The Grotesque

paleontology would consider them. Not me. For me, Phlegmosaurus was the patriarch, and the line of descent was direct. Yes, Phlegmosaurus was the father of the birds—and this of course was the subject of my lecture.

I pressed the switch beside the door. Fluorescent tubes, suspended from the rafters, flickered to life, and my haunted ossuary metamorphosed into the laboratory of a working paleontologist. It was only then that I sat down in the white wicker chair that faced the beast and opened my letter from the Royal Society. The news, indeed, was bad.

¦

At lunch I was silent and morose. “Sykes-Herring,” I said, “has written to me.” There were only the two of us at table, Cleo and Sidney having gone off on bicycles to take rubbings from gravestones near Pock. Harriet had been out in the garden, and the brisk autumn weather had brought a glow to her cheeks. Her hair was gathered and pinned rather higher on her skull than usual, and she was gazing out of the window, giving me her profile, her nose slightly uptipped, her buttonlike chin couched snugly in the warm swell of flesh that had once been her neck. Her brow furrowed as she turned to me. “Now tell me again, dear, which one Sykes-Herring is, I get them all mixed up. Is he the pterodactyl man?”

“No, Harriet,” I said, trying to keep the snappish tone out of my voice. “He’s the Secretary of the Royal Society.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Rather a sweet little man.”

“Sweet or not,” I said dryly, “he doesn’t want me to give my lecture.”

Harriet was indignant. “Not give your lecture?” she cried. “What, never?”

“He doesn’t say. Apparently he’s having trouble with the scheduling; I am to contact him at my earliest convenience.”

“Well,” said Harriet crossly, “I think that’s perfectly dreadful of him. Now you’ll be impossible all winter.”

I frowned. This was not what I wished to hear, not at all. Impossible indeed! Harriet, I think, realized her gaffe, and nervously touched her hair. A sort of cough came from Fledge. A sudden gust rattled the windowpanes, and was followed by a brisk volley of rain. Harriet turned toward the window again and said, distractedly, “Oh dear, Cleo and Sidney will be quite soaked.” I glanced at Fledge, and I saw it: he was covering his mouth with his hand. He was doing this, I am convinced, not to muffle a cough, but to conceal the fact that he was laughing at me.

¦

I have thought long and hard about that gesture of Fledge’s, for it was the first real indication I had that the man was not what he seemed; and yes, he was laughing at me. He found me absurd. He thought it ridiculous, clearly, that I should angle for my wife’s sympathy and then allow myself to be slighted as I had. I daresay he was right—but I was damned if I’d let him laugh in my face like that! I could hardly confront him with it, however; it was all too easy to imagine his cool “Sir?”, his cool “I beg your pardon, Sir Hugo?” I would merely compound my absurdity, my humiliation, in his eyes.

I returned to the barn in a foul, black mood, a mood that grew fouler and blacker all afternoon, as, indeed, did the weather. I stopped working on the leg at about three, and had a large scotch. I was of course furious with the Royal Society, and with Sykes-Herring in particular, for obstructing me, for putting obstacles in my path. But this was not new; my relationship with the paleontological establishment had never been cordial, for I was no orthodox paleontologist, I was no house paleontologist, like Sykes-Herring and his ilk. No, this was a familiar conflict. What did raise my hackles was the lack of sympathy I found in Crook. Harriet was more concerned about this alleged “impossibility” of mine than she was about Sykes-Herring’s machinations, and my own butler laughed at me to my face! I went back to the house at six, and learned that Sidney and Cleo had come home wet and miserable a half-hour previously and been packed off by Harriet to have hot baths. This is always a perilous undertaking in Crook, given the state of the plumbing, but whatever household gods are responsible for pipes, boilers, etc., that day, apparently, they were smiling.

I, however, was not smiling. I sat on the edge of my bed, over in the east wing, in my socks and underwear, and I seethed. I had brought a large scotch up with me; I was smoking a cigar. There came a light tap on the door. “Come!” I barked. It was Mrs. Fledge. She had brought me a clean shirt. “Oh excuse me, Sir Hugo,” she whispered, and made as if to withdraw.

“Come in, come in!” I shouted. “Never seen a man in his underpants, Mrs. Fledge? Just hang it on the back of the chair, will you.”

She scurried across the bedroom with eyes downcast. What a timid creature she was—had Fledge reduced her to this, with his chilly, sardonic ways? “Mrs. Fledge!” I said. Having hung up my shirt, she was halfway to the door. She froze, and stood there, her eyes averted from me, her back slightly stooped, her shoulders pulled in toward her flat bosom, a tall, workworn woman with a tight bun on the back of her head and a beaky, red-tipped nose. Her long white hands drooped limply from the wrists, red and rough about the knuckles, I noticed, from all the washing she did. She would not look at me. I clamped the cigar between my teeth, rose to my feet, and began to put on my clean shirt. “Mrs. Fledge,” I said, “what do you think of me?”

“Oh Sir Hugo,” she murmured, casting at me one quick furtive sideways glance, “that’s not for me to say.”

“No, come, Mrs. Fledge,” I said, buttoning the shirt, “do you think, for instance, that I am an impossible man?”

“Oh not a bit, Sir Hugo,” she said, with apparent sincerity. This was something, at any rate.

“You don’t find me impossible?” I said. “You find me—reasonable?”

“Yes, Sir Hugo.”

“Am I absurd to you, Mrs. Fledge?”

“No, Sir Hugo.”

“Not absurd? Not impossible? A perfectly decent, reasonable, straightforward man?”

“Yes, Sir Hugo.”

“I wonder, Mrs. Fledge, if you would mind fastening my cuff links for me.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and she leaned over me, fastening my cuff links with her long thin washerwoman’s fingers. She smelled of carbolic soap, but not of sherry—on the wagon, perhaps. “Mrs. Fledge,” I said. I was gazing at the top of her skull, as she bent over me, examining her silver-threaded hair. “Mrs. Fledge, I wanted to ask you about your husband’s sense of humor.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir Hugo?” she murmured faintly. Her fingertips brushed my left wrist.

“Fledge’s sense of humor. Does he like a joke? A prank? A bit of fun?”

“Not so as you’d notice, Sir Hugo.”

“Laughter does not come easily to him, Mrs. Fledge?” I said. She lifted her head then, and looked me straight in the eye. She twitched her nose and sniffed. Then she dropped her head once more, and busied herself with my right cuff. “We’ve not had much to laugh about, Fledge and I,” she muttered.

“Is that so?” I said. I chewed my cigar, mulling this over. “A hard life, eh?”

“Hard enough, Sir Hugo.”

“You knew hardship in Kenya?”

“Of a sort, Sir Hugo. There!” She stood up. “Will that be all, Sir Hugo? I’ve still the potatoes to see to.”

“And what,” I said, ignoring her evident desire to flee, “would amuse your husband, then, Mrs. Fledge?”

She had retreated to the door. “I’m sure I can’t say, Sir Hugo. Excuse me!” And she was out of the door, leaving only a faint whiff of carbolic behind her. I rather like the smell of carbolic; it reminds me of my own days in Africa.

¦

My little chat with Mrs. Fledge cheered me, in some curious way, and when I descended the stairs, dressed for dinner, some fifteen minutes later, I was feeling a good deal more jaunty than I had all day. Not that I intended to demonstrate this; there were still scores to settle, with Harriet and with Fledge, and I did not intend that this should be a happy evening in Crook. I reached the drawing room to find Harriet asking Sidney whether his bath had been hot enough. Sidney was always animated when he talked to Harriet. “Oh yes, Lady Coal,” he cried—he was sitting on the edge of the couch, beside Cleo, the pair of them like some latter-day Hansel and Gretel—“oh, it was as hot as I could bear it! And I sat there so long I came out wrinkled like a prune and pink as a lobster!”

I suppressed a savage snort of rage that an inanity like this should be uttered in my own drawing room.