Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [163]
‘But fortunately,’ Philip had remarked, ‘the rich can afford to buy silent cars. And there’s something about internal combustion engines that makes for birth control. Who ever heard of a chauffeur with eight children?’ Coach-house and horse-boxes had been knocked together in the reconstruction of the stable, into a single spacious living-room. Two screens hinted at a division. Behind the screen on the right, as you entered, was the drawing-room end of the apartment—chairs and a sofa grouped around the fireplace. The screen on the left concealed the dining-table and the entrance to a tiny kitchen. A little staircase slanted up across one of the walls, leading to the bedrooms. Yellow cretonnes mimicked the sunshine that never shone through the northward-looking windows. There were many books. Old Bidlake’s portrait of Elinor as a young girl hung over the mantelpiece.
Philip was lying on the sofa, book in hand. ‘Very remarkable,’ he read, ‘is Mr. Tate Regan’s account of pigmy parasitic males in three species of Cerativid Anglerfishes. In the Arctic Ceratias holbolli a female about eight inches in length carried on her ventral surface two males of about two-and-a-half inches. The snout and chin region of the dwarf malewas permanently attached to a papilla of the female’s skin, and the bloodvessels of the two were confluent. The male is without teeth; the mouth is useless; the alimentary canal is degenerate. In photocarynus spiniceps the female, about two-and-a-half inches in length bore a male under half an inch long on the top of her head in front of her right eye. In Edriolychnus schmidti the dimensions were about the same as in the last case, and the female carried the pigmy male upside down on the inner surface of her gill-cover.’
Philip put down the book and feeling in his breast pocket pulled out his pocket diary and his fountain-pen. ‘Female Anglerfishes,’ he wrote, ‘carry dwarf parasitic males attached to their bodies. Draw the obvious comparison, when my Walter rushes after his Lucy. What about a scene at an aquarium? They go in with a scientific friend who shows them the female Anglers and their husbands. The twilight, the fishes—perfect background.’ He was just putting his diary away, when another thought occurred to him. He reopened it. ‘Make it the aquarium at Monaco and describe Monte Carlo and the whole Riviera in terms of deep-sea monstrosity.’ He lit a cigarette and went on with his book.
There was a rap at the door. He got up and opened; it was Elinor.
‘What an afternoon!’ She dropped into a chair.
‘Well, what news of Marjorie?’ he asked.
‘No news,’ she sighed, as she took off her hat. ‘The poor creature’s as dreary as ever. But I’m very sorry for her.’
‘What did you advise her to do?’
‘Nothing. What else could she do? And Walter?’ she asked in her turn. ‘Did you get a chance to be the heavy father?’
‘The middle-weight father, shall we say. I persuaded him to come down to Chamford with Marjorie.’
‘Did you? That was a real triumph.’
‘Not quite such a triumph as you think. I had no enemy to fight with. Lucy’s going to Paris next Saturday.’
‘Let’s hope she’ll stay there. Poor Walter!’
‘Yes, poor Walter. But I must tell you about Anglerfishes.’ He told her. ‘One of these days,’ he concluded,’ I shall really have to write a modem Bestiary. Such moral lessons! But tell me, how was Everard? I quite forgot you’d seen him.’
‘You would have forgotten,