‘Whist is the card game, I think you’ll find,’ offered the Reverend Godfrey Freemantle, diffidently. ‘Wisteria is a climbing plant, floribunda, formosa, sinensis, venusta …’ Here he caught the Colonel’s hostile eye, and added, ‘But, of course, as Perry says, it is indeed listeria that causes gippy tummy.’ Once more he smiled at the Colonel, who was notoriously irked by being corrected, and who, on account of just this very flaw, had once narrowly missed the opportunity of being made equerry to the Queen.
The guests tucked into their fish, and declared it perfect, wonderful, superb, just right, and the best they had ever had. But the sorry fact was that Colonel and Mrs Barkwell had managed all the same to insinuate doubt into their guests’ minds as well. ‘It would have been better not to have said anything at all,’ reflected Leafy Barkwell, as she surveyed the mildly worried expressions upon their faces.
The Rector had a second helping, motivated by Christian supportiveness, explicitly putting his trust in God by means of a fleeting supplication, and the Major had seconds because, as he put it, ‘In my time I’ve drunk water from a petrol can, and I’ve cooked fried eggs on the bare metal of an armoured car in the middle of the desert, and I’m damned if anything will ever make me ill again.’ He ate his second helping as a direct personal challenge to the fish, and to any and all bacilli that it might contain. Joan, his wife, who had heard this speech about petrol cans and fried eggs a hundred times, loyally corroborated the Major’s assertions. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘the Major’s never ill. It’s positively alarming what his stomach can put up with.’
The Colonel glanced at the Major somewhat balefully. There had been a strong undercurrent of rivalry between them ever since the Major had disclosed that he had been in the only Foot Guard regiment senior to the Coldstreams. It was indeed an unfortunate coincidence that a former Grenadier had turned up in the same village as a former Coldstreamer, especially as both of them were of titanic build and forceful temperament. In this instance it irked Perry Barkwell that a Grenadier should lay claim to a cast-iron constitution, and so he countered with: ‘Ate a boa constrictor in Belize. Damned tasty actually. Not bad at all. Ate a dog in Malaya. Emergency. Not quite so good.’
‘Oh Perry, don’t, how could you?’ demanded Leafy Barkwell. ‘How perfectly horrid.’ She had not heard this story before, and suspected that her husband was elaborating falsehoods from somewhat base motives.
The carcass of the salmon was cleared away, and in the kitchen Mrs Leafy Barkwell heaped its remains into Troodos’s bowl, having decided that it was probably not a good idea to keep it over for the following day. Nanna went out to rattle the biscuit box, and Troodos appeared shortly through the catflap, an anticipatory purr rattling in his throat. It was his right to eat leftovers, and he was never far away from the catflap at about eight o’clock in the evening, after which his night’s adventures could begin. The leftovers would be followed by flirtation, a little hunting, a little chromatic yeowling, and, with any luck, an exhilaratingly good battle with a farm cat. Troodos would often appear in the morning with the outer sheath of a claw embedded in the middle of his forehead like a piece of Ruritanian military regalia, and Perry Barkwell would extract it, saying, ‘Damn good soldier. Chip off the old block, what?’
Dessert was served and eaten, and then the Colonel and the Major announced their intention to waive their right to stay on at table and pass the port while the ladies withdrew.
They both felt uneasy because, naturally, the Reverend Freemantle would be remaining with them, and they would feel inhibited about coming out with the odd ‘bugger it’, or worse, and risqué anecdotes or even talk about old campaigns would be out of the question. The Rector, they suspected, was a milksop, a nice chap, but with no balls at all. Accordingly they all removed to the drawing room, and Nanna served coffee, returning to the kitchen to begin the washing-up, which she did with her customary fanaticism, polishing the plates until they glowed.
Polly Wantage lit her pipe, and began a long discourse about a squirrel that she had recently shot. The Colonel and the Major listened with admiration, for Polly, with her plus fours, her pipe, her legendary past in the England women’s cricket team and her monocle, was the kind of woman a chap could really rub along with; none of that damned female nonsense about headaches and manicures and hairdos.
‘And so,’ said Polly, puffing on her pipe and creating the atmosphere of a damp bonfire in autumn, ‘there he was, the little bugger,’ (here everyone glanced at the Rector, who merely smiled theologically) ‘and I gave him the right barrel. Boom.’ (Here Polly wielded an imaginary twelve-bore.) ‘And bugger me, I missed. And then the little bugger takes a leap, and, like a flash, boom, I’m after him with the other barrel, and blow me down, I got him in mid-air, and he spins over and drops, and there he is, stone dead on the pine needles. One bad shot, and one blinder. Just like life, what?’
Polly looked around with satisfaction, and the Rector observed, ‘Such a rich metaphor,’ while the Major and the Colonel responded almost in unison with ‘Jolly good, old girl. Splendid.’
Joan and Leafy exchanged glances, and the former summoned up her courage. ‘Polly dear, I can’t help wondering why you have this thing about squirrels.’
Polly puffed vehemently on her pipe, and then pointed the stem at Joan, stabbing the air with it for emphasis. ‘Rats,’ she said. ‘Rats with fluffy tails. Tree rats. Vermin. Full of fleas. Disgusting.’
‘Oh, I think they’re rather sweet,’ said Joan, unthinkingly.
‘It’s the songbirds,’ explained Polly. ‘You can have squirrels or songbirds, but not both. These grey squirrels eat the eggs, and they eat the heads off the chicks. Nice and crunchy, you see. I’m voting for songbirds. Bugger the squirrels. Got to get rid of them. Do you remember Eric? Before your time, I should think. Eric Parker? He was the last man to see a red squirrel in the village.’
Just then Nanna flung open the door, hurled herself into the centre of the room and exclaimed, ‘Oh mein Gott, mein Gott, du lieber Gott, der Kater ist tot. Der arme Kater, oh oh oh.’
The Colonel stood up abruptly, exclaiming, ‘What? What? What?’ and Nanna clutched the sides of her face with both hands, her eyes full of horror, tears running down her cheeks. She swayed like an opera singer imitating the effects of a storm, and Joan and the other women exchanged a ‘What do we do now?’ kind of glance.
‘Pull yourself together, woman,’ cried the Colonel, grasping Nanna’s shoulders, and for one horrible moment everyone thought that he was going to slap her, as if she were the stock hysterical woman in an old-fashioned film. Nanna looked up at him and managed to say, her voice choking with distress, ‘Tot, tot, tot ist der Kater.’
The guests went pale in unison, and in unison their stomachs began to feel unwell. ‘Pussy’s dead,’ said Mrs Barkwell, horrified both by the news and by what it meant. A wave of social shame swept over her, for the time being postponing the jagged grief that she would feel for her beloved pet. ‘The salmon,’ she blurted out, looking to her husband for strength. ‘Oh my God, the salmon.’
The Colonel had not spent all those years in the Coldstreams without learning the art of dealing with an emergency. ‘On the double,’ he roared, ‘quick march,’ and everybody, galvanised by this vocal explosion, jumped up out of their armchairs. ‘Into the hall,’ commanded the Colonel. He turned to his wife. ‘Start the car. Round the front!’ She seemed a little confused, but was electrified into action by his ‘Jump to it, woman, jump to it’.