Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

“Now,” said Mactavish, taking charge of operations, “the best thing to do is to get onto the jetty and stroll about a bit admiring things as though, er..., as though..., er...”

“As though we were tourists?” Larry suggested innocently.

“I was about to say ,” said Mactavish, “as though we had no evil intentions.”

“Dear God,” said Larry, “one would think this were Darkest Africa.”

“Larry dear, do be quiet,” said Mother. “I’m sure Mr Mactavish knows best. After all, it is my birthday.”

So we all trooped out onto the jetty and stood for some moments pointing in different directions and carrying on ridiculous conversations with each other.

“Now,” said Mactavish, “forward into the village.”

Leaving Spiro and Taki in charge of the boat, we trooped off The village consisted of some thirty or forty houses, all tiny, all whitewashed and gleaming, some of them with trellises of green vine, some shrouded in great cloaks of purple bougainvillea.

With a brisk, military walk Mactavish led the way, looking like an intrepid member of the French Foreign Legion about to take over an unruly Arab settlement, and we all ambled after him.

There was only one main street in the village, if it could be dignified with that term, and off it ran several tiny alleyways, between the houses. As we passed one of these alleyways, a woman wearing a yashmak rushed out of a house, gave us a horrified glance and disappeared down one of the alleyways at a hurried pace. I had never seen a yashmak before so I was vastly intrigued.

“What was she wearing on her face?” I inquired. “Is she bandaged up for some reason?”

“No, no,” said Theodore, “she’s wearing a yashmak. If they are very Turkish in this village you will find that most of the women wear them to cover their faces.”

“I always thought it was a bloody silly idea,” said Larry. “If a woman’s got a pretty face, she should show it. The only thing I would advocate is a gag if she talked too much.”

The street led inevitably to what was the hub of any village — a tiny square dominated by an enormous and very beautiful umbrella pine, and in its shade a series of tables and chairs. Here was the tiny cafe which, as in an English village, acts as the local pub, dispensing not only foodstuffs but wine and gossip and slander in equal quantities. It was very curious to me that as our cavalcade had passed through the village we had seen not a living soul except the woman. If it had been one of the remoter villages of Corfu, we would have been surrounded by now by a vociferous and fascinated crowd of inhabitants. However, when we came to the village square we saw — or at least we thought we saw — the reason, for most of the little tables under the pine tree were occupied by men, nearly all of whom were elderly, with impressive long white beards, wearing baggy pants, tattered shirts and charukias , the curious shoes with upturned toes made of bright red leather with the toes decorated with highly coloured pompons. They greeted the arrival our group in the square with complete silence. They just sat and looked at us.

“Aha!” said Mactavish in a loud and cheerful voice. “ Kalimera, kalimera, kalimera !”

If it had been a Greek village there would have been an immediate response to his cry of “good morning”. Some would have said, “We are glad you have come”, others, “ herete ”, which means “be happy”, and others have responded with “ kalimera ”. Instead, there was no reaction except that one or two of the older men bowed their heads gravely in our direction.

“Well, now,” said Mactavish, “let’s get a few tables together, have a few drinks, and once they get used to us I’m sure they’ll rally round.”

“I don’t think I really like it,” said Mother nervously. “Don’t you think that Margo, Leonora and I ought to go back to the boat? I mean, it’s all men and no women.”

“Oh, nonsense, Mother. Stop fussing,” said Larry.

“I think,” said Theodore glancing up lovingly at the huge umbrella pine above us, “I think that’s why that small boy ran into the village. In some of these remoter villages, you know, the women have to stay in the houses. And so he went, you know, to warn them. Also the sight of, um... um... er... er..., the er... ladies of the party must be er..., you know, um..., unusual to them.”

As Mother, Margo and Leonora were not wearing yashmaks and Margo and Leonora were wearing rather dashing cotton dresses which left a considerable portion of their anatomy visible, this was not altogether surprising.

We joined several tables together, placed chairs around them and sat down. The groups of men who, contrary to Larry’s expectations, outnumbered us by about five to one, continued to sit there silently, gazing at us as impassively as lizards. After waiting for some considerable time, making rather haphazard conversation, an elderly man shuffled out of the cafe and came with obvious reluctance to our table. By now thoroughly unnerved, we all said kalimera in unison with various degrees of nervous enthusiasm. To our infinite relief, he said kalimera back.

“Now,” said Mactavish, who rather prided himself on his command of the Greek language, “we’ll have a little drink and some meze .”

It should have been unnecessary for him to add the request for meze , for this includes things like olives, nuts, hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, cheese, and similar little plates which, if you ordered a drink in Greece, were automatically served. But it seemed in the circumstances that even an ex-Mountie was beginning to become slightly rattled.

“Yes,” said the cafe owner gravely. “What drink would you require?”

Mactavish took orders for our drinks, which ranged from ginger beer through ouzo to brandy and retsina. He translated all this to the cafe owner.

“I have only red wine,” said the cafe owner.

An exasperated look spread across Mactavish’s face.

“Well then, bring us red wine and meze ,” he said.

The cafe owner gave a little nod of his head and shuffled back to the interior of his gloomy little shop.

“Now why,” asked Mactavish, “should he ask me what we wanted to drink when he knew perfectly well he’d only got red wine?”

Mactavish loved the Greeks dearly and had taken the trouble to speak their language quite fluently, but he could never quite come to terms with their logic.

“It’s perfectly obvious,” said Larry exasperatedly. “He wanted to find out what you wanted to drink and if you had wanted red wine he would have gone and got it for you.”

“Yes, but why not just say he’s got red wine in the first place and nothing else?”

“But that doesn’t happen in Greece,” Larry explained patiently. “It’s too logical.”

We sat at our table with all those inimical eyes fastened on us, feeling rather like a group of actors on a stage who had all simultaneously forgotten their lines. Presently the old man shuffled out, carrying a battered tin tray which bore upon it, for some obscure reason, a portrait of Queen Victoria. He placed on the table some little plates of small black olives and chunks of white goat cheese, two flagons of wine and a series of glasses that, although clean, were so chipped and worn with use that they looked as though they could give you any one of a number of interesting diseases.

“They do not seem very happy in dis village,” observed Max.

“What do you expect?” said Donald. “ Lot of damned foreigners. Now, if this were England it would be different.”

“Yes,” said Larry sarcastically, “we’d be doing Morris dancing with them in next to no time.”