Gerald Durrell: The Corfu Trilogy

As each funeral passed, and the sounds of mourning and the clopping of hooves died away in the distance, Mother became more and more agitated.

‘I’m sure it’s an epidemic,’ she exclaimed at last, peering down nervously into the street.

‘Nonsense, Mother; don’t fuss,’ said Larry airily.

‘But, dear, so many of them… it’s unnatural.’

‘There’s nothing unnatural about dying. People do it all the time.’

‘Yes, but they don’t die like flies unless there’s something wrong.’

‘Perhaps they save ’em up and bury ’em in a bunch,’ suggested Leslie callously.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mother. ‘I’m sure it’s something to do with the drains. It can’t be healthy for people to have those sort of arrangements.’

‘My God!’ said Margo sepulchrally, ‘then I suppose I’ll get it.’

‘No, no, dear; it doesn’t follow,’ said Mother vaguely; ‘it might be something that’s not catching.’

‘I don’t see how you can have an epidemic unless it’s something catching,’ Leslie remarked logically.

‘Anyway,’ said Mother, refusing to be drawn into any medical arguments, ‘I think we ought to find out. Can’t you ring up the health authorities, Larry?’

‘There probably aren’t any health authorities here,’ Larry pointed out, ‘and even if there were, I doubt if they’d tell me.’

‘Well,’ Mother said with determination, ‘there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to move. We must get out of the town. We must find a house in the country at once .’

The next morning we started on our house-hunt, accompanied by Mr Beeler, the hotel guide. He was a fat little man with cringing eyes and sweat-polished jowls. He was quite sprightly when we set off, but then he did not know what was in store for him. No one who has not been house-hunting with my mother can possibly imagine it. We drove around the island in a cloud of dust while Mr Beeler showed us villa after villa in a bewildering selection of sizes, colours, and situations, and Mother shook her head firmly at them all. At last we had contemplated the tenth and final villa on Mr Beeler’s list, and Mother had shaken her head once again. Brokenly Mr Beeler seated himself on the stairs and mopped his face with his handkerchief.

‘Madame Durrell,’ he said at last, ‘I have shown you every villa I know, yet you do not want any. Madame, what is it you require? What is the matter with these villas?’

Mother regarded him with astonishment.

‘Didn’t you notice? ’ she asked. ‘None of them had a bathroom.’

Mr Beeler stared at Mother with bulging eyes.

‘But Madame,’ he wailed in genuine anguish, ‘what for you want a bathroom? Have you not got the sea?’

We returned in silence to the hotel.

By the following morning Mother had decided that we would hire a car and go out house-hunting on our own. She was convinced that somewhere on the island there lurked a villa with a bathroom. We did not share Mother’s belief, and so it was a slightly irritable and argumentative group that she herded down to the taxi rank in the main square. The taxi drivers, perceiving our innocent appearance, scrambled from inside their cars and flocked round us like vultures, each trying to out-shout his compatriots. Their voices grew louder and louder, their eyes flashed, they clutched each other’s arms and ground their teeth at one another, and then they laid hold of us as though they would tear us apart. Actually, we were being treated to the mildest of mild altercations, but we were not used to the Greek temperament, and to us it looked as though we were in danger of our lives.

‘Can’t you do something, Larry?’ Mother squeaked, disentangling herself with difficulty from the grasp of a large driver.

‘Tell them you’ll report them to the British consul,’ suggested Larry, raising his voice above the noise.

‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said Mother breathlessly. ‘Just explain that we don’t understand.’

Margo, simpering, stepped into the breach.

‘We English,’ she yelled at the gesticulating drivers; ‘we no understand Greek.’

‘If that man pushes me again I’ll poke him in the eye,’ said Leslie, his face flushed red.

‘Now, now, dear,’ panted Mother, still struggling with the driver who was propelling her vigorously towards his car; ‘I don’t think they mean any harm.’

At that moment everyone was startled into silence by a voice that rumbled out above the uproar, a deep, rich, vibrant voice, the sort of voice you would expect a volcano to have.

‘Hoy!’ roared the voice. ‘Whys donts yous have someones who can talks your own language?’

Turning, we saw an ancient Dodge parked by the curb, and behind the wheel sat a short, barrel-bodied individual, with hamlike hands and a great, leathery, scowling face surmounted by a jauntily tilted peaked cap. He opened the door of the car, surged out onto the pavement, and waddled across to us. Then he stopped, scowling even more ferociously, and surveyed the group of silent cab drivers.

‘Thems been worrying yous?’ he asked Mother.

‘No, no,’ said Mother untruthfully; ‘it was just that we had difficulty in understanding them.’

‘Yous wants someones who can talks your own language,’ repeated the new arrival; ‘thems bastards… if yous will excuses the words… would swindles their own mothers. Excuses me a minute and I’ll fix thems.’

He turned on the drivers a blast of Greek that almost swept them off their feet. Aggrieved, gesticulating, angry, they were herded back to their cars by this extraordinary man. Having given them a final and, it appeared, derogatory blast of Greek, he turned to us again.

‘Wheres yous wants to gos?’ he asked, almost truculently.

‘Can you take us to look for a villa?’ asked Larry.

‘Sure. I’ll takes yous anywheres. Just yous says.’

‘We are looking,’ said Mother firmly, ‘for a villa with a bathroom. Do you know of one?’

The man brooded like a great, suntanned gargoyle, his black eyebrows twisted into a knot of thoughtfulness.

‘Bathrooms?’ he said. ‘Yous wants a bathrooms?’

‘None of the ones we have seen so far had them,’ said Mother.

‘Oh, I knows a villa with a bathrooms,’ said the man. ‘I was wondering if its was goings to be bigs enough for yous.’

‘Will you take us to look at it, please?’ asked Mother.

‘Sure, I’ll takes yous. Gets into the cars.’

We climbed into the spacious car, and our driver hoisted his bulk behind the steering wheel and engaged his gears with a terrifying sound. We shot through the twisted streets on the outskirts of the town, swerving in and out among the loaded donkeys, the carts, the groups of peasant women, and innumerable dogs, our horn honking a deafening warning. During this our driver seized the opportunity to engage us in conversation. Each time he addressed us he would crane his massive head round to see our reactions, and the car would swoop back and forth across the road like a drunken swallow.

‘Yous English? Thought so… English always wants bathrooms… I gets a bathroom in my house… Spiro’s my name, Spiro Hakiaopulos… they alls calls me Spiro Americano on accounts of I lives in America… Yes, spent eight years in Chicago… That’s where I learnt my goods English… Wents there to makes moneys… Then after eight years I says, “Spiros,” I says, “yous mades enough…” sos I comes backs to Greece… brings this car… best ons the islands… no one else gets a car like this… All the English tourists knows me, theys all asks for me when theys comes here… Theys knows theys wonts be swindled… I likes the English… best kinds of peoples… Honest to Gods, ifs I wasn’t Greek I’d likes to be English.’