• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 8833 0

in spite of his queerness, so touched by any kindness done to him. He was even touched by being called "that Firmin." And he was devoted to old Taskerson. M. Laruelle felt that in his way he was devoted to all the Taskersons and would have defended them to the death. There was something disarmingly helpless and at the same time so loyal about him. And after all, the Taskerson boys had, in their monstrous bluff English fashion, done their best not to leave him out and to show him their sympathy on his first summer holiday in England. It was not their fault if he could not drink seven pints in fourteen minutes or walk fifty miles without dropping. It was partly due to them that Jacques himself was here to keep him company. And they had perhaps partly succeeded in making him overcome his shyness. For from the Taskersons the Old Bean had at least learned, as Jacques with him, the English art of "picking up girls." They had an absurd Pierrot song, sung preferably in Jacques's French accent. Jacques and he walked along the promenade singing:

Oh we allll WALK ze wibberlee wobberlee WALK

And we alll TALK ze wibberlee wobberlee TALK

And we alll WEAR wibberlee wobberlee TIES

And-look-at-all-ze-pretty-girls-with-wibberlee-wobberlee eyes. Oh

We allll SING ze wibberlee wobberlee SONG

Until ze day is dawn-ing,

And-we-all-have-zat-wibberlee-wobberlee-wobberlee-wibberlee-wibberlee-wobberlee feeling

In ze morning.

Then the ritual was to shout "Hi" and walk after some girl whose admiration you imagined, if she happened to turn round, you had aroused. If you really had and it was after sunset you took her walking on the golf course, which was full, as the Taskersons put it, of good "sitting-out places." These were in the main bunkers or gulleys between dunes. The bunkers were usually full of sand, but they were windproof, and deep; none deeper than the "Hell Bunker." The Hell Bunker was a dreaded hazard, fairly near the Taskersons' house, in the middle of the long sloping eighth fairway. It guarded the green in a sense, though at a great distance, being far below it and slightly to the left. The abyss yawned in such a position as to engulf the third shot of a golfer like Geoffrey, a naturally beautiful and graceful player, and about the fifteenth of a duffer like Jacques. Jacques and the Old Bean had often decided that the Hell Bunker would be a nice place to take a girl, though wherever you took one, it was understood nothing very serious happened. There was, in general, about the whole business of "picking up" an air of innocence. After a while the Old Bean, who was a virgin to put it mildly, and Jacques, who pretended he was not, fell into the habit of picking up girls on the promenade, walking to the golf course, separating there, and meeting later. There were, oddly, fairly regular hours at the Taskersons'. M. Laruelle didn't know to this day why there was no understanding about the Hell Bunker. He had certainly no intention of playing Peeping Tom on Geoffrey. He had happened with his girl, who bored him, to be crossing the eighth fairway towards Leasowe Drive when both were startled by voices coming from the bunker. Then the moonlight disclosed the bizarre scene from which neither he nor the girl could turn their eyes. Laruelle would have hurried away but neither of them--neither quite aware of the sensible impact of what was occurring in the Hell Bunker--could control their laughter. Curiously, M. Laruelle had never remembered what anyone said, only the expression on Geoffrey's face in the moonlight and the awkward grotesque way the girl had scrambled to her feet, then, that both Geoffrey and he behaved with remarkable aplomb. They all went to a tavern with some queer name, as "The Case is Altered." It was patently the first time the Consul had ever been into a bar on his own initiative; he ordered Johnny Walkers all round loudly, but the waiter, encountering the proprietor, refused to serve them and they were turned out as minors. Alas, their friendship did not for some reason survive these two sad, though doubtless providential,