Vintage Stuff

Chapter 1

The arrival of Peregrine Roderick Clyde-Browne on earth was authenticated by his birth certificate. His father was named as Oscar Motley Clyde-Browne, occupation Solicitor, and his mother as Marguerite Diana, maiden name Churley. Their address was The Cones, Pinetree Lane, Virginia Water. It was also announced in The Times with the additional note, 'Most grateful thanks to the staff of St Barnabas' Nursing Home.'

The thanks were premature but at the time sincere. Mr and Mrs Clyde-Browne had waited a long time for a child and were about to resort to medical help when Peregrine was conceived. Mrs Clyde-Browne was then thirty-six and her husband already forty. They were therefore understandably delighted when, after a surprisingly easy labour, Peregrine weighed in at 8 lb 5 oz at 6 a.m. on 25 March 196-.

'He's a beautiful baby,' said the Sister with greater regard for Mrs Clyde-Browne's feelings than for the facts. Peregrine's beauty was of the sort usually seen after a particularly nasty car accident. 'And such a good one.'

Here she was nearer the truth. From the moment of his birth Peregrine was good. He seldom cried, ate regularly and had just the right amount of wind to reassure his parents that he was thoroughly normal. In short, for the first five years he was a model child and it was only when he continued to be a model child through his sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth years that the Clyde-Brownes had cause to wonder if Peregrine was more model than was entirely proper for a small boy.

'Behaviour: Impeccable?' said Mr Clyde-Browne, reading his school report. Peregrine went to a very expensive preparatory school as a day-boy. 'I find that a little disturbing.'

'I can't imagine why. Peregrine has always been a very good boy and I think it does us credit as his parents.'

'I suppose so, though when I was his age nobody said my behaviour was impeccable. On the contrary...'

'You were an extremely naughty little boy. Your mother admitted as much.'

'My mother would,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, whose feelings for his late mother were mixed. 'And I don't much like this "Tries hard" against all the subjects. I'd rather his work was impeccable and his behaviour left something to be desired.'

'Well, you can't have everything. If he misbehaved you'd call him a hooligan or vandal or something. Be grateful he tries hard at work and doesn't get into trouble.'

So for the time being Mr Clyde-Browne left it at that and Peregrine continued to be a model child. It was only after another year of impeccable behaviour and hard trying that Mr Clyde-Browne approached the headmaster for a fuller report on his son.

'I'm afraid there's no chance of his entering for a scholarship to Winchester,' said the headmaster when Mr Clyde-Browne expressed this hope. 'In fact it's extremely doubtful if he'd get into Harrow.'

'Harrow? I don't want him to go to Harrow,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, who had a conventional opinion of Old Harrovians, 'I want him to have the best possible education money can buy.'

The headmaster sighed and crossed to the window. His was a most expensive prep, school. 'The fact of the matter is, and you must appreciate that I have had some thirty years in the teaching profession, that Peregrine is an unusual boy. A most unusual boy.'

'I know that,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, 'And I also know that every report I've had says his behaviour is impeccable and that he tries hard. Now I can face facts as well as the next man. Are you suggesting he's stupid?'

The headmaster turned his back to the desk with a deprecatory gesture. 'I wouldn't go as far as to say that,' he murmured.

'Then how far would you go?'

'Perhaps "late developer" would be more accurate. The fact of the matter is that Peregrine has difficulty conceptualizing.'

'So do I, come to that,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'What on earth does it mean?'

'Well, as a matter of fact...'

'That's the third time you've prefaced a matter of no fact whatsoever by using that phrase,' said Mr Clyde-Browne in his nastiest courtroom manner. 'Now I want the truth.'

'In short, he takes everything he's told as Gospel.'

'As Gospel?'

'Literally. Absolutely literally.'

'He takes the Gospel literally?' said Mr Clyde-Browne, hoping for a chance to vent his feelings about Religious Education in a rational world.

'Not just the Gospel. Everything,' said the headmaster, who was finding the interview almost as harassing as trying to teach Peregrine. 'He seems incapable of distinguishing between a general instruction and the particular. Take the time, for instance.'

'What time?' asked Mr Clyde-Browne, with a glazed look in his eyes.

'Just time. Now if one of the teachers sets the class some work to do and adds, "Take your own time," Peregrine invariably says "Eleven o'clock."'

'Invariably says "Eleven o'clock"?'

'Or whatever the time happens to be. It could be half past nine or quarter to ten.'

'In that case he can't invariably say "Eleven o'clock",' said Mr Clyde-Browne, resorting to cross-examination to fight his way out of the confusion.

'Well, not invariably eleven o'clock,' conceded the headmaster, 'but invariably some time or other. Whatever his watch happens to tell him. That's what I mean about him taking everything literally. It makes teaching him a distinctly unnerving experience. Only the other day I told his class they'd got to pull their socks up, and Peregrine promptly did. It was exactly the same in Bible Studies. The Reverend Wilkinson said that everyone ought to turn over a new leaf. During the break Peregrine went to work on the camellias. My wife was deeply upset.'

Mr Clyde-Browne followed his glance out of the window and surveyed the stripped bushes. 'Isn't there some way of explaining the difference between metaphorical or colloquial expressions and factual ones?' he asked plaintively.

'Only at the expense of a great deal of time and effort. Besides we have the other children to consider. The English language is not easily adapted to pure logic. We must just hope that Peregrine will develop quite suddenly and learn not to do exactly what he's told.'

It was a sadder but no wiser Mr Clyde-Browne who returned to The Cones. That evening, after a heated argument with his wife, whom he blamed entirely for bringing Peregrine up too dutifully, he tried to explain to his son the hazards involved in doing exactly what he was told.

'You could get into terrible trouble, you know. People are always saying things they don't really mean and if you do what they tell you, everything they tell you, you'll end up in Queer Street.'

Peregrine looked puzzled. 'Where's Queer Street, daddy?' he asked.

Mr Clyde-Browne studied the boy with a mixture of cautious curiosity and ill-concealed irritation. Now that it had been drawn to his attention, Peregrine's adherence to the literal had about it something of the same cunning Mrs Clyde-Browne displayed when confronted by facts she preferred not to discuss. He had in mind extravagant use of the housekeeping money. Perhaps Peregrine's stupidity was as deliberate as his mother's. If so, there was still hope.

'Queer Street is nowhere. It is simply an expression meaning a bad end.'

Peregrine considered this for a moment. 'How can I go there if it's nowhere?' he asked finally.

Mr Clyde-Browne closed his eyes in silent prayer. He could appreciate the plight of the teachers who had to cope with this ghastly logic every day. 'Never mind where it is,' he said, controlling his fury with some difficulty. 'What I'm saying is, that if you don't pull yourself together...no, forget that. Peregrine might go into convulsions. 'If you don't learn to make a distinction between statements of fact and mere exhortations, you'll find yourself in deep wat...in terrible trouble. Do I make myself plain?'

'Yes, daddy,' said Peregrine, looking at Mr Clyde-Browne's face with a critical eye that belied his father's hopes. But Mr Clyde-Browne had exhausted his repertoire of clichés. 'Then get out and don't do every damned thing you're told to,' he shouted incautiously.

Over the next few days he came to learn the full horror of Peregrine's perverse obedience. From being a model child, Peregrine became a model delinquent. He refused to pass the marmalade at breakfast when he was told to; he came home from school with a black eye precisely because the headmaster had warned the boys against fighting; he shot Mrs Worksop's cat with his airgun, thanks to his mother's injunction to be sure he didn't; and to make matters worse, told Mrs Worksop by way of inverted apology that he was glad he'd shot her pussy.

'I can't think what's got into him,' Mrs Clyde-Browne complained when she discovered that far from tidying his room as she'd asked him, Peregrine had emptied the drawers onto the floor and had practically wrecked the place. 'He's never done anything like that before. It's all most peculiar. You don't think we've got a poltergeist in the house, do you?'

Mr Clyde-Browne replied with inaudible caution. He knew only too well what they had in the house, a son with the moral discernment of a micro-processor and with an uncanny flair for misapplying logic.

'Forget what I said the other day,' he snarled, dragging Peregrine from his previously overfed pet rabbit which was now starving. 'From now on you're to do what your mother and I say. I don't care what havoc you wreak at school but I'm not having this house turned into a hellhole and the neighbours' cats shot because you're told not to. Do you understand that?'

'Yes, daddy,' said Peregrine and returned to his less disturbing model behaviour.