Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

‘I cannot feed zem all,’ he explained to me, ‘so I like to make zem happiness by zooting zem. Zey are bezzer so, buz iz makes me feel so zad.’

He was, in fact, performing a very necessary and humane service, as anyone who had seen the cats would agree. So my lessons in French were being continuously interrupted while the consul leaped to the window to send yet another cat to a happier hunting ground. After the report of the gun there would be a moment’s silence, in respect for the dead; then the consul would blow his nose violently and sigh tragically, and we would plunge once more into the tangled labyrinth of French verbs.

For some inexplicable reason the consul was under the impression that Mother could speak French, and he would never lose an opportunity of engaging her in conversation. If she had the good fortune, while shopping in the town, to notice his top hat bobbing through the crowd towards her, she would hastily retreat into the nearest shop and buy a number of things she had no use for, until the danger was past. Occasionally, however, the consul would appear suddenly out of an alley-way and take her by surprise. He would advance, smiling broadly and twirling his cane, sweep off his top hat, and bow almost double before her, while clasping her reluctantly offered hand and pressing it passionately into his beard. Then they would stand in the middle of the street, occasionally being forced apart by a passing donkey, while the consul swamped Mother under a flood of French, gesturing elegantly with his hat and stick, apparently unaware of the blank expression on Mother’s face. Now and then he would punctuate his speech with a questioning ‘ N’est-ce pas, madame? ’ and this was Mother’s cue. Summoning up all her courage, she would display her complete mastery over the French tongue.

‘ Oui, oui! ’ she would exclaim, smiling nervously, and then add, in case it had sounded rather unenthusiastic, ‘OUI, OUI.’

This procedure satisfied the consul, and I’m sure he never realized that this was the only French word that Mother knew. But these conversations were a nerve-racking ordeal for her, and we had only to hiss ‘Look out, Mother, the consul’s coming,’ to set her tearing off down the street at a lady-like walk that was dangerously near to a gallop.

In some ways these French lessons were good for me; I did not learn any French, it’s true, but by the end of the morning I was so bored that my afternoon sorties into the surrounding country were made with double the normal enthusiasm. And then, of course, there was always Thursday to look forward to. Theodore would come out to the villa as soon after lunch as was decent, and stay until the moon was high over the Albanian mountains. Thursday was happily chosen, from his point of view, because it was on this day that the seaplane from Athens arrived and landed in the bay not far from the house. Theodore had a passion for watching seaplanes land. Unfortunately the only part of the house from which you could get a good view of the bay was the attic, and then it meant leaning perilously out of the window and craning your neck. The plane would invariably arrive in the middle of tea; a dim, drowsy hum could be heard, so faint one could not be sure it was not a bee. Theodore, in the middle of an anecdote or an explanation, would suddenly stop talking, his eyes would take on a fanatical gleam, his beard would bristle, and he would cock his head on one side.

‘Is that… er… you know… is that the sound of a plane? ’ he would inquire.

Everyone would stop talking and listen; slowly the sound would grow louder and louder. Theodore would carefully place his half-eaten scone on his plate.

‘Ah-ha!’ he would say, wiping his fingers carefully. ‘Yes, that certainly sounds like a plane… er… um… yes.’

The sound would grow louder and louder, while Theodore shifted uneasily in his seat. At length Mother would put him out of his misery.

‘Would you like to go up and watch it land?’ she would ask.

‘Well… er… if you’re sure…’ Theodore would mumble, vacating his seat with alacrity. ‘I… er… find the sight very attractive… if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

The sound of the plane’s engines would now be directly overhead; there was not a moment to lose.

‘I have always been… er… you know… attracted…’

‘Hurry up, Theo, or you’ll miss it,’ we would chorus.

The entire family then vacated the table, and, gathering Theodore en route , we sped up the four flights of stairs, Roger racing ahead, barking joyfully. We burst into the attic, out of breath, laughing, our feet thumping like gun-fire on the uncarpeted floor, threw open the windows, and leaned out, peering over the olive tops to where the bay lay like a round blue eye among the trees, its surface as smooth as honey. The plane, like a cumbersome overweight goose, flew over the olive groves, sinking lower and lower. Suddenly it would be over the water, racing its reflection over the blue surface. Slowly the plane dropped lower and lower. Theodore, eyes narrowed, beard bristling, watched it with bated breath. Lower and lower, and then suddenly it touched the surface briefly, left a widening petal of foam, flew on, and then settled on the surface and surged across the bay, leaving a spreading fan of white foam behind it. As it came slowly to rest, Theodore would rasp the side of his beard with his thumb, and ease himself back into the attic.

‘Um… yes,’ he would say, dusting his hands, ‘it is certainly a… very… er… enjoyable sight.’

The show was over. He would have to wait another week for the next plane. We would shut the attic windows and troop noisily downstairs to resume our interrupted tea. The next week exactly the same thing would happen all over again.

It was on Thursdays that Theodore and I went out together, sometimes confining ourselves to the garden, sometimes venturing further afield. Loaded down with collecting boxes and nets, we wended our way through the olives, Roger galloping ahead of us, nose to the ground. Everything that we came across was grist to our mill: flowers, insects, rocks, or birds. Theodore had an apparently inexhaustible fund of knowledge about everything, but he imparted this knowledge with a sort of meticulous diffidence that made you feel he was not so much teaching you something new as reminding you of something which you were already aware of, but which had, for some reason or other, slipped your mind. His conversation was sprinkled with hilarious anecdotes, incredibly bad puns, and even worse jokes, which he would tell with great relish, his eyes twinkling, his nose wrinkled as he laughed silently in his beard, as much at himself as at his own humour.

Every water-filled ditch or pool was, to us, a teeming and unexplored jungle, with the minute cyclops and water-fleas, green and coral pink, suspended like birds among the underwater branches, while on the muddy bottom the tigers of the pool would prowl: the leeches and the dragon-fly larvæ. Every hollow tree had to be closely scrutinized in case it should contain a tiny pool of water in which mosquito-larvæ were living, every mossy-wigged rock had to be overturned to find out what lay beneath it, and every rotten log had to be dissected. Standing straight and immaculate at the edge of a pool, Theodore would carefully sweep his little net through the water, lift it out, and peer keenly into the tiny glass bottle that dangled at the end, into which all the minute water life had been sifted.

‘Ah-ha!’ he might say, his voice ringing with excitement, his beard bristling, ‘I believe it’s ceriodaphnia laticaudata .’

He would whip a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and peer more closely.