a brain wave,” said Mother delightedly. “The very thing!”
Immediately all my instincts for self-preservation came to the fore. I said that I did want to go to the christening, I had been looking forward to it, it was the only chance I would ever have of seeing Larry being a godfather, and he might drop the baby or something and I would miss it; and anyway, the count did not like snakes and tortoises and birds and things, so what could I do with him? There was silence while the family, like a jury, examined the strength of my case.
“I know, take him out in your boat,” suggested Margo brightly.
“Excellent!” said Larry, “I’m sure he’s got a straw hat and a striped blazer among his sartorial effects. Perhaps we can borrow a banjo.”
“It’s a very good idea,’ said Mother. “After all, it’s only for a couple of hours, dear. You surely wouldn’t mind that.”
I stated in no uncertain terms that I would mind it very much indeed.
“I tell you what,” said Leslie, “they’re having a fish drive down at the lake on Monday. If I get the chap who’s in charge to let you go, will you take the count?”
I wavered, for I had long wanted to see a fish drive. I knew I was going to have the count for the afternoon, so it was simply a matter of what I could get out of it.
“And then we can see about that new butterfly cabinet you want,” said Mother.
“And Margo and I will give you some money for books,” said Larry, generously anticipating Margo’s participation in the bribery.
“And I’ll give you that clasp knife you wanted,” said Leslie.
I agreed. I felt that if I had to put up with the count for an afternoon, I was at least being fairly compensated for it. That evening at dinner, Mother explained the situation and went into such detailed eulogies about the fish drives that you would have thought she had personally invented them.
“Ees eating?” asked the count.
“Yes, yes,” said Mother. “The fish are called kefalias and they’re delicious.”
“No, ees eating on ze lack?” asked the count. “Ees eating wiz sun?”
“Oh … oh, I see,” said Mother. “Yes, it’s very hot. Be sure to wear a hat.”
“We go in ze enfant’s yacht?” asked the count, who liked to get things clear.
“Yes,” said Mother.
The count outfitted himself for the expedition in pale blue linen trousers, elegant chestnut-bright shoes, a white silk shirt with a blue and gold cravat knotted carelessly at the throat, and an elegant yachting cap. While the Bootle Bumtrinket was ideal for my purposes, I would have been the first to admit that she had none of the refinements of an oceangoing yacht, and this the count was quick to perceive when I led him down to the canal in the maze of old Venetian salt pans below the house, where I had the boat moored.
“Zis … is yacht?” he asked in surprise and some alarm.
I said that indeed this was our craft, stalwart and stable, and, he would note, a flat bottom to make it easier to walk about in. Whether he understood me, I do not know; perhaps he thought the Bootle Bumtrinket was merely the dinghy in which he was to be rowed out to the yacht, but he climbed in delicately, spread his handkerchief fastidiously over the seat and sat down gingerly. I leapt aboard and with the aid of a pole started punting the craft down the canal, which at this point was some twenty feet wide and two feet deep. I congratulated myself on the fact that only the day before I had decided that the Bootle Bumtrinket was starting to smell almost as pungently as the count, for over a period a lot of dead shrimps, seaweed and other debris had collected under her boards. I had sunk her in some two feet of sea water and given her bilges a thorough cleaning, so now, for this expedition, she was sparkling clean and smelt beautifully of sun-hot tar and paint and salt water.
The old salt pans lay along the edge of the brackish lake, forming a giant chessboard with the cross-hatching of these placid canals, some as narrow as a chair, some thirty feet wide. Most of these waterways were only a couple of feet deep, but below the water lay an almost unplumbable depth of fine black silt. The Bootle Bumtrinket, by virtue of her shape and flat bottom, could be propelled up and down these inland waterways with comparative ease, for one did not have to worry about sudden gusts of wind or a sudden, bouncing cluster of wavelets, two things that always made her a bit alarmed. But the disadvantage of the canals was that they were fringed on each side with tall, rustling bamboo breaks which, while providing shade, precluded the wind, so the atmosphere was still, dark, hot and as richly odoriferous as a manure heap. For a time the artificial smell of the count vied with the scents of nature, but eventually nature won.
“Ees smell,” the count pointed out. “In France ze water ees hygiene.”
I said it would not be long before we left the canal and were out on the lake, where there would be no smell.
“Ees heating,” was the count’s next discovery, mopping his face and moustache with a scent-drenched handkerchief, “ees heating much.”
His pale face had, as a matter of fact, turned a light shade of heliotrope. I was just about to say that that problem, too, would be overcome once we reached the open lake when, to my alarm, I noticed something wrong with the Bootle Bumtrinket. She had settled sluggishly in the brown water and hardly moved to my punting. For a moment I could not imagine what was wrong with her; we had not run aground and I knew that there were no sandbanks in this canal. Then suddenly I noticed the swirl of water coiling up over the boards in the bottom of the boat. Surely, I thought, she could not have sprung a leak. Fascinated, I watched the water rise to engulf the bottom of the oblivious count’s shoes, and I suddenly realized what must have happened. When I had cleaned out the bilges I had, of course, removed the bung in the Bumtrinket’s bottom to let the fresh seawater in; apparently I had not replaced it with enough care, and now the canal water was pouring into the bilges. My first thought was to pull up the boards, find the bung and replace it, but the count was now sitting with his feet in about two inches of water and it seemed to me imperative that I turn the Bootle Bumtrinket towards the bank while I could still maneuver a trifle and get my exquisite passenger on shore. I did not mind being deposited in the canal by the Bootle Bumtrinket; after all, it was not her fault and, anyway, I was always in and out of the canals like a water rat in pursuit of water snakes, terrapins, frogs and other small fry, but I knew that the count would look askance at gamboling in two feet of water and an undetermined amount of mud, so my efforts to turn the leaden, waterlogged boat towards the bank were superhuman. Gradually, I felt the dead weight of the boat responding and her bows turning sluggishly towards the shore. Inch by inch I eased her towards the bamboos, and we were within ten feet of the bank when the count noticed what was happening.
“Mon dieu!” he cried shrilly, “ve are submerge. My shoe is submerge. Ze boat, she ave sonk.”
I stopped poling briefly to soothe the count. I told him that there was no danger; all he had to do was to sit still until I got him to the bank.
“My shoe! Regardez my shoe!” he said, pointing at his now dripping and discolored footwear with such an expression of outrage and horror that it was all I could do not to giggle.
A moment, I said to him, and I should have him on dry land, and indeed if
