Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

“I can’t bear it,” said Larry. “This is not a ship, it’s a sort of floating Cadena Café from Bournemouth . It’ll drive us all mad.”

At Larry’s words, the band stopped playing and the leader’s face lit up in a gold-toothed smile of welcome. He gestured at his two colleagues with his bow and they also bowed and smiled. We three could do no less, and so we swept them a courtly bow before proceeding to the bar. The band launched itself with ever greater frenzy into “The Roses of Picardy” now that it had an audience.

“Please give me,” Larry asked the barman, a small wizened man in a dirty apron, “in one of the largest glasses you possess, an ouzo that will, I hope, paralyse me.”

The barman’s walnut face lit up at the sound of a foreigner who could not only speak Greek but was rich enough to drink so large an ouzo.

“ Amessos , kyrie,” he said. “Will you have it with water or ice?”

“One lump of ice,” Larry stipulated. “Just enough to blanch its cheeks.”

“I’m sorry, kyrie, we have no ice,” said the barman, apologetically.

Larry sighed a deep and long-suffering sigh.

“It is only in Greece,” he said to us in English, “that one has this sort of conversation. It gives one the feeling that one is in such close touch with Lewis Carroll that the barman might be the Cheshire cat in disguise.”

“Water, kyrie?” asked the barman, sensing from Larry’s tone that he was not receiving approbation but rather censure.

“Water,” said Larry, in Greek, “a tiny amount.”

The barman went to the massive bottle of ouzo, as clear as gin, poured out a desperate measure, and then went to the little sink and squirted water in from the tap. Instantly, the ouzo turned the colour of watered milk and we could smell the aniseed from where we were standing.

“God, that’s a strong one,” said Leslie. “Let’s have the same.” I agreed. The glasses were set before us. We raised them in toast:

“Well, here’s to the Marie Celeste and all the fools who sail in her,” said Larry, and took a great mouthful of ouzo. The next minute he spat it out in a flurry that would have done credit to a dying whale, and reeled back against the bar, clasping his throat, his eyes watering.

“Ahhh!” he roared. “The bloody fool’s put bloody hot water in it!”

Nurtured as we had been among the Greeks, we were inured to the strange behaviour they indulged in, but for a Greek to put boiling water in his national drink, was, we felt, carrying eccentricity too far.

“Why did you put hot water in the ouzo?” asked Leslie belligerently.

“Because we have no cold,” said the barman, surprised that Leslie should not have worked out this simple problem in logic for himself. “That is why we have no ice. This is the maiden voyage, kyrie, and that is why we have nothing but hot water in the bar.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Larry brokenly. “I just don’t believe it. A maiden voyage and the ship’s got a bloody great hole in her bows, a Palm Court Orchestra of septuagenarians, and nothing but hot water in the bar.”

At that moment Mother appeared, looking distinctly flustered.

“Larry, I want to speak to you,” she panted.

Larry looked at her. “What have you found? An iceberg in the bunk?” he asked.

“Well, there’s a cockroach in the cabin. Margo threw a bottle of Eau de Cologne at it, and it broke, and now the whole place smells like a hairdresser’s. I don’t think it killed the cockroach either,” said Mother.

“Well,” rejoined Larry. “I’m delighted you have been having fun. Have a red-hot ouzo to round off the start of this riotous voyage.”

“No, I didn’t come here to drink.”

“You surely didn’t come to tell me about an Eau de Cologne-drenched cockroach?” asked Larry in surprise. “Your conversation is getting worse than the Greeks for eccentricity.”

“No, it’s Margo,” Mother hissed. “She went to the you-know-where and she’s got the slot jammed.”

“The ‘you-know-where’? Where’s that?”

“The lavatory, of course. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” said Larry. “I’m not a plumber.”

“Can’t she climb out?” enquired Leslie.

“No,” said Mother. “She’s tried, but the hole at the top is much too small, and so is the hole at the bottom.”

“But at least there are holes,” Larry pointed out. “You need air in a Greek lavatory in my experience and we can feed her through them during the voyage.”

“Don’t be so stupid, Larry,” said Mother. “You’ve got to do something.”

“Try putting another coin in the slot thing,” suggested Leslie. “That sometimes does it.”

“I did,” said Mother. “I put a lira in but it still wouldn’t work.”

“That’s because it’s a Greek lavatory and will only accept drachmas,” Larry pointed out. “Why didn’t you try a pound note? The rate of exchange is in its favour.”

“Well, I want you to get a stewardess to help her out,” said Mother. “She’s been in there ages. She can’t stay all night. Supposing she banged her elbow and fainted? You know she’s always doing that.” Mother tended to look on the black side of things.

“In my experience of Greek lavatories,” said Larry judiciously, “you generally faint immediately upon entering without the need to bang your elbow.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake do something!” cried Mother. “Don’t just stand there drinking.”

Led by her, we eventually found the lavatory in question. Leslie, striding in masterfully, rattled the door.

“Me stuck. Me English,” shouted Margo from behind the door. “You find stewardess.”

“I know that, you fool. It’s me, Leslie,” he growled.

“Go out at once. It’s a ladies’ lavatory,” said Margo.

“Do you want to get out or not? If you do, shut up!” retorted Leslie belligerently.

He fiddled ineffectually with the door, swearing under his breath.

“I do wish you wouldn’t use bad language, dear,” protested Mother. “Remember, you are in the ladies’.”

“There should be a little knob thing on the inside which you pull,” said Leslie. “A sort of bolt thing.”

“I’ve pulled everything,” rejoined Margo indignantly. “What do you think I’ve been doing in here for the last hour?”

“Well, pull it again,” suggested Leslie, “while I push.”

“All right, I’m pulling,” said Margo.

Leslie humped his powerful shoulders and threw himself at the door.

“It’s like a Pearl White serial,” said Larry, sipping the ouzo that he had thoughtfully brought with him and which had by now cooled down. “If you’re not careful we’ll have another hole in the hull.”

“It’s no good,” said Leslie panting. “It’s too tough. We’ll have to get a steward or something.”

He went off in search of someone with mechanical knowledge.

“I do wish you’d hurry,” said Margo, plaintively. “It’s terribly oppressive in here.”

“Don’t faint,” cried Mother in alarm. “Try to regulate your breathing.”

“And don’t bang your elbows,” Larry added.

“Oh, Larry, you do make me cross,” said Mother. “Why can’t you be sensible?”

“Well, shall I go and get her a hot ouzo? We can slide it in under the door,” he suggested helpfully.

He was saved from Mother’s ire by the arrival of Leslie, bringing in tow a small and irritated puppet-like man with a lugubrious face.

“Always the ladies is doing this,” he said to Mother, shrugging expressive shoulders. “Always they are getting catched. I show you. It is easy. Why woman not learn?”