Gerald Durrell - The Corfu Trilogy

‘But I can’t, dear; I told her in the last letter what a big villa we had.’

‘She’s probably forgotten,’ said Leslie hopefully.

‘She hasn’t. She mentions it here… where is it?… oh, yes, here you are: “As you now seem able to afford such an extensive establishment, I am sure, Louie dear, that you would not begrudge a small corner to an old woman who has not much longer to live.” There you are! What on earth can we do? ’

‘Write and tell her we’ve got an epidemic of smallpox raging out here, and send her a photograph of Margo’s acne,’ suggested Larry.

‘Don’t be silly, dear. Besides, I told her how healthy it is here.’

‘Really, Mother, you are impossible!’ exclaimed Larry angrily. ‘I was looking forward to a nice quiet summer’s work, with just a few select friends, and now we’re going to be invaded by that evil old camel, smelling of mothballs and singing hymns in the lavatory.’

‘Really, dear, you do exaggerate . And I don’t know why you have to bring lavatories into it – I’ve never heard her sing hymns anywhere.’

‘She does nothing else but sing hymns… “Lead, Kindly Light,” while everyone queues on the landing.’

‘Well, anyway, we’ve got to think of a good excuse. I can’t write and tell her we don’t want her because she sings hymns.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t be unreasonable, dear; after all, she is a relation.’

‘What on earth’s that got to do with it? Why should we have to fawn all over the old hag because she’s a relation, when the really sensible thing to do would be to burn her at the stake.’

‘She’s not as bad as that,’ protested Mother half-heartedly.

‘My dear mother, of all the foul relatives with which we are cluttered, she is definitely the worst. Why you keep in touch which her I cannot, for the life of me, imagine.’

‘Well, I’ve got to answer her letters , haven’t I?’

‘Why? Just write “Gone away” across them and send them back.’

‘I couldn’t do that, dear; they’d recognize my handwriting,’ said Mother vaguely; ‘besides, I’ve opened this now.’

‘Can’t one of us write and say you’re ill?’ suggested Margo.

‘Yes, we’ll say the doctors have given up hope,’ said Leslie.

‘ I’ll write the letter,’ said Larry with relish. ‘I’ll get one of those lovely black-edged envelopes… that will add an air of verisimilitude to the whole thing.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ said Mother firmly. ‘If you did that she’d come straight out to nurse me. You know what she is.’

‘Why keep in touch with them? That’s what I want to know,’ asked Larry despairingly. ‘What satisfaction does it give you? They’re all either fossilized or mental.’

‘Indeed, they’re not mental,’ said Mother indignantly.

‘Nonsense, Mother… Look at Aunt Bertha, keeping flocks of imaginary cats… and there’s Great-Uncle Patrick, who wanders about nude and tells complete strangers how he killed whales with a penknife… They’re all bats.’

‘Well, they’re queer ; but they’re all very old, and so they’re bound to be. But they’re not mental ,’ explained Mother, adding candidly, ‘Anyway, not enough to be put away.’

‘Well, if we’re going to be invaded by relations, there’s only one thing to do,’ said Larry resignedly.

‘What’s that?’ inquired Mother, peering over her spectacles expectantly.

‘We must move, of course.’

‘Move? Move where?’ asked Mother, bewildered.

‘Move to a smaller villa. Then you can write to all these zombies and tell them we haven’t any room.’

‘But don’t be stupid, Larry. We can’t keep moving. We moved here in order to cope with your friends.’

‘Well, now we’ll have to move to cope with the relations.’

‘But we can’t keep rushing to and fro about the island. People will think we’ve gone mad.’

‘They’ll think we’re even madder if that old harpy turns up. Honestly, Mother, I couldn’t stand it if she came. I should probably borrow one of Leslie’s guns and blow a hole in her corsets.’

‘Larry! I do wish you wouldn’t say things like that in front of Gerry.’

‘I’m just warning you.’

There was a pause, while Mother polished her spectacles feverishly.

‘But it seems so… so… eccentric to keep changing villas like that, dear,’ she said at last.

‘There’s nothing eccentric about it,’ said Larry, surprised; ‘it’s a perfectly logical thing to do.’

‘Of course it is,’ agreed Leslie; ‘it’s a sort of self-defence, anyway.’

‘Do be sensible, Mother,’ said Margo; ‘after all, a change is as good as a feast.’

So, bearing that novel proverb in mind, we moved.

Perched on a hill-top among olive trees, the new villa, white as snow, had a broad veranda running along one side, which was hung with a thick pelmet of grape-vine. In front of the house was a pocket-handkerchief-sized garden, neatly walled, which was a solid tangle of wild flowers. The whole garden was overshadowed by a large magnolia tree, the glossy dark green leaves of which cast a deep shadow. The rutted driveway wound away from the house, down the hillside through olive groves, vineyards, and orchards, before reaching the road. We had liked the villa the moment Spiro had shown it to us. It stood, decrepit but immensely elegant, among the drunken olives, and looked rather like an eighteenth-century exquisite reclining among a congregation of charladies. Its charms had been greatly enhanced, from my point of view, by the discovery of a bat in one of the rooms, clinging upside down to a shutter and chittering with dark malevolence. I had hoped that he would continue to spend the day in the house, but as soon as we moved in he decided that the place was getting overcrowded and departed to some peaceful olive trunk. I regretted his decision, but, having many other things to occupy me, I soon forgot about him.

It was at the white villa that I got on really intimate terms with the mantids; up till then I had seen them, occasionally, prowling through the myrtles, but I had never taken very much notice of them. Now they forced me to take notice of them, for the hill-top on which the villa stood contained hundreds, and most of them were much larger than any I had seen before. They squatted disdainfully on the olives, among the myrtles, on the smooth green magnolia leaves, and at night they would converge on the house whirring into the lamplight with their green wings churning like the wheels of ancient paddle-steamers, to alight on the tables or chairs and stalk mincingly about, turning their heads from side to side in search of prey, regarding us fixedly from bulbous eyes in chinless faces. I had never realized before that mantids could grow so large, for some of the specimens that visited us were fully four and a half inches long; these monsters feared nothing, and would, without hesitation, attack something as big as or bigger than themselves. These insects seemed to consider that the house was their property, and the walls and ceilings their legitimate hunting grounds. But the geckos that lived in the cracks in the garden wall also considered the house their hunting ground, and so the mantids and the geckos waged a constant war against each other. Most of the battles were mere skirmishes between individual members of the two forms of animals, but as they were generally well matched the fights rarely came to much. Occasionally, however, there would be a battle really worth watching. I was lucky enough to have a grandstand view of such a fight, for it took place above, on, and in my bed.