Turtle Diary

28 Neaera H

I was reading about colliery horses in this morning’s paper. Pit ponies, they’re called. They live underground and work with the miners. They’ve saved lives, the article said, by stopping in their tracks and refusing to go ahead seconds before a roof-fall. They’ve led miners with broken lamps through black tunnels to safety, and it was said that a horse once pressed its body against a collapsing wall to give the men time to escape.

I like thinking about the horses and the men working together underground. A large strong animal and a man together add up to more than a man and an animal. They aren’t afraid of the same things, and where the senses of one leave off, those of the other go on. I wish I had a horse to work with. Either I think the roof’s going to fall in all the time or I think it’ll never fall. I’m sure a horse would give it no thought at all except when the actuality impended. One can’t have a horse to help with writing or drawing. Mice perhaps. Madame Beetle is not a help in any practical way but I feel that her attitude is exemplary. Swimming, diving, coming to the surface for air or sitting quietly in her shipwreck she is in harmony with her small world, has a good style.

How very patronizing of me, now that I consider it, to think that of Madame Beetle. If she’s in harmony with her ‘small world’ then she’s in harmony with as much of the world as she has contact with. If I enjoyed comparable harmony I’d speak of it as being with the world, not my ‘small world’. And if I find her exemplary how can I say she’s of no practical value? If I were paying a Zen master for instruction I’d consider him an exemplar whose example had practical value. Madame Beetle cost only 31p and her tiny daily fee is not even paid in money so I discount her value.

I wrote a letter to Harry Rush thanking him for his offer but saying that I simply did not have a book on The Tragic Heritage in Children’s Literature in me. I wasn’t sure I’d post the letter but I took it with me when I went out. I didn’t feel like cooking or eating in the flat. I took Tolstoy’s The Cossacks with me and went to an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge near William G.’s bookshop.

It was early and the place was almost empty. I settled into a booth, ordered escalope milanese and a half-carafe of red and began The Cossacks, which I’d last read twenty-five years ago. At the end of the first short chapter I came to:

… the three shaggy post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past houses he had never seen before. It seemed to Olenin that only travellers bound on a long journey ever went through such streets as these.

Perfectly true, I thought as I drank my wine. The same streets do not exist for everybody. Only travellers bound on a long journey go through such streets as those. Only solitary sojourners go through other streets, sit at tables such as this.

My seat shook a little as someone sat down in the booth behind me. I was facing away from the door and hadn’t seen them come in. I went on with my Tolstoy until I heard William G.’s voice say, ‘I’m having escalope milanese.’

‘Where’s that on the menu?’ said a female voice, one I’d heard before. The girl at the bookshop who’d given me his address and telephone number. Her voice came from beside him rather than opposite.

‘Here,’ said William. Odd how people do that with menus. One person reads aloud the name of a dish and the other person requires to see it in print as if the word were a picture.

‘I’ll have the scampi,’ she said. I didn’t want to overhear their conversation but my escalope hadn’t come yet.

‘Jannequin, Costely, Passereau, Bouzignac,’ said William. ‘Renaissance madrigals with soprano solo.’

‘Couperin, Lully, Rameau, Baroque songs for soprano,’ she said. ‘I know those three but I’ve never heard of the others.’ Probably they were on their way to the South Bank and looking at the programme.

The booth creaked as the voices became murmurous, there were silences. I concentrated on Tolstoy until my escalope arrived, ate as quickly as possible, finished my wine, didn’t bother with a sweet or coffee. I had to pass their booth to get to the door. If they noticed me I’d say hello, if not I’d just not see them.

I passed the booth, they both looked up at me. It wasn’t William G. and the girl from the bookshop. It was two people I’d never seen before.