Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

All was bustle and activity when we dragged ourselves out of bed and assembled, as we had been told, in the main saloon.

Presently, the Purser materialized, and bowed to Mother and Margo. The Captain’s compliments, he said, and would we all like to go on to the bridge and see the ship dock? Mother consented to attend this great moment with such graciousness that you would have thought that they had asked her to launch the ship. After a hurried and typical Greek breakfast (cold toast, cold bacon and eggs, served on iced plates, accompanied by lukewarm tea which turned out to be coffee in a teapot for some mysterious reason), we trooped up on to the bridge.

The Captain, looking slightly jowly but with no loss of charm after his hard night, greeted us with great joy, presented Mother and Margo with carnations, showed us round the wheelhouse with pride, and then took us out on what Larry insisted on calling the quarter-deck. Front here, we had a perfect view over both the bows and the stern of the vessel. The Chief Officer stood by the winch round which the anchor chain was coiled like a strange rusty necklace, and near hint stood at least three of the sailors who had made up last night’s band. They all waved and blew kisses to Margo.

“Margo, dear I do wish you wouldn’t be so familiar with those sailors,” complained Mother.

“Oh, Mother, don’t be so old-fashioned,” said Margo, blowing lavish kisses back. “After all, I’ve got an ex-husband and two children.”

“It’s by blowing kisses at strange sailors that you get ex-husbands and children,” remarked Mother, grimly.

“Now,” said the Captain, his teeth glittering in the sun, “you come, Miss Margo, and I show you our radar. Radar so we can avoid rocks, collisions, catastrophes at sea. If Ulysses had had this, he would have travelled farther, eh? Beyond the portals of Hercules, eh? Then we Greeks would have discovered America . . . Come.”

He led Margo into the wheelhouse and was busily showing her the radar. The ship was now pointing straight at the docks, travelling at the speed of an elderly man on a bicycle. The Chief Officer, his eyes fixed on the bridge like a retriever poised to fetch in the first grouse of the season, waited anxiously for instructions. Inside the bridge-house, the Captain was explaining to Margo how, with radar, the Greeks could have discovered Australia, as well as America . Leslie began to get worried, for we were now quite close to the docks.

“I say, Captain,” he called. “Shouldn’t we drop anchor?”

The Captain turned from beaming into Margo’s face and fixed Leslie with a frigid stare.

“Please not to worry, Mr Durrell,” he said. “Everything is under control.”

Then he turned and saw the dock looming ahead like an implacable cement iceberg.

“Mother of God help me!” he roared in Greek, and bounded out of the wheelhouse.

“Papadopoulos!” he screamed. “Let go the anchor!”

This was the signal the Chief Officer had been waiting for. There was a burst of activity, and a roar and clatter as the chain was pulled by the heavy anchor, the splash as the anchor hit the sea, and the rattle as the chain continued running out. The ship went inexorably on its way. More and more chain rattled out, and still the ship slid on. It was obvious that the anchor had been released too late to act in its normal capacity as a brake. The Captain, ready for any emergency as a good Captain should be, leapt into the wheelhouse, signalled full astern, and brought the wheel hard over, pushing the helmsman out of the way with great violence. Alas, his brilliant summation of the situation, his rapid thinking, his magnificent manoeuvre, could not save us.

With her bow still swinging round, the Poseidon hit the docks with a tremendous crash. At the speed we were travelling, I thought that we would only feel the merest shudder. I was wrong. It felt as though we had struck a mine. The entire family fell in a heap. The three fat ladies, who had been descending a companionway, were flung down it like an avalanche of bolsters. In fact, everyone, including the Captain, fell down. Larry received a nasty cut on the forehead, Mother bruised her ribs, Margo only laddered her stockings. The Captain with great agility, regained his feet, did various technical things at the wheel, signalled the engine room, and then — his face black with rage — strode out on to the bridge.

“Papadopoulos!” he roared at the poor Chief Officer, who was getting shakily to his feet and mopping blood from his nose, “you son of a poutana , you imbecile, you donkey! You illegitimate son of a ditch-delivered Turkish cretin! Why didn’t you lower the anchor?”

“But Captain,” began the Chief Officer, his voice muffled behind a blood-stained handkerchief, “you never told me to.”

“Am I expected to do everything around here,” bellowed the Captain. “Steer the ship, run the engines, produce the band which can play the Greek songs? Mother of God!” He clapped his face in his hands.

All around arose the cacophony of Greeks in a SITUATION. With this noise, and the Captain’s tragic figure, it seemed rather like a scene from the battle of Trafalgar.

“Well,” said Larry, mopping blood from his eyes, “this was a splendid idea, Mother. I do congratulate you. I think, however, I will fly back. That is, if we can get ashore alive.”

Eventually, the walking wounded were allowed ashore and we straggled down the gangway. We could now see that the Poseidon had another, almost identical, hole in her bows, on the opposite side to the previous one.

“Well, at least now she matches,” said Leslie gloomily.

“Oh, look!” said Margo, as we stood on the docks. “There’s that poor old band.”

She waved, and the three old gentlemen bowed. We saw that the violinist had a nasty cut on his forehead and the tuba player a piece of sticking-plaster across the bridge of his nose. They returned our bows and, obviously interpreting the appearance of the family as a sign of support that would do something to restore their sense of dignity which had been so sorely undermined by their ignominious dismissal of the night before, they turned in unison, glanced up at the bridge, with looks of great defiance raised tuba, trombone and violin, and started to play.

The strains of “Never on Sunday” floated down to us.

Venice is one of the most beautiful of European cities and one that I had visited frequently but never stayed in. I had always been on my way to somewhere else and so had never had the time for proper exploration. So, one red-hot summer when I had been working hard and was feeling tired and in need of a change, I decided that I would go and spend a week in Venice and relax and get to know her. I felt that a calming holiday in such a setting was exactly what I needed. I have rarely regretted a decision more; if I had known what was going to happen to me I would have fled to New York or Buenos Aires or Singapore rather than set foot in that most elegant of cities.

I drove through the beautiful and incomparable France, through orderly Switzerland, over the high passes where there were still ugly piles of dirty grey snow at the edge of the roads and then down into Italy and towards my destination. The weather remained perfect until I reached the causeway that leads into Venice . Here the sky, with miraculous suddenness, turned from blue to black, became veined with fern-like threads of intense blue and white lightning, and then disgorged a torrent of rain of such magnitude that it made windscreen wipers futile and brought a great chain of traffic to a standstill. Hundreds of hysterically twitching Italians sat there, nose to tail, immobilized by the downpour, trying to ease their frustration by blowing their horns cacophonously, and screaming abuse at each other above the roar of the rain.