As the days passed she proceeded to add to the roof over the tunnel and finally constructed a silken roof above ground. I watched this architectural achievement for some considerable time and then, as I could see nothing, I grew impatient. With the aid of a scalpel and a long darning needle I carefully opened up the silken room. To my astonishment I found that it was surrounded by cells in which all the young spiders sat, while in the central hall lay the corpse of their mother. It was a macabre, yet touching sight; the babies all sitting round the mortal remains of their mother, in a sort of spiders’ wake. When the babies hatched, however, I was forced to let them all go. Providing food for some eighty minute spiders was a problem in catering which even I, enthusiastic though I was, could not solve.
Among the numerous friends that Larry saw fit to inflict us with was a strange pair of painters called Lumis Bean and Harry Bunny. They were both American and deeply devoted to each other, so much so that within twenty-four hours they were known privately to the family as Lumy Lover and Harry Honey. They were young, very good looking, with the fluid boneless grace of movement that you expect from coloured people but rarely get in Europeans. They wore perhaps a shade too many gold bangles and a soupçon too much scent and hair cream, but they were nice and, what was unusual in the painters who came to stay, hard-working. Like so many Americans, they were possessed of a charming naïveté and earnestness and these qualities, as far as Leslie was concerned at any rate, made them ideal subjects for practical jokes. I used to participate in these and then relate the results to Theodore, who used to get as much innocent pleasure as Leslie and I did out of the result. Every Thursday I had to report progress and I sometimes got the feeling that Theodore looked forward to the jokes with more interest than he did the news of my menagerie.
Leslie had a genius for practical jokes and the child-like innocence of our two guests inspired him to new heights. It was shortly after their arrival that he got them to congratulate Spiro most prettily on his final success in taking out Turkish naturalization papers. Spiro, who, like most Greeks, considered the Turks to be slightly more malevolent than Satan himself and who had spent several years fighting them, exploded like a volcano. Fortunately, Mother was near at hand and moved swiftly between the white-faced protesting, bewildered Lumy and Harry and Spiro’s barrel-shaped, muscular bulk. She looked not unlike a diminutive Victorian missionary facing a charging rhino.
‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells,’ Spiro roared, his gargoyle features purple with rage, his ham-like hands clenched. ‘Lets me pokes them one.’
‘Now, now, Spiro,’ said Mother, ‘I’m sure it’s all a mistake. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’
‘They calls me a bastard Turks!’ roared Spiro. ‘I’m Greeks. I’m no bastard Turks.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ said Mother soothingly, ‘I’m sure it was just a mistake.’
‘Mistakes!’ bellowed Spiro, his plurals coming thick and fast with rage. ‘Mistakes! I’m nots goings to be called a bastards Turks by these bloody fairies, if you’ll excuse my language, Mrs Durrells.’
It was some considerable time before Mother could calm Spiro and get a coherent story out of the terrified Lumy Lover and Harry Honey. The episode gave her a severe headache and she was very cross with Leslie.
Some time later Mother had to move them out of the bedroom we had given them because it was going to be decorated. She put them temporarily into one of our large, gloomy attics. This gave Leslie the opportunity of telling them the story of the headless bell-ringer of Kontokali who died in the attic. He was the fiend who in 1604, or thereabouts, was official executioner and torturer to Corfu. First he would torture his victims and then he would ring his bell before they were finally beheaded. Getting slightly fed up with him, the villagers of Kontokali broke into the villa one night and beheaded him. Now, as a prelude to seeing his ghost, headless and with a gory stump, you would hear him frantically ringing his bell.
Having convinced our earnest couple of the authenticity of this fable by getting it vouched for by Theodore, Leslie borrowed fifty-two alarm clocks from a friendly clock-maker in town, prised up two floor boards in the attic, and placed the clocks, all set to go off at three in the morning, carefully between the joists.
The effect of fifty-two alarm clocks all going off simultaneously was most gratifying. Not only did Lumy and Harry vacate the attic with all speed, uttering cries of terror, but in their haste they tripped each other up and, clasped in each other’s arms, fell heavily down the attic stairs. The resulting turmoil woke the whole house and it was some time before we could convince them that it was a joke and soothe them with brandy. Mother, together with our guests, once again had a severe headache next day and would hardly talk to Leslie at all.
The affair of the invisible flamingoes came about one day quite casually as we were sitting having tea on the veranda. Theodore had asked our pair of Americans how their work was progressing.
‘Darling Theo,’ said Harry Honey, ‘we’re getting on divinely, simple divinely, aren’t we, lover?’
‘We sure are,’ said Lumy Lover, ‘we sure are. The light here is fantastic, simply fantastic. It’s as though the sun were closer to the earth somehow, you know.’
‘It sure does seem that way,’ Harry Honey agreed. ‘It seems just like, as Lumy says, the sun is right down low, beaming straight at little old us.’
‘I said that to you this morning, Harry Honey, didn’t I?’ said Lumy Lover.
‘You did, Lumy, you did. Right up there by that little barn, do you remember, you said to me…’
‘Have another cup of tea,’ Mother interrupted, for she knew from experience that these post-mortems to prove the togetherness of these two could go on indefinitely.
The conversation drifted on into the realms of art and I scarcely listened until suddenly my attention was riveted by Lumy Lover saying:
‘Flamingoes! Ooh, Harry Honey, flamingoes! My favourite birds. Where, Les, where?’
‘Oh, over there,’ said Leslie, giving a wave that embraced Corfu, Albania, and the better half of Greece. ‘Great flocks of them.’
Theodore, I could see, was holding his breath, as was I, in case Mother, Margo, or Larry should say anything to upset this outrageous lie.
‘Flamingoes?’ said Mother interestedly. ‘I didn’t know there were any flamingoes here.’
‘Yes,’ said Leslie solemnly, ‘hundreds of them.’
‘Did you know there were flamingoes, Theodore?’ asked Mother.
‘I… er… you know… caught a glimpse of them down on Lake Hakiopoulos,’ said Theodore, not deviating from the truth but omitting to mention that this had been three years previously and the only time flamingoes had ever visited Corfu. I had a handful of pink feathers to commemorate it.
‘Jee-hovah!’ said Lumy Lover. ‘Could we catch a glimpse of them, Les, dear? D’you suppose we could sneak up on them?’
‘Sure,’ said Leslie airily, ‘easiest thing in the world. They migrate over the same route every day.’
The following morning Leslie came into my room carrying what looked like a strange form of trumpet made out of a cow’s horn. I asked him what it was and he grinned.
‘It’s a flamingo decoy,’ he said with satisfaction.
I was deeply interested and said I had never heard of a flamingo decoy.
‘Neither have I,’ Leslie admitted. ‘It’s an old cow’s horn powder container, for muzzle-loaders, you know. But the end’s broken off so you can blow on it.’
By way of illustration, he raised the pointed end of the cow’s horn to his lips and blew. The horn produced a long, sonorous sound somewhere between a foghorn and a raspberry, with very vibrant overtones. I listened critically and said that it did not sound a bit like a flamingo.
‘Yes, but I bet Lumy Lover and Harry Honey don’t know that,’ said Leslie. ‘Now all I need is to borrow your flamingo feathers.’
I was somewhat reluctant to part with such rare specimens from my collection until
Leslie explained why he wanted them and promised that they would come to no harm.
At ten o’clock Lumy and Harry appeared, having been dressed by Leslie for flamingo hunting. Each wore a large straw hat and gumboots, for, as Leslie explained, we might have to follow the flamingoes into the swamps. Lumy and Harry were flushed and excited at the prospect of this adventure and their enthusiasm when Leslie demonstrated the flamingo decoy knew no bounds. They blew such resounding blasts on it that the dogs went mad and howled and barked and Larry, furious, leaned out of his bedroom window and said that if we were all going to carry on like a meet of the bloody Quorn hunt he was going to move.
‘And you’re old enough to know better!’ was his parting shot as he slammed the window, addressed to Mother who had just joined us to see what the noise was all about.
We eventually got our bold hunters into the field and walked them about two miles, by which time their enthusiasm for flamingo hunting was on the wane. Then we scrambled them up to the top of an almost inaccessible hillock, stationed them inside a bramble bush and told them to keep calling to attract the flamingoes. For half an hour they blew on the horn in turns with great dedication, but their wind started to give out. Towards the end the noise they were making was beginning to sound more like the despairing cry of a mortally wounded bull elephant than anything in the bird line.
Then it was my turn. Panting and excited, I rushed up the hillock and told our hunters that their efforts had not been in vain. The flamingoes had indeed responded but, unfortunately, they had settled in a valley below a hill half a mile to the east. If they hurried there, they would find Leslie waiting. I was lost in admiration at their American tenacity. Thumping along in their ill-fitting gumboots, they galloped off to the farther hill, pausing periodically as per my instructions to blow gaspingly on the flamingo decoy. When, in an ocean of sweat, they reached the top of the hill, they found Leslie. He said that if they remained there and continued to blow on the decoy he would make his way around the valley and drive the flamingoes up to them. He gave them his gun and game bag so that, as he explained, he could stalk more easily. Then he faded away.
It was at this point that our favourite policeman, Filimona Kontakosa entered the act. Filimona was without doubt the fattest and most somnambulistic of all the Corfu policemen; he had been in the force for thirty-odd years and owed his lack of promotion to the fact that he had never made an arrest. He had explained to us at great length that he was, in fact, physically incapable of doing so; the mere thought of being harsh to a criminal would fill his pansy-dark eyes with tears, and on feast days the slightest sign of altercation among the wine-happy villagers and you could see him waddling resolutely in the opposite direction. He preferred to lead a gentle life and every fortnight or so he would pay us a visit to admire Leslie’s gun collection (for which we had no permits) and bring gifts of smuggled tobacco to Larry, flowers to Mother and Margo, and sugared almonds to me. He had, in his youth, been a deck hand on a cargo boat and had acquired a tenuous command of the English language, and this, combined with the fact that all Corfiotes adore practical jokes, made him perfect for our purposes. He rose to the occasion magnificently.
He waddled to the top of the hill, resplendent in his uniform, every kilo of him looking the personification of law and order and a credit to the force. He found our hunters blowing in a desultory fashion on their decoy. Benignly, he asked them what they were doing. Responding to kindness like two puppies, Lumy Lover and Harry Honey were only too delighted to compliment Filimona on his truncated English and explain matters to him. To the Americans’ consternation, he suddenly changed from a kindly, twinkling, fat policeman to the cold, brutal personification of officialdom.
‘You no know flamongoes you no shoot?’ he snapped at them. ‘Is forbidden to shoot flamongoes!’
‘But, darling, we’re not shooting them,’ said Lumy Lover falteringly. ‘We only want to see them.’
‘Yes. Gee, you got it all wrong,’ said Harry Honey ingratiatingly. ‘We don’ wanna shoot the little fellas; we just wanna see ’em. No shoot, see?’
‘If you no shoot, why you have gun?’ asked Filimona.
‘Oh, that,’ said Lumy Lover, reddening. ‘That belongs to a friend of ours… er… amigo… savvy?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Harry Honey, ‘friend of ours. Les Durrell. Maybe you know him? He’s well known around these parts.’
Filimona stared at them coldly and implacably.
‘I no know this friend,’ he said at last. ‘Please to open bag.’
‘Well, now, steady on, see here,’ protested Lumy Lover. ‘This isn’t our bag, officer.’
‘No, no,’ said Harry Honey. ‘It belongs to this friend of ours, Durrell.’
‘You have gun. You have bag,’ Filimona pointed out. ‘Please to open bag.’
‘Well, I must say I think you’re exceeding your duty just a tiny bit, officer, I really do,’ said Lumy Lover, while Harry Honey nodded eager assent. ‘But if it’ll make you feel any easier, well then, I don’t suppose there’s much harm in letting you have a little peek.’
He wrestled briefly with the straps of the bag, opened it, and handed it to Filimona. The policeman peered into it, gave a triumphant grunt, and pulled from the interior the plucked and headless body of a chicken to which were adhering numerous bright pink feathers. Both the stalwart flamingo hunters went white with emotion.
‘But see here now… er… wait a moment…’ Lumy Lover began, and his voice trailed away before Filimona’s accusing look.
‘Is forbidden shoot flamongo, I tell you,’ said Filimona. ‘I arrest you both.’
He herded them, alarmed and protesting, down to the village police station and kept them there for several hours, during which they nearly went mad writing out statements and getting so muddled through nerves and frustration that they kept contradicting each other’s stories. To add to their alarm Leslie and I had assembled a crowd of our village friends who shouted and roared in the terrifying way Greeks have, periodically bellowing ‘Flamongo!’ and throwing the odd stone at the police station.
Eventually Filimona allowed his captives to send a note to Larry, who stormed down into the village, told Filimona it would be more to the point if he caught some evil-doers rather than indulged in practical jokes, and brought our two flamingo hunters back to the bosom of the family.
‘This has got to stop!’ said Larry angrily. ‘I will not have my guests subjected to ill-bred japes perpetrated by a pair of half-witted brothers.’
I must say Lumy Lover and Harry Honey were wonderful.
‘Don’t be angry, Larry darling,’ said Lumy Lover. ‘It’s just high spirits. It’s just as much our fault as Les’.’
‘Yes,’ said Harry Honey. ‘Lumy’s right. It’s our fault for being so gullible, silly old us.’
To show that there was no ill-feeling, they even went down to the town and brought back a crate of champagne to have a party and they went down to the village themselves to fetch Filimona up to the house for it. They sat on the terrace, one on each side of the policeman, toasting him coyly in champagne while Filimona, in a surprisingly good tenor, sang love songs that brightened his great dark eyes with tears.
‘You know,’ Lumy Lover confided to Larry at the height of the party, ‘he’d be really very good looking if he went on a diet. But don’t tell Harry I said so, darling, will you?’
3
The Garden of the Gods
Behold, the Heavens do open, the Gods look down and the unnatural scene they laugh at.
– SHAKESPEARE, Coriolanus
The island lay bent like a misshapen bow, its two tips nearly touching the Greek and Albanian coastlines, and the blue waters of the Ionian Sea were caught in its curve like a blue lake. Outside our villa was a wide flagstoned veranda roofed with an ancient vine from which the great green clusters of grapes hung like chandeliers; from here one looked out over the sunken garden full of tangerine trees and the silver-green olive groves to the
sea, blue and smooth as a flower petal.
In fine weather we always had our meals on the veranda at the rickety marble-topped table and it was here that all the major family decisions were taken. It was at breakfast that there was liable to be most acrimony and dissension, for it was then that letters, if any, were read and plans for the day made, remade, and discarded; it was during these early morning sessions that the family fortunes were organized, albeit haphazardly, so that a simple request for an omelet might end in a three-month camping expedition to a remote beach, as had happened on one occasion. So when we assembled in the brittle morning light we were never quite sure how the day was going to get on its feet. To begin with, one had to step warily for tempers were fragile but, gradually, under the influence of tea, coffee, toast, home-made marmalade, eggs and bowls of fruit, a lessening of the early morning tension would be felt and a more benign atmosphere begin to permeate the veranda.
The morning that heralded the arrival of the Count among us was no different from any other. We had all reached the final cup of coffee stage and each was busy with his own thoughts; Margo, my sister, her blonde hair done up in a bandana, was musing over two pattern books, humming gaily but tunelessly to herself; Leslie had finished his coffee and produced a small automatic pistol from his pocket, dismantled it, and was absent-mindedly cleaning it with his handkerchief; my mother was perusing the pages of a cookery book in pursuit of a recipe for lunch, her lips moving soundlessly, occasionally breaking off to stare into space while she tried to remember if she had the necessary ingredients; Larry, clad in a multi-coloured dressing gown, was eating cherries with one hand and reading his mail with the other.