‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Leslie, do go and put some clothes on,’ said Margo. ‘These are friends of Larry’s.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Leslie dismally, ‘not more.’
He turned and made his way back upstairs.
‘Drinks!’ said Max, rapturously seizing Margo in his arms and waltzing her round to the accompaniment of almost hysterical barks on the part of Roger.
‘I do wish you would try to be more quiet,’ said Larry. ‘Max, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Damned bad form,’ said Donald.
‘Remember my mother,’ said Larry, since this reference had obviously struck a chord in Max’s soul.
Immediately he ceased waltzing with the breathless Margo and came to a halt.
‘Vere is your Muzzer?’ he inquired. ‘De lady is sick… take me to her dat I may secure her.’
‘Succour,’ said Donald.
‘I’m here,’ said Mother in a slightly nasal tone of voice from the doorway. ‘What is going on?’
She was clad in her nightie and wearing, for reasons of her cold, a voluminous shawl over her shoulders. She carried under one arm the drooping, panting, apathetic figure of Dodo, her Dandie Dinmont terrier.
‘Why, you’re just in time, Mother,’ said Larry. ‘I want you to meet Donald and Max.’
With the first sign of animation that he had shown, Donald rose to his feet, marched swiftly across the room to Mother, seized her hand, and gave a slight bow over it.
‘Enchanted,’ he said. ‘Terribly sorry about the disturbance. My friend, you know. Continental.’
‘How nice to see you,’ said Mother, summoning up all her resources.
At her entrance, Max had thrown his arms wide and was now gazing upon her with all the devoutness of a Crusader catching his first sight of Jerusalem.
‘Muzzer!’ he intoned dramatically. ‘You are de Muzzer!’
‘How do you do,’ said Mother uncertainly.
‘You are,’ Max asked, getting his facts straight, ‘de sick Muzzer?’
‘Oh, it’s just a bit of a cold,’ said Mother deprecatingly.
‘Ve have voked you,’ said Max, clasping his breast, his eyes brimming with tears.
‘Awoken or woken,’ said Donald sotto voce.
‘Come,’ said Max and put his long arms round Mother and ushered her to a chair near the fire, pressing her into it with the utmost delicacy. He took off his coat and spread it gently about her knees. Then he squatted by her side, took her hand and peered earnestly into her face.
‘Vhat,’ he inquired, ‘does Muzzer vant?’
‘An uninterrupted night’s sleep,’ said Leslie, who had just returned, more conventionally garbed in a pair of pyjama trousers and sandals.
‘Max,’ said Donald sternly, ‘stop monopolizing the conversation. Remember what we have come for.’
‘Of course,’ said Max delightedly. ‘Ve have vunderful news, Larry. Donald has decided to become an author.’
‘Had to,’ murmured Donald modestly. ‘Seeing all you chaps living in the lap of luxury. Royalties pouring in. Felt I must try my hand at it.’
‘That’s jolly good,’ said Larry, with a certain lack of enthusiasm.
‘I’ve just completed the first chapter,’ said Donald, ‘and so we came out hot-foot, as it were, so that I could read it to you.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Larry, horrified. ‘No, Donald, really. My critical faculties are completely dehydrated at half past two in the morning. Can’t you leave it here and I’ll read it tomorrow?’
‘It’s short,’ said Donald, taking no notice of Larry and producing a small sheet of paper from his pocket, ‘but I think you will find the style interesting.’
Larry gave an exasperated sigh, and we all sat back and listened expectantly while Donald cleared his throat.
‘Suddenly,’ he began in a deep vibrant voice, ‘suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, there he was and then suddenly, there she was, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly. And suddenly he looked at her, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, and she suddenly looked at him, suddenly. She suddenly opened her arms, suddenly, suddenly, and he opened his arms, suddenly. Then suddenly they came together and, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, he could feel the warmth of her body and suddenly, suddenly she could feel the warmth of his mouth on hers as they suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly fell on the couch together.’
There was a long pause while we waited for Donald to go on. He gulped once or twice as though overcome with emotion at his own writing, folded the piece of paper carefully and put it back in his pocket.
‘What do you think?’ he inquired of Larry.
‘Well, it’s a bit short,’ said Larry cautiously.
‘Ah, but what do you think of the style?’ said Donald.
‘Well, it’s, um, interesting,’ said Larry. ‘I think you’ll find it’s been done before, though.’
‘Couldn’t have been,’ explained Donald. ‘You see, I only thought of it tonight.’
‘I don’t think he ought to have any more to drink,’ said Leslie loudly.
‘Hush, dear,’ said Mother. ‘What do you intend to call it, Donald?’
‘I thought,’ said Donald owlishly, ‘I thought I would call it The Suddenly Book.’
‘A very trenchant title,’ said Larry. ‘I feel, however, that your main characters could be padded out a little bit, in depth, as it were, before you get them all tangled up on the sofa.’
‘Yes,’ said Donald. ‘You could well be right.’
‘Well, that is interesting,’ said Mother, sneezing violently. ‘And now I think we really all ought to have a cup of tea.’
‘I vill make de tea for you, Muzzer,’ said Max, leaping to his feet and starting all the dogs barking again.
‘I will help you,’ said Donald.
‘Margo, dear, you had better go with them and just make sure they find everything,’ said Mother.
When the three of them had left the room, Mother looked at Larry.
‘And these are the people,’ she said coldly, ‘you say are not eccentric.’
‘Well, Donald’s not eccentric,’ said Larry. ‘He’s just a bit high.’
‘And suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly he was drunk,’ intoned Leslie, putting some more logs on the fire and kicking it into some semblance of a blaze.
‘They are both of them very good chaps,’ said Larry. ‘Donald’s already laid half of Corfu by its ears.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Mother.
‘Well, you know how the Corfiotes love to worm every hidden secret out of you,’ said Larry. ‘They’re all convinced that since he appears to have private means and is so incredibly British that he must have a terribly posh background. So he has been amusing himself by telling them all different stories. He has so far, I have been assured, been the elder son of a duke, the cousin of the Bishop of London, and the illegitimate son of Lord Chesterfield. He has been educated at Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, and, to my delight, this morning Mrs Papanopoulos assured me that he had assured her that his formal education had been undertaken at Girton.’
Just at that moment Margo came back into the drawing-room, looking slightly distraught.
‘I think you had better come and do something with them, Larry,’ she said. ‘Max has just lighted the kitchen fire with a five-pound note and Donald has disappeared and keeps shouting “Cooee” at us and we can’t see where he’s gone.’
All of us trooped down to the gigantic stone-flagged kitchen where a kettle was starting to sing on one of the charcoal fires and Max was contemplating, woefully, the charred remains of a five-pound note which he held in one hand.
‘Really, Max,’ said Mother, ‘what a silly thing to do.’
Max beamed at her.
‘No expense spared for Muzzer,’ he said, and then, pressing the remains of the fiver into her hand, ‘Keep it, Muzzer, as a souvenir.’
‘Cooee,’ came a doleful, echoing cry.
‘T
hat’s Donald,’ said Max proudly.
‘Where is he?’ said Mother.
‘I don’t know,’ said Max. ‘Ven he vants to hide, he vants to hide.’
Leslie strode to the back door and flung it open.
‘Donald,’ he called, ‘are you there?’
‘Cooee,’ came a quavering cry from Donald with subtle, echoing overtones.
‘Christ!’ said Leslie. ‘The silly bastard’s fallen down the well.’
In the garden at the back of the kitchen there was a large well some fifty feet deep with a thick, round, iron pipe running right down the shaft. From the echoing qualities of Donald’s voice, we were quite sure that Leslie’s guess was right. Carrying a lamp, we made our way hurriedly up to the edge of the well and peered, in a circle, down into its dark depths. Half-way down the pipe was Donald, his arms and legs entwined firmly round it. He gazed up at us.
‘Cooee,’ he said coyly.
‘Donald, don’t be a bloody fool,’ said Larry exasperatedly. ‘Come up out of there. If you fall into that water you’ll drown. Not that I worry about that, but you’ll pollute our entire water supply.’
‘Shan’t,’ said Donald.
‘Donald,’ said Max, ‘ve vant you. Come. It is cold down dere. Come and have some tea with Muzzer and ve vill talk more about your book.’
‘Do you insist?’ asked Donald.
‘Yes, yes, we insist,’ said Larry impatiently.
Slowly and laboriously Donald climbed up the pipe, while we watched him breathlessly. When he was within easy reach, Max and the entire family leaned over the well, grabbed various portions of his anatomy, and hauled him to safety. Then we escorted our guests back into the house and plied them with vast quantities of hot tea until they seemed as sober as they were likely to be without having slept.
‘I think you had better go home now,’ said Larry firmly, ‘and we’ll meet you in town tomorrow.’
We escorted them out onto the veranda. The cab stood, with the horse drooping forlornly between the shafts. The cab driver was nowhere to be seen.
‘Did they have a cab driver?’ Larry asked of me.
I said that, quite honestly, I had been so captivated by the sight of their candelabras that I had not noticed.
‘I vill drive,’ said Max, ‘and Donald shall sing to me.’
Donald arranged himself carefully in the back of the cab with the candelabras and Max took to the driving seat. He cracked the whip in a most professional manner and the horse aroused itself from its comatose condition, gave a sigh, and then shambled off down the drive.
‘Good night,’ shouted Max, waving his whip.
We waited until they had disappeared from sight behind the olive trees and then trooped back inside the house and with sighs of heartfelt relief, closed the front door.
‘Really, Larry, you shouldn’t invite people at this hour of night,’ said Mother.
‘I didn’t invite them at this hour of the night,’ said Larry, annoyed. ‘They just came. I invited them for drinks.’
Just at that moment there was a thunderous knocking on the front door.
‘Well, I’m off,’ said Mother and scuttled upstairs with considerable alacrity.
Larry opened the front door and there stood the distraught figure of the cab driver.
‘Where’s my carrochino?’ he shouted.
‘Where were you?’ retorted Larry. ‘The kyrios have taken it.’
‘They have stolen my carrochino?’ shouted the man.
‘Of course they haven’t stolen it, foolish one,’ said Larry, now tried beyond endurance. ‘Because you weren’t waiting here they took it to get back into town. If you run quickly you can catch them up.’
Imploring St Spiridion to help him, the man ran off through the olive trees and down towards the road.
Determined not to miss the last act in this drama, I ran to a vantage point where I got a clear view of the entrance to our drive and a stretch of moonlit roadway which led into town. The cab had just left the drive and arrived on the road at a brisk walk, Donald and Max singing happily together. At that moment the cab driver appeared through the olives, and screaming imprecations, he started to run after them.
Max, startled, looked over his shoulder.
‘Volves, Donald,’ he shouted. ‘Hold tight!’ He proceeded to belabour the behind of the unfortunate horse who, startled, broke into a gallop. But it was the sort of gallop that only a Corfu cab horse could achieve. It was just sufficiently fast to keep the cab owner running at full stretch some ten paces behind the cab. He was shouting and imploring and almost weeping with rage. Max, determined to save Donald, at all costs, was belabouring the horse unmercifully while Donald leaned over the back of the cab and shouted ‘Bang!’ at intervals, and thus they disappeared out of my sight along the Corfu road.
The following morning, at breakfast, all of us felt slightly jaded, and Mother was lecturing Larry severely for allowing people to turn up at two o’clock in the morning for drinks. Just at that moment, Spiro’s car drove up to the front of the house and he waddled onto the veranda where we were sitting, clasping in his arms an enormous, flat brown-paper parcel.
‘This is for yous, Mrs Durrells,’ he said.
‘For me?’ said Mother, adjusting her spectacles. ‘What on earth can it be?’
She unwrapped the brown paper cautiously and there inside, as bright as a rainbow, was the biggest box of chocolates I had ever seen in my life. Pinned to it was a little white card on which had been written in a rather shaky hand, ‘With apologies for last night. Donald and Max.’
7
Owls and Aristocracy
Now winter was upon us. Everything was redolent with the smoke of olive-wood fires. The shutters creaked and slapped the sides of the house as the wind caught them, and the birds and leaves were tumbled across a dark lowering sky. The brown mountains of the mainland wore tattered caps of snow and the rain filled the eroded, rocky valleys, turning them into foaming torrents that fled eagerly to the sea carrying mud and debris with them. Once they reached the sea they spread like yellow veins through the blue water, and the surface was dotted with squill bulbs, logs and twisted branches, dead beetles and butterflies, clumps of brown grass and splintered canes. Storms would be brewed in among the whitened spikes of the Albanian mountains and then tumble across to us, great black piles of cumulus, spitting a stinging rain, with sheet lightning blooming and dying like yellow ferns across the sky.
It was at the beginning of the winter that I received a letter.
Dear Gerald Durrell,
I understand from our mutual friend, Dr Stephanides, that you are a keen naturalist and possess a number of pets. I was wondering, therefore, if you would care to have a white owl which my workmen found in an old shed they were demolishing? He has, unfortunately, a broken wing, but is otherwise in good health and feeding well.
If you would like him, I suggest you come to lunch on Friday and take him with you when you return home. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know. A quarter to one or one o’clock would be suitable.
Yours sincerely,
Countess Mavrodaki
This letter excited me for two reasons. Firstly, because I had always wanted a barn owl, for that was what it obviously was, and secondly, because the whole of Corfu society had been trying unavailingly for years to get to know the Countess. She was the recluse par excellence. Immensely wealthy, she lived in a gigantic, rambling, Venetian villa deep in the country and never entertained or saw anybody except the workmen on her vast estate. Her acquaintance with Theodore was due only to the fact that he was her medical adviser. The Countess was reputed to possess a large and valuable library and for this reason Larry had been most anxious to try to get himself invited to her villa, but without success.
‘Dear God,’ he said bitterly when I showed him my invitation. ‘Here I’ve been trying for months to get that old harpy to let me see her books and she invites you to lunch – there’s no justice in the world.?
??
I said that after I had lunched with the Countess, maybe I could ask her if he could see her books.
‘After she’s had lunch with you I shouldn’t think she would be willing to show me a copy of The Times, let alone her library,’ said Larry witheringly.
However, in spite of my brother’s low opinion of my social graces, I was determined to put in a good word for him if I saw a suitable opportunity. It was, I felt, an important, even solemn occasion, and so I dressed with care. My shirt and shorts were carefully laundered and I had prevailed upon Mother to buy me a new pair of sandals and a new straw hat. I rode on Sally – who had a new blanket as a saddle to honour the occasion – for the Countess’s estate was some distance away.
The day was dark and the ground mushy under foot. It looked as though we would have a storm, but I hoped this would not be until after I had arrived, for the rain would spoil the crisp whiteness of my shirt. As we jogged along through the olives, the occasional woodcock zooming up from the myrtles in front of us, I became increasingly nervous. I discovered that I was ill-prepared for this occasion. To begin with, I had forgotten to bring my four-legged chicken in spirits. I had felt sure that the Countess would want to see this and in any case I felt it would provide a subject of conversation that would help us in the initial awkward stages of our meeting. Secondly, I had forgotten to consult anybody on the correct way to address a countess. ‘Your Majesty’ would surely be too formal, I thought, especially as she was giving me an owl? Perhaps ‘Highness’ would be better – or maybe just a simple ‘Mam’?
Puzzling over the intricacies of protocol, I had left Sally to her own devices and so she had promptly fallen into a donkey-doze. Of all the beasts of burden, only the donkey seems capable of falling asleep while still moving. The result was that she ambled close to the ditch at the side of the road, suddenly stumbled and lurched and I, deep in thought, fell off her back into six inches of mud and water. Sally stared down at me with an expression of accusing astonishment that she always wore when she knew she was in the wrong. I was so furious, I could have strangled her. My new sandals oozed, my shorts and shirt – so crisp, so clean, so well-behaved-looking a moment before – were now bespattered with mud and bits of decaying water-weed. I could have wept with rage and frustration. We were too far from home to retrace our footsteps so that I could change; there was nothing for it but to go on, damp and miserable, convinced now that it did not matter how I addressed the Countess. She would, I felt sure, take one look at my gypsy-like condition and order me home. Not only would I lose my owl, but any chance I had of getting Larry in to see her library. I was a fool, I thought bitterly. I should have walked instead of trusting myself to this hopeless creature, who was now trotting along at a brisk pace, her ears pricked like furry arum lilies.