Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

‘Where?’ inquired Leslie.

‘Liapades,’ said Margo airily, ‘I haven’t been there for ages.’

‘Liapades?’ echoed Leslie. ‘A stroll? It’s right the other side of the island. It’ll take you hours.’

‘Well, I thought we’d take a picnic and make a day of it,’ said Margo, adding archly, ‘that is, if Adrian doesn’t mind.’

It was obvious that Adrian would not mind if Margo had suggested swimming underwater to Italy and back in full armour. I said I thought I would accompany them, as it was an interesting walk from a zoological point of view. Margo shot me a baleful look.

‘Well, if you come you must behave yourself,’ she said enigmatically.

Adrian was, needless to say, full of the walk and Margo’s kindness in asking him. I was not so sure. I pointed out that Liapades was a long way and that it was very hot, but Adrian said he did not mind a bit. Privately, I wondered, since he was rather frail, whether he would last the pace but I could not say this without insulting him. At five o’clock on the appointed day we assembled on the veranda. Adrian was wearing an enormous pair of hob-nailed boots he had acquired from somewhere, long trousers and a thick flannel shirt. To my astonishment, when I ventured to suggest that this ensemble was not suitable for a walk across the island in a temperature of over a hundred in the shade, Margo disagreed. Adrian was wearing perfect walking kit, chosen by herself, she said. The fact that she was clad in a diaphanous bathing suit and sandals and I was in shorts and an open-necked shirt did not deter her. She was armed with a massive pack on her back, which I imagined contained our food and drink, and a stout stick. I was carrying my collecting bag and butterfly net.

Thus equipped, we set out, Margo setting an unreasonably fast pace, I thought. Within a short space of time Adrian was sweating profusely and his face turned pink. Margo, in spite of my protests, stuck to open country and shunned the shade-giving olive groves. In the end I kept pace with them but walked in the shade of the trees a few hundred yards away. Adrian, afraid of being accused of being soft, followed doggedly and moistly at Margo’s heels. After four hours, he was limping badly and dragging his feet; his grey shirt was black with sweat and his face was an alarming shade of magenta.

‘Would you like a rest?’ Margo inquired at this point.

‘Just a drink, perhaps,’ said Adrian in a parched voice like a corncrake.

I said I thought this was a splendid idea so Margo stopped and sat down on a red hot rock in the open sun-soaked ground on which you could have roasted a team of oxen. She fumbled surreptitiously in her pack and produced three small bottles of Gazoza , a fizzy and extremely sweet local lemonade.

‘Here,’ she said, handing us a bottle each. ‘This’ll buck you up.’

In addition to being fizzy and over-sweet, the Gazoza was very warm so, if anything, it increased rather than assuaged our thirst. By the time it was nearing midday we were in sight of the opposite coast of the island. The news brought a spark of hope into the lacklustre eyes of Adrian. Once we reached the sea we could rest and swim, Margo explained. We reached the wild coastline and made our way down through the jumble of gigantic red and brown rocks strewn along the sea shore like an uprooted giants’ cemetery. Adrian threw himself down in the shade of an enormous block of rock topped with a wig of myrtle and a baby umbrella pine and tore off his shirt and boots. His feet, we discovered, were almost the same startling red as his face, and badly blistered. Margo suggested that he soak them in a rock pool to harden them and this he did while Margo and I swam. Then, much refreshed, we squatted in the shade of the rocks and I said I thought some food and drink would be welcome.

‘There is none,’ said Margo.

There was a stunned silence for a moment. ‘What d’you mean, there is none?’ asked Adrian. ‘What’s in that pack?’

‘Oh, those are just my bathing things,’ said Margo. ‘I decided I wouldn’t bring any food because it was so heavy to carry in this heat, and anyway, we’ll be back for supper if we start soon.’

‘And what about something to drink?’ inquired Adrian hoarsely. ‘Haven’t you got any more Gazoza ?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Margo irritably. ‘I brought three . That’s one each, isn’t it? And they’re terribly heavy to carry. I don’t know what you’re fussing about anyway; you eat far too much. A little rest’ll do you good. It’ll give you a chance to un-bloat.’

Adrian came as close to losing his temper as I had ever seen him.

‘I don’t want to un-bloat, whatever that means,’ he said icily, ‘and if I did I wouldn’t walk half across the island to do it.’

‘That’s just the trouble with you. You’re namby-pamby,’ snorted Margo. ‘Take you for a little walk and you’re screaming for food and wine. You just want to live in the hub of luxury all the time.’

‘I don’t think a drink on a day like this is a luxury,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s a necessity.’

Finding this argument profitless, I took the three empty Gazoza bottles half a mile down the coast to where I knew there was a tiny spring. When I reached it I found a man squatting by it, having his midday meal. He had a brown, seamed, wind-patterned face, and a sweeping black moustache. He was wearing the thick, sheepswool socks that the peasants wore when working in the fields and beside him lay his short, wide-bladed hoe.

‘ Kalimera ,’ he greeted me without surprise, and waved his hand in a courteous gesture towards the spring, as if he owned it.

I greeted him and then lay face downwards on the small carpet of green moss that the moisture had created, and lowered my face to where the bright spring throbbed like a heart under some maidenhair ferns. I drank long and deeply and I could never remember water having tasted so good. I soaked my head and neck with it and sat up with a satisfied sigh.

‘Good water,’ said the man. ‘Sweet, huh? Like a fruit.’

I said the water was delicious and started to wash the Gazoza bottles and fill them.

‘There’s a spring up there,’ said the man, pointing up the precipitous mountainside, ‘but the water is different, bitter as a widow’s tongue. But this is sweet, kind water. You are a foreigner?’

While I filled the bottles I answered his questions but my mind was busy with something else. Nearby lay the remains of his food – half a loaf of maize bread, yellow as a primrose, some great fat white cloves of garlic and a handful of large, wrinkled olives as black as beetles. At the sight of them my mouth started to water and I became acutely aware of the fact that I had been up since dawn with nothing to eat. Eventually the man noticed the glances I kept giving his food supply and, with the typical generosity of the peasants, pulled out his knife.

‘Bread?’ he asked. ‘You want bread?’

I said that I would love some bread but that the problem was that there were three of me, as it were. My sister and her husband, I lied, were also starving somewhere among the rocks. He snapped his knife shut, gathered together the remains of his lunch and held it out to me.

‘Take it for them,’ he said grinning. ‘I’ve finished and it’s not right for the good name of Corfu that foreigners should starve.’

I thanked him profusely, put the olives and garlic into my handkerchief, tucked the bread and the Gazoza bottles under my arm and set off.

‘Go to the good,’ the man called after me. ‘Keep away from the trees, we’ll be having a storm later.’

Looking up at the blue and burnished sky, I thought the man was wrong but did not say so. When I got back I found Adrian sitting glumly with his feet in a rock pool and Margo sunbathing on a rock and singing tunelessly to herself. They greeted the food and water with delight and fell on it, tearing at the golden bread and gulping the olives and garlic like famished wolves.