the Zoo? To the Aquarium! And immediately an explosion of images ran through his brain. ‘Sabrina fair… under the glassy, cool, translucent wave…’ ‘Full fathom five thy father lies…’ He saw ferns and fronds and fins and was suddenly and devastatingly happy.
Margaret, when he ran her to ground in the Zoology lab, saw only an interruption to a sensibly planned day. She sat in her white lab coat, bent over the hepatic portal system of an extremely pickled dog fish, lifting with calm forceps the fragile threads of empty arteries, snipping unruffled among clusters of organs as delicate as Lilliputian grapes. Like Toby, she was doing post-graduate research. Unlike him, she never felt as he did, even after he took a First at Oxford, that the research was doing
him
.
In the end, however, she took off her overall, resigned, composed, because he was nothing but a child, really, and needed humouring, and went to fetch the large, cool, plastic handbag which had in it all the things that Toby never had -clean handkerchiefs, door keys that really fitted doors - and still smelling slightly but impressively of formalin, agreed to go with him to the Aquarium…
There was nothing impulsive about the visit of Harold, with his mother, to the Zoo. It had been carefully planned for days and the route they were to follow memorized from Harold’s map. So far all had gone well, but it was with a certain amount of relief that Harold went up the steps to the Aquarium. The llamas, overcome by the unusual heat, had shown a disconcerting amorousness and the baboons – well, baboons were
like
that. But it was his pride to spare Mother, who lived alone in Teddington, the least unpleasantness, and there was always something calmingly ethereal about fish.
After the heat outside, the dark, columned halls of the Aquarium were marvellously cool. Margaret and Toby were proceeding tank by tank along its length, for Margaret was above all a systematic girl. A fleet of bass floated motionless in a forest of bamboo. Flounders performed strange and dreamy acrobatics with their bulging eyes. Dust-speckled bubble stars illumined a black heaven beneath which a deeply placid carp smiled as he swam.
‘In a cool curving world he lies and ripples with dark ecstasies,’ said Toby happily, and Margaret, who was beginning to despair of ever curing him of quoting pointless bits of poetry, sighed.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘they have an interesting reproductive system,’ and told him serious things about whitish tubercules and elongated papillae.
‘Oh,’ said Toby, unaccountably cast down, and moved on. An octopus with rows of suckers like milky pearls, gave them an
enfant terrible
grin from a Stonehenge of sea-washed rocks.
‘Their pancreas is excretory, did you know?’ said Margaret, and elaborated.
‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said a sharp, elderly voice beside them, and Toby, who didn’t either, who wanted the octopus entire and lovable, turned round in sympathy. But the woman, who appeared even on this burning summer day to be clutching a plastic raincoat, was suffering from a different obsession. ‘Nothing will make me believe that the girl will settle down and make you a good wife. I tell you, I heard her talking to my begonias when you brought her to tea. No self control, she said they had. And always barefoot with those straw baskets. An invitation to thieves.’
‘She is very willing to learn,’ said Harold calmly, and looked down at the luminous dial of his watch, pleased to observe that they were comfortably within schedule.
‘Oh!’ said Toby, suddenly and deeply harrowed. In front of them a hopelessly narcissistic lung fish alone in its tank floated constantly upwards to kiss its own reflection in the moment that it broke.
‘That’s tragedy,’ said Toby, ‘to be in love with yourself because there’s no one else.’
Margaret, who disliked him to be fanciful, had moved on to a tank of bewigged anemones like infant
Margaret, when he ran her to ground in the Zoology lab, saw only an interruption to a sensibly planned day. She sat in her white lab coat, bent over the hepatic portal system of an extremely pickled dog fish, lifting with calm forceps the fragile threads of empty arteries, snipping unruffled among clusters of organs as delicate as Lilliputian grapes. Like Toby, she was doing post-graduate research. Unlike him, she never felt as he did, even after he took a First at Oxford, that the research was doing
him
.
In the end, however, she took off her overall, resigned, composed, because he was nothing but a child, really, and needed humouring, and went to fetch the large, cool, plastic handbag which had in it all the things that Toby never had -clean handkerchiefs, door keys that really fitted doors - and still smelling slightly but impressively of formalin, agreed to go with him to the Aquarium…
There was nothing impulsive about the visit of Harold, with his mother, to the Zoo. It had been carefully planned for days and the route they were to follow memorized from Harold’s map. So far all had gone well, but it was with a certain amount of relief that Harold went up the steps to the Aquarium. The llamas, overcome by the unusual heat, had shown a disconcerting amorousness and the baboons – well, baboons were
like
that. But it was his pride to spare Mother, who lived alone in Teddington, the least unpleasantness, and there was always something calmingly ethereal about fish.
After the heat outside, the dark, columned halls of the Aquarium were marvellously cool. Margaret and Toby were proceeding tank by tank along its length, for Margaret was above all a systematic girl. A fleet of bass floated motionless in a forest of bamboo. Flounders performed strange and dreamy acrobatics with their bulging eyes. Dust-speckled bubble stars illumined a black heaven beneath which a deeply placid carp smiled as he swam.
‘In a cool curving world he lies and ripples with dark ecstasies,’ said Toby happily, and Margaret, who was beginning to despair of ever curing him of quoting pointless bits of poetry, sighed.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘they have an interesting reproductive system,’ and told him serious things about whitish tubercules and elongated papillae.
‘Oh,’ said Toby, unaccountably cast down, and moved on. An octopus with rows of suckers like milky pearls, gave them an
enfant terrible
grin from a Stonehenge of sea-washed rocks.
‘Their pancreas is excretory, did you know?’ said Margaret, and elaborated.
‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said a sharp, elderly voice beside them, and Toby, who didn’t either, who wanted the octopus entire and lovable, turned round in sympathy. But the woman, who appeared even on this burning summer day to be clutching a plastic raincoat, was suffering from a different obsession. ‘Nothing will make me believe that the girl will settle down and make you a good wife. I tell you, I heard her talking to my begonias when you brought her to tea. No self control, she said they had. And always barefoot with those straw baskets. An invitation to thieves.’
‘She is very willing to learn,’ said Harold calmly, and looked down at the luminous dial of his watch, pleased to observe that they were comfortably within schedule.
‘Oh!’ said Toby, suddenly and deeply harrowed. In front of them a hopelessly narcissistic lung fish alone in its tank floated constantly upwards to kiss its own reflection in the moment that it broke.
‘That’s tragedy,’ said Toby, ‘to be in love with yourself because there’s no one else.’
Margaret, who disliked him to be fanciful, had moved on to a tank of bewigged anemones like infant
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