Gerald Durrell: The Corfu Trilogy

Scarcely had we settled into the strawberry-pink villa before Mother decided that I was running wild, and that it was necessary for me to have some sort of education. But where to find this on a remote Greek island? As usual when a problem arose the entire family flung itself with enthusiasm into the task of solving it. Each member had his or her own idea of what was best for me, and each argued with such fervour that any discussion about my future generally resulted in an uproar.

‘Plenty of time for him to learn,’ said Leslie; ‘after all, he can read, can’t he? I can teach him to shoot, and if we bought a boat I could teach him to sail.’

‘But, dear, that wouldn’t really be much use to him later on,’ Mother pointed out, adding vaguely, ‘unless he was going into the Merchant Navy or something.’

‘I think it’s essential that he learns to dance,’ said Margo, ‘or else he’ll grow up into one of these awful tongue-tied hobbledehoys.’

‘Yes, dear; but that sort of thing can come later . He should be getting some sort of grounding in things like mathematics and French… and his spelling’s appalling.’

‘Literature,’ said Larry, with conviction, ‘that’s what he wants, a good solid grounding in literature. The rest will follow naturally. I’ve been encouraging him to read some good stuff.’

‘But don’t you think Rabelais is a little old for him?’ asked Mother doubtfully.

‘Good, clean fun,’ said Larry airily; ‘it’s important that he gets sex in its right perspective now.’

‘You’ve got a mania about sex,’ said Margo primly; ‘it doesn’t matter what we’re discussing, you always have to drag it in.’

‘What he wants is a healthy, outdoor life; if he learned to shoot and sail –’ began Leslie.

‘Oh, stop talking like a bishop. You’ll be advocating cold baths next.’

‘The trouble with you is you get in one of these damned supercilious moods where you think you know best, and you won’t even listen to anyone else’s point of view.’

‘With a point of view as limited as yours, you can hardly expect me to listen to it.’

‘Now, now, there’s no sense in fighting,’ said Mother.

‘Well, Larry’s so bloody unreasonable.’

‘I like that!’ said Larry indignantly; ‘I’m far and away the most reasonable member of the family.’

‘Yes, dear, but fighting doesn’t solve the problem. What we want is someone who can teach Gerry and who’ll encourage him in his interests.’

‘He appears to have only one interest,’ said Larry bitterly, ‘and that’s this awful urge to fill things with animal life. I don’t think he ought to be encouraged in that . Life is fraught with danger as it is. I went to light a cigarette only this morning and a damn’ great bumble-bee flew out of the box.’

‘It was a grasshopper with me,’ said Leslie gloomily.

‘Yes, I think that sort of thing ought to be stopped,’ said Margo. ‘I found the most revolting jar of wriggling things on the dressing-table, of all places.’

‘He doesn’t mean any harm, poor little chap,’ said Mother pacifically; ‘he’s so interested in all these things.’

‘I wouldn’t mind being attacked by bumble-bees, if it led anywhere,’ Larry pointed out. ‘But it’s just a phase… he’ll grow out of it by the time he’s fourteen.’

‘He’s been in this phase from the age of two,’ said Mother, ‘and he’s showing no signs of growing out of it.’

‘Well, if you insist on stuffing him full of useless information, I suppose George would have a shot at teaching him,’ said Larry.

‘ That’s a brain-wave,’ said Mother delightedly. ‘Will you go over and see him? I think the sooner he starts the better.’

Sitting under the open window in the twilight, with my arm round Roger’s shaggy neck, I had listened with interest, not unmixed with indignation, to the family discussion on my fate. Now that it was settled, I wondered vaguely who George was, and why it was so necessary for me to have lessons. But the dusk was thick with flower scents, and the olive groves were dark, mysterious, and fascinating. I forgot about the imminent danger of being educated, and went off with Roger to hunt for glow-worms in the sprawling brambles.

I discovered that George was an old friend of Larry’s, who had come to Corfu to write. There was nothing very unusual about this, for all Larry’s acquaintances in those days were either authors, poets, or painters. It was George, moreover, who was really responsible for our presence in Corfu, for he had written such eulogistic letters about the place that Larry had become convinced we could live nowhere else. Now George was to pay the penalty for his rashness. He came over to the villa to discuss my education with Mother, and we were introduced. We regarded each other with suspicion. George was a very tall and extremely thin man who moved with the odd disjointed grace of a puppet. His lean, skull-like face was partially concealed by a finely pointed brown beard and a pair of large tortoise-shell spectacles. He had a deep, melancholy voice, a dry and sarcastic sense of humour. Having made a joke, he would smile in his beard with a sort of vulpine pleasure which was quite unaffected by anyone else’s reactions.

Gravely George set about the task of teaching me. He was undeterred by the fact that there were no school-books available on the island; he simply ransacked his own library and appeared on the appointed day armed with a most unorthodox selection of tomes. Sombrely and patiently he taught me the rudiments of geography from the maps in the back of an ancient copy of Pears Cyclopædia , English from books that ranged from Wilde to Gibbon, French from a fat and exciting book called Le Petit Larousse , and mathematics from memory. From my point of view, however, the most important thing was that we devoted some of our time to natural history, and George meticulously and carefully taught me how to observe and how to note down observations in a diary. At once my enthusiastic but haphazard interest in nature became focused, for I found that by writing things down I could learn and remember much more. The only mornings that I was ever on time for my lessons were those which were given up to natural history.

Every morning at nine George would come stalking through the olive trees, clad in shorts, sandals, and an enormous straw hat with a frayed brim, clutching a wedge of books under one arm, swinging a walking-stick vigorously.

‘Good morning. The disciple awaits the master agog with anticipation, I trust?’ he would greet me, with a saturnine smile.

In the little dining-room of the villa the shutters would be closed against the sun, and in the green twilight George would loom over the table, methodically arranging the books. Flies, heat-drugged, would crawl slowly on the walls or fly drunkenly about the room, buzzing sleepily. Outside the cicadas were greeting the new day with shrill enthusiasm.

‘Let me see, let me see,’ George would murmur, running a long forefinger down our carefully prepared time-table; ‘yes, yes, mathematics. If I remember rightly, we were involved in the Herculean task of discovering how long it would take six men to build a wall if three of them took a week. I seem to recall that we have spent almost as much time on this problem as the men spent on the wall. Ah, well, let us gird our loins and do battle once again. Perhaps it’s the shape of the problem that worries you, eh? Let us see if we can make it more exciting.’

He would droop over the exercise book pensively, pulling at his beard. Then in his large, clear writing he would set the problem out in a fresh way.