Mick Hartley

From “Excellent Women”, the 1952 novel by Barbara Pym:

I thought I had better revive the conversation which had lapsed, so I commented on the animals’ heads in the hall, saying what fine specimens they were.

“My husband shot them in India and Africa,” said Mrs Bone, “but however many you shoot there still seem to be more.”

“Oh, yes, it would be a terrible thing if they became extinct,” I said. “I suppose they keep the rarer animals in game reserves now.”

“It’s not the animals so much as the birds,” said Mrs Bone fiercely. “You will hardly believe this, Miss – er – but I was sitting in the window this afternoon and as it was a fine day I had it open at the bottom, when I felt something drop into my lap. And do you know what it was?” She turned and peered at me intently.

I said that I had no idea.

“Unpleasantness,” she said, almost triumphantly so that I was reminded of William Caldicote. Then lowering her voice she explained, “From a bird, you see. It had done something when I was actually sitting in my own drawing-room.”

“How annoying,” I said, feeling mesmerised and unable even to laugh.

“And that’s not the worst,” she went on, rummaging in a small desk which stood open and seemed to be full of old newspapers. “Read this.” She handed me a cutting headed OWL BITES WOMAN, from which I read that an owl had flown in through a cottage window one evening and bitten a woman on the chin. “And this,” she went on, handing me another cutting which told how a swan had knocked a girl off her bicycle. “What do you think of that?”

“Oh, I suppose they were just accidents,” I said.

“Accidents! Even Miss Jessop agrees that they are rather more than accidents. Don’t you, Miss Jessop?”

Miss Jessop made a quavering sound which might have been “Yes” or “No” but it was not allowed to develop into speech, for Mrs Bone broke in by telling Everard that Miss Jessop wouldn’t want any sherry.

“The Dominion of the Birds,” she went on. “I very much fear it may come to that.”

Everard looked at me a little anxiously but I managed to keep up the conversation until Mrs Bone declared that it was dinner time. “You had better be going home now, Miss Jessop,” she said. “We are going to have our dinner.”

Miss Jessop stood up and put on her gloves. Then, with a little nod which seemed to include all of us, she went quietly out of the room.

“I eat as many birds as possible,” said Mrs Bone when we were sitting down to roast chicken. “I have them sent from Harrods or Fortnum’s, and sometimes I go and look at them in the cold meats department. They do them up very prettily with aspic jelly and decorations. At least we can eat our enemies. Everard, dear, which was that tribe in Africa which were cannibals?”