Free Fillets of Plaice, by Gerald Durrell by Fillets of Plaice

very much, I shouldn't think,” said Larry. “I doubt that you are what they mean by reliable.”
    “Anyway, they'd have to pay me something, wouldn't they?” I said.
    “Are you old enough to be employed?” inquired Larry.
    “Well, I'm almost sixteen,” I said.
    “Well, go and have a shot at it,” he suggested.
    So the following morning I went down to the pet shop and opened the door and went in. A short, slender, dark man with very large horn-rimmed spectacles danced across the floor towards me.
    “Good morning! Good morning! Good morning, sir!” he said. “What can I do for you?”
    “You, um…, you want an assistant…,” I said.
    He cocked his head on one side and his eyes grew large behind his spectacles.
    “An assistant,” he said. “Do you mean to say you want the job?”
    “Er…, yes,” I said.
    “Have you had any experience?” he inquired doubtfully.
    “Oh, I've had plenty of experience,” I said. “I've always kept reptiles and fish and things like that. I've got a whole flatful of things now.”
    The little man looked at me.
    “How old are you?” he asked.
    “Sixteen… nearly seventeen,” I lied.
    “Well,” he said, “we can't afford to pay very much, you know. The overheads on this shop are something extraordinary. But I could start you off at one pound ten.”
    “That's alright,” I said. “When do I start?”
    “You'd better start on Monday,” he said. “I think on Monday because then I can get all your cards stamped up and straight. Otherwise we get in such a muddle, don't we? Now, my name's Mr Romilly.”
    I told him my name and we shook hands rather formally, and then we stood looking at each other. It was obvious that Mr Romilly had never employed anybody before and did not know quite what the form was. I thought perhaps I ought to help him out.
    “Perhaps you could just show me round,” I suggested, “and tell me a few things that you will want me to do.”
    “Oh, what an excellent idea,” said Mr Romilly. “An excellent idea!”
    He danced round the shop waving his hands like butterfly wings and showed me how to clean out a fish tank, how to drop the mealworms into the cages of frogs and toads, and where the brush and broom were kept that we swept the floor with. Under the shop was a large cellar where various fish foods, nets and other things were kept, and it included a constantly running tap that dripped into a large bowl containing what at first glance appeared to be a raw sheep's heart. This, on close inspection, turned out to be a closely knitted ball of threadlike tubifex worms. These bright red worms were a favourite food of all the fish and some of the amphibians and reptiles as well. I discovered that as well as the delightful things in the window there were hosts of other creatures in the shop besides — cases full of lizards, toads, tortoises and treacle-shiny snakes, tanks full of moist, gulping frogs, and newts with filled tails like pennants. After having spent so many months in dry, dusty and desiccated London, the shop was, as far as I was concerned, a Garden of Eden.
    “Now,” said Mr Romilly, when he had shown me everything, “you start on Monday, hm? Nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late, will you?”
    I did not tell Mr Romilly that nothing short of death would have prevented me from being there at nine o'clock on Monday.
    So at ten to nine on Monday morning I paced the pavement outside the shop until eventually Mr Romilly appeared, clad in a long black coat and a black Homburg hat, waving his bunch of keys musically.
    “Good morning, good morning,” he trilled. “I'm glad to see you're on time. What a good start.”
    So we went into the shop and I started on the first chores of the day, which were to sweep the comparatively spotless floor clean and then to go round feeding little knots of wriggling tubifex to the fishes.
    I very soon discovered that Mr Romilly, though a kindly man, had little or no knowledge of the creatures in his care. Most of the cages were most unsuitably decorated for the