Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

We paid our bill, straggled down to the Canal and climbed on board one of the motor launches which my mother, with her masterly command of Italian, insisted on calling a vaporiser. The Italians, being less knowledgeable, called them vaporettos. Venice was a splendid sight as we chugged our way down the Canal, past the great houses, past the rippling reflections of the lights in the water. Even Larry had to admit that it was a slight improvement on the Blackpool illuminations. We were landed eventually at the docks which, like docks everywhere in the world, looked as though they had been designed (in an off moment) by Dante while planning his Inferno. We huddled in puddles of phosphorescent light that made us all look like something out of an early Hollywood horror film and completely destroyed the moonlight, which was by now silver as a spider’s web. Our gloom was not even lightened by the sight of Mother’s diminutive figure attempting to convince three rapacious Venetian porters that we did not need any help with our motley assortment of luggage. It was an argument conducted in basic English.

“We English. We no speak Italian,” she cried in tones of despair, adding a strange flood of words which consisted of Hindustani, Greek, French and German, none of which bore any relation to each other. This was my mother’s way of communication with any foreigner, be they Aborigine or Eskimo, but it failed to do more than momentarily lighten our gloom.

We stood and contemplated those bits of the Canal which led out into our section of the dock Suddenly there slid into view a ship which, even by the most land-lubberish standards, could never have been mistaken for seaworthy. At some time in her career, she had been used as a species of reasonably-sized inshore steamer but even in those days, when she had been virginal and freshly painted, she could not have been beautiful. Now, sadly lacking in any of the trappings that, in that ghastly phosphorescent light, might have made her turn into a proud ship, there was nothing. Fresh paint had not come her way for a number of years and there were large patches of rust, like unpleasant sores and scabs, all along her sides. Like a woman on excessively high-heeled shoes who had had the misfortune to lose one of the heels, she had a heavy list to starboard. Her totally unkempt air was bad enough, but the final indignity was exposed as she turned to come alongside the docks. It was an enormous tattered hole in her bows that would have admitted a pair of Rolls-Royces side by side. This terrible defloration was made worse by the fact that no first-aid of any description, even of the most primitive kind, had been attempted. The plates on her hull curved inwards where they had been crushed, like a gigantic chrysanthemum. Struck dumb, we watched her come alongside; there, above the huge hole in her bows, was her name: the Poseidon .

“Dear God!” breathed Larry.

“She’s appalling,” said Leslie, the more nautical member of our family. “Look at that list.”

“But it’s our boat,” squeaked Margo. “Mother, it’s our boat!”

“Nonsense, dear, it can’t be,” said my mother, readjusting her spectacles and peering hopefully up at the boat as it loomed above us.

“Three days on this,” said Larry. “It will be worse than the Ancient Mariner’s experience, mark my words.”

“I do hope they are going to do something about that hole,” said Mother worriedly, “before we put out to sea.”

“What do you expect them to do? Stuff a blanket into it?” asked Larry.

“But surely the Captain’s noticed it,” said Mother bewildered.

“I shouldn’t think that even a Greek captain could have been oblivious of the fact that they have, quite recently, given something a fairly sharp tap,” said Larry.

“The waves will get in,” moaned Margo. “I don’t want waves in my cabin. My dresses will all be ruined.”

“I should think all the cabins are under water by now,” observed Leslie.

“Our snorkels and flippers will come in handy,” said Larry. “ What a novelty to have to swim down to dinner. How I shall enjoy it all.”

“Well, as soon as we get on board you must go up and have a word with the Captain,” decided Mother. “It’s just possible that he wasn’t on board when it happened, and no one’s told him.”

“Really, Mother, you do annoy me,” said Larry irritably. “What do you expect me to say to the man? ‘Pardon me, Kyrie Capitano, sir, but did you know you’ve got death-watch beetle in your bows?’ ”

“Larry, you always complicate things,” complained Mother. “You know I can’t speak Greek or I’d do it.”

“Tell him I don’t want waves in my cabin,” insisted Margo.

“As we are due to leave tonight, they couldn’t possibly mend it anyway,” observed Leslie.

“Exactly,” said Larry. “But Mother seems to think that I am some sort of reincarnation of Noah.”

“Well, I shall have something to say about it when I get on board,” said Mother belligerently, as we made our way up the gangway.

At the head of the gangway, we were met by a romantic-looking Greek steward (with eyes as soft and melting as black pansies) wearing a crumpled and off-grey white suit, with most of the buttons missing. From his tarnished epaulettes, he appeared to be the Purser, and his smiling demand for passports and tickets was so redolent of garlic that Mother reeled back against the rails, her query about the ship’s bows stifled.

“Do you speak English?” asked Margo, gamely rallying her olfactory nerves more rapidly than Mother.

“Small,” he replied, bowing.

“Well, I don’t want waves in my cabin,” said Margo firmly. “It will ruin my clothes.”

“Everything you want we give,” he answered. “if you want wife, I give you my wife. She . . .”

“No, no,” exclaimed Margo, “the waves . You know . . . water.”

“Every cabeen has having hot and cold running showers,” he said with dignity. “Also there is bath or nightcloob having dancing and wine and water.”

“I do wish you’d stop laughing and help us, Larry,” said Mother, covering her nose with her handkerchief to repel the odour of garlic, which was so strong that one got the impression it was like a shimmering cloud round the Purser’s head.

Larry pulled himself together and in fluent Greek (which delighted the Purser) elicited, in rapid succession, the information that the ship was not sinking, that there were no waves in the cabins, and that the Captain knew all about the accident as he had been responsible for it. Wisely, Larry did not pass on this piece of information to Mother. While Mother and Margo were taken in a friendly and aromatic manner down to the cabins by the Purser, the rest of us then followed his instructions as to how to get to the bar.

This, when we located it, made us all speechless. It looked like the mahogany-lined lounge of one of the drearier London clubs. Great chocolate-coloured leather chairs and couches cluttered the place, interspersed with formidable fumed-oak tables. Dotted about were huge Benares brass bowls in which sprouted tattered, dusty palm trees. There was, in the midst of this funereal splendour, a minute parquet floor for dancing, flanked on one side by the small bar containing a virulent assortment of drinks, and on the other by a small raised dais, surrounded by a veritable forest of potted palms. In the midst of this, enshrined like flies in amber, were three lugubrious musicians in frock coats, celluloid dickies, and cummerbunds that would have seemed dated in about 1890. One played on an ancient upright piano and tuba, one played a violin with much professional posturing, and the third doubled up on the drums and trombone. As we entered, this incredible trio was playing “The Roses of Picardy” to an entirely empty room.