'What are you doing? asked Larry irritably. 'For Heaven's sake hurry up; I'm not used to being a slipway.'
At last we got the cork from the bottle, and I announced in a clear voice that I christened this ship the Bootle-Bumtrinket. Then I slapped her rotund backside with the bottle, with the unhappy result that half a pint of white wine splashed over Larry's head.
'Look out, look out,' he remonstrated. 'Which one of us are you supposed to be launching?
At last they cast the Bootle-Bumtrinket off the jetty with a mighty heave, and she landed on her flat bottom with a report like a cannon, showering sea-water in all directions, and then bobbed steadily and confidently on the ripples. She had the faintest suggestion of a list to starboard, but I generously attributed this to the wine and not to Leslie's workmanship.
'Now!' said Leslie, organizing things. 'Let's get the mast in ... Margo, you hold her nose ... that's it Now, Peter,
if you'll get into the stern, Larry and I will hand you the mast... all you have to do is stick it in that socket.'
So, while Margo lay on her tummy holding the nose of the boat, Peter leapt nimbly into the stern and settled himself, with legs apart, to receive the mast which Larry and Leslie were holding.
'This mast looks a bit long to me, Les,' said Larry, eyeing it critically.
'Nonsense! It'll be fine when it's in,' retorted Leslie. 'Now . . . are you ready, Peter?
Peter nodded, braced himself, clasped the mast firmly in both hands, and plunged it into the socket. Then he stood back, dusted his hands, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket, with a speed remarkable for a craft of her circumference, turned turtle. Peter, clad in his one decent suit which he had put on in honour of my birthday, disappeared with scarcely a splash. All that remained on the surface of the water was his hat, the mast, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket's bright orange bottom.
'He'll drown 1 He'll drown!' screamed Margo, who always tended to look on the dark side in a crisis.
'Nonsense! It's not deep enough,' said Leslie.
'I told you that mast was too long,' said Larry unctuously.
'It isn't too long,' Leslie snapped irritably; 'that fool didn't set it right.'
'Don't you dare call him a fool,' said Margo.
'You can't fit a twenty-foot mast on to a thing like a wash-tub and expect it to keep upright,' said Larry.
'If you're so damn clever why didn't you make the boat?
'I wasn't asked to.... Besides, you're supposed to be the expert, though I doubt if they'd employ you on Clydeside.'
'Very funny. It's easy enough to criticize ... just because that fool. . .'
'Don't you call him a fool.... How dare you?
'Now, now, don't argue about it, dears,' said Mother peaceably.
'Well, Larry's so damn patronizing ... *
'Thank God! He's come up,' said Margo in fervent tones as the bedraggled and spluttering Peter rose to the surface.
We hauled him out, and Margo hurried him up to the house to try to get his suit dry before the party. The rest of us followed, still arguing. Leslie, incensed at Larry's criticism, changed into trunks and, armed with a massive manual on yacht construction and a tape measure, went down to salvage the boat. For the rest of the morning he kept sawing bits off the mast until she eventually floated upright, but by then the mast was only about three feet high. Leslie was very puzzled, but he promised to fit a new mast as soon as he'd worked out the correct specification. So the Bootle-Bumtrinket, tied to the end of the jetty, floated there in all her glory, looking like a very vivid, overweight Manx cat.
Spiro arrived soon after lunch, bringing with him a tall, elderly man who had the air of an ambassador. This, Spiro explained, was the King of Greece's ex-butler, who had been prevailed upon to come out of retirement and help with the party. Spiro then turned everyone out of the kitchen and he and the butler closeted themselves in there together. When I went round and peered through the window, I saw the butler in his waistcoat, polishing glasses, while Spiro, scowling thoughtfully and humming to himself, was attacking a vast pile of vegetables. Occasionally he would waddle over and blow vigorously at the seven charcoal fires along the wall, making them glow like rubies.
The first guest to arrive was Theodore, sitting spick and span in a carriage, his best suit on, his boots polished, and, as a concession to the occasion, without any collecting gear. He clasped in one hand a walking-stick, and in the other a neatly tied parcel. 'Ah ha! Many ... er ... happy returns of the day,' he said, shaking my hand. 'I have brought you a... er... small... er... memento ... a small gift, that is to say, present to er . . . commemorate the occasion . . . um..
On opening the parcel I was delighted to find that it contained a fat volume entitled Life in Ponds and Streams.
'I think you will find it a useful... um... addition to your library,' said Theodore, rocking on his toes. 'It contains some very interesting information on ... er ... general freshwater life.'
Gradually the guests arrived, and the front of the villa was a surging mass of carriages and taxis. The great drawing-room and dining-room were full of people, talking and arguing and laughing, and the butler (who to Mother's dismay had donned a tail coat) moved swiftly through the throng like an elderly penguin, serving drinks and food with such a regal air that a lot of the guests were not at all sure if he was a real butler, or merely some eccentric relative we had staying with us. Down in the kitchen Spiro drank prodigious quantities of wine as he moved among the pots and pans, his scowling face glowing redly in the light from the fires, his deep voice roaring out in song. The air was full of the scent of garlic and herbs, and Lugaretzia was kept hobbling to and fro from kitchen to drawing-room at considerable speed. Occasionally she would succeed in backing some unfortunate guest into a corner and, holding a plate of food under his nose, would proceed to give him the details of her ordeal at the dentist, giving the most life-like and most repulsive imitation of what a molar sounded like when it was torn from its socket, and opening her mouth wide to show her victims the ghastly havoc that had been wrought inside.
More and more guests arrived, and with them came presents. Most of these were, from my point of view, useless, as they could not be adapted for natural history work. The best of the presents were, in my opinion, two puppies brought by a peasant family I knew who lived not far away. One puppy was liver and white, with large ginger eyebrows, and the other was coal black with large ginger eyebrows. As they were presents, the family had, of course, to accept them. Roger viewed them with suspicion and interest, so in order that they should all get acquainted I locked them in the dining-room with a large plate of party delicacies between them. The results were not quite what I had anticipated, for when the flood of guests grew so large that we had to slide back the doors and let some of them into the dining-room, we found Roger seated gloomily on the floor, the two puppies gamboling round him, while the room was decorated in a fashion that left us in no doubt that the new additions had both eaten and drunk to their hearts' content. Larry's suggestion that they be called Widdle and Puke was greeted with disgust by Mother, but the names stuck and Widdle and Puke they remained.