I sighed. She was such a lovely girl that it seemed cruel of fate to have given me a tantalising glimpse of her and then to whisk her out of my life. But I was wrong, for within three days Ursula had been whisked back into my life where she remained, intermittently, for the next five years.
I had been invited to a friend’s house to celebrate his birthday, and as I entered the drawing-room I heard the clear, flute-like voice of the girl on the bus.
“I’m just a natural voyeur,” she was saying earnestly to a tall young man. “Travel is in my blood. Daddy says I’m the original rolling moss.”
“Happy birthday,” I said to my host. “And in return for this extremely expensive present I want you to introduce me to the girl with the extraordinary nose.”
“What, Ursula?” he asked in surprise. “You don’t want to meet her, do you?”
“It’s my greatest ambition in life,” I assured him.
“Well, on your own head be it,” he said. “If she takes you up she’ll drive you mad. The local asylum is already bursting with her various boyfriends.”
We moved across the room to the girl with the ravishing nose. “Ursula,” said my friend, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice, “Here’s somebody who wants to meet you. Gerry Durrell... Ursula Pendragon White.”
Ursula turned and enveloped me in a blue stare of prickling intensity, and gave me a ravishing smile. Her nose, seen full-face, was even more enchanting than in profile. I gazed at her and was lost.
“Hallo,” she said. “You’re the bug boy, aren’t you?”
“I would prefer to be known as an elegant, handsome, witty, devil-may-care man-about-town,” I said regretfully. “But if it is your wish that I be the bug boy, then the bug boy I shall be.”
She gave a laugh that sounded like sleigh-bells.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me. But you are the person who likes animals, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Then you’re just the person I want to talk to. I’ve been arguing with Cedric for days about it. He’s terribly stubborn, but I know I’m right. Dogs can have inhibitions, can’t they?”
“Well...” I said judiciously, “if you beat them seven days a week...”
“No, no, no!” said Ursula impatiently, as to a dimwitted child, “inhibitions. You know, they can see ghosts and tell when you’re going to die, and all that sort of thing.”
“Don’t you mean premonitions?” I suggested tentatively.
“No, I don’t,” said Ursula sharply. “I mean what I say.” After we had discussed the noble qualities of dogs and their sooth-saying prowess for some time, I cunningly steered the conversation on to music. There was a concert on at the Pavilion for which I had managed to acquire seats and I thought that this would be a very dignified and cultural way of beginning my friendship with Ursula. Did she, I asked, like music?
“I simply adore it,” she said, closing her eyes blissfully. “If music be the bowl of love, play on.”
She opened her eyes and beamed at me.
“Don’t you mean...” I began unguardedly.
From being warm and blurred as Love-in-the-mist Ursula’s eyes suddenly became as sharp and angry as periwinkles under ice.
“Now don’t you start telling me what I mean,” she said mutinously. “All my boyfriends do it and it makes me wild. They go on correcting and correcting me as though I was an... an exam paper or something.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” I said blandly. “I was about to say, ‘don’t you mean that your love of music is so great that you would accept with delight an invitation to a concert at the Pavilion to-morrow afternoon’?”
“Ooooo!” she exclaimed, her eyes glowing. “You haven’t got tickets, have you?”
“It’s the accepted way of getting into a concert,” I pointed out.
“You are clever. I tried to get some last week and they were sold out. I’d love to come!”
As I left, feeling very pleased with myself, my host asked me how I had got on with Ursula.
“Wonderfully,” I said, elated with my success. “I’m taking her out to lunch to-morrow and then to a concert.”
“What?” exclaimed my host in horror.
“Jealousy will get you nowhere,” I said. “You’re a nice enough chap in your humble, uncouth way, but when it comes to attractive girls like Ursula you need a bit of charm, a bit of the old bubbling wit, a touch of the je ne sais quoi. ”
“I cannot do it,” said my host. “In spite of your appalling arrogance, I cannot let you, a friend of mine, rush headlong into one of the blackest pits of hell without stretching out a hand to save you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, genuinely interested, for he seemed serious.
“Listen,” he said, earnestly. “Be warned. The best thing would be for you to phone her up this evening and tell her you’ve got flu or rabies or something, but I know you won’t do that. You’re besotted. But for heaven’s sake, take my advice. If you take her out to lunch, keep her away from the menu, unless somebody’s just died and left you a couple of hundred pounds. She has an appetite like a particularly rapacious python, and no sense of money. As to the concert... Well, don’t you realise, my dear fellow, that the Pavilion authorities go pale and tremble at the mere mention of her name? That they have been trying for years to think of a legal way of banning her from attending concerts?”
“But she said she was very fond of music,” I said uneasily.
“So she is, and it has a horrifying effect upon her. But not nearly as horrifying an effect as she has on music. I’ve seen the leader of the orchestra in tears, gulping Sal volatile like a baby sucking its bottle, after a performance of the Magic Flute. And it’s rumoured, I think quite rightly, that the conductor’s hair went white overnight after she’d attended a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Don’t you realise that when Eileen Joyce gave a recital here and Ursula attended she had such a detrimental effect upon that unfortunate pianist that she forgot to change her dress between pieces?”
“It... it could have been an oversight.” I said.
“An oversight; an oversight? Tell me, have you ever known Eileen Joyce to run out of dresses?”
I must confess he had me there.
He propelled me with the gentleness of a kindly hangman to the front door.
“Don’t forget,” he said in a low voice, squeezing my arm with sympathy, “I’m your friend. If you need me, phone me. Any hour of the day or night. I’ll be here.”
And he shut the front door firmly in my face and left me to walk home, curiously disquieted.
But the following morning my spirits had revived. After all, I thought, Ursula was an exceptionally lovely girl and I was quite sure that anyone as attractive as that could not behave in the boorish manner that my friend had described. Probably he had tried to date her and she, being wise as well as beautiful, had given him the brush-off. Comforting myself with this thought I dressed with unusual care and went down to the railway station to meet her. She had explained that living out in Lyndhurst in the New Forest, she had to come into Bournemouth by train because “Daddy always uses the Rolls when I want it”. On the platform I awaited the arrival of the train anxiously. Whilst I was rearranging my tie for the twentieth time I was accosted by an elderly lady, a pillar of the local church, who was, unaccountably, a friend of my mother’s. I stood, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, wishing the old harridan would go away, for when meeting a new girlfriend for the first time the last thing one wanted was a sanctimonious and critical audience. But she clung like a leech and was still telling me about her latest jumble sale when the train dragged itself chunting and grimy into the station. I was giving scant attention to her story of what the vicar said; I was too busy looking at the opening carriage doors to try and spot Ursula.