The Bearded Tit Part 7

And, to my ear, 'quack, quack' is not a great approximation. I think 'w.a.n.k, w.a.n.k' is closer but I've never seen that in any children's book.

Now, Emmanuel College was one of the few Oxbridge colleges with a duck pond, and very pretty it was too. It achieved its duck-pond status by having all the absolute essentials of a duck pond. Water and ducks. It also had a large number of huge carp and, at certain times of the year, waterlilies. But these were fancy extras. Its duckiness came from its ducks, and its pondiness from its water.

As a nineteen-year-old modern languages student, I didn't realize ducks were birds. Obviously I knew the mallard. The ordinary wild duck that everybody knows. But even when I was a child drawing birds, copying or tracing them out of books, I might do the mallard but skip the other twenty or so British ducks.

One lunch-break I suggested to JJ that she come and look at the college gardens and the unique duck pond.

'What's unique about it?'

'It's the only one of its kind in the college.'

'What sort of birds does it have?'

'Well, ducks, funnily enough.'

'I presumed the duck pond had ducks, otherwise it would just be a pond.'

'Well, you know, the usual. Mallards.'

'What else?' Her question made me realize I didn't know any other ducks. I'd heard of Aylesbury duck but I thought you only got those in supermarkets. Or in Aylesbury, if there was such a place. Oh yes, and Bombay duck, which I'd had once in an Indian restaurant and was never one hundred per cent sure of its provenance and was too scared to ask in case it turned out to be smoked baboon s.c.r.o.t.u.m.

'It's beautiful.' JJ loved the college gardens and the duck pond. It was all I could do to stop myself being proud of the place. And it was a delight to have her there, not least because my room was about forty-seven yards from the duck pond. If there was a sudden downpour, which would not be untypical of the time of year, I could legitimately invite her back.

'Wow, you've got loads of different ducks! That's a shelduck.'

She was pointing at what I thought was a goose: a large white and orangey-brown bird with a black head and a bright red bill with what I now know is called a k.n.o.b on the forehead. Three prettily marked birds, which she told me were a teal, a wigeon and a pochard, also seemed to excite JJ. Then I remembered something-I did know another type of duck after all.

'We used to have a Jamaican whistling duck!'

'Very exotic! What happened to it?'

'Fox got it.'

'Ah well, natural, I suppose.'

I hadn't the heart to tell her that the demise of the Jamaican whistling duck was not as natural as she supposed. The duck had been a gift to the college from an ex-fellow who had gone on to make billions in the pharmaceutical industry. (Drug dealing, of course, was the de rigueur de rigueur rumour we undergraduates circulated.) As a token of grat.i.tude, this multi-millionaire alumnus had decided to reward the college with a duck. There was a low-key ceremony when the bizarre creature was released from its pen and made some unpleasant high-pitched hissing sounds and a few of the fellows applauded and the dean made a speech of thanks about how we would enjoy the bird and remember our benefactor fondly. That very night the bird was, I believe, enjoyed by a few of the undergraduates after it had been 'bagged' by the captain of the rowing club, who, for the record, was called Julian Fox. rumour we undergraduates circulated.) As a token of grat.i.tude, this multi-millionaire alumnus had decided to reward the college with a duck. There was a low-key ceremony when the bizarre creature was released from its pen and made some unpleasant high-pitched hissing sounds and a few of the fellows applauded and the dean made a speech of thanks about how we would enjoy the bird and remember our benefactor fondly. That very night the bird was, I believe, enjoyed by a few of the undergraduates after it had been 'bagged' by the captain of the rowing club, who, for the record, was called Julian Fox.

The previous spring, the college catering manager had come in for some rough treatment courtesy of the Emmanuel ducks. It was that time of year when the gardens were overrun with duckling. In this 'protected' environment all the ducks bred well. Our catering manager was called Steve Chilton, an obsequious but two-faced toerag. This was Kramer's description of him. 'It's true,' he maintained. 'That's what it says on his CV.' But he did try to improve the standard and variety of college meals. One night in hall he was proud to offer the undergraduates a couple of roast quail each. Luxury. But someone had Tippexed out 'roast quails' from the menu sheets and subst.i.tuted 'Emmanuel's own baby ducklings'. There was a riot when the animal-rights society found out. The hall was invaded, meals were thrown, plates smashed; Rex the Chaplain's sherry was knocked over and he fainted as a result.

'And a tufted duck,' exclaimed JJ. 'They're fantastic.' Now tufted ducks certainly are value for money. They're like playing-in-the-bath-ducks but black and white with a bright yellow eye and a long, wispy tuft or crest hanging down the back of their head. They are 'diving ducks' and disappear underwater for ages and then reappear somewhere completely different. You can spend many a pleasurable hour watching this duck. Well, you can if you're supposed to be doing something else like working or studying; or if you're not in bed with the girl of your dreams. So, yes, I have spent a great deal of time watching the tufted duck.

But there is a drawback to having a duck pond in a college. Put mathematically: duck pond plus student plus alcohol equals student being slung into duck pond late at night in underpants.

But this was Cambridge University so obviously it was a bit more sophisticated than that. The college had a club known as the Ponding Club.

This was basically a drinking club, which, as is often the way with drinking clubs, consisted mainly of rowers and rugby players. It wasn't enough just to go out and get drunk. There had to be rituals, formalities, rules to be obeyed, a hierarchy of officers, a specially designed tie and a song. And like all such clubs there was a Masonic secrecy to it all. Only the committee members knew who the committee members were.

The other-than-alcoholic purpose of the club was to project into the pond, naked or clad only in underwear, certain students who, in the opinion of the committee, deserved it. Needless to say, the usual victims were not rugger hearties or boaties, but longhaired, slightly arty types, or perhaps Marxists, or eccentrics, the odd individual who maybe smoked cannabis, and on one occasion it was the college orchestra's euphonium player. No surprise to anyone then that I should be on the list. Well, a surprise to me, when Lazy Lobby and Degsy from the first XV accosted me one night as I left the bar and dragged me off towards the pond.

'You're making a big mistake,' I told them.

'There has been one mistake, McGrath, you little sewer rat, and you've made it,' said Lobby, tightening his grasp on the lapels of my jacket. I tried again.

'You sure you're not confusing me with the other Rory McGrath?'

They stopped and let me drop to the ground.

'Which other Rory McGrath?' spat Lobby.

I hadn't expected them to take this question seriously so I had no answer prepared. I played for time. 'Er...that t.w.a.t!'

'That's you,' Degsy cut in.

Lobby grabbed me again. 'He's stalling.'

'Quit stalling, McGrath!' Degsy's peculiarly Hollywood command sounded more than faintly ludicrous coming from this Old Harrovian with a cut-gla.s.s English accent. I declined to mention this.

'Just tell me this, lads: you clearly think I've done something wrong and I clearly think I haven't, so maybe you could just let me know what it is and then you...er, well, can go ahead and throw me in the pond!'

I got to my feet and brushed myself down.

Degsy paused. 'Well, we've heard that you-'

Lobby stopped him. 'Wait, Degsy. You can't tell him why he's being ponded. That's against the rules of the club. The pondees are chosen after solemn deliberation by the committee and when a decision is made, action must be taken.'

'I was only-'

'Degs, listen. The victim knows that the committee wouldn't choose him lightly. This isn't some frivolous p.i.s.s-head club that chucks w.a.n.kers in the pond. To explain to the pondee why he is chosen makes it sound like we're in some way unsure, as though we feel we have to justify the sacred and binding judgement of the committee.'

Both the public-school oafs had let go of me in order to discuss the Holy Writ of the Ponders Club elite members. As a non-member, there was little I could contribute to this discussion so I thought it might be a good time to find somewhere else on the planet to stand. I legged it into the cloisters and did a sharp left and into the street. Neither of them seemed to be in pursuit but I did hear Lobby shout, 'We'll get you next time! You call me a poof again and you're dead!'

I didn't think it was worth returning to college too soon so I sought refuge in St John's where the bar manager was a fellow Spanish student of mine.

'Call Lobby a poof? I've never ever done that,' I mused with Kramer later on in the safety and exceedingly cheap vodka of the Polish Club on Chesterton Road, which Kramer had blagged membership of through a refugee great-aunt of his from Gdansk.

'I know where this is coming from,' said the wise elder. 'The Christians. Branfield! Think about it. We tell Fletcher they put swastikas on our milk and Fletcher bans them from having prayer breakfasts. Branfield plays rugby. He's mates with Degsy and Lobby. It's going to be easy for him to slip in the odd rumour about you or me.' Kramer looked determined. ''We must do something; and i'the heat!' King Lear? King Lear?

'Don't call me King Lear.'

Kramer, as far as we knew, had not crossed Degsy or Lobby's path and would probably not be known to be one of my 'gang', so he went to work over a chance meeting by the pinball machine. Lobby held the record for the highest score, needless to say.

'That's a h.e.l.l of a score to beat,' Kramer said.

'I know. It's mine!' Lobby sneered.

'Wow, well done!'

Kramer glossed over the details of the whole conversation but somehow he manoeuvred it to this conclusion: 'And Branfield told me you always wanted to be in that position in the scrum because you liked his a.r.s.e.'

Lobby was dumbstruck with rage. Kramer rubbed salt into the cliche. 'And apparently you sometimes stroked his bottom and once tried to insert your finger! Well, this is just what Branfield says; I don't believe it for a moment, Lobby, I know you. A man like that doesn't get the record highest score on the college pinball machine!'

Lobby shook with rage and stormed off to convene an emergency committee meeting of the Ponding Club.

'Oh no, it's raining,' said JJ.

'Good weather for ducks, as they say,' I said, adding casually, 'Hey, why don't we wait in my room; it's only just up there. Till the rain stops.'

She looked into my eyes, thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled.

'Not today.' She looked sad. I looked sad and she added, 'One day though. Soon.'

And with that we started walking back to the bookshop via a cafe, leaving the huge raindrops to bounce off the indifferent backs of the college ducks.

Duck.

The first proper word I ever spoke.

After 'Dada', of course.

Interesting that most babies can articulate 'Dada' as a word earlier than 'Mama'. Clearly, despite the tenderness of maternal love, babies are keener to talk about avant-garde art movements of the early twentieth century.

But for me after 'Dada' came 'duck'.

I don't remember it but my parents still talk fondly about an early visit to a park near Newquay, where we fed the ducks in a pond by the playing fields.

I apparently turned to my father and pointed saying, 'Duck, Dada!' And they all laughed. 'Duck, Dada!' I said again and they all clapped. 'Dada, duck!' I said again. Too late, as my father was. .h.i.t on the back of the head by a cricket ball.

RAIN.

'd.a.m.n,' said JJ, 'I'm going to get soaked.' She only had a Tshirt on.

'Here,' I said handing her my jacket and putting it round her shoulders. 'Oh, and what about your hair?' I took off my shirt and put it over her head.

'You're mad! Ooh, it's nice and warm.' It was a cold autumn afternoon and my toplessness drew some baffled and disapproving looks from pa.s.sers-by. We laughed. I thought I was being well gallant and I didn't mind the rain even though it was colder than I'd antic.i.p.ated. Looking back, of course, I realize that this larking about was really some sort of courtship behaviour. It was the extravagant male, singing, dancing and flashing for the female.

We arrived at the cafe and the waitress said, 'Please sit anywhere you like.'

'Great,' I said. 'We'll sit at Roxy's c.o.c.ktail bar on Bondi beach, thanks.' JJ giggled even though I'd said this in various forms on quite a few of our dates. But there you are, you see: amusing the female can be such a useful, if obvious, way of attracting a human mate.

'If you can make a girl laugh, you're in,' a girl once told me.

'That's easy, I'll drop my trousers,' I'd said. She'd laughed a lot.

'You see, you're putting yourself down, but it's still funny!' She laughed again and, you know what, within days she was going out with my best friend.

Birds have a comparatively simple time. The male frigate bird, after twenty hard minutes of gulping air, can transform his saggy, wrinkled throat pouch into a huge, bright red balloon that attracts females from miles around. And apparendy the size of the balloon is important. The Bulwer's pheasant can pull a mate just by expanding and waggling its spectacular wattles. I couldn't compete with that, not with the size of my red throat balloon and the length of my wattles; I was going to have to stick to small talk, and hope that the size of my small talk didn't matter.

I put my wet shirt back on as the waitress guided us to a table in the window. We sat down and watched the busy street trickle in a blur down the gla.s.s. I like rain. I do. I really love it. It cheers me up. I love waking up in the morning and hearing rain on the windows. I love returning from a hot, sunny, foreign holiday to a rainy Heathrow, to the comforting blandness of drizzle and grey. There is probably some deep psychological reason for this hidden away in the murkiness of my childhood. I've no idea but I do know that sunshine makes me feel uncomfortable. Bright light means no hiding place. It means exposure and vulnerability. Perhaps diere's a shadow of my Catholic guilt being cast over my life by the sun. Is it G.o.d's searchlight poking into holes, under rocks and into corners looking for me? The sun makes me feel like I'm under a microscope being examined, a.s.sessed and evaluated. What shall we do with this specimen, then? Throw it away; it's useless. Rain is my friend: stroking my forehead, caressing my troubled brow and rhythmically rocking me to sleep.

'Isn't this weather awful,' said JJ, peering out of the cafe window into the torrential gloom of a November afternoon.

'Dreadful,' I concurred.

In fact, I thought the weather was being rather kind to us. Our time together was so limited that the rain meant we couldn't wander down by the river or over the meadows, looking at birds. We had to sit together in cafes or pubs; we had to sit close together in dark, cosy corners. It also meant that I stood a better chance of being seen by fellow students who would undoubtedly be stopped dead in their tracks at seeing me 'canoodling' with such a gorgeous girl. Not that we were quite on 'canoodling' terms just yet.

'You've got a bit of coffee froth on the side of your mouth,' I told JJ.

I leant over and wiped it off as gently as I could. An electric moment. Tingle, sparkle, crackle and pop.

More animal behaviour. Cla.s.sic courtship. Mutual grooming and preening. Even the mighty albatross with its huge, deadly bill can delicately caress his female, stroking the feathers and removing the odd bit of dirt or a parasite or, quite possibly, coffee froth.

'It's nice to be all snuggled up inside on a day like this,' I suggested.

'Yes, it would be nice to be in bed, wouldn't it?' she said.

'Extremely.'

We looked at each other and there was an unspoken struggle to change the subject but leave the subject the same.

We laughed. She squeezed my hand. Things were getting more intense. Something would happen soon. It was clear to both of us that we felt the same way and that things would inevitably develop in their own time. These thoughts and feelings were, of course, unspoken. Most of our relationship was unspoken. We spoke of birds and made jokes about friends, colleagues, strangers in bars but the real stuff was never mentioned. Except in eye contact. We'd hardly touched each other literally, but our eye contact must have been X-rated. JJ and I were one of those couples who now get on my nerves. Young lovers staring wordlessly into each other's faces and sighing occasionally over an undrunk beer or a now stone-cold cup of coffee.

'The lapwing,' she said, and suddenly we were back in the bustle of the steamy cafe.

'The lapwing?'

'Yes, I've just remembered,' she explained. 'The lapwing is sometimes called the rain bird.'

Now the lapwing is an amazing suitor to the ladies. The courtship flight is quite a piece of work; lapwings go for it and just don't care. They climb, they dive, they swoop, they flutter, they zigzag, they swerve, they change speed recklessly. They are that bloke on the disco floor who is on his own but who knows he is the best mover in the place and goes through his entire box of dancing tricks and doesn't give a d.a.m.n who sees him or what they think.

'I thought the lapwing had enough names already: lapwing, green plover, peewit. So why rain bird?'

'No idea. It's a plover. And 'plover' must come from pluvium pluvium, the Latin for rain.'

'Does it portend rain, then? Does it like the rain? Does it breed in the rain? Does it eat rain? Do lapwings fall from the sky in little drops? I mean, why 'rain bird'?'

I was only joking but it came out quite angry-sounding. She smiled at me. I was probably annoyed that the spell had been broken and I think she knew. She lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed it. This was the first uninvited and positively physical thing she'd done to me and it was wonderful. The broken spell was mended and we resumed staring vacantly into each other's eyes.

'Well, look who it is!' said Kramer with unwelcome bonhomie bonhomie. The spell was broken again. Any more breakages and we'd end up having to get a new spell altogether.

'Miserable day,' he went on.

'It is now,' I said.

'Oh, am I disturbing you?'

'Of course not,' said JJ, just getting in ahead of my 'yes, can you go away'. JJ seemed to like Kramer and they got on very well. But she got on well with everybody. She was attractive.