The Corfu Trilogy (59 page)

Just at that moment there was a thunderous knocking on the front door.

‘Well, I’m off,’ said Mother and scuttled upstairs with considerable alacrity.

Larry opened the front door and there stood the distraught figure of the cab driver.

‘Where’s my
carrochino
?’ he shouted.

‘Where were you?’ retorted Larry. ‘The
kyrios
have taken it.’

‘They have stolen my
carrochino
?’ shouted the man.

‘Of course they haven’t stolen it, foolish one,’ said Larry, now tried beyond endurance. ‘Because you weren’t waiting here they took it to get back into town. If you run quickly you can catch them up.’

Imploring St Spiridion to help him, the man ran off through the olive trees and down towards the road.

Determined not to miss the last act in this drama, I ran to a vantage point where I got a clear view of the entrance to our drive and a stretch of moonlit roadway which led into town. The cab had just left the drive and arrived on the road at a brisk walk, Donald and Max singing happily together. At that moment the cab driver appeared through the olives, and screaming imprecations, he started to run after them.

Max, startled, looked over his shoulder.

‘Volves, Donald,’ he shouted. ‘Hold tight!’ He proceeded to belabour the behind of the unfortunate horse who, startled, broke into a gallop. But it was the sort of gallop that only a Corfu cab horse could achieve. It was just sufficiently fast to keep the cab owner running at full stretch some ten paces behind the cab. He was shouting and imploring and almost weeping with rage. Max, determined to save Donald, at all costs, was belabouring the horse unmercifully while Donald leaned over the back of the cab and shouted ‘Bang!’ at intervals, and thus they disappeared out of my sight along the Corfu road.

The following morning, at breakfast, all of us felt slightly jaded, and Mother was lecturing Larry severely for allowing people to turn up at two o’clock in the morning for drinks. Just at that moment, Spiro’s car drove up to the front of the house and he
waddled onto the veranda where we were sitting, clasping in his arms an enormous, flat brown-paper parcel.

‘This is for yous, Mrs Durrells,’ he said.

‘For me?’ said Mother, adjusting her spectacles. ‘What on earth can it be?’

She unwrapped the brown paper cautiously and there inside, as bright as a rainbow, was the biggest box of chocolates I had ever seen in my life. Pinned to it was a little white card on which had been written in a rather shaky hand, ‘With apologies for last night. Donald and Max.’

Now winter was upon us. Everything was redolent with the smoke of olive-wood fires. The shutters creaked and slapped the sides of the house as the wind caught them, and the birds and leaves were tumbled across a dark lowering sky. The brown mountains of the mainland wore tattered caps of snow and the rain filled the eroded, rocky valleys, turning them into foaming torrents that fled eagerly to the sea carrying mud and debris with them. Once they reached the sea they spread like yellow veins through the blue water, and the surface was dotted with squill bulbs, logs and twisted branches, dead beetles and butterflies, clumps of brown grass and splintered canes. Storms would be brewed in among the whitened spikes of the Albanian mountains and then tumble across to us, great black piles of cumulus, spitting a stinging rain, with sheet lightning blooming and dying like yellow ferns across the sky.

It was at the beginning of the winter that I received a letter.

Dear Gerald Durrell,

I understand from our mutual friend, Dr Stephanides, that you are a keen naturalist and possess a number of pets. I was wondering, therefore, if you would care to have a white owl which my workmen found in an old shed they were demolishing? He has, unfortunately, a broken wing, but is otherwise in good health and feeding well.

If you would like him, I suggest you come to lunch on Friday and take him with you when you return home. Perhaps you
would be kind enough to let me know. A quarter to one or one o’clock would be suitable.

Yours sincerely,

Countess Mavrodaki

This letter excited me for two reasons. Firstly, because I had always wanted a barn owl, for that was what it obviously was, and secondly, because the whole of Corfu society had been trying unavailingly for years to get to know the Countess. She was the recluse par excellence. Immensely wealthy, she lived in a gigantic, rambling, Venetian villa deep in the country and never entertained or saw anybody except the workmen on her vast estate. Her acquaintance with Theodore was due only to the fact that he was her medical adviser. The Countess was reputed to possess a large and valuable library and for this reason Larry had been most anxious to try to get himself invited to her villa, but without success.

‘Dear God,’ he said bitterly when I showed him my invitation. ‘Here I’ve been trying for months to get that old harpy to let me see her books and she invites you to lunch – there’s no justice in the world.’

I said that after I had lunched with the Countess, maybe I could ask her if he could see her books.

‘After she’s had lunch with
you
I shouldn’t think she would be willing to show me a copy of
The Times
, let alone her library,’ said Larry witheringly.

However, in spite of my brother’s low opinion of my social graces, I was determined to put in a good word for him if I saw a suitable opportunity. It was, I felt, an important, even solemn occasion, and so I dressed with care. My shirt and shorts were carefully laundered and I had prevailed upon Mother to buy me a new pair of sandals and a new straw hat. I rode on Sally – who had a new blanket as a saddle to honour the occasion – for the Countess’s estate was some distance away.

The day was dark and the ground mushy under foot. It looked as though we would have a storm, but I hoped this would not be until after I had arrived, for the rain would spoil the crisp whiteness of my shirt. As we jogged along through the olives, the occasional woodcock zooming up from the myrtles in front of us, I became increasingly nervous. I discovered that I was ill-prepared for this occasion. To begin with, I had forgotten to bring my four-legged chicken in spirits. I had felt sure that the Countess would want to see this and in any case I felt it would provide a subject of conversation that would help us in the initial awkward stages of our meeting. Secondly, I had forgotten to consult anybody on the correct way to address a countess. ‘Your Majesty’ would surely be too formal, I thought, especially as she was giving me an owl? Perhaps ‘Highness’ would be better – or maybe just a simple ‘Mam’?

Puzzling over the intricacies of protocol, I had left Sally to her own devices and so she had promptly fallen into a donkey-doze. Of all the beasts of burden, only the donkey seems capable of falling asleep while still moving. The result was that she ambled close to the ditch at the side of the road, suddenly stumbled and lurched and I, deep in thought, fell off her back into six inches of mud and water. Sally stared down at me with an expression of accusing astonishment that she always wore when she knew she was in the wrong. I was so furious, I could have strangled her. My new sandals oozed, my shorts and shirt – so crisp, so clean, so
well-behaved-looking
a moment before – were now bespattered with mud and bits of decaying water-weed. I could have wept with rage and frustration. We were too far from home to retrace our footsteps so that I could change; there was nothing for it but to go on, damp and miserable, convinced now that it did not matter how I addressed the Countess. She would, I felt sure, take one look at my gypsy-like condition and order me home. Not only would I lose my owl, but any chance I had of getting Larry in to see her library. I was a fool, I thought bitterly. I should have
walked instead of trusting myself to this hopeless creature, who was now trotting along at a brisk pace, her ears pricked like furry arum lilies.

Presently we came to the Countess’s villa, lying deep in the olive groves, approached by a drive lined with tall green-and-pink-trunked eucalyptus trees. The entrance to the drive was guarded by two columns on which were perched a pair of white-winged lions who stared scornfully at Sally and me as we trotted down the drive. The house was immense, built in a hollow square. It had at one time been a lovely, rich, Venetian red, but this had now faded to a rose-pink, the plaster bulged and cracked in places by the damp, and I noticed that a number of brown tiles were missing from the roof. The eaves had slung under them more swallows’ nests - now empty, like small, forgotten, brown ovens - than I had ever seen congregated in one spot before.

I tied Sally up under a convenient tree and made my way to the archway that led into the central patio. Here a rusty chain hung down and when I pulled it I heard a bell jangle faintly somewhere in the depths of the house. I waited patiently for some time and was just about to ring the bell again when the massive wooden doors were opened. There stood a man who looked to me exactly like a bandit. He was tall and powerful, with a great jutting hawk-nose, sweeping flamboyant white moustaches, and a mane of curling white hair. He was wearing a scarlet tarboosh, a loose white blouse beautifully embroidered with scarlet-and-gold thread, baggy pleated black pants, and on his feet upturned
charukias
decorated with enormous red-and-white pom-poms. His brown face cracked into a grin and I saw that all his teeth were gold. It was like looking into a mint.

‘
Kyrié
Durrell?’ he inquired. ‘Welcome.’

I followed him through the patio, full of magnolia trees and forlorn winter flower-beds, and into the house. He led me down a long corridor tiled in scarlet and blue, threw open a door, and ushered me into a great, gloomy room lined from ceiling to floor
with bookshelves. At one end was a large fire-place in which a blaze flapped and hissed and crackled. Over the fire-place was an enormous gold-framed mirror, nearly black, with age. Sitting by the fire on a long couch, almost obliterated by coloured shawls and cushions, was the Countess.

She was not a bit what I had expected. I had visualized her as being tall, gaunt, and rather forbidding, but as she rose to her feet and danced across the room to me I saw she was tiny, very fat, and as pink and dimpled as a rosebud. Her honey-coloured hair was piled high on her head in a pompadour style and her eyes, under permanently arched and surprised eyebrows, were as green and shiny as unripe olives. She took my hand in both her warm little pudgy ones and clasped it to her ample breast.

‘How kind, how
kind
of you to come,’ she exclaimed in a musical, little girl’s voice, exuding an overpowering odour of Parma violets and brandy in equal quantities. ‘How very,
very
kind. May I call you Gerry? Of course I may. My friends call me Matilda… it isn’t my
real
name, of course. That’s Stephani Zinia… so uncouth – like a patent medicine. I
much
prefer Matilda, don’t you?’

I said, cautiously, that I thought Matilda a very nice name.

‘Yes, a comforting
old-fashioned
name. Names are
so
important, don’t you think? Now he there,’ she said, gesturing at the man who had shown me in, ‘
he
calls himself Demetrios. I call him Mustapha.’

She glanced at the man and then leaned forward, nearly asphyxiating me with brandy and Parma violets, and hissed suddenly, in Greek, ‘He’s a misbegotten Turk.’

The man’s face grew red and his moustache bristled, making him look more like a bandit than ever. ‘I am not a Turk,’ he snarled. ‘You lie.’

‘You are a Turk and your name’s Mustapha,’ she retorted.

‘It isn’t… I’m not… It isn’t… I’m not,’ said the man, almost incoherent with rage. ‘You are lying.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are.’

‘I’m
not
.’

‘You’re a damned elderly liar.’

‘Elderly,’ she squeaked, her face growing red. ‘You dare to call me elderly… you… you
Turk
you.’

‘You are elderly and you’re fat,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha coldly.

‘That’s too much,’ she screamed. ‘Elderly… fat… that’s too much. You’re sacked. Take a month’s notice. No, leave this instant, you son of a misbegotten Turk.’

Demetrios-Mustapha drew himself up regally.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Do you wish me to serve the drinks and lunch before I go?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

In silence he crossed the room and extracted a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket behind the sofa. He opened it and poured equal quantities of brandy and champagne into three large glasses. He handed us one each and lifted the third himself.

‘I give you a toast,’ he said to me solemnly. ‘We will drink to the health of a fat, elderly liar.’

I was in a quandary. If I drank the toast it would seem that I was concurring in his opinion of the Countess, and that would scarcely seem polite; and yet, if I did
not
drink the toast, he looked quite capable of doing me an injury. As I hesitated, the Countess, to my astonishment, burst into delighted giggles, her smooth fat cheeks dimpling charmingly.

‘You mustn’t tease our guest, Mustapha. But I must admit the toast was a good touch,’ she said, gulping at her drink.

Demetrios-Mustapha grinned at me, his teeth glittering and winking in the fire-light.

‘Drink,
kyrié
,’ he said. ‘Take no notice of us. She lives for food, drink, and fighting, and it is my job to provide all three.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the Countess, seizing my hand and leading me to the sofa, so that I felt as though I were hitched to a small, fat, pink cloud. ‘Nonsense, I live for a lot of things, a lot of things. Now, don’t stand there drinking my drink, you drunkard. Go and see to the food.’

Demetrios-Mustapha drained his glass and left the room, while the Countess seated herself on the sofa, clasping my hand in hers, and beamed at me.

‘This
is
cosy,’ she said delightedly. ‘Just you and I. Tell me, do you always wear mud all over your clothes?’