Turtle Diary

2 Neaera H

I fancied a china castle for the aquarium but they had none at the shop, so I contented myself with a smart plastic shipwreck. Snugg & Sharpe are expecting a new Gillian Vole story from me but I have not got another furry-animal picnic or birthday party in me. I am tired of meek and cuddly creatures, my next book will be about a predator. I’ve posted my cheque for 31p to Gerrard & Haig in Surrey for a Great Water-beetle, Dysticus marginalis, and I should have it by tomorrow. I’ve asked for a male.

On my way home wheeling the tank and all the other aquarium gear in the push-chair I stopped at the radio and TV shop because there was an oyster-catcher on all the TV screens in the window, a BBC nature film it must have been. It was like encountering someone from childhood now famous. I used to see oyster-catchers sometimes on the mussel beds near Breydon Bridge when the tide was out. They were nothing like the gulls and terns, their black-and-white had a special air, they went a little beyond being birds. They walked with their heads down, looking as if they had hands clasped behind their backs like little European philosophers in yachting gear. But it was a less rhythmical walk than a philosopher’s because the oyster-catchers were busy making a living with the mussels. In childhood at Breydon Water the day was wide and quiet, there was time enough to think of everything with no hurry whatever, to look at everything many times over.

The oyster-catcher on the TV screens was gone, there was a shot of mudflats and sea. The oyster-catcher had been very elegant in colour: creamy white, velvety black, orange bill and eye-rings, pink legs. On the black-and-white screens it had been more existential, a working bird alone in the world. Here I am, I thought, forty-three years old, waiting for a water-beetle. My married friends wear Laura Ashley dresses and in their houses are grainy photographs of them barefoot on Continental beaches with their naked children. I live alone, wear odds and ends, I have resisted vegetarianism and I don’t keep cats.

I passed the place where they’re tearing up the street and the three workmen in the hole said ‘Good morning’ for the first time. Before this we’ve nodded.

As I was going into my flat Webster de Vere, the unemployed actor next door, was coming out of his. ‘Fascinating hobby,’ he said when he saw the tank. ‘I’ve been keeping fish for years. Black Mollies, you know. Nothing flash, just neat little black fish. What will you have in your aquarium?’

‘A water-beetle,’ I said.

‘A water-beetle,’ he said. ‘Fascinating pet. If you ever need any snails do let me know, I’ve masses of them. Keep the tank clean, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s all new to me, I must see how it goes.’

He went down the hall swinging his cane. As far as I know he’s been out of work the whole five or six years he’s been my neighbour. He keeps so fit that it’s hard to tell how old he is but by the brightness of his eye I’d say he’s at least fifty-five. Most of the voices I hear through the wall belong to young men of the antique-shop type but I think he lives off old ladies. I’ve no reason to think it except his looks. His eyes look as if he’s pawned his real ones and is wearing paste.

After I’d set up the aquarium I looked in my book of Bewick engravings for an oyster-catcher but couldn’t find one. Bewick has drawn the dotterel, the spotted redshank, the godwit and the little stint but there’s no oyster-catcher in my book. He would have drawn it very well, it’s his sort of bird. The best bird drawings I’ve done were for Delia Swallow’s Housewarming, one of my early books. The story was rubbish but the swallow was well observed, she was a distinct Laura Ashley type.