The Corfu Trilogy (39 page)
Authors: Gerald Durrell
The tender had to wait patiently while we comforted him. Then, as its engine throbbed and it drew away across the dark blue water, our three friends stood out against the multicoloured background, the tottering houses sprawled up the hillside, Theodore neat and erect, his stick raised in grave salute, his beard twinkling in the sun; Kralefsky bobbing and ducking and waving extravagantly; Spiro, barrel-bodied and scowling, alternately wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and waving it to us.
As the ship drew across the sea and Corfu sank shimmering into a pearly heat haze on the horizon a black depression settled on us, which lasted all the way back to England. The grimy train scuttled its way up from Brindisi towards Switzerland, and we sat in silence, not wishing to talk. Above our heads, on the rack, the finches sang in their cages, the Magenpies chucked and hammered with their beaks, and Alecko gave a mournful yarp at intervals. Around our feet the dogs lay snoring. At the Swiss frontier our passports were examined by a disgracefully efficient official. He handed them back to Mother, together with a small slip of paper, bowed unsmilingly, and left us to our gloom. Some moments later Mother glanced at the form the official had filled in, and as she read it, she stiffened.
‘Just look what he’s put,’ she exclaimed indignantly, ‘
impertinent
man.’
Larry stared at the little form and snorted. ‘Well, that’s the penalty you pay for leaving Corfu,’ he pointed out.
On the little card, in the column headed
Description of Passengers
had been written, in neat capitals:
ONE TRAVELLING CIRCUS AND STAFF
.
‘What a thing to write,’ said Mother, still simmering. ‘Really, some people are
peculiar
.’
The train rattled towards England.
To Theodore Stephanides,
in gratitude for laughter and for learning
Conversation
It had been a hard winter, and even when spring was supposed to have taken over, the crocuses – which seemed to have a touching and unshaken faith in the seasons – were having to push their way grimly through a thin crust of snow. The sky was low and grey, liable to discharge another fall of snow at any minute, and a biting wind howled round the house. Taken altogether, weather conditions were not ideal for a family reunion, particularly when it was my family.
It was a pity, I felt, that when they had all forgathered in England for the first time since World War II, they should be treated to something approaching a blizzard. It did not bring out the best in them; it made them more touchy than usual, quicker to take offence, and less likely to lend a sympathetic ear to anyone’s point of view but their own.
They were grouped, like a pride of moody lions, round a fire so large and flamboyant that there was immediate danger of its setting fire to the chimney. My sister Margo had just added to it by the simple method of dragging in the carcass of a small tree from the garden and pushing one end into the fireplace, while the remainder of the trunk lay across the hearth-rug. My mother was knitting, but you could tell by the slightly vacant look on her face and the way her lips moved occasionally, as if she were in silent prayer, that she was really occupied with the menu for tomorrow’s lunch. My brother Leslie was buried behind a large manual on ballistics, while my elder brother Lawrence, clad in a roll-top pullover of the type usually worn by fishermen (several sizes too large for him), was standing by the window sneezing wetly and regularly into a large scarlet handkerchief.
‘Really, this is a
frightful
country,’ he said, turning on us belligerently, as though we were all directly responsible for the climatic conditions prevailing. ‘You set foot on shore at Dover and you’re met by a positive barrage of cold germs… D’you realize that this is the first cold I’ve had in twelve years? Simply because I had the sense to keep away from Pudding Island. Everyone I’ve met so far has a cold. The entire population of the British Isles seems to do absolutely nothing from one year’s end to another except shuffle round in small circles sneezing voluptuously into each other’s faces… a sort of merry-go-round of reinfection. What chance of survival has one got?’
‘Just because
you’ve
got a cold you carry on as though the world was coming to an end,’ said Margo. ‘I can’t understand why men always make such a fuss.’
Larry gave her a withering look from watering eyes. ‘The trouble with you all is that you like being martyrs. No one free from masochistic tendencies would stay in this – this virus’s paradise. You’ve all stagnated; you
like
wallowing here in a sea of infection. One excuses people who have never known anything else, but you all had a taste of the sun in Greece; you should know better.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mother soothingly, ‘but you’ve just come at a bad time. It can be very nice, you know. In the spring, for example.’
Larry glared at her. ‘I hate to jolt you out of your Rip Van Winkle-like trance,’ he said, ‘but this is supposed to
be
the spring… and look at it! You need a team of huskies to go down to post a letter.’
‘Half an inch of snow,’ snorted Margo. ‘You do exaggerate.’
‘I agree with Larry,’ Leslie said, appearing from behind his book suddenly. ‘It’s bloody cold out. Makes you feel you don’t want to do anything. You can’t even get any decent shooting.’
‘Exactly,’ said Larry triumphantly, ‘while in a sensible country like Greece one would be having breakfast outside and then
going down to the sea for a morning bathe. Here my teeth chatter so much it’s only with difficulty that I can eat any breakfast.’
‘I do wish you’d stop harping on Greece,’ said Leslie. ‘It reminds me of that bloody book of Gerry’s. It took me ages to live that down.’
‘Took
you
ages?’ said Larry caustically. ‘What about me? You’ve no idea what damage that Dickens-like caricature did to my literary image.’
‘But the way he wrote about me, you would think I never thought about anything but guns and boats,’ said Leslie.
‘Well, you never do think about anything but guns and boats.’
‘I was the one that suffered most,’ said Margo. ‘He did nothing but talk about my acne.’
‘I thought it was quite an accurate picture of you all,’ said Mother, ‘but he made me out to be a
positive imbecile
.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being lampooned in decent prose,’ Larry pointed out, blowing his nose vigorously, ‘but to be lampooned in bad English is unbearable.’
‘The title alone is insulting,’ said Margo. ‘
My Family and Other Animals
! I get sick of people saying, “And which other animal are you?” ’
‘I thought the title was rather funny, dear,’ said Mother. ‘The only thing I thought was that he hadn’t used all the best stories.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ said Leslie.
‘What best stories?’ Larry demanded suspiciously.
‘Well, what about the time you sailed Max’s yacht round the island? That was damned funny.’
‘If that story had appeared in print I would have sued him.’
‘I don’t see why, it was very funny,’ said Margo.
‘And what about the time you took up spiritualism – supposing he’d written about that? I suppose you’d enjoy
that?
’ inquired Larry caustically.
‘No, I would not – he couldn’t write that,’ said Margo in horror.
‘Well, there you are,’ said Larry in triumph. ‘And what about Leslie’s court case?’
‘I don’t see why you have to bring me into it,’ said Leslie.
‘You were the one who was going on about him not using the best incidents,’ Larry pointed out.
‘Yes, I’d forgotten about those stories,’ said Mother, chuckling. ‘I think they were funnier than the ones you used, Gerry.’
‘I’m glad you think that,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘Why?’ asked Larry, glaring at me.
‘Because I’ve decided to write another book on Corfu and use all those stories,’ I explained innocently.
The uproar was immediate.
‘I forbid it,’ roared Larry, sneezing violently. ‘I absolutely forbid it.’
‘You’re not to write about my spiritualism,’ Margo cried out. ‘Mother, tell him he’s not to write about that.’
‘Nor my court case,’ snarled Leslie. ‘I won’t have it.’
‘And if you so much as mention yachts…’ Larry began.
‘Larry dear, do keep your voice down,’ said Mother.
‘Well, forbid him to write a sequel then,’ shouted Larry.
‘Don’t be silly, dear, I can’t stop him,’ said Mother.
‘Do you want it all to happen again?’ demanded Larry hoarsely. ‘The bank writing to ask if you will kindly remove your overdraft, the tradesmen looking at you askance, anonymous parcels full of strait-jackets being left on the doorstep, being cut dead by all the relatives. You are supposed to be head of the family – stop him writing it.’
‘You do exaggerate, Larry dear,’ said Mother. ‘Anyway, I can’t stop him if he wants to write it. I don’t think it will do any harm and those stories are the best ones, I think. I don’t see why he shouldn’t write a sequel.’
The family rose in a body and told her loudly and vociferously
why I should not write a sequel. I waited for the noise to die down.
‘And apart from those stories, there are quite a number of others,’ I said.
‘Which ones, dear?’ inquired Mother.
The family, red-faced, bristling, glowered at me in an expectant silence.
‘Well,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘I want to give a description of your love affair with Captain Creech, Mother.’
‘What?’ squeaked Mother. ‘You’ll do no such thing… love affair with that disgusting old creature, indeed. I won’t have you writing about
that
.’
‘Well, I think that’s the best story of the lot,’ said Larry unctuously, ‘the vibrant passion of the romance, the sweet, archaic charm of the leading man… the way you led the poor old chap on…’
‘Oh, do be quiet, Larry,’ said Mother crossly. ‘You do make me angry when you talk like that. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to write this book, Gerry.’
‘I second that,’ said Larry. ‘If you publish we’ll sue you in a body.’
Faced with such a firm and united family, bristling in their resolve to prevent me at all costs, there was only one thing I could do. I sat down and wrote this book.
Writing something of this sort presents many pitfalls for the author. His new readers do not want to be constantly irritated by references to a previous book that they have not read, and the ones who have read the previous book do not want to be irritated by constant repetition of events with which they are familiar. I hope that I have managed to steer a fairly steady course between the two.
Perama
Here great trees cool-shaded grow, pear, pomegranate, rich apple, honey-sweet fig and blossoming olive, forever bearing fruit, winter and summer never stripped, but everblowing the western wind brings fruit to birth and ripens others. Pear follows pear, apple after apple grows, fig after fig, and grape yields grape again.
– H
OMER
The Christening
The island lies off the Albanian and Greek coast-lines like a long, rust-eroded scimitar. The hilt of the scimitar is the mountain region of the island, for the most part barren and stony, with towering rock cliffs haunted by blue rock-thrushes and peregrine falcons. In the valleys in this mountain region, however, where water gushes plentifully from the red-and-gold rocks, you get forests of almond and walnut trees, casting shade as cool as a well, thick battalions of spear-like cypress and silver-trunked fig trees with leaves as large as a salver. The blade of the scimitar is made up of rolling greeny-silver eiderdowns of giant olive trees, some reputedly over five hundred years old and each one unique in its hunched, arthritic shape, its trunk pitted with a hundred holes like pumice-stone. Towards the tip of the blade you have Lefkimi, with its twinkling, eye-aching sand dunes and great salt marshes, decorated with acres of bamboos that creak and rustle and whisper to each other surreptitiously. The island is called Corfu.
That August, when we arrived, the island lay breathless and sun-drugged in a smouldering, peacock-blue sea under a sky that had been faded to a pale powder-blue by the fierce rays of the sun. Our reasons for packing up and leaving the gloomy shores of England were somewhat nebulous, but based loosely on the fact that we were tired of the drab suburbanness of life in England and its accompanying bleak and unpleasant climate. So we had fled to Corfu, hoping that the sunshine of Greece would cure us of the mental and physical inertia which so long a sojourn in England had brought about. Very soon after we had landed, we had acquired our first villa and our first friend on the island.
The friend was Spiro, a waddling, barrel-shaped man with huge powerful hands and a brown, leathery, scowling face. He had perfected an odd but adequate command over English and he possessed an ancient Dodge which he used as a taxi. We soon found that Spiro, like most of the Corfu characters, was unique. There seemed to be no one that he did not know and nothing that he could not obtain or get done for you. Even the most bizarre requests from the family would be met by him with the remark, ‘Don’ts yous worries about thats. I’ll fixes thats.’ And fix it he would. His first major piece of fixing was the acquisition of our villa, for Mother had been insistent that we must have a bathroom, and this very necessary adjunct of wholesome living was in short supply in Corfu. But, needless to say, Spiro knew of a villa with a bath, and very soon, after much shouting and roaring, gesticulation, sweating, and waddling to and fro carrying armfuls of our goods and chattels, Spiro had us safely installed. From that moment he ceased to be merely a taxi driver that we hired and became our guide, philosopher, and friend.
