Rancid Pansies Read Online Free PDF Page B

likely tale, but with Gerry it really is possible. Awful thing to say about your supposed partner but in some respects he’s like a child. He really needs someone to save him from his delusions . If he had somebody living with him who could laugh at him from time to time there’s a chance some of his wackier notions might be curbed.
    How are things at Woods Hole? You must be well settled in by now. I do envy you – you’re on hallowed oceanographer’s ground in Cape Cod. Apart from the presiding ghost of Spencer Fullerton Baird you’ve got that exotic mix of stolid British-sounding places (Falmouth, Barnstaple, Yarmouth, Sandwich) cheek by jowl with those mysterious and beautiful Algonquin names like Sippewissett, Teaticket and Mashpee. I’m always struck in the US by how poetic such Indian words sound to us (Parsippany, Shenandoah) even though they usually turn out to mean the same as place names anywhere and most were anyway mis-transliterated by immigrants. Well, I hope you’re enjoying New England as much as I did. I loved my time at WHOI, as you know, and I’m already looking forward to my next visit. And what of Luke and your own domestic setup? Itrust there’s more to your life than sick bivalves? Remember me to Peter Millikan.
    Cheers,
Adrian
    PS Are you doing b-radioactivity counts on the shells? You should be.

2
    The kitchen presents a scene of peaceful normality, though hardly of the kind that once reigned in my sweet Tuscan farmhouse, despite the heady regressive scent of baking. Jennifer is stirring something on the Aga. Luna the cat is asleep on a tea towel on the work surface next to it, her tail draped across a block of butter on a plate. Josh is sitting on the kitchen table in his underwear, licking the remains of chocolate-flavoured cake mixture out of a bowl. I notice his pants are on back to front, as so often. It’s sheer luck whether the little pest puts them on the right way round, as with his shoes: a reminder that it will be years yet before he becomes fully human. At the moment he’s really just a collection of more or less noisome valves, though at times he can be quite ornamental.
    With her back to me his mother says, ‘Max still raves about your birthday dinner, you know. He thinks that badger Wellington was superb. I’d have had you do it for this dinner, only we couldn’t guarantee to find you a badger in time.’
    ‘Alas. But there’s also the gun-dog pâté, don’t forget. That’s an essential filling. I suppose in default of Italian-style hunting accidents I could hang around the local vet’s back door and make a quick offer for the bulging bin liner even as the wailing owners retreat to their Volvo out front, leaning against one another for support. All the same, I’m none too smitten by the idea of meat containing a lethal dose of anaesthetic.’
    ‘But you are doing us an inventive hors d’oeuvre instead?’
    ‘It’s all in hand,’ I tell her loftily. ‘You specified something a little out of the ordinary and I’m working on it.’
    ‘I was quite hoping it mightn’t involve that plastic pot in the pantry fridge with things in gore.’
    ‘Very delicious, that will be. You lack faith in the Samper artistry. I’ll say no more.’
    ‘Promise me it has nothing to do with bats, Gerry,’ Jennifer-the -hostess says anxiously, turning around.
    ‘Certainly I promise.’
    ‘Eeeuwghh, bats ?’ Josh looks up with gleeful horror, chocolate cake-mix glistening in his hair. Blonds really can’t afford to be careless in their eating habits.
    ‘Just carry on,’ I tell him. ‘When you’ve finished with the bowl there will still be plenty left on your face. I promise: no bats. But I did wonder for a moment whether an authentic hedgerow broth mightn’t be made by gently seething some owl pellets. Do you think? Obviously one would need to strain out the fur and the voles’ teeth; but if the Chinese can make soup out of birds’ nests held together by avian phlegm, I