The Ark's Anniversary
‘The discipline, darlings,’ he said, clasping his hands and looking skywards. ‘The discipline. You have no idea. So strict, but so rewarding.’
‘How d’you mean?’ asked Godfrey, lying on the floor of the cabin like a beached whale. ‘No booze?’
‘No drink at all,’ said Peter, horrified. ‘Hours and hours and hours at the barre until you felt your legs were going to drop off. Simply exhausting.’
‘And you did all this without a drink?’ asked Godfrey, incredulously.
‘Not a drop, dear heart, not a tiny sip.’
‘Devotion,’ said Godfrey, turning to me, ‘absolute devotion. Don’t see how you can dance without a drink.’
‘What else did you have to do?’ asked Margot.
‘Well,’ said Peter, now well into his fifth glass of champagne, ‘they made you dance in a little box thing, I forget the name, to make sure that you only had a small area and if you went beyond it you fell off.’
‘Dance in a box?’ said Godfrey. ‘What sort of a box?’
‘Well, sort of flat-topped, rather like that,’ said Peter, pointing at the small circular table which was part of the cabin furnishings. ‘But that’s only the size of a sombrero,’ said Godfrey, ‘you can’t dance on that.’
‘Mexicans dance on their hats,’ said Margot, thoughtfully refilling every body’s glass.
‘But Peter’s not a Mexican,’ Godfrey pointed out, ‘he’s Irish.’
‘The Irish do clog dances,’ I said, to confuse the issue.
‘Well, anyway, Irish or not, I don’t believe he can dance on that table,’ said Godfrey with finality, and took a deep draught of champagne.
We should have been warned. The ship was still shifting uneasily from side to side, but we attributed this to the health-giving properties of the champagne and not to the inclemencies of the weather.
‘Of course I can dance on it,’ said Peter, annoyed at having his prowess denigrated. ‘I’ll show you what we used to do.’
He pushed the table into the centre of the cabin and looked at it thoughtfully.
‘I’m wearing too many clothes,’ he said, and with great dignity stripped down to his underpants.
‘That’s why ballet dancers get a bad name,’ Godfrey said, ‘always rushing about exposing themselves.’
‘I’m not exposed,’ said Peter indignantly, ‘am I, Margot?’
‘Not yet,’ said Margot, philosophically.
Peter climbed on to the table and raised his arms above his head, hands and fingers delicately posed. He rose on his toes and looked at us archly.
‘Sing something,’ he suggested.
After some thought, Godfrey plunged into a barely recognizable version of the Nutcracker Suite. Peter dosed his eyes in ecstasy, twirled round and round, did a few grand pliés, and rose to his toes to do another twirl when a seventh wave of some magnitude hit the ship. With a squawk, our poor man’s Nijinsky fell off the table in a thrashing of arms and legs. Like a baby bird who has been practicing flying on the edge of its nest and has lost its balance and fallen into a frightening alien world, thus it was with Peter. He lay on the floor, his face white, clasping his thigh.
‘Ow! Ow! Ow!’ he screamed, and the resemblance to a lemur was remarkable. ‘Ow! My leg! I’ve broken my leg!’
That, I thought, is all we need. Due to arrive in New York the next morning and my amanuensis with a broken leg.
We gathered around our fallen hero, pressed champagne to his whitened lips, assured him that he was not in imminent danger of needing the last rites and, what was more important, that his leg was not broken. He had severely wrenched his thigh muscles, but there was no break. However, it was so nasty that he would have to go into hospital for an X-ray and treatment. So when we docked in New York my doughty Jeeves was whisked away in an ambulance and I was left to face the perils of the New World on my own.
Fortunately, my first engagements were in the Big Apple, or in places within easy striking distance of it, so I could get on with these while Peter was languishing in hospital and running up such astronomical bills that I was thankful for our insurance. Medicine in America appears to be such a lucrative racket that I am surprised the Mafia have not taken it over.
It was while I was in New York that the young woman who was acting in loco parentis while Peter was out of commission kept telling me about a certain Dr Thomas Lovejoy and how wonderful he was. In her eyes, he was God’s gift to everything and it was clear that she was deeply smitten. She said that she was trying to arrange a meeting but Lovejoy was in such demand that he was as hard to catch as a will-o’-the-wisp. Then, one morning, we were outside Macy’s after doing some shopping when the young woman uttered a piercing squeak of delight.
‘Look,’ she cried. ‘Look, it’s Tom Lovejoy.’
I looked, interested to see this elusive paragon. I saw a slight young man dancing down the sidewalk towards us, tousled dark hair, dark eyes with a humorous glint in them, a handsome face with an endearing grin. I could see at once what made her heart beat faster. I liked him at once and felt that he liked me. Having captured this unicorn so fortuitously, we dragged him off to a nearby hostelry and filled him with beer while I told him what I was trying to do in America. He listened quietly and gave me some excellent advice. I warmed to him, especially when I realized he was one of those rare scientists who took his job seriously but could laugh at himself and others. In fact, it was his outrageous sense of humour that formed a bond between us. In conservation work, if you can’t laugh you must weep and with weeping comes despair. Tom promised to see me when I returned from my trip, so that we could discuss how best to set up the Trust in America.
Shortly after this, Peter emerged from hospital and we started on our marathon round of the USA.
America was fantastic and that first trip had many highlights. We had arrived in New York in a heatwave with the air warm and muggy, the like of which I had not experienced outside West Africa. The brown smog lay like cumulus clouds in fish-shaped banks among the skyscrapers, so that their tops stood out pristine in the sunlight like huge cubes of sugar, while portions of them were lost in the surly banks of smog. It was incredible and looked just like a Ray Bradbury Martian city. I fell in love with New York altogether, although I don’t like cities. When we drove to Chicago, a place I did not care for – and here I was to lecture to an audience of some 2000 – Peter, to compensate for his ballet gaffe, clucked over me like a mother hen. However, in occupying himself with minutiae, he was apt to overlook the broad canvas. Thus we arrived at the auditorium to discover a packed, expectant house and to find simultaneously that we had left half our film on the Trust at the hotel. I am always a nervous speaker and this did nothing to help me. Worse still was to happen in Chicago. At a cocktail party, kindly given by friends to those members of the audience who might be big givers, I was standing by a sofa on which was sitting a slender, grey-looking man, when I was suddenly approached by a rather fearsome looking woman with bright blue hair, a face like a tomahawk and a voice which could have sliced stone in any quarry.
‘Mr. Dewroll,’ she shrilled, ‘my names Avenspark, and that’s my husband there.’ She made a possessive gesture towards the frail-looking man at my elbow. We bowed to each other. ‘Mr. Dewroll,’ she continued, ‘my husband and I have travelled two hundred and fifty miles to be here to hear you lecture tonight.’
‘That’s very flattering . . .’ I began.
‘Two hundred and fifty miles,’ she said, oblivious of my interruption. ‘Two hundred and fifty miles, and my husband a sick man.’
‘Really?’ I said, turning to Mr. Avenspark commiseratingly, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes,’ she went on in that skull-shattering voice. ‘He’s got wall-to-wall cancer.’
It was, I discovered, difficult to know what to say to a statement like that. ‘I ho
pe you get well soon’ was hardly adequate or appropriate. While I was racking my brains, I was fortunately rescued by Peter and whisked away. This, in some degree, made up for the forgotten film.
We got on the train to go from Chicago to San Francisco. We were ushered to our stateroom by a small, ancient, black car attendant with snow-white hair, who looked as though he had just walked off the set of Gone with the Wind. To my delight, he talked like it too.
‘Dis here is yo’ compartment, sah,’ he said, ‘and yo’ gen’leman friend is in dis one right nex’ do’. I go fetch yo’ baggage right away gen’leman.’
I knew that partitions between the well-designed little staterooms are removable, so when our porter came back with the bags, I asked him to remove the partition.
‘Sho’ will, sah,’ he said, twisting the knobs that hold the sections, and within a short space of time we had a spacious stateroom with two beds, two basins, two cupboards, two armchairs and two picture windows through which we could admire passing America. It had been a hectic day in Chicago and so I thought we deserved a treat.
‘And now,’ I said, ‘my friend and I would like a bottle of Korbel champagne, please.’
‘Sho, sah, sho’, I’ll fetch it fo’ you right away,’ he said.
He came back – as the train was sliding out of the station and into the countryside – bearing a nicely chilled bottle of that excellent American champagne in an ice bucket.
‘Shall I open it?’
‘Yes, please, and have another on ice, just in case,’ I said.
‘Yes, siree,’ he said, busy with the cork.
After I had sipped my approval, he poured the wine, bound the bottle up carefully in a snow-white napkin and returned it to the bucket.
‘Will dat be all, sah?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.
He paused at the door. ‘Forgive me fo’ saying’ so, sah,’ he said, his face split by a wide, white smile, ‘but it sho’ is a real pleasure to serve gen‘lemen who know how to travel, yes siree.’
As we sat there, sipping the wine, I gave Peter the benefit of my views on train travel.
‘This really is one of the best ways of travelling,’ I said. ‘Who wants to be incarcerated in a sardine can 25,000 feet up with a lot of people you know are going to panic if anything happens? Whereas on a train it is quite different. You are not scrunched up in that prenatal position, you can walk about. You travel at a civilized speed, watching the world go by in great comfort and with great service. Moreover, you are on the ground and you know the pilot is not going to apprise you suddenly of the exhilarating fact that the starboard engine is on fire and not to panic. Train travel, my dear Peter, may be slow but it is safe.’
As I said these words, the train jolted as if it had hit a brick wall. Our champagne glasses did a tip dance and split their contents as they danced, and large pieces of wood and metal started flying past the picture window. The train juddered to a screaming halt.
‘Do you think,’ said Peter nervously, ‘that we’ve hit something?’
‘Nonsense,’ I said stoutly, ‘trains don’t hit things.’
‘But this is America,’ Peter pointed out.
‘True,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see.’
We joined the other passengers on the track and walked down to where our proud engine was standing dolefully in a shawl of steam. It appeared that a gigantic lorry pulling an equally gigantic trailer had endeavoured to race our train across a level crossing. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for this murderous bravado. The lorry got across, but we hit the tail end of the trailer and stove it in. We could judge the force of the collision by the fact that our train’s thick steel cow catcher had been buckled as if it were spaghetti. So much so, indeed, that we had to wait three hours while they brought up another engine as a replacement. It was the last time I lectured Peter on the joys of train travel. I think he was so glad to leave the dangers of train travel that when we reached San Francisco we had driven some distance from the station before I discovered that he had left my entire wardrobe hanging up in one of our sleeping-car cupboards.
Finally, after falling in love with San Francisco and hating Los Angeles – a misnomer if ever there was one – I undertook my last speaking engagement at an incredibly exclusive and expensive country club where you could not obtain admittance until you had salted away your first million bucks. It seemed an appropriate place for me to go with my begging bowl. The place was littered with expensive nouveau riche Americans, the females with violet hair, necks like vultures and the minute, telltale scars of the last facelift showing through the real or fake tan. They were bejewelled like Christmas trees and tinkled like musical boxes as they walked. I felt that if I could lure one of them behind a bush and strip her of her baubles, it would probably keep the Trust solvent for several years. However, my gentlemanly instincts prevented me from applying this technique for obtaining, easily and rapidly, funds to help animals.
The males who belonged to these females were all, it seemed, six or eight stone overweight, with voices that had a rich timbre through regular gargling with gravel, and purple pouting faces like giant babies suffering from nappy rash. They rode around in electric golf carts with fringes on top, so that there was no risk of their losing weight. Everywhere else in America I had met charming, civilized and overwhelmingly generous and gracious people, so this collection of horrors was, to say the least, offputting. My plea to these moon people was supposed to take place after dinner. Dinner was preceded by two hours of solid and lavish drinking on a scale I have rarely seen equalled. A request for a Scotch resulted in something the size of a small flower vase being thrust into your hand, containing half a pint of spirits, four ice cubes, each capable of sinking the Titanic, and a teaspoonful of soda in which three or four errant bubbles were enmeshed.
By the time dinner was served my potential audience was well on the way to inebriation. With dinner, of course, came the appropriate wines with each course and then finally brandy in goblets as large as soup tureens. The woman next to me (who was weighed down by a passable imitation of the Crown jewels) was, presumably for health reasons, on a mainly liquid diet and merely toyed with her food. The few remarks she addressed to me were, it seemed, couched in one of the more flamboyant and incomprehensible middle-European dialects. I nodded and smiled and said ‘Yes’, ‘Really?’ ‘Oh’ and similar intelligent comments. Then came my great moment. The person who had organized this terrifying ordeal rose to his feet and, fighting gamely against the roar of after-dinner conversation, made a short, totally inaudible speech of introduction and sat down rather unsteadily. This was my cue. I rose. Everyone stopped talking and stared at me owlishly.
I launched into my heartrending plea on behalf of the animals of the world to an audience of quite the most unprepossessing mammals I had ever encountered. As I was ploughing on, aware that sibilant conversation was starting up on all sides, I became aware of a curious noise at my elbow. Looking round, I perceived, not altogether to my astonishment, that the woman with the Crown Jewels (doubtless soothed by my mellifluous English accent) had fallen asleep and the weight of her jewels had carried her unconscious head down into her plate which, unfortunately, contained the remains of a lavish strawberry soufflé. Her face nestled in this pink lavaflow which had enveloped her nostrils. As she breathed stertorously, the strawberry soufflé bubbled merrily with a loud gurgling and popping noise, reminiscent of somebody trying to suck a complex fruit sundae through a straw.
I was glad not only to sit down but to leave this exclusive club the following day, richer by a hardly munificent one hundred dollars.
It was imperative that we caught an early morning plane to New York, for I had radio, TV and the press lined up, as well as a lecture. So early that morning, having breakfasted and packed, I shuffled off to Peter’s room to make sure that he had not overslept. A sad
and soulful voice told me to come in. His breakfast tray was on the bed but he was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where are you?’ I called.
‘In here, dearest Gerry, in here,’ came his faint voice from the bathroom.
I poked my head around the door and discovered Peter standing stark naked in the bath, clutching a-large towel to his bosom, with an expression of extreme terror on his face.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, puzzled by his demeanour.
‘Look,’ he croaked, pointing downwards.
I looked. A great stream of blood was pouring down his leg and forming a gory pool in the bath.
‘Good God! What have you done?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Peter, looking as if he were going to cry. ‘I think I cut myself with my signet ring when I was drying myself.’
‘Well, come and lie down on the bed and let me have a look at it,’ I said, thinking somewhat uncharitably that Peter would wait until we had a tight schedule before slashing himself with a signet ring. He lay on the bed and I discovered that the ring had sliced nearly through a largish vein in that part of his anatomy where it was impossible to put a tourniquet without turning my friend and helper into a boy soprano. Wondering how on earth to staunch the blood, my desperate eyes fell on the breakfast tray. Reposing on it was a saltcellar: quickly, I mopped the blood off the severed vein and poured the contents of the capacious saltcellar on to it. The results were not quite what I had expected. All his ballet training came to the fore. Peter left the bed with a leap Nijinsky could not have emulated, scattering blood and salt in all directions, uttering long yodelling cries indicative of extreme agony. I had to pursue him several times around the room before I could get him to lie down on the bed again, but only when he had extracted a promise that I would not use any more salt. Of course, all the activity had excited the vein, which was now pumping out blood like a fountain. It was obvious that something drastic must be done if Peter were not to bleed to death and we were going to catch our plane on time.