Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

“But, Madam,” implored the Captain, “you’re my guest. You must dance.” So masterful was he that, to our astonishment, Mother — like a rabbit hypnotized by a stoat — rose and allowed him to escort her out on to the dance floor.

“But Mother hasn’t danced since Dad died in nineteen-twenty-six,” gasped Margo.

“She’s gone mad,” said Leslie gloomily. “She’ll have a heart attack and we’ll have to bury her at sea.”

Being buried at sea had been her last choice anyway. Mother spent much of her time choosing places in which to be buried.

“She’s more likely to he trampled to death, with those three enormous women about,” observed Larry. “Fatal to attempt to get on to that floor. It’s like entering an arena full of rogue elephants.”

Indeed, the floor was so packed that the couples were gyrating at an almost glacial slowness. The Captain, using Mother as a battering ram and aided by his broad shoulders, had managed to fight his way into the solid wall of flesh and he and Mother were now embedded in its depth. Mother, owing to her diminutive size, was impossible to see but we caught an occasional glimpse of the Captain’s face and the twinkling of his teeth. Finally, the last liquid notes of “Tales from the Vienna Woods” crashed out and the gasping, panting, sweating dancers left the floor. Mother, crumpled and purple in the face, was half carried back to our table by the beaming Captain. She sank into her chair, too breathless to speak, and fanned herself with her handkerchief.

“The waltz is a very good dance,” said the Captain, gulping his ouzo. “And it is not only a good dance but it is good exercise also for all the muscles.”

He seemed oblivious to the fact that Mother, gasping, and with congested face, looked like someone who has just returned from a near fatal encounter with King Kong.

It was Margo’s turn next but being younger and lighter on her feet and more agile than Mother, she survived rather better.

When she returned, Mother offered effusive thanks to the Captain for his hospitality but said she thought she ought to be getting to bed as she had had rather a busy day. She’d actually spent the day wrapped in blankets in a rickety deck chair complaining about the cold wind and the choppy sea. So she made a graceful retreat and was escorted to her cabin by Leslie. By the time he returned, Margo, using all her undoubted charms, had persuaded the Captain that, although Viennese waltzes were all right as a toning-up exercise, no Greek ship worthy of its name (and certainly not one on her maiden voyage) could ignore the cultural inheritance of Greece as embodied in her national dances. The Captain was much struck by both Margo and the scheme and, before we had orientated ourselves to the idea, had taken control of Greece ’s national heritage. He strode over to the septuagenarian band and demanded of them in loud tones what fine old cultural Greek tunes they knew. Tunes of the peasantry, of the people. Tunes that brought out both the wonders of Greece and the valour of her people, the poignancy of her history and the beauty of her architecture, the subtlety of her mythology, the sparkling brilliance that had led the world, tunes that would conjure up Plato, Socrates, the glory of Greeks past, present and future.

The violinist said they only knew one such tune and that was “Never on Sunday”.

The Captain came as near to having an apoplectic fit as anyone I’ve ever seen. With veins throbbing in his temple he turned, threw out his arms, and addressed the assembled company. Had anyone, he asked, rhetorically, ever heard of a Greek band that did not know a Greek tune?

“Ummm,” said the crowd, as crowds do when presented with something they don’t quite understand.

“Send for the Chief Officer!” roared the Captain. “Where is Yanni Papadopoulos?”

So threatening did he look, standing in the middle of the dance floor with clenched fist and bared golden teeth, that the waiters went scurrying in search of the Chief Officer, who presently appeared, looking faintly alarmed, presumably fearing that another hole in the bows had appeared.

“Papadopoulos,” snarled the Captain, “are not the songs of Greece one of the best things about our cultural heritage?”

“Of course,” said Papadopoulos, relaxing slightly, since it did not seem from the conversation that his job was in jeopardy. It was obvious, he thought, that he was on safe ground. Even an unreasonable Captain could not blame him for the brilliance or otherwise of the musical heritage of Greece .

“Why you never tell me, then,” said the Captain, glowering fiendishly, “that this band don’t know any Greek tunes, eh?”

“They do,” said the Chief Officer.

“They don’t,” said the Captain.

“But I’ve heard them,” protested the Chief Officer.

“Play what?” asked the Captain, ominously.

“ ‘Never on Sunday’,” said the Chief Officer triumphantly.

The word “excreta” in Greek is a splendid one for spitting out to soothe overwrought nerves.

“ Scata! Scata! ” shouted the Captain. “My spittle on ‘Never on Sunday’! I ask you for the cultural heritage of Greece and you give me a song about a ‘ poutana ’. Is that culture? Is that necessary?”

“ Poutanas are necessary for the crew,” the Chief Officer pointed out. “For me, I’m a happily married man . . .”

“I don’t want to know about poutanas ,” snarled the Captain. “Is there no one on this ship who can play any real Greek songs?”

“Well,” said the Chief Officer, “there’s the electrician, Taki, he has a bouzouki — and I think one of the engineers has a guitar.”

“Bring them!” roared the Captain. “Bring everyone who can play Greek songs.”

“Suppose they all play,” said the Chief Officer, who was of a literal turn of mind. “Who’d run the ship?”

“Get them, idiot,” snarled the Captain, and with such vehemence that the Chief Officer blanched and faded away.

Having shown his authority, the Captain’s good humour returned. Beaming twinklingly, he returned to the table and ordered more drinks. Presently, from the bowels of the ship, struggled a motley gang, most of them half dressed, carrying between them three bouzoukis, a flute and two guitars. There was even a man with a harmonica. The Captain was delighted, but dismissed the man with the harmonica, to the poor man’s obvious chagrin.

“But, Captain,” he protested, “I play well.”

“It is not a Greek instrument,” said the Captain austerely. “It is Italian. Do you think that when we built the Acropolis we went around playing Italian instruments?”

“But I play well,” the man persisted. “I can play ‘Never on Sunday’.”

Luckily the Purser hurried him out of the night-cloob before his Captain could get at him.

The rest of the evening went splendidly, with only minor accidents to mar the general air of cultural jollification. Leslie ricked his back while trying to leap in the air and slap his heels in the approved style during a strenuous Hosapiko , and Larry sprained his ankle by slipping on some melon pips that somebody had thoughtfully deposited on the dance floor. The same, but more painful, fate overtook the barman who, endeavouring to dance with what he thought was a glass of water on his head, slipped and crashed backwards. The glass tipped over his face. Unfortunately it did not contain water but ouzo — a liquid similar in appearance but more virulent in effect when splashed in your eyes. His sight was saved by the presence of mind of the Purser who seized a siphon of soda and directed into each eye of the unfortunate barman, a jet of such strength that it almost undid its therapeutic work by blowing out his eyeballs. He was led off to his cabin, moaning, and the dance continued. The dance went on until dawn, when, like a candle, it dwindled and flickered and went out. We crept tiredly to our beds as the sky was turning from opal to blue and the sea was striped with scarves of mist.