The Strident Cry of the Peacock

Gerald Durrell, in one sentence, verbalised the peacock's shrill cry of 'help...help!' so that after that, for the rest of that morning, I kept stopping whatever I happened to be doing to utter it. And just so you know I was at home and very much alone; it would have been rather odd if I'd been in public, don't you think, if I'd suddenly thrown my head back and let out a god-awful yell that sounded unmistakeably peacock-like. Durrell, I suppose, might have done that, had the coast been clear of people and the setting had been more country than market town, with peacocks in the vicinity, but I would have had none of those reasons. Not even youth for which allowances are often made.

And so, as Durrell imitated the language of tiger sniffing I practised the peacock's strident 'help...help!', reminding myself with each mimicked call of Lenny Henry, though wasn't his more parrot? A macaw, possibly? Um, maybe it wasn't a bird at all...

No, I can't nail Lenny's down, but Gerald had got it exactly, the cry, that is, of that particular fowl. Help! is exactly what a peacock conveys, falsely of course, for there's never anything wrong. No calamity, no emergency, just a strutting attention-seeking. This is my manor. Just got to get me some hens. Help...help! with tail-feathers fanned-out and head crown quivering might get them a-flutter; though on the rare occasions I've seen the spectacle the drabber peahens don't seem to take much notice, just carry on pecking the ground and minding their own business, just as I do if I happen to hear a male holler.

A peacock, then, is the bird equivalent of the boy crying wolf. You subconsciously register the call but don't bother to go and see what's the matter. I wonder what cry they make when they are in trouble, real trouble? It can't be the same, can it? A human would, why not a peacock? Animals can be just as dim-witted.

The cry once registered and identified with what makes it, though, can, even on recall alone – including imitations of – conjure up other images you associate with it, and for me, probably unsurprisingly, that happens to be a country house. The type of place you might expect to find a peacock; a place where they can lord it. With a pristine white or off-white façade and maintained gardens i.e. not jungles, but with the right amount of decoration and growth, and with or without a sweeping drive. Maybe some gravel so their tails could drag over it and make a whooshing noise. How impractical – they might swallow it! See, how the mind easily runs away with romantic visions. Note to self: erase the gravel and replace it with a beaten path.

And there's always one or two literary references. In this case, the mind brings forth Rumer Godden's Peacock Spring, though more for the remembrance of the peacock on the cover of that edition than for the story. However, and from memory also, I think it was set in Delhi, and peacocks must have featured, or at the very least a feather. Wasn't there an gardener by the name of...something like Ravi? See, the more you think, the more you remember, or in failing to drive yourself loopy; so you stop, and it comes, at a moment when you don't want it, but still the fact that it has is hugely satisfying. Well, it is if you're worried your memory is getting shabby.

And then there's the William de Morgan tile design of a peacock and a peahen. I spent yesterday evening trying to recall his first name. I got his wife's, an artist in her own right, first. Evelyn. And now I have a person, with the name and face of Gerald Durrell but with the voice of David Attenborough. I always seem to hear Sir David's well-known narrator tones when I read a Durrell, which, if you're not in the know, read like an H. E Bates, in the Larkins style. There's a chummy-feel to them, that makes you exclaim midway through and again at the end, even if you're not quintessentially English, 'How delightful!' And his keen observations of fowls and beasts and humans produce chortles, of the sort that threaten to break out into guffaws. You laugh with, you laugh at, you laugh and learn, and find yourself longing to visit a zoo, one near you or Durrell's in Jersey.

Book Recommendation: Beasts in my Belfry, Gerald Durrell

Picture credit: The House at Rueil, 1882, Edouard Manet (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

Crispy Fried Potatoes

Many nights ago I dreamt I was sitting on a wooden bench somewhere eating not chips but crispy cubes of potato from a paper cone, swinging my legs and admiring the view as I did so; a view I now can't remember, but I know it wasn't of the sea. It was of something green and yellow, an open flat space before me. And the day was fine: blue and white skies with a sun that was warm but not blazing, and a just right breeze. 

Anyhow, in my semi-comatose state and at one with the dream I picked up a dislodged ear plug and, thinking it was a 'chip', popped it in my mouth. And bit down, or tried to. Luckily, realising the texture wasn't right I came to and quickly took the offending (and by now wet) article out of my mouth. But I'd been so sure, before, that what I get would be crispy fried potato. It was a surprise, and displeasing, when I didn't.

What was going on? Had my brain gone into Homer Simpson Mode? Chips...chips...shudder...dribble. The mere image of them, and thinking I was already eating them, had made me want them. And I haven't touched the real thing in years; I'm more of a rice and pasta gal, and potatoes, if they're had, are in their jackets or peeled, baked or boiled. Besides, you never enjoy something as much as you think you're going to when you actually have it. Well, that theory was borne out in the dream too.

I thought this little episode was funny. Last night I tried to eat an earplug! Cue laughter, smirks; none. Why am I the only one to be amused? 

All others seemed to see was the danger. I could have choked; I could have swallowed the earplug. I hadn't considered that, and I still felt, when they voiced this in all seriousness to me, unconcerned. I hadn't; I had stopped myself. Well, okay, not me, my brain had; I presume the more sensible part.

But were they right? Should I have been able to act out what my dream self was experiencing? Could I have been not strictly speaking in a dream but in a lucid state? And have I ever done anything like this before, that I don't know of? I could set up a camera and film. No, creepy. And I would never be able to sleep with a lens pointing at me. It would be too weird to watch back, also.

Oh, why had I said anything to anybody! Raise a laugh – isn't she daft?- raise worries more like.

And so to expunge myself of these I went on a memory association trip and found: Nan.

In the kitchen in a floral print dress about to sound the gong for luncheon and open the film.

My baby's sick, my baby's sick, the wood pigeons lament; the gulls chime in with their high-pitch cries.

More pork, join in some sleepy New Zealand owls (what are they doing here?); a little bit of bread and no cheese, cheep some unidentifiable birds; who wears short shorts? says the Crow.

The opening song of the birds fades; the din of the gong reverberates.

Nan and the womenfolk dance, pass things through the serving hatch, to the men on the other side; or go through, from the kitchen to the dining room, from the dining room to the kitchen.

Kids and dogs get underfoot, run in and out, in and out, as the table is laid and people take up their accustomed places.

A mad house, though there are only three couples, three children and two dogs.

Quiet descends, within and without, as all are seated; the dogs, on their haunches, gradually slump, head on paws. The only sounds to be heard are polite murmurs of 'Yes, please' and No, thank you', as bread and butter and plates are passed and drinks are poured.

Lunch is served. A gentle hum of conversation, in-between grunts of appreciation and swallows and bites, resumes.

Fade out.

Ah, so the gulls, so far inland, had made me think of the seaside and Nan. Nan who would put crispy fried potatoes in a newspaper cone. And who, along with other members of the family, thought birds spoke and who would echo back, repeatedly, the wood pigeon's wail.

Picture credit: Potatoes in a Yellow Dish, 1888, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

This post was penned in 2019.

Old Woman in Evidence

I saw quite a few waiting rooms in 2019, of one description or another – some of them were rooms, some of them areas only, a cluster of chairs round a table piled with old magazines – but mostly my doctor's. I'm not and have never been a regular visitor. My constitution is generally sound, or it was, and I have a man's (or should that be dog's) attitude to doctors – it's a serious concern if I walk through that door. I do not think I'm dying, like some men do, if I have a sore throat, cough, cold, suspicion of flu or viruses; pulled muscles, aching back, tendinitis, neuralgia. I just accept the discomfort and get on with it, occasionally with though mostly without something to take the edge off. 

Martyr! No! H'm possibly...my body is a temple.

And I should just say, before I continue, my surgery is good; my doctor's lovely, in spite of the odd admin mix-up: duplicate letters and phone calls, so that there were times I felt I was going mad. Haven't I had this conversation? Haven't I received this communication or made this appointment already?

Anyhow, last year I got to know that waiting room quite well, along with some others I wouldn't have otherwise had the occasion to see. And by doing so accumulated a whole shopping basket of tests, which had I gone in with a list would have read a little something like this: 1 physical examination; 1 planned surgical procedure (which didn't go ahead as proved unnecessary); 2 blood tests - 1 full MOT and 1 specific; 1 scan; 2 (very nearly 3) ECGs – the machine didn't like me or my heart didn't want to be read; and 1 clinical assessment. With of course subsequent follow-ups and consultations and an accompanying bundle of paperwork. I could start a file. And a fire, if I didn't want to leave it to posterity, and I don't. But whilst I'm living I suppose a paper record might come in handy.

All quite dizzying, really, when I was in it, and even when I look back. Am I still in its throes? The jaws of death. Well, okay, not death. Did I mention I can be a little melodramatic? Poetic licence. 

But am I in its throes: the rounds of professionals and appointments? Well, it's possible. I'm not a crystal-ball gazer, though some of my articles when published a year or so later are often quite prophetic. It's not a gift because I don't know when and if I'm tapping into it. In other words: Fat lot of good it does me. 

Am I writing like Isherwood yet? Christopher. That was an ambition. A year on maybe it still is and maybe I'm still reading him. A back catalogue of Christopher and his collection of persons. I should have taken him to these waiting rooms. 

I can never sit and read in them, not even idly flick through a very out of date magazine. No, I sit, alert like a dog, poised for action. My surgery is a warren of treatment rooms, so in my head I'm planning my strategy i.e. the quickest route to the right door from where I'm sitting and whose legs I might have to disturb, have to brush against. I'll have to be careful not to hit them with my handbag or elbow them – and my elbows are sharp - in the head or eye. I wouldn't want to add to anybody's ailments. Or add to mine by tripping over pram wheels or toddlers who have become bored with coloured bricks and are running around, waving their arms. And it could happen, not that I'm known to be clumsy but fretting makes something more liable to happen. Self-consciousness 101, but there isn't a room for that, not a physical one. Maybe a different surgery has one?

So, I sit and wait, on the edge of an uncomfortable seat, for my name to be flashed up on a screen and then called in a robotic female voice; usually I jump up as soon as my name appears rather than stay to hear how she might pronounce it, not that it's a difficult to say but because I seem to presume that the quicker I leave the waiting room the less people will put my person and it together. I mean, in that year alone, I was able to put quite a few names to local faces, and some of them stuck, so that if I see them around now it feels odd: I possess a detail about them and they don't know I have it.

What was my problem? I'm more like a woman of sixty-five than a woman of thirty-nine.

Picture credit: Portrait of a Lady in a Lace-edged Dress, 1915, Frank Dicksee (source: WikiArt)

Miss Kilman

Miss Kilman stood, in her mackintosh, on the landing, impressed upon my mind, long after I'd finished Mrs Dalloway for the second time. There she was, just standing there, in her mackintosh, waiting for some token acknowledgement, some small word as a dog waits for a bone or for a dinner scrap to be thrown, little realising just how detestable her person was to the lady of the house, the glittering wife of Richard Dalloway, MP, who that evening was to host a party, which she, Doris Kilman, hadn't been invited to. She was never invited anywhere.

So, in my mind, she stands there, unmoving, her mackintosh dripping, drip drip drip on the landing; for she's sopping wet, as if instead of taking her leave she's not long arrived and was caught, in getting there, in a June shower. Her mackintosh appropriate wear for such weather, for the storm cloud she walks under and takes with her, wherever she goes. She drips. Pitter-patter on the landing.

Miss Dalloway, coming out to see what the drip drip was about, hides her contempt; attempts civility. Miss Kilman, her enemy, again in this house! stealing her Elizabeth; converting her to religion. Love and religion. A love that unites, a love that destroys.

Drip drip. Pitter-patter; pitter-patter. It's raining: turn to God; pray with me.

Miss Kilman's thoughts are in a churn; roused to a passion, as always, by Mrs Dalloway. She registers something was asked and makes a remark; her large gooseberry-coloured eyes fixed as she replies on this paragon of vanity.

Mrs Dalloway and her small pink face. Mrs Dalloway and her delicate body; said to be so fine that of an afternoon she laid on sofas. My mother is resting.

She will have, Miss Kilman thinks, some time soon her religious victory. Clarissa Dalloway's body and soul will be subdued, and when they are she will claim to herself (and possibly to others) it is God's will. Until then she will return and drip drip drip on this soft carpet, and allow herself to be spoken to condescendingly, and inwardly rage, feel her bile rise, against these rich people and their expensive things: furnishings, gilt-framed paintings and servants.

Yes, Miss Kilman drips, glares and glowers at this paragon of vanity and deceit. Jealous. And cheated. Of happiness, of education, of a proper, respectable occupation. The world has sneered at her and cast her off. For this, for the likes of Clarissa Dalloway, with her dresses and flowers, and a husband who is kindness itself and a beautiful daughter.

Bitter and burning, is Doris Kilman. Pitying and envying. All who seat themselves above her.

But should the mother be more like the daughter, well! Miss Kilman would welcome any kind attention from her; any tête a tête with her; any touch of consoling hands.

Ah, Elizabeth. Beautiful Elizabeth. So different to her mother, in character and colouring. So open to instruction. She can be brought more easily to God. She might, too, one day see the same light as Miss Kilman had two years and three months ago, and also be rid of her fleshy desires. Desires that Miss Kilman herself is not entirely free of.

Beauty. Youth. Chocolate éclairs.

Tea with Elizabeth at the Stores. Elizabeth and food was all that she lived for. Oh, and the occasional wisdom of Rev. Edward Whittaker: knowledge comes through suffering. She had knowledge enough hadn't she? She, with her degree in Modern History. Why should she forego these few comforts and suffer further?

Mrs Dalloway escaped such torments (Clarissa would have liked to, at this moment, escaped the landing but Miss Kilman's sinister serenity and dripping mackintosh held her there); she could be doing more good, thinks Miss Kilman. I would do more if I were she. Clothes might suit me – I could buy anything - and I might come first with someone. Beauty might never be mine but youth might stay. All this the silent-mouthed Miss Kilman might think.

And as the rain pours down from this one black cloud Mrs Dalloway, too, might be having her own soundless thoughts: O, where has Elizabeth got to! Why has she left me with this monster? And: how tiring it must be to pray, each day, to a god that may or may not answer.

Picture credit: Lady Caroline Scott as Winter, 1776, Sir Joshua Reynolds (source: Wikiart).

Further note to accompanying picture: 'the gilt rim of the Sir Joshua picture of the little girl with the muff brought back Kilman with a rush; Kilman her enemy.' (Clarissa Dalloway). That used closest to that description.

This post was penned in 2019.