Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

‘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.