And then Bow-wow got knocked down and since then she’s been going steadily downhill. My dear, you could see it. Every time I came to visit her I could see that she was getting more and more sort of, well — you know, old and haggish.”

“And how do you think the puppy is going to help her?” I enquired.

“Of course it’s going to help her. It’s the most savage puppy of the litter. It’s bound to bite the postman or the greengrocer or somebody who delivers something, and it’s got very long hair for a peke and it’s going to shed that all over the place, and it’s not house trained so it’s going to pee and poo all over the place, dear.”

“Just a minute,” I said, interrupting. “Do you think this is a very wise gift to give a fragile old lady who’s just lost her favourite Bow-wow?”

“But my dear, it’s the only gift,” said Ursula. She stopped, conveniently under a street lamp, and her eyes gazed up at me.

“Bow-wow used to be exactly the same. He left hair all over the place, and if she didn’t let him out he’d pee in the hall, and she’d complain for days... Gives her something to do. Well, since her husband died and Bow-wow died she’s got nothing to do at all and she was just going into a sort of... a sort of grey decline. Now, with this new puppy, he’ll bite her and he’ll bite everyone else. They’ll probably have court cases and he’ll put his hair all over the place and he’ll pee on the carpet and she’ll be as delighted as anything.”

I gazed at Ursula and for the first time I saw her for what she was.

“Do you know,” I said, putting my arms round her and kissing her, “I think you’re rather nice.”

“It’s not a question of niceness,” said Ursula, disrobing herself on me, as it were. “It’s not a question of niceness, She’s just a pleasant old lady and I want her to have fun while she’s still alive. That puppy will give her tremendous fun.”

“But you know, I would never have thought of that,” I said.

“Of course you would, darling,” she said, giving me a brilliant smile. “You’re so clever.”

“Sometimes,” I said as I took her arm and walked her down the street. “Sometimes I begin to wonder whether I am.”

The next few months had many halcyon days for me. Ursula possessed a sort of ignorant purity that commanded respect. I very soon found that in order to avoid embarrassment it was better to take her out into the countryside rather than confine her to a restaurant or somewhere similar. At least in the countryside the cuckoos and larks and hedgehogs accepted her for what she was, a very natural and nice person. Take her into the confines of Bournemouth society and she dropped bricks, at the rate of an unskilled navvy helping on a working site.

However, even introducing Ursula to the wilds was not without its hazards. I showed her a tiny strip of woodland that I’d discovered which had, at that time, more birds’ nests per square inch than any other place I knew. Ursula got wildly excited and peered into nests brim full of fat, open-mouthed baby birds or clutches of blue and brown eggs, and ooo’d over them delightedly. Nothing would content her but that I had to visit the place every day and phone her a long report on the progress of the various nests. A few weeks later I took her down to the place again and we discovered, to our horror, that it had been found, presumably by a group of schoolboys, and they had gone systematically through the whole of the woodland and destroyed every nest. The baby birds were lying dead on the ground and the eggs had all been taken. Ursula’s anguish was intense. She sobbed uncontrollably with a mixture of rage and grief and it was a long time before I could comfort her.

She was still racked with occasional shuddering sobs when I ushered her into the spit and sawdust bar of the Square and Compass, one of my favourite pubs in that region. Here, in this tiny bar, all the old men of the district would gather every evening, great brown lumbering shire horses of men, their faces as wrinkled as walnuts, their drooping moustaches as crisp and white as summer grass with frost on it. They were wonderful old men and I thought to meet them would take Ursula’s mind off the ravaged nests. I was also interested to see what sort of reaction her presence would create.

To begin with, they sat stiff, silent and suspicious, their hands carefully guarding their tankards, staring at us without expression. They knew me but now I had introduced an alien body into their tiny, smoke-blurred bar and, moreover, a very attractive and feminine body. This was heresy. The unwritten law was that no woman entered that bar. But Ursula was completely unaware of this or, if not unaware, undaunted by it. She powdered her nose, gulped down a very large gin in record time, and turned her brilliant melting blue eyes on the old men. Within a few minutes she had them relaxed and occasionally, half guiltily, chuckling with her. Then she spied the blackboard in the corner.

“Ooooh!” she squealed delightedly, “Tiddleywinks!”

The old men exchanged looks of horror. Then they all looked at the oldest member of the group, an eighty-four-year-old patriarch who was, I knew, the local champion of this much beloved game.

“No, Miss,” he said firmly, “that’s shove ha’penny.”

“Do teach me to play it,” said Ursula, gazing at him so adoringly that his brown face went the colour of an over-ripe tomato.

“Yes, go on, George, teach the Miss,” the other old men chorused, delighted that George was colouring and shuffling like a schoolboy.

Reluctantly, he lumbered to his feet and he and Ursula moved over to the table where the shove ha’penny board lay in state.

As I watched him teaching her I realised, not for the first time, the deviousness of women in general and of Ursula in particular. It was perfectly obvious that she not only knew how to play shove ha’penny but probably could have beaten George at it. But her fumbling attempts to learn from him and the sight of him patting her shoulder with his enormous carunculated hand as gently as though he were patting a puppy was a delight to watch. Ursula lost gracefully to him and then insisted on buying drinks all round — for which I had to pay since she had no money.

By now, the old men, flushed and enthusiastic, were practically coming to blows over who should play her next. Ursula, armed with her indispensable evening newspaper, disappeared briefly into the Ladies before coming back to challenge all comers.

George, wiping the froth off his magnificent moustache, lowered himself onto the oak trestle beside me and accepted a cigarette.

“A fine young woman, sir,” he said, “a very fine young woman, even though she’s a foreigner.”

The curious thing is that he did not use the term foreigner in the way that most villagers in England would use it to describe somebody who had not actually been born in the village. He was firmly convinced by Ursula’s particular brand of English that she must indeed come from the Continent or some savage place like that. I did not disillusion him.

I had known Ursula for about a year when one day she phoned me and dropped a bombshell.

“Gerry!” The voice was so penetrating that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. It could only be Ursula.

“Yes,” I said resignedly.

“Darling, it’s me, Ursula.”

“I never would have guessed it,” I said. “You’re so much quieter, so much more dulcet. That soft voice, like the cooing of a sucking dove.

“Don’t be silly, darling. I phoned you up because I’ve the most wonderful news and I wanted you to be the first to know,” she said breathlessly.

What now, I wondered? Which one of her numerous friends had achieved sonic awful success due to her Machiavellian plottings?

“Tell me all,” I said, resigning myself to at least half an hour of telephone conversation.

“Darling, I’m engaged,” said Ursula.

I confess that my heart felt a sudden pang and a loneliness spread over me. It was not that I was in love with Ursula; it was not that I wanted to marry her — God forbid! — but suddenly I realised that I was being deprived of a charming companion. I was being deprived of somebody who could always lighten my gloom, and who had given me so many hours of pleasure. And now she was engaged, doubtless to some hulking idiot, and all this, our lovely friendship, would change.

“Darling?” said Ursula. “Darling? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m still here.”

“But, darling, you sound so glum. Is anything the matter? I thought you’d be pleased!” Her voice sounded plaintive, uncertain.

“I am pleased,” I said, trying to cast away selfishness, trying to cast away the remembrance of Ursula telling me of a friend who’d gone to Venice and who’d had a gondolier every night. “Really, my love, I’m as pleased as Punch. Who is the unlucky man?”

“It’s Toby,” she said. “You know Toby.”

“But I thought he was an incoherent?” I said.

“No, no, Silly. Not that Toby, a completely different one.”

“I’m glad of that. I thought that if he was an incoherent he would have had difficulty in proposing.”

“Darling, you don’t sound a bit like you,” she said, her voice worried and subdued. “Are you angry with me for getting engaged?”

“Not at all,” I said acidly. “I’m delighted to know that you’ve found somebody who can stop you talking long enough to propose. I never could.”

“Oooo!” said Ursula. “You’re jealous! Darling, how wonderful! I never knew you wanted to propose to me. When was it?”

“Frequently,” I said, tersely, “but fortunately I managed to stamp the desire underfoot.”

“Oh, darling, I am sorry. Are you going to go all silent and. withdrawn and morass?”

“I’ve not the slightest intention of turning myself into a bog for your benefit,” I said with some asperity.

“Oh, darling, don’t be so silly. I thought you’d be pleased. As a matter of fact I was hoping we could meet...” Her voice trailed away.

What a cad I was being, I reflected. What a monstrous, inhuman cad. Here was the girl virtually asking me to set the seal on her nuptials and here was I behaving like a fifteen-year-old. I was contrite.

“Of course we can meet, my sweet,” I said. “I’m sorry I was rude. It’s just that I can’t get used to the idea of you being engaged. Where do you want to meet?”

“Oh, darling, that’s better. Why don’t we dance away the evening? Let’s go to the Tropicana... Do let’s, darling!”

Dance away the evening until ten o’clock, I thought to myself The Tropicana was a particularly revolting nightclub of the sort that blossom suddenly like puffballs, have their brief moment of contributing to human misery and then mercifully disappear into obscurity. Of all the places she could have suggested Ursula could not have picked one that I disliked more.

“Right,” I said with enthusiasm, “but can we have dinner first?”

“Oh darling, yes. Where?”

“How about the Grill Room? I’ll book a table.”

“Daarling!” breathed Ursula. “The first place we had lunch together. Darling, you are romantic.”

“Not particularly. It’s just the only place that serves good food,” I said austerely.

“Darling, I love you... Even if you are oppressive. Lovely food, and then dancing. Oh, I’ll meet you at the Grill at eight, darling, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’re pleased. I love you and love you for ever.”

I put the phone back and realised what I’d lost.

I realised what I’d lost even more when I met her, for she brought her fiancé with her. He was a handsome young man, quite obviously besotted by Ursula, with a very limited vocabulary. But he seemed nice enough. The Grill Room, as I rather suspected, was packed and so the three of us had to sit uncomfortably at a table designed for two. Toby didn’t have much to say for himself but that scarcely mattered as Ursula talked quite enough for two of them. When we’d finished dinner we went on to the Tropicana where the band was blaring. Here, Toby and I solemnly took it in turns to propel Ursula, chattering madly, round and round the floor. It was a thoroughly miserable evening from my point of view. After that, I didn’t see Ursula for a long time. I’d heard that she’d eventually got married and that she’d had a baby. I felt that now she was safely ensconced on her wedding bed that she would drift out of my life altogether. But again I was wrong. One day the phone rang, and it was Ursula.

“Darling! It’s me, Ursula!” she said.

“Good heavens!” I said, surprised. “Where have you been all these years?”

“Darling, I got married,” she said. “I’ve had a baby.”

“So I heard,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Darling, I’ve been stuck down in the country for so long. I’ve got to come into Bournemouth to-day to do some shopping. I wondered whether we could meet?”

“Are you bringing your husband with you?” I asked cautiously.

“No, darling, I’m just coming on my own,” she said.

“Well, in that case, by all means let us meet. I’ll buy you lunch. But first I’ll meet you in the Cadena for coffee.”

“Marvellous, darling. I’ll be there at eleven o’clock,” she said.

At eleven o’clock promptly she appeared through the doors of the Cadena café and I could see instantly that she was well on the way to expecting her second child. Apart from the protuberance of her stomach she had a glowing air about her, like rose petals in sunshine.

“Darling!” she screamed. “Darling! Darling!”

She flung her arms round me and gave me a prolonged kiss of the variety that is generally cut out of French films by the English censor. She made humming noises as she kissed, like a hive of sex-mad bees. She thrust her body against mine to extract the full flavour of the embrace and to show me that she really cared, really and truly. Several elderly ladies, and what appeared to be a brigadier who had been preserved (like a plum in port) stared at us with fascinated repulsion. You could tell, from their expressions, that they expected me to rip her clothes off her and rape her there, on the sacred floor of the Cadena. I tore myself loose from her with an effort.

“I thought you were married,” I said.

“I am darling,” she said. “Don’t you think my kissing’s improved?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sit down and have some coffee.”

“Can I have an ice cream?” she asked.

“All right,” I said.

I ordered a coffee and an ice cream.

“Well, I must say, you’re looking blooming,” I said.

“Do you think so?”

“I think you’re looking wonderful. I see you’re going to have another one.

She took a large mouthful of ice cream and spoke through it rather indistinctly.

“Children are absholutely marvelloush.”

“So I believe,” I said.

She swallowed her mouthful of ice cream, leant forward and tapped my wrist with her moist spoon to gain my full attention.

“Do you know what they say?” she inquired in her penetrating voice.

Every table in the restaurant suspended operations and waited expectantly. I felt I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

“No,” I said. “What do they say?”

“Why,” she said, waving her spoon happily, “contraception is a woman’s work.”

We had coffee and then I took Ursula shopping, and later we went to lunch.

“Do you miss me, darling?” she enquired as she sipped at her wine.

“Of course I miss you,” I said. “You were always one of my favourite girlfriends.”

“Isn’t it a pity that one can’t have boyfriends and be married?” she said.

“Well, you can always try,” I suggested.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “But you are sweet.”

“Think nothing of it,” I said.

“Anyway, I don’t suppose you’d like me now,” she said, wistfully. “I’ve reformed. I’ve become very dull.”

“Do you think so?” I asked, thinking how vital and sweet she was still.

“Oh, yes,” she said, looking at me solemnly with her great blue eyes. “I’m afraid I’m now what they call one of the petty beaujolais.”

“Yes, but a vintage year,” I said, raising my glass.