“What’s the matter, Mr Romilly?” I asked cautiously.
Mr Romilly appeared at the foot of the stairs clasping his brow, distraught.
“Stupid me!” he intoned. “Stupid, stupid, stupid me!”
Gathering from this that I was not the culprit, I took heart.
“What’s the matter?” I asked solicitously.
“Tubifex and daphnia!” said Mr Romilly tragically, removing his spectacles and starting to polish them feverishly.
“Have we run out?”
“Yes,” intoned Mr Romilly sepulchrally. “How stupid of me! What negligence! How very, very remiss of me. I deserve to be sacked. I really am the stupidest mortal...”
“Can’t we get some from somewhere else?” I asked, interrupting Mr Romilly’s verbal flagellation.
“But the farm always sends it up,” exclaimed Mr Romilly, as though I were a stranger in need of an explanation. “The farm always sends up the supply when I ask for it, every weekend. And I, crass idiot that I am, never ordered any.”
“But can’t we get it from somewhere else?” I asked.
“And the guppies and the sword-tails and the black mollies, they so look forward to their tubifex,” said Mr Romilly, working himself into a sort of hysterical self-pity. “They relish it. How can I face those tiny pouting faces against the glass? How can I eat my lunch while those poor little fish...”
“Mr Romilly,” I interrupted firmly. “Can we get some tubifex from somewhere other than the farm?”
“Eh?” said Mr Romilly, staring at me. “Other than the farm? But the farm always sends... Ah, wait a bit. I see what you mean... Yes...”
He climbed laboriously up the wooden stairs, mopping his brow, and emerged like the sole survivor of a pit disaster. He gazed round him with vacant, tragic eyes.
“But where?” he said at last, despairingly. “But where?”
“Well,” I said, taking the matter in hand. “What about Bellow?”
“Bellow? Bellow?” he said. “Most unbusinesslike chap. He deals in birds. Shouldn’t think he’d have any.”
“But surely it’s worth a try?” I said. “Let me go round and see.”
Mr Romilly thought about it.
“Alright,” he said at last, averting his face from the serried ranks of accusing-looking fish, “take ten shillings out of petty cash, and don’t be too long.”
He handed me the key and sat down, gazing glumly at his highly polished shoes. I opened the tin petty cash box, extracted a ten shilling note, filled in a petty cash slip — “IOU 10/— Tubifex” — and slipped it into the box, locked it, and pushed the key into Mr Roniilly’s flaccid hand. A moment later I was out on the broad pavement, weaving my way through the vacant-eyed throng of shoppers, making my way towards Bellow’s shop, while the mountainous red buses thundered past with their gaggle of attendant taxis and cars. I came to the tiny alleyway and turned down it, and immediately peace reigned. The thunder of buses, the clack of feet, the honk and screech of cars became muted, almost beautiful, like the distant roar of the surf. On one side of the alley was a blank soot-blackened wall; on the other, the iron railings which guarded the precious piece of ground that led to the local church. Here had been planted — by someone of worth — a rank of plane trees. They leant over the iron railings, roofing the alley with green, and on their mottled trunks looper caterpillars performed prodigious and complicated walks, humping themselves grimly towards a goal about which even they seemed uncertain. Where the plane trees ended the shops began. There were no more than six of them, each Lilliputian in dimensions and each one forlornly endeavouring.
There was Clemystra, Modes for Ladies, with a rather extraordinary fur in their window as the piиce de résistance ; a fur which, with its glass eyes and its tail in its mouth, would have curdled the heart of any anti-vivisectionist should one pass that way. There was the Pixies’ Parlour, Light Luncheons, Teas and Snacks, and next door to it, once you had refreshed yourself, was A. Wallet, Tobacconist, whose window consisted entirely of cigarette and pipe advertisements, the predominant one being a rather Holman Hunt type of placard for Wills’ Wild Woodbines. I hurried past all these and past William Drover, Estate Agent, with its host of fascinating pale brown pictures of desirable residences, past the shrouded portal, decorated rather severely and somewhat surprisingly by one rose-pink lavatory pan, of Messrs M. & R. Drumlin, Plumbers, to the end of the row of shops where the faded notice above the door stated simply and unequivocally: Henry Bellow, Aviculturist. At last, I thought, I had the chance of getting inside the shop and solving, if nothing else, the mystery of the birds with the “SOLD” notices on their cages. But as I approached the shop something unprecedented happened. A tall, angular woman in tweeds, wearing a ridiculous Tyrolean hat with a feather, strode purposefully down the alley and, a brief second before me, grasped the handle of the door marked “Enter Please” and swept in, while the bell jangled melodiously. I was astonished. It was the first time I had ever seen a customer enter any of the shops in the alley. Then, anxious to see what happened once she had entered the shop, I rushed after her and caught the closing door on the last jangle.
In an almost lightless shop the woman with the Tyrolean hat and I were caught like moths in some dingy spider’s web. The melodious chimes of the door, one felt assured, would have someone running to attend the shop. Instead of which there was silence, except for the faint cheeping of the birds in the window and the sudden shuffling of feathers from a cockatoo in the corner, a sound like un-ironed washing being spread out. Having shuffled its feathers to its satisfaction, it put its head on one side and said, “Hello, hello, hello,” very softly and with complete lack of interest.
We waited what seemed a long time but was probably only a few seconds. My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the gloom. I saw that there was a small counter and behind it shelves of bird seed, cuttle-fish and other accoutrements of the aviculturist’s trade, and in front of it were a number of large sacks containing hemp and rape and millet seed. In one of these perched a white mouse eating the seeds with the frantic speed of a nervous person nibbling cheese straws at a cocktail party. I was beginning to wonder whether to open the door and make the bell jangle again when, suddenly, a very large and ancient retriever padded its way solemnly through the door at the back of the shop and came forward, wagging its tail. It was followed by a man I took to be Henry Bellow. He was a tall, stout man with a great mop of curly grey hair and a huge bristling moustache, like an untamed gorse bush, that looked as though it were a suitable nesting site for any number of birds. From under his shaggy eyebrows his tiny blue eyes stared out, brilliant as periwinkles, through his gold-rimmed spectacles. He moved with a sort of ponderous slowness rather like a lazy seal. He came forward and gave a little bow.