Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

Spring affected the family in a variety of ways. Larry bought himself a guitar and a large barrel of strong red wine. He interspersed his bouts of work by playing haphazardly on the instrument and singing Elizabethan love songs in a meek tenor voice, with frequent pauses for refreshment. This would soon induce a mood of melancholy, and the love songs would become more doleful, while between each Larry would pause to inform whichever member of the family happened to be present that spring, for him, did not mean the beginning of a new year, but the death of the old one. The grave, he would proclaim, making the guitar rumble ominously, yawned a little wider with each season.

One evening the rest of us had gone out and left Mother and Larry alone together. Larry had spent the evening singing more and more dismally, until he had succeeded in working them both into a fit of acute depression. They attempted to alleviate this state with the aid of wine, but unfortunately this had the reverse effect, for they were not used to the heavy wines of Greece. When we returned we were somewhat startled to be greeted by Mother, standing at the door of the villa with a hurricane lantern. She informed us with lady-like precision and dignity that she wished to be buried under the rose bushes. The novelty of this lay in the fact that she had chosen such an accessible place for the disposal of her remains. Mother spent a lot of her spare time choosing places to be buried in, but they were generally situated in the most remote areas, and one had visions of the funeral cortège dropping exhausted by the wayside long before it had reached the grave.

When left undisturbed by Larry, however, spring for Mother meant an endless array of fresh vegetables with which to experiment, and a riot of new flowers to delight her in the garden. There streamed from the kitchen a tremendous number of new dishes, soups, stews, savouries, and curries, each richer, more fragrant, and more exotic than the last. Larry began to suffer from dyspepsia. Scorning the simple remedy of eating less, he procured an immense tin of bicarbonate of soda, and would solemnly take a dose after every meal.

‘Why do you eat so much if it upsets you, dear?’ Mother asked.

‘It would be an insult to your cooking to eat less,’ Larry replied unctuously.

‘You’re getting terribly fat,’ said Margo; ‘it’s very bad for you.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Larry in alarm. ‘I’m not getting fat, Mother, am I?’

‘You look as though you’ve put on a little weight,’ Mother admitted, surveying him critically.

‘It’s your fault,’ Larry said unreasonably. ‘You will keep tempting me with these aromatic delicacies. You’re driving me to ulcers. I shall have to go on a diet. What’s a good diet, Margo?’

‘Well,’ said Margo, launching herself with enthusiasm into her favourite topic, ‘you could try the orange-juice-and-salad one; that’s awfully good. There’s the milk-and-raw-vegetable one… that’s good too, but it takes a little time. Or there’s the boiled-fish-and-brown-bread one. I don’t know what that’s like, I haven’t tried it yet.’

‘Dear God!’ exclaimed Larry, genuinely shocked. ‘Are those diets?’

‘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.