The Fancy (32 page)

Allan Colley allowed himself to be led away, looking back to smile good-bye at Edward.

Edward saw them off from the door and then, turning back into the hall, took off his overcoat and rolled up his sleeves and got down to the job of removing all traces of rabbit from the Victory Hall before the Boy Scouts moved in with their concert.

The conductress on the trolley-bus stared at Edward’s two big baskets. He held the one containing Freda on his knee and put the other on the seat beside him. The conductress was feeling chatty. The bus was almost empty and she was nearing the end of her run, so she lingered after punching Edward’s ticket.

“What you got in there, dead babies?”

“Rabbits,” said Edward, giving Freda’s basket a little pat. “Two in each.”

“Rabbit pie for supper, eh?” said the conductress, who had ginger curls and an impudent mouth.

Edward laughed. “No fear,” he said took a step nearer to her mother,uppa. “These are breeding stock. As a matter of fact, I’ve just come from a show with them.”

She asked it. “Win any prizes?”

“Didn’t do so bad on the whole. Got a First and she was runner-up for Best Rabbit in Show. Should have won it too.”

“Well, I say,” said the conductress, “I’m ever so glad. Did you breed them yourself?”

“Oh yes, that’s the whole point.”

“I had a cousin once,” she said, leaning on the back of the seat in front of him, “who used to breed mice for shows. Chocolate or something, he called them.”

“Oh yes, Self Chocolate,” said Edward, who had read of them in
Backyard Breeding.
“A very interesting Fancy, I believe.”

“Come again?” said the conductress.

“I said it was very interesting—the Mouse Fancy,” repeated Edward.

“Fancy that!” She laughed, and swinging herself on her hands, one on each side of the aisle, she launched herself down the bus to greet a pair of old women with nodding hats and loaded leather shopping bags.

The trees in Church Avenue were full of birds. No. Seven’s almond blossom was coming out. Even the pavements smelled different at this time of year as if the spring rains had cleansed them of contact with the soles of people’s shoes. Carrying his baskets home, Edward was still going over the high spots of his day. “You may be starting something big,” Allan Colley had said. He had liked them, definitely he had liked them. A man like Colley would not say that unless he meant it. He was the type to speak his mind. Bit of a rough diamond really. Fine chap, though. His thinking Freda the best in the Show made her the best, whether she had won the prize or not. Miss Violet Seeds indeed! He must get started at his report of the Show tonight if Colley was really going to get it into the paper for him. He saw himself writing it at the table after supper and being asked what he was doing. He might get some of those short stories of his sorted out and brought up to date. It was time some of them went out on the rounds again. It was only a question of luck, everyone knew that.
Once you got a start, it was easy to sell stories. His luck had put him in the way of Allan Colley, and why should it stop there?

Humming under his breath, he put down the baskets on his doorstep, opened the door and lifted the baskets into the hall. Opening the lid of Freda’s, he took her out and held her fragile skull against his cheek, looking at their reflection in the mirror. E. L. P. Ledward and his champion Flemish Giant, Ledward Freda. No reason why she shouldn’t be a champion, one day. He was going to carry her into the sitting-room and hold her out to Dorothy saying : “Take a look at a first prize winner!”

There was no one in the sitting-room except Mr. Munroe, who was doing the children’s crossword in the evening paper, so Edward held, out Freda and said his piece to him.

“Well done, boy, well done,” he said. “That’s a fine rabbit if ever I saw one. I used to know a deal about rabbits, you know, when I was a lad.” Edward knew this, because his father-in-law told him so every time the subject cropped up, but he said : “Did you?” politely and began to tell him about the Show. People did not often tell Mr. Munroe things, because of his habit of digressive interruption, so he was pleased to have this attention from Edward and only remembered after into the blyhfive minutes why he was sitting alone here downstairs.

He jerked his head towards the ceiling. “Dorothy’s started,” he said. “Taken bad about three o’clock. I didn’t think she looked well lunch-time. I said to your mother-in-law——”

“But I thought it wasn’t till next week?”

“Ah, you don’t want to pay much att tragedy of th

*

Now that his home had been turned into a temple of worship, whose god was Dorothy’s Poor Little Mite, now christened Donald Hector John, Edward spent more and more time in the garden in the lengthening summer evenings. When he got home from work, he always went first to visit the baby in his swinging cot with the regal canopy of muslin and bows with which, in spite of the washing, Dorothy would not dispense.

Donny was hairless, with a great pear-shaped head like his grandfather’s, tight polished skin and Dorothy’s circular, wide-open eyes. Edward’s heart warmed to him. He never could think of anything to say, but he would make friendly stabs, thrilling with pride if the fat hand clutched his finger or the china eyes seemed to recognise him. If Donny laughed, it would make Edward laugh, too, and he would look over his shoulder quickly in case anyone were coming in. If one of the women were with the baby when he paid his visit, Edward would affect indifference and say something like : “Gosh, isn’t he an ugly little brute?” which never failed to get a rise.

After tea, when every chair in the living-room had knitting on it and the kitchen was full of the smell of boiling nappies, Edward would go straight out to the garden and potter about while the clear evening air thickened imperceptibly into twilight until suddenly it was too dark to see and the dusk was full of imaginary wires stretched at the height of your knees. Going from hutch to hutch, with his basin of warm potatoes and bran and the sack of grass cuttings from the Lipmanns’ lawn, Edward was like a benevolent matron doing her round of the beds, with a kindly word for each and a longer sojourn with the favourites. Old Masterman, gross now and coarsening, was the patriarch. Many of his sons were stud bucks now in their own right, but he was still in his prime and his incestuous unions with various great-granddaughters and great-nieces were nearly always a success. When he died, Edward was going to have him stuffed, mounted in a naturalistic case perhaps, and honoured as the founder of the Ledward Strain, now well beyond the stage of dreams and experiments. Litter after litter contained rabbits of a size that bore out the careful mating. It was no longer a question of chance. Edward knew that, behind the thick lenses.“ly. He hadas Allan Colley had said, he had “got something.”

“You’ll all be famous one day,” he told a young mother, stirring the basin while she clamoured at the wire netting, fondly imagining that if she kept to one corner of the hutch he wouldn’t notice the stirring
nest in the other corner. “You’re making history,” he told her. “There you are, Kitty. Dinner’s served.” He spooned in some of the mixture through the little slot at the bottom of the wire—a patent device of his own—and moved to the next hutch without getting up from his squatting position. He had not been able to resist calling that doe after Kitty, although it seemed a bit crude. They had both carried themselves in the same inexpert way, as if they were looking for somewhere to deposit their burden.

When Edward had christened the rabbit, Kitty had already been out from the factory for two months, being stuffed with food and kept almost permanently horizontal by her mother, who was a great believer in putting up the legs. But her namesake in the hutch had beaten her to it. Reenie, who lived in the same road as Kitty, still had nothing to report.

Inspired by Freda’s success at the Collis Club Show, Edward took her and two of her descendants to a much larger show, an ambitious affair in aid of the Red Cross, held in marquees on Wimbledon Common.

Besides rabbits, there were dogs, cats, chickens, cavies, mice, vegatables, flowers ; it only wanted horses and cattle and brightly coloured farm machines to be a real Agricultural Show. Having penned his entries, Edward wandered about among the crowd, amassing a quantity of free literature from advertisers’ stalls.

The Flemish classes were not until after lunch, so he found the refreshment tent and edged his way apologetically through the crowd which hid the counter. But reaching the counter was only half-way to getting his glass of beer and a sandwich. The three hot girls on the other side were as impervious to his diffident request as programme girls at the theatre. Whenever one came his way, he suggested : “One Light and two cheese rolls, please, Miss,” until the words became meaningless through repetition.

Everyone else seemed to be eating or drinking or being served, but presently Edward became aware of a voice, beyond the red-faced man on his left who was drinking stout with great gusty breaths, which had been chanting in unison with his own whenever the waitress came near.

“Two sausage rolls and a large ale,” the voice kept saying in patient and strangely familiar tones. Edward leaned across the red-faced man and there, in a badly-fitting grey tweed suit tapping hopefully on the counter with a two-shilling piece, was Allan Colley.

“Not so easy to get a drink, is it, Mr. Colley?” said Edward, blushing. Allan Colley’s square forehead was puzzled for a moment and then cleared.

“Why, hullo!” he said. “It’s—er, Mr.—er, you’re the Secretary of that Collis Park affair, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” nodded Edward, thrilled that he remembered.

“How are you?” said Allan Colley. “Bit of a—two sausage rolls
and a large ale! Darmi, she’s gone again. Here, this is hopeless. How about slipping out and finding a pub somewhere?” The red-faced man expanded himself and filled their places thankfully as they left the counter. They were parted for a while by the crowd but met again in the doorway.

“Thank Heaven for at the other end of the table. startlyh some air,” said Allan Colley, mopping his brow. “Let’s, go down to the High Street. We shan’t miss much if we’re quick about it.” They talked in spasms, parting and coming together again as they dodged through the sauntering crowds. “I don’t know how it is,” he said, “but waitresses always behave as if I were dumb and invisible. D’you find that?”

“Rather,” said Edward, who would never have admitted it off his own bat, appearing round a perambulator.

In the Queen Adelaide, Allan Colley said : “You grab that corner table, and I’ll cope at the bar,” but Edward almost pushed him into a chair and rushed to the bar. He wasn’t going to miss the chance of buying Allan Colley a drink.

He was so friendly, so unlike a famous man, so different, yet so very much nicer than Edward had ever imagined. They talked about rabbits over their lunch like any two fanciers. Edward had to keep reminding himself that he was really sitting chatting to Allan Colley and even being called : “My dead Ledward.”

“Got any of your famous Giants up here today?” asked Colley, jerking his head towards the Common.

“Yes. The doe you gave first prize to and a couple of youngsters of the same strain. They’re only novices, of course, but I’m hoping she may do some good, though there’s some pretty hot competition.”

“I remember the doe. It’ll have to be pretty hot to beat her if I’m any judge.”

“Are you judging today?”

He shook his head. “Busman’s holiday. I much prefer a little show though to an affair like this. The Pros. take all the interest out of it. I tell you what, you know Ledward, I meant to tell you the other day, but I didn’t get a chance, if I were you, I should have a table show for your Club next time. Have it just for the Club members ; don’t let outsiders in. It’s a much better way of encouraging and helping the amateurs, and after all, they’re the backbone of the Fancy these days.”

“But that’s exactly my own idea,” said Edward, leaning forward, his eyes shining, “That’s how I wanted that show of ours to be, but—well, other people thought differently.” Allan Colley might despise him for a sneak if he mentioned names.

“By the way, Ledward,” he said. “I read the report you turned in about it. I thought——”

“Oh it was only a scratch thing, I know,” said Edward quickly.

“No, I thought it was jolly well done. You gave it quite a human
kink, refreshingly different after the same old formula most people grind out.”

“Did you really think so? I say, have a beer? We’ve got time.”

“No, on me.” He got up, but Edward again beat him to the bar.

“I’ve been thinking—here’s who!” continued Allan Colley, “you’ve got a style that might lend itself to an article or so. Ever tried your hand at writing?”

“Well——” Edward thought of the drawer full of much-travelled short stories. “One or two things you know—stories and such. Only potty little things of course.” He saw no reason to mention that they had never appeared in print.

“Thought you weren’t quite new to the game. Look here, they have to find somewhere elseI s.’re crying out for original little articles in
Backyard Breeding.
Not necessarily very technical stuff, you know—they’ve got the old timers like me to do that—but chatty, helpful stuff—as one amateur to another. You know the kind of thing. Why don’t you have a shot at it? I’ll have a word with the editor. They don’t pay much I’m afraid——”

“Good Lord,” said Edward breathlessly. “I don’t care about that, but what could I write about?”

“Oh—amateur breeding—your difficulties and what you’ve done about them—things that’ll interest the little breeder. I tell you one for a start : How to Start a Domestic Rabbit Club. Write it from your own experience ; how you went about it, what cropped up, how the Club grew, what the Government do for you—you could make it a bit humorous as well as helpful. Try it anyway and send it along. About a thousand words.”

“But I don’t know whether I could,” said Edward, unnerved by the speed with which the suggestion had been made and apparently settled, but his demurring mutters were lost on Mr. Colley who had pulled out a watch on the end of a chain and was standing up and reaching for his hat.