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.
