The Corfu Trilogy (11 page)

‘Yes, and they’re all very good ones,’ said Margo earnestly. ‘I’ve been trying the orange-juice one and it’s done wonders for my acne.’

‘No,’ said Larry firmly. ‘I’m not going to do it if it means that I have to champ my way like a damned ungulate through bushels of raw fruit and vegetables. You will all have to resign yourselves to the fact that I shall be taken from you at an early age, suffering from fatty degeneration of the heart.’

At the next meal he took the precaution of having a large dose of bicarbonate beforehand, and then protested bitterly that the food tasted queer.

Margo was always badly affected by the spring. Her personal appearance, always of absorbing interest to her, now became
almost an obsession. Piles of freshly laundered clothes filled her bedroom, while the washing-line sagged under the weight of clothes newly washed. Singing shrilly and untunefully she would drift about the villa, carrying piles of flimsy underwear or bottles of scent. She would seize every opportunity to dive into the bathroom, in a swirl of white towels, and once in there she was as hard to dislodge as a limpet from a rock. The family in turn would bellow and batter on the door, getting no more satisfaction than an assurance that she was nearly finished, an assurance which we had learned by bitter experience not to have any faith in. Eventually she would emerge, glowing and immaculate, and drift from the house, humming, to sun-bathe in the olive groves or go down to the sea and swim. It was during one of these excursions to the sea that she met an over-good-looking young Turk. With unusual modesty she did not inform anyone of her frequent bathing assignations with this paragon, feeling, as she told us later, that we would not be interested. It was, of course, Spiro who discovered it. He watched over Margo’s welfare with the earnest concern of a St Bernard, and there was precious little she could do without Spiro’s knowing about it. He cornered Mother in the kitchen one morning, glanced surreptitiously round to make sure they were not overheard, sighed deeply, and broke the news to her.

‘I’m very sorrys to haves to tells you this, Mrs Durrells,’ he rumbled, ‘buts I thinks you oughts to knows.’

Mother had by now become quite used to Spiro’s conspiratorial air when he came to deliver some item of information about the family, and it no longer worried her.

‘What’s the matter now, Spiro?’ she asked.

‘It’s Missy Margo,’ said Spiro sorrowfully.

‘What about her?’

Spiro glanced round uneasily.

‘Dos you knows shes meetings a
mans?
’ he inquired in a vibrant whisper.

‘A man? Oh… er… yes, I did know,’ said Mother, lying valiantly.

Spiro hitched up his trousers over his belly and leaned forward.

‘But dids you knows he’s a
Turk?
’ he questioned in tones of bloodcurdling ferocity.

‘A Turk?’ said Mother vaguely. ‘No, I didn’t know he was a Turk. What’s wrong with that?’

Spiro looked horrified.

‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells, whats wrongs with it? He’s a
Turk
. I wouldn’ts trust a sonofabitch Turk with any girls. He’ll cuts her throats, thats what he’ll do. Honest to Gods, Mrs Durrells, its not safe, Missy Margo swimmings with hims.’

‘All right, Spiro,’ said Mother soothingly, ‘I’ll speak to Margo about it.’

‘I just thoughts you oughts to knows, thats all. Buts donts you worrys… if he dids anythings to Missy Margo I’d fix the bastard,’ Spiro assured her earnestly.

Acting on the information received, Mother mentioned the matter to Margo, in a slightly less bloodcurdling manner than Spiro’s, and suggested that the young Turk be brought up to tea. Delighted, Margo went off to fetch him, while Mother hastily made a cake and some scones, and warned the rest of us to be on our best behaviour. The Turk, when he arrived, turned out to be a tall young man, with meticulously waved hair and a flashy smile that managed to convey the minimum of humour with the maximum of condescension. He had all the sleek, smug self-possession of a cat in season. He pressed Mother’s hand to his lips as though he were conferring an honour on her, and scattered the largesse of his smile for the rest of us. Mother, feeling the hackles of the family rising, threw herself desperately into the breach.

‘Lovely having you… wanted so often… never seems time, you know… days simply
fly
past… Margo’s told us so much about you… do have a scone…’ she said breathlessly, smiling with dazzling charm and handing him a piece of cake.

‘So kind,’ murmured the Turk, leaving us in some doubt as to whether he was referring to us or himself. There was a pause.

‘He’s on holiday here,’ announced Margo suddenly, as though it were something quite unique.

‘Really?’ said Larry waspishly. ‘On holiday? Amazing!’

‘I had a holiday once,’ said Leslie indistinctly through a mouthful of cake; ‘remember it clearly.’

Mother rattled the tea things nervously, and glared at them.

‘Sugar?’ she inquired fruitily. ‘Sugar in your tea?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

There was another short silence, during which we all sat and watched Mother pouring out the tea and searching her mind desperately for a topic of conversation. At length the Turk turned to Larry.

‘You write, I believe?’ he said with complete lack of interest.

Larry’s eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.

‘Yes, yes,’ she smiled, ‘he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter.’

‘I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried,’ remarked the Turk.

‘Really?’ said Mother. ‘Yes, well, it’s a gift, I suppose, like so many things.’

‘He swims well,’ remarked Margo, ‘and he goes out terribly far.’

‘I have no fear,’ said the Turk modestly. ‘I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear.’

He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.

‘You see,’ he went on, in case we had missed the point, ‘you see, I am not a fearful man.’

The result of the tea party was that the next day Margo
received a note from the Turk asking her if she would accompany him to the cinema that evening.

‘Do you think I ought to go?’ she asked Mother.

‘If you want to, dear,’ Mother answered, adding firmly, ‘but tell him I’m coming too.’

‘That should be a jolly evening for you,’ remarked Larry.

‘Oh, Mother, you can’t,’ protested Margo; ‘he’ll think it so queer.’

‘Nonsense, dear,’ said Mother vaguely. ‘Turks are quite used to chaperones and things… look at their harems.’

So that evening Mother and Margo, dressed becomingly, made their way down the hill to meet the Turk. The only cinema was an open-air one in the town, and we calculated that the show should be over by ten at the latest. Larry, Leslie, and I waited eagerly for their return. At half-past one in the morning Margo and Mother, in the last stages of exhaustion, crept into the villa and sank into chairs.

‘Oh, so you’ve come back?’ said Larry. ‘We thought you’d flown with him. We imagined you galloping about Constantinople on camels, your yashmaks rippling seductively in the breeze.’

‘We’ve had the most awful evening,’ said Mother, easing her shoes off, ‘really awful.’

‘What happened?’ asked Leslie.

‘Well, to begin with he stank of the most frightful perfume,’ said Margo, ‘and that put me off straight away.’

‘We went in the cheapest seats, so close to the screen that I got a headache,’ said Mother, ‘and simply crammed together like sardines. It was so oppressive I couldn’t breathe. And then, to crown it all, I got a flea. It was nothing to laugh at, Larry; really I didn’t know what to do. The blessed thing got inside my corsets and I could feel it running about. I couldn’t very well scratch, it would have looked so peculiar. I had to keep pressing myself against the seat. I think he noticed, though… he kept giving
me funny looks from the corner of his eye. Then in the interval he went out and came back with some of that horrible, sickly Turkish Delight, and before long we were all covered with white sugar, and I had a dreadful thirst. In the second interval he went out and came back with flowers. I ask you, dear, flowers in the middle of the cinema. That’s Margo’s bouquet, on the table.’

Mother pointed to a massive bunch of spring flowers, tied up in a tangle of coloured ribbons. She delved into her bag and produced a minute bunch of violets that looked as though they had been trodden on by an exceptionally hefty horse.

‘This,’ she said, ‘was for me.’

‘But the worst part was coming home,’ said Margo.

‘A dreadful journey!’ Mother agreed. ‘When we came out of the cinema I thought we were going to get a car, but no, he hustled us into a cab, and a very smelly one at that. Really, I think he must be mental to try and come all that way in a cab. Anyway, it took us hours and
hours
, because the poor horse was tired, and I was sitting there trying to be polite, dying to scratch myself, and longing for a drink. All the fool could do was to sit there grinning at Margo and singing Turkish love songs. I could have cheerfully hit him. I thought we were
never
going to get back. We couldn’t even get rid of him at the bottom of the hill. He insisted on coming up with us, armed with a huge stick, because he said the forests were full of serpents at this time of the year. I was
so
glad to see the back of him. I’m afraid you’ll just
have
to choose your boy friends more carefully in future, Margo. I can’t go through that sort of thing again. I was terrified he’d come right up to the door and we’d have to ask him in. I thought we’d
never
get away.’

‘You obviously didn’t make yourself fearful enough,’ said Larry.

For Leslie the coming of spring meant the soft pipe of wings as the turtle-doves and wood-pigeons arrived, and the sudden flash and scuttle of a hare among the myrtles. So, after visiting
numerous gun shops and after much technical argument, he returned to the villa one day proudly carrying a double-barrelled shotgun. His first action was to take it to his room, strip it down, and clean it, while I stood and watched, fascinated by the gleaming barrels and stock, sniffing rapturously at the rich heavy scent of the gun oil.

‘Isn’t she a beauty?’ he crooned, more to himself than to me, his vivid blue eyes shining. ‘Isn’t she a honey?’

Tenderly he ran his hands over the silken shape of the weapon. Then he whipped it suddenly to his shoulder and followed an imaginary flock of birds across the ceiling of the room.

‘Pow!… pow!’ he intoned, jerking the gun against his shoulder. ‘A left and a right, and down they come.’

He gave the gun a final rub with the oily rag and set it carefully in the corner of the room by his bed.

‘We’ll have a try for some turtle-doves tomorrow, shall we?’ he continued, splitting open a packet and spilling the scarlet shells onto the bed. ‘They start coming over about six. That little hill across the valley is a good place.’

So at dawn he and I hurried through the hunched and misty olive groves, up the valley where the myrtles were wet and squeaky with dew, and on to the top of the little hill. We stood waist-deep among the vines, waiting for the light to strengthen and for the birds to start flighting. Suddenly the pale morning sky was flecked with dark specks, moving as swiftly as arrows, and we could hear the quick wheep of wings. Leslie waited, standing stockily with legs apart, gun-stock resting on his hip, his eyes, intense and gleaming, following the birds. Nearer and nearer they flew, until it seemed that they must fly past us and be lost in the silvery, trembling olive tops behind. At the very last moment the gun leaped smoothly to his shoulder, the beetle-shiny barrels lifted their mouths to the sky, the gun jerked as the report echoed briefly, like the crack of a great branch in a still forest. The turtle-dove, one minute so swift and intent in its
flight, now fell languidly to earth, followed by a swirl of soft, cinnamon-coloured feathers. When five doves hung from his belt, limp, bloodstained, with demurely closed eyes, he lit a cigarette, pulled his hat-brim down over his eyes and cuddled the gun under his arm.

‘Come on,’ he said; ‘we’ve got enough. Let’s give the poor devils a rest.’

We returned through the sun-striped olive groves where the chaffinches were pinking like a hundred tiny coins among the leaves. Yani, the shepherd, was driving his herd of goats out to graze. His brown face, with its great sweep of nicotine-stained moustache, wrinkled into a smile; a gnarled hand appeared from the heavy folds of his sheepskin cloak and was raised in salute.

‘
Chairete
,’ he called in his deep voice, the beautiful Greek greeting, ‘
chairete, kyrioi
… be happy.’

The goats poured among the olives, uttering stammering cries to each other, the leader’s bell clonking rhythmically. The chaffinches tinkled excitedly. A robin puffed out his chest like a tangerine among the myrtles and gave a trickle of song. The island was drenched with dew, radiant with early morning sun, full of stirring life. Be happy. How could one be anything else in such a season?

As soon as we had settled down and started to enjoy the island, Larry, with characteristic generosity, wrote to all his friends and asked them to come out and stay. The fact that the villa was only just big enough to house the family apparently had not occurred to him.

‘I’ve asked a few people out for a week or so,’ he said casually to Mother one morning.

‘That will be nice, dear,’ said Mother unthinkingly.

‘I thought it would do us good to have some intelligent and stimulating company around. We don’t want to stagnate.’

‘I hope they’re not too
highbrow
, dear,’ said Mother.

‘Good Lord, Mother, of course they’re
not
; just extremely charming, ordinary people. I don’t know why you’ve got this phobia about people being highbrow.’

‘I don’t like the highbrow ones,’ said Mother plaintively. ‘I’m not highbrow, and I can’t talk about poetry and things. But they always seem to imagine, just because I’m your mother, that I should be able to discuss literature at great length with them. And they always come and ask me silly questions just when I’m in the middle of cooking.’