Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

He went to the door, fiddled with it for a moment, and it flew open.

“Thank God,” said Mother, as Margo appeared in the doorway. But before she could emerge into the bosom of her family, the little man held up a peremptory hand.

“Back!” he commanded, masterfully. “I teaches you.” Before we could do anything intelligent, he had pushed Margo back into the lavatory and slammed the door shut.

“What’s he doing?” squeaked Mother in alarm. “What’s he doing, that little man? Larry, do something.”

“It’s all right, Mother,” shouted Margo, “he’s showing me how to do it.”

“How to do what?” asked Mother, alarmed.

There was a long and ominous silence, eventually broken by a flood of Greek oaths.

“Margo, you come out of there at once,” ordered Mother, considerably alarmed.

“I can’t,” wailed Margo. “He’s locked us both in.”

“Disgusting man,” cried Mother, taking command. “Hit him dear, hit him. Larry, you go for the Captain.”

“I mean, he can’t open the door either,” said Margo.

“Please to find Purser,” wailed the little man. “Please finding Purser for opening door.”

“Well, where do we find him?” asked Leslie.

“It’s too ridiculous,” said Mother. “Are you all right? Stand well away from him, dear.”

“You find Purser in Purser’s office, first deck,” yelled the imprisoned man.

The ensuing scene, to anyone who does not know the Greek temperament and their strange ability to change a perfectly normal situation into something so complicated that it leaves the Anglo Saxon mind unhinged, may find what followed incredible. We, knowing the Greeks, did also. Leslie returned with the Purser, who not only added to the redolence of the Ladies’ with his garlic, but in quick succession complimented Larry on drinking ouzo and Leslie on his Greek accent, soothed Mother with a large carnation plucked from behind his ear, and then turned such a blast of invective on the poor little man locked up with my sister that one expected the solid steel door to melt. He rushed at it and pounded with his fists and kicked it several times. Then he turned to Mother and bowed.

“Madam,” he said, smiling, “no alarm. Your daughter is safe with a virgin.”

This remark confused Mother completely. She turned to me for explanation, as Larry, knowing this sort of fracas of old, had repaired to the bar to get drinks. I said I thought he meant she would be as safe as a virgin.

“He can’t mean that ,” she said suspiciously. “She’s got two children.”

I began to lose my bearings slightly as one always seemed to do when confused by the Greeks. I had just taken an unwisely deep breath to embark on an elaboration for my Mother, when I was mercifully stopped by the arrival of three fellow passengers, all large, big-bosomed, thick-legged peasant ladies, with heavy moustaches and black bombazine dresses three times too small, smelling of garlic, some sickly scent, and perspiration in equal quantities. They elbowed their way between Mother and myself and entered the lavatory. Seeing the Purser still dancing with rage and pounding on the door, they paused like massive war-horses that have scented battle.

Any other nationality would have complained about the Purser’s presence in this shrine to womanhood, let alone mine as a foreigner’s, but this is where the Greeks so delightfully differ from other races. They knew it was a SITUATION with capital letters, and this above all is what Greeks love. The presence of three men (if you include the invisible one closeted with Margo) in their lavatory was as nothing compared to the SITUATION.

Their eyes glittered, their moustaches wiffled and, a solid wall of eager flesh, they enveloped the Purser and demanded to know what was afoot. As usual in a SITUATION, everyone spoke at once. The temperature in the Ladies’ went up to something like seventy degrees and the volume of sound made one’s head spin, like playing the noisier bits of the Ride of the Valkyries in an iron barrel.

Having grasped the elements of the SITUATION from the harassed Purser, the three powerful ladies, each built on the lines of a professional wrestler, swept him out of the way with scarlet-tipped spade-shaped hands and proceeded to lift up their skirts. With deafening cries of “Oopah, oopah” they charged the lavatory door. Their combined weights must have amounted to some sixty stone of flesh and bone, but the door was stalwart and the three ladies fell in a tangle of limbs on the floor. They got to their feet with some difficulty and then argued among themselves as to the best way to break down a lavatory door.

One of them, the least heavy of the three, demonstrated her idea — an ideal method — against one of the other lavatory doors. This, unfortunately, was not on the latch and so she crashed through at surprising speed and received a nasty contusion upon her thigh by crashing full tilt into the lavatory pan. Although it had not proved her point, she was very good-natured about it, especially as at that moment Larry arrived accompanied by the barman carrying a tray of drinks.

For a time we all sipped ouzo companionably, toasted each other, and asked if we were all married and how many children we had. Fresh interest in the SITUATION was aroused by the arrival of Leslie with what appeared to be the ship’s carpenter for whom he had gone in search. Everyone now forgot their drinks and expounded their theories to the carpenter, all of which he disagreed with, with the air of one who knows. He then, like a magician, rolled up his sleeves and approached the door. Silence fell. He produced a minute screwdriver from his pocket and inserted it into a minute hole. There was a click and a gasp of admiration, and the door flew open. He stood back and spread his hands like a conjuror.

The first little man and Margo emerged like survivors from the Black Hole of Calcutta. The poor little man was seized by the Purser and pounded and pummelled and shaken, while being roundly abused. The carpenter, at this stage, took over. After all, he had opened the door. We listened to him with respect as he expounded the cunning mechanism of locks in general and this one in particular. He drained an ouzo and waxed poetic on locks, which were his hobby it appeared. With his little screwdriver or a hairpin or a bent nail or, indeed, a piece of plastic, he could open any lock. He took the first little man and the Purser by the wrist and led them into the lavatory like lambs to the slaughter. Before we could stop them, he had slammed the door shut. My family and the three fat ladies waited with bated breath. There were strange scrapings and clickings, then a long pause. This was followed by a torrent of vituperation from the Purser and the Steward, mixed with confused excuses and explanations from the lock expert. As we furtively crept away, the three ladies were preparing to charge the door again.

So ended scene one of the maiden voyage.

I draw a veil over the increasing irritability of my family that evening because, for some strange Greek reason of protocol, dinner could not be served until the Purser had been released. This took a considerable time since the constant assaults to which the door had been subjected had irretrievably damaged the lock and they had to wait until the Bosun could be retrieved, from some carousal ashore, to saw through the hinges. We eventually gave up waiting, went ashore, had a quick snack, and then retired to our respective cabins in a morbid state of mind.

The following morning, we went down to the dining-room and tried to partake of breakfast. The years had mercifully obliterated our memories of the average Greek’s approach to cuisine. There are, of course, places in Greece where one can eat well, but they have to be searched for and are as rare as unicorns. Greece provides most of the ingredients for good cooking but the inhabitants are generally so busy arguing that they have no time left to pursue the effete paths of haute cuisine .