Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

We returned in the evening, exhausted and irritable, the car piled high with food, and Lugaretzia lying across our laps like a corpse, moaning frightfully. It was perfectly obvious that she would be in no condition to assist with the cooking and other work on the morrow.

Spiro, when asked to suggest a solution, gave his usual answer. ‘Nevers you minds,’ he scowled; ‘leaves everything to me.’

The following morning was full of incident. Lugaretzia had recovered sufficiently to undertake light duties, and she followed us all round the house, displaying with pride the gory cavities in her gums, and describing in detail the agonies she had suffered with each individual tooth. My presents having been duly inspected and the family thanked, I then went round to the back veranda with Leslie, and there lay a mysterious shape covered with a tarpaulin. Leslie drew this aside with the air of a conjuror, and there lay my boat. I gazed at it rapturously; it was surely the most perfect boat that anyone had ever had. Gleaming in her coat of new paint she lay there, my steed to the enchanted archipelago.

The boat was some seven feet long, and almost circular in shape. Leslie explained hurriedly – in case I thought the shape was due to defective craftsmanship – that the reason for this was that the planks had been too short for the frame, an explanation I found perfectly satisfactory. After all, it was the sort of irritating thing that could have happened to anyone. I said stoutly that I thought it was a lovely shape for a boat, and indeed I thought it was. She was not sleek, slim, and rather predatory looking, like most boats, but rotund, placid, and somehow comforting in her circular solidarity. She reminded me of an earnest dungbeetle, an insect for which I had great affection. Leslie, pleased at my evident delight, said deprecatingly that he had been forced to make her flat-bottomed, since, for a variety of technical reasons, this was the safest. I said that I liked flat-bottomed boats the best, because it was possible to put jars of specimens on the floor without so much risk of them upsetting. Leslie asked me if I liked the colour scheme, as he had not been too sure about it. Now, in my opinion, the colour scheme was the best thing about it, the final touch that completed the unique craft. Inside she was painted green and white, while her bulging sides were tastefully covered in white, black, and brilliant orange stripes, a combination of colours that struck me as being both artistic and friendly. Leslie then showed me the long, smooth cypress pole he had cut for a mast, but explained that it could not be fitted into position until the boat was launched. Enthusiastically I suggested launching her at once. Leslie, who was a stickler for procedure, said you couldn’t launch a ship without naming her, and had I thought of a name yet? This was a difficult problem, and the whole family were called out to help me solve it. They stood clustered round the boat, which looked like a gigantic flower in their midst, and racked their brains.

‘Why not call it the Jolly Roger? ’ suggested Margo.

I rejected this scornfully; I explained that I wanted a sort of fat name that would go with the boat’s appearance and personality.

‘ Arbuckle ,’ suggested Mother vaguely.

That was no use, either; the boat simply didn’t look like an Arbuckle.

‘Call it the Ark ,’ said Leslie, but I shook my head.

There was another silence while we all stared at the boat. Suddenly I had it, the perfect name: Bootle , that’s what I’d call her.

‘Very nice, dear,’ approved Mother.

‘I was just about to suggest the Bumtrinket ,’ said Larry.

‘Larry, dear!’ Mother reproved. ‘Don’t teach the boy things like that.’

I turned Larry’s suggestion over in my mind; it was certainly an unusual name, but then so was Bootle . They both seemed to conjure up the shape and personality of the boat. After much thought I decided what to do. A pot of black paint was produced and laboriously, in rather trickly capitals, I traced her name along the side: THE BOOTLE-BUMTRINKET. There it was; not only an unusual name, but an aristocratically hyphenated one as well. In order to ease Mother’s mind I had to promise that I would refer to the boat only as the Bootle in conversation with strangers. The matter of the name being settled, we set about the task of launching her. It took the combined efforts of Margo, Peter, Leslie, and Larry to carry the boat down the hill to the jetty, while Mother and I followed behind with the mast and a small bottle of wine with which to do the launching properly. At the end of the jetty the boat-bearers stopped, swaying with exhaustion, and Mother and I struggled with the cork of the wine-bottle.

‘What are you doing? ’ asked Larry irritably. ‘For Heaven’s sake hurry up; I’m not used to being a slipway.’

At last we got the cork from the bottle, and I announced in a clear voice that I christened this ship the Bootle-Bumtrinket . Then I slapped her rotund backside with the bottle, with the unhappy result that half a pint of white wine splashed over Larry’s head.

‘Look out, look out,’ he remonstrated. ‘Which one of us are you supposed to be launching?’

At last they cast the Bootle-Bumtrinket off the jetty with a mighty heave, and she landed on her flat bottom with a report like a cannon, showering sea-water in all directions, and then bobbed steadily and confidently on the ripples. She had the faintest suggestion of a list to starboard, but I generously attributed this to the wine and not to Leslie’s workmanship.

‘Now!’ said Leslie, organizing things. ‘Let’s get the mast in… Margo, you hold her nose… that’s it… Now, Peter, if you’ll get into the stern, Larry and I will hand you the mast… all you have to do is stick it in that socket.’

So, while Margo lay on her tummy holding the nose of the boat, Peter leaped nimbly into the stern and settled himself, with legs apart, to receive the mast which Larry and Leslie were holding.

‘This mast looks a bit long to me, Les,’ said Larry, eyeing it critically.

‘Nonsense! It’ll be fine when it’s in,’ retorted Leslie. ‘Now… are you ready, Peter?’

Peter nodded, braced himself, clasped the mast firmly in both hands, and plunged it into the socket. Then he stood back, dusted his hands, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket , with a speed remarkable for a craft of her circumference, turned turtle. Peter, clad in his one decent suit which he had put on in honour of my birthday, disappeared with scarcely a splash. All that remained on the surface of the water was his hat, the mast, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket ’s bright orange bottom.

‘He’ll drown! He’ll drown!’ screamed Margo, who always tended to look on the dark side in a crisis.

‘Nonsense! It’s not deep enough,’ said Leslie.

‘I told you that mast was too long,’ said Larry unctuously.

‘It isn’t too long,’ Leslie snapped irritably; ‘that fool didn’t set it right.’

‘Don’t you dare call him a fool,’ said Margo.

‘You can’t fit a twenty-foot mast onto a thing like a washtub and expect it to keep upright,’ said Larry.

‘If you’re so damn clever why didn’t you make the boat?’

‘I wasn’t asked to… Besides, you’re supposed to be the expert, though I doubt if they’d employ you on Clydeside.’

‘Very funny. It’s easy enough to criticize… just because that fool—’

‘Don’t you call him a fool… How dare you?’

‘Now, now, don’t argue about it, dears,’ said Mother peaceably.

‘Well, Larry’s so damn patronizing…’