Читать книгу Fauna and Family - Gerald Durrell - Страница 10

Behold! the heavens do ope,

The gods look down, and this 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 verandah 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 verandah at the rickety marble-topped table, and it was here that all the major family decisions were taken.

It was at breakfast time that there was liable to be the most acrimony and dissension, for it was then that letters, if any, were read and plans for the day were 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 omelette 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, one was 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, homemade marmalade, eggs and bowls of fruit, a lessening of the early-morning tension would be felt and a more benign atmosphere would begin to permeate the verandah.

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 absentmindedly 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 for the recipe she was reading; Larry, my elder brother, clad in a multicolored dressing gown, was eating cherries with one hand and reading his mail with the other.

I was occupied feeding my latest acquisition, a young jackdaw, who was such a singularly slow eater I had christened him Gladstone, having been told that that statesman always chewed everything several hundred times. While waiting for him to digest each mouthful, I stared down the hill at the beckoning sea and planned my day. Should I make a trip to the high olive groves in the center of the island to try and catch the agamas that lived on the glittering gypsum cliffs, where they basked in the sun, tantalizing me by wagging their yellow heads at me and puffing out their orange throats? Or should I go down to the small lake in the valley behind the villa, where the dragonfly larvae should be hatching? Or should I perhaps – happiest thought of all – take my new boat on a major sea trip?

In spring the almost enclosed sheet of water that separated Corfu from the mainland would be a pale and delicate blue, and then as spring settled into hot, crackling summer, it seemed to stain the still sea a deeper and more unreal color, which in some lights seemed like the violet blue of a rainbow, a blue that faded to a rich jade green in the shallows. In the evening when the sun sank, it was as if it were drawing a brush across the sea’s surface, streaking and blurring it to purples smudged with gold, silver, tangerine and pale pink. To look at this placid, land-locked sea in summer when it seemed so mild-mannered, a blue meadow that breathed gently and evenly along the shoreline, it was difficult to believe that it could be fierce; but even on a still, summer’s day, somewhere in the eroded hills of the mainland, hot fierce wind would suddenly be born and leap, screaming, at the island, turning the sea so dark it was almost black, combing each wave crest into a sheaf of white froth and urging and harrying them like a herd of panic-stricken blue horses until they crashed exhausted on the shore and died in a hissing shroud of foam. And in winter, under an iron-grey sky, the sea would lift sullen muscles of almost colorless waves, ice-cold and unfriendly, veined here and there with mud and debris that the winter rains swept out of the valleys and into the bay. To me, this blue kingdom was a treasure house of strange beasts which I longed to collect and observe, and at first it was frustrating for I could only peck along the shoreline like some forlorn seabird, capturing the small fry in the shallows and occasionally being tantalized by something mysterious and wonderful cast up on the shore. But then I got my boat, the good ship Bootle Bumtrinket, and so the whole of this kingdom was opened up for me, from the golden red castles of rock and their deep pools and underwater caves in the north to the long, glittering white sand dunes lying like snowdrifts in the south.

I decided on the sea trip, and so intent was I on planning it that I had quite forgotten Gladstone, who was wheezing at me with the breathless indignation of an asthmatic in a fog.

“If you must keep that harmonium covered with feathers,” said Larry, glancing up irritably, “you might at least teach it to sing properly.”

He was obviously not in the mood to receive a lecture on the jackdaw’s singing abilities, so I kept quiet and shut Gladstone up with a mammoth mouthful of food.

“Marco’s sending Count Rossignol for a couple of days,” Larry said casually to Mother.

“Who’s he?” asked Mother.

“I don’t know,” said Larry.

Mother straightened her glasses and looked at him.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” she asked.

“What I say,” said Larry. “I don’t know; I’ve never met him.”

“Well, who’s Marco?”

“I don’t know; I’ve never met him either. He’s a good artist though.”

“Larry, dear, you can’t start inviting people you don’t know to stay,” said Mother. “It’s bad enough entertaining the ones you do know without starting on the ones you don’t know.”

“What’s knowing them got to do with it?” asked Larry, puzzled.

“Well, if you know them, at least they know what to expect,” Mother pointed out.

“Expect?” said Larry coldly. “You’d think I was inviting them to stay in a ghetto or something, the way you go on.”

“No, no, dear, I don’t mean that,” said Mother, “but it’s just that this house so seldom seems normal. I do try, but we don’t seem able to live like other people somehow.”

“Well, if they come to stay here, they must put up with us,” said Larry. “And anyway, you can’t blame me; I didn’t invite him. Marco’s sending him.”

“But that’s what I mean,” said Mother. “Complete strangers sending complete strangers to us, as if we were a hotel or something.”

“Trouble with you is you’re antisocial,” said Larry.

“And so would you be if you had to do the cooking,” said Mother indignantly. “It’s enough to make one want to be a hermit.”

“Well, as soon as the count’s been, you can be a hermit if you want to,” said Larry. “No one’s stopping you.”

“A lot of chance I get to be a hermit, with you inviting streams of people to stay.”

“Of course you can, if you organize yourself,” said Larry. “Leslie will build you a cave down in the olive groves; you can get Margo to stitch a few of Gerry’s less smelly animal skins together to wear, a pot of blackberries, and there you are. I can bring people down to see you. ‘This is my mother,’ I shall say. ‘She has deserted us to become a hermit.’ ”

Mother glared at him.

“Really, Larry, you do make me cross sometimes,” she said.

“I’m going down to see Leonora’s baby,” said Margo. “Is there anything you want from the village?”

“Oh, yes,” said Larry, “that reminds me. Leonora’s asked me to be a godparent to the brat.”

Leonora was our maid Lugaretzia’s daughter, who used to come up to the house and help us when we had a party and who, because of her sparkling good looks, was a great favorite of Larry’s.

“You? A godfather?” said Margo in astonishment. “I thought godfathers were supposed to be pure and religious and things.”

“How nice of her,” said Mother doubtfully. “But it’s a bit odd, isn’t it?”

“Not half so odd as it would be if she asked him to be father,” said Leslie.

“Leslie, dear, don’t say things like that in front of Gerry, even in fun,” said Mother. “Are you going to accept, Larry?”

“Yes,” said Larry. “Why shouldn’t the poor little thing have the benefit of my guidance?”

“Ha!” said Margo derisively. “Well, I shall tell Leonora that if she thinks you’re going to be pure and religious, she’s trying to make a pig’s poke out of a sow’s ear.”

“If you can translate that into Greek, you’re welcome to tell her,” said Larry.

“My Greek’s just as good as yours,” said Margo belligerently.

“Now, now, dears, don’t quarrel,” said Mother. “I do wish you wouldn’t clean your guns with your handkerchief, Leslie; the oil is impossible to get out.”

“Well, I’ve got to clean them with something,” said Leslie aggrievedly.

At this point I told Mother I was going to spend the day exploring the coast and could I have a picnic?

“Yes, dear,” she said absently, “tell Lugaretzia to organize something for you. But do be careful, dear, and don’t go into very deep water. Don’t catch a chill and … watch out for sharks.”

To Mother, every sea, no matter how shallow or benign, was an evil and tumultuous body of water, full of tidal waves, waterspouts, typhoons, whirlpools, inhabited entirely by giant octopus and squids and savage, sabre-toothed sharks, all of whom had the killing and eating of one or other of her progeny as their main objective in life. Assuring her that I would take great care, I hurried off to the kitchen and collected the food for myself and my animals, assembled my collecting equipment, whistled the dogs, and set off down the hill to the jetty where my boat was moored.

The Bootle Bumtrinket, being Leslie’s first effort in boat building, was almost circular and flat-bottomed, so that, with her attractive color scheme of orange and white stripes, she looked not unlike an ornate celluloid duck. She was a friendly, stalwart craft, but owing to her shape and her lack of keel she became very flustered in anything like a heavy sea and would threaten to turn upside down and proceed that way, a thing she was very prone to do in moments of stress, so when I went on any long expeditions in her, I always took plenty of food and water in case we were blown off course and shipwrecked, and I hugged the coastline as much as possible so that I could make a dash for safety should the Bootle Bumtrinket be assaulted by a sudden sirocco. Owing to my boat’s shape, she could not wear a tall mast without turning over and so her pocket-handkerchief-sized sail could only garner and harvest the tiniest cupfuls of wind; thus, for the most part, she was propelled from point to point with oars, and when we had a full crew on board – three dogs, an owl, and sometimes a pigeon – and were carrying a full cargo – some two dozen containers full of seawater and specimens – she was a back-aching load to push through the water.

Roger was a fine dog to take to sea, and he thoroughly enjoyed it; he also took a deep and intelligent interest in marine life and would lie for hours, with ears pricked, watching the strange convolutions of the brittle starfish in a collecting bottle. Widdle and Puke, on the other hand, were not sea dogs and were really most at home tracking down some not too fierce quarry in the myrtle groves; when they came to sea they tried to be helpful but rarely succeeded and in a crisis would start howling or jumping overboard, or, if thirsty, drinking seawater and then vomiting over your feet just as you were doing a tricky bit of navigation. I could never really tell if Ulysses, my scops owl, liked sea trips; he would sit dutifully wherever I placed him, his eyes half closed, wings pulled in, looking like one of the more malevolent carvings of Oriental deities. My pigeon, Quilp – he was the son of my original pigeon, Quasimodo – adored boating; he would take over the Bootle Bumtrinket’s minute foredeck and carry on as though it were the promenade deck of the Queen Mary. He would pace up and down, pausing to do a quick waltz occasionally, and with pouting chest would give a quick contralto concert, looking strangely like a large opera singer on a sea voyage. Only if the weather became inclement would he get nervous and would then fly down and nestle in the captain’s lap for solace.

On this particular day I had decided to pay a visit to a small bay one side of which was formed by a tiny island surrounded by reefs in which there dwelt a host of fascinating creatures. My particular quarry was a peacock blenny, which I knew lived in profusion in that shallow water. Blennies are curious-looking fish with elongated bodies, some four inches long, shaped rather like an eel, and with their pop eyes and thick lips they are vaguely reminiscent of a hippopotamus. In the breeding season the males become most colorful, with a dark spot behind the eyes edged with sky blue, a dull orange humplike crest on the head and a darkish body covered with ultramarine or violet spots. The throat was pale sea green with darkish stripes on it. In contrast, the females were a light olive green with pale blue spots and leaf-green fins. I was anxious to capture some of these colorful little fish, since it was their breeding season and I was hoping to try and establish a colony of them in one of my aquariums so that I could watch their courtship. After half an hour’s stiff rowing we reached the bay, which was rimmed with silvery olive groves and great golden tangles of broom that sent its heavy musky scent out over the still, clear waters. I anchored the Bootle Bumtrinket in two feet of water near the reef, and then taking off my clothes, and armed with my butterfly net and a wide-mouthed jar, I stepped into the gin-clear sea, which was as warm as a bath.

Everywhere there was such a profusion of life that it required stern concentration not to be diverted from one’s task. Here the sea slugs, like huge warty brown sausages, lay in battalions among the multicolored weeds. On the rocks were the dark purple and black pincushions of the sea urchins, their spines turning to and fro like compass needles. Here and there, stuck to the rocks like enlarged wood lice, were the chitons and the brightly freckled top shells, moving about, each containing either its rightful owner or else a usurper in the shape of a red-faced, scarlet-clawed hermit crab. Here and there a small weed-covered rock would suddenly walk away from under your foot, revealing itself as a spider crab, with his back a neatly planted garden of weeds, to camouflage him from his enemies.

Soon I came to the area of the bay that I knew the blennies favored. It was not long before I spotted a fine male, brilliant and almost iridescent in his courting outfit of many colors. Cautiously I edged my net towards him, and he retreated suspiciously, gulping at me with his pouting lips. I made a sudden sweep with the net, but he was too wary and avoided it with ease. Several times I tried and failed, and after each attempt he retreated a little further. Finally, tiring of my attentions, he flipped off and took refuge in his home, which was the broken half of a terra-cotta pot of the sort that fishermen put down to trap unwary octopuses in. Although he was under the impression he had reached safety, it was in fact his undoing, for I simply scooped him up, pot and all, in my net and then transferred him and his home to one of my bigger containers in the boat.

Flushed with success, I continued my hunting, and by lunchtime I had caught two green wives for my blenny, as well as a baby cuttlefish and an interesting species of starfish, which I had not seen previously. The sun was now blistering hot, and most of the sea life had disappeared under rocks to lurk in the shade. I went on shore then, to sit under the olive trees to eat my lunch. The air was heavy with broom scent and full of the zinging cries of the cicadas.

As I ate, I watched a huge dragon-green lizard with bright blue eye markings along his body carefully stalk and catch a black-and-white-striped swallowtail butterfly. No mean feat, since the swallowtail rarely sits still for long and their flight is erratic and unpredictable. Moreover the lizard caught the butterfly on the wing, leaping some sixteen inches off the ground to do so. Presently, having finished my lunch, I loaded up the boat and, getting my canine crew on board, commenced to row home so that I could settle my blennies in their aquarium. Reaching the villa, I placed the male blenny, together with his pot, in the center of the larger of my aquariums and then carefully introduced the two females. Although I watched them for the rest of the afternoon, they did nothing spectacular. The male merely lay, gulping and pouting, in the entrance of his pot, and the females lay, gulping and pouting, at either end of the aquarium.

The following morning when I got up, I found, to my intense annoyance, that the blennies must have been active at dawn, for a number of eggs had been laid on the roof of the pot. Which female was responsible for this I did not know, but the male was a very protective and resolute father, attacking my finger ferociously when I picked up the pot to look at the eggs.

Determined not to miss any of the drama, I rushed and got my breakfast and ate it squatting in front of the aquarium, my gaze fixed on the blennies. The family, who had hitherto regarded my fish as the least of potential troublemakers among my pets, began to have doubts about the blennies, for as the morning wore on I would importune each passing member of the household to bring me an orange, or a drink of water, or to sharpen my pencil for me, for I was whiling away the time drawing the blennies in my diary. My lunch was served to me at the aquarium, and as the long, hot afternoon wore on, I began to feel sleepy. The dogs, long since bored with a vigil they could not understand, had gone off into the olive groves and left me and the blennies to our own devices.

The male blenny was deep in his pot, scarcely visible. One of the females had wedged herself behind some small rocks, while the other sat gulping on the sand. Occupying the aquarium with the fish were two small spider crabs, each encrusted with weeds, and one wearing a small, pink sea anemone like a rakish bonnet on his head. It was this crab who really precipitated the whole romance of the blennies. He was wandering about the floor of the aquarium, delicately popping bits of debris into his mouth with his claws, like a finicky spinster eating cucumber sandwiches, and he happened to wander up to the entrance of the pot. Immediately the male blenny emerged, glowing with iridescent colors, ready for battle. He swooped down onto the spider crab and bit at it viciously time after time. The crab, after a few ineffectual attempts to ward off the fish with its claws, meekly gave in and turned tail and scuttled off. This left the blenny, glowing virtuously, as the victor, and he sat just outside his pot looking rather smug. Now a very unexpected thing happened. The female on the sand had had her attention attracted by the fight with the crab and now she swam over and stopped some four or five inches away from the male. At the sight of her, he became very excited and his coloring seemed to glow all the more. Then, to my astonishment, he attacked the female. He dashed at her and bit at her head, at the same time curving his body like a bow and giving her blows with his tail. I watched this behavior in amazement until I suddenly realized that throughout this beating and buffeting the female was completely passive and made no attempt at retaliation. What I was witnessing was not an unprovoked attack, but a rather belligerent courtship display. As I watched I saw that, with slaps from his tail and bites at the female’s head, the male blenny was in fact herding her towards his pot as a sheep dog herds sheep. Realizing that once they entered the pot I should lose sight of them, I dashed into the house and came back with an instrument I normally used for examining birds’ nests. It was a bamboo pole with a small mirror set at an angle on the end. If there was a bird’s nest out of reach, you could use the mirror on the end as a sort of periscope to enable you to examine the eggs or fledglings. Now I used it in the same way, but upside down. By the time I got back, the blennies were just disappearing into the pot. With great caution, so as not to disturb them, I lowered the mirror on the bamboo into the water and maneuvered it until it was at the entrance of the pot. When I had jiggled it into position, I found not only that I got a very good view of the interior of the pot but that the sunlight reflected off the mirror lit up the inside beautifully.

To begin with, the two fish stayed quite close together and there was a lot of fin waving but nothing much else. The male’s attacks on the female, now she was safely in the pot, ceased, and he seemed more conciliatory towards her. After about ten minutes the female moved from the position alongside him and then proceeded to lay a small cluster of transparent eggs, which stuck to the smooth side of the pot like frog spawn. This done, she moved and the male took up his position over the eggs. Unfortunately, the female got between me and him, so I could not see him actually fertilize the eggs, but it was obvious that that was what he was doing. Then the female, feeling that her part of the procedure was over, swam out of the pot and across the aquarium, displaying no further interest in the eggs. The male, however, spent some time fussing around them and then came to lie in the mouth of the pot on guard.

I waited eagerly for the baby blennies to appear, but there must have been something wrong with the aeration of the water, for only two of the eggs hatched. One of the diminutive babies was, to my horror, eaten by his own mother, before my very eyes. Not wishing to have a double case of infanticide on my conscience, and lacking aquarium space, I put the baby in a jar and rowed down the coast to the bay where I had caught his parents. Here I released him with my blessing, in the clear tepid water ringed with golden broom, where I hoped that he would rear many multicolored offspring of his own.

THREE DAYS LATER the count appeared. He was tall and slender, with tightly curled hair as golden as a silkworm’s cocoon, shining with oil, a delicately curled moustache of a similar hue, and slightly protuberant eyes of a very pale and unpleasant green. He alarmed Mother by arriving with a huge wardrobe trunk, and she was convinced that he had come to stay for the summer. But we soon found that the count found himself so attractive he felt it necessary to change his clothes about eight times a day to do justice to himself. His clothes were such elegant confections, beautifully hand-stitched and of such exquisite materials, that Margo was torn between envy at the count’s wardrobe and disgust at his effeminacy. Combined with this narcissistic preoccupation with himself, the count had other equally objectionable characteristics. He drenched himself in a scent so thick it was almost visible and he had only to spend a second in a room to permeate the whole atmosphere, while the cushions he leaned against and the chairs he sat in reeked for days afterwards. His English was limited, but this did not prevent him from expounding on any subject with a sort of sneering dogmatism that made everyone’s hackles rise. His philosophy, if any, could be summed up in the phrase “We do it better in France,” which he used repeatedly about everything. He had such a thoroughly Gallic interest in the edibility of everything he came in contact with that one could have been pardoned for thinking him the reincarnation of a goat.

He arrived, unfortunately, in time for lunch, and by the end of the meal, without really trying, he had succeeded in alienating everybody including the dogs. It was in its way quite a tour de force to be able to irritate and insult five people of such different character with such ease and, apparently, without even being aware of doing it, inside two hours of arrival at a new locale. During the course of lunch, he said, having just eaten a soufflé as delicate as a cloud in which were embedded the pale pink bodies of freshly caught shrimps, that it was quite obvious that Mother’s chef was not French. Having discovered that Mother was the chef, he showed no embarrassment but merely said that she would then be glad of his presence for it would enable him to give her some guidance in the culinary arts. Leaving her speechless with rage at his audacity, he turned his attention to Larry, to whom he vouchsafed the information that the only good writers were French. At the mention of Shakespeare, he merely shrugged; “le petit poseur,” he said. To Leslie he offered the information that anyone who was interested in hunting must assuredly have the instincts of a criminal and, in any case, it was well known that the French produced the best guns, swords and other weapons of offense. To Margo he gave the advice that it was a woman’s job to keep beautiful for men and, in particular, not to be greedy and eat too many things that would ruin the figure. As Margo was suffering from a certain amount of puppy fat at that time and was on a rigid diet in consequence, this information was not at all well received. He merely condemned himself in my eyes by calling the dogs village curs and comparing them unfavorably to his selection of Labradors, setters, retrievers and spaniels, all French-bred, of course. Furthermore, he was puzzled as to why I kept so many pets, all of which were uneatable. “In French we only shoot zis kind of thing,” he said.

Small wonder, then, that after lunch when he went upstairs to change, the family were quivering like a suppressed volcano, and only Mother’s golden rule that a guest must not be insulted on the first day kept us in check. But such was the state of our nerves that if anyone had started to whistle the “Marseillaise,” we would have torn him limb from limb.

“You see,” said Mother accusingly to Larry, “this is what comes of letting people you don’t know send people you don’t know to stay. The man’s insufferable!”

“Well … he’s not so bad,” said Larry feebly, trying to argue against an attitude that he agreed with. “I thought some of his comments were valid.”

“What?” asked Mother ominously.

“Yes, what?” asked Margo, quivering.

“Well,” said Larry vaguely, “I thought that soufflé was a bit on the rich side, and Margo is beginning to look a bit circular.”

“Beast!” said Margo, and burst into tears.

“Now that’s quite enough, Larry,” said Mother. “How we’re going to endure this … this … scented lounge lizard of yours for another week I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ve got to put up with him too, don’t forget,” said Larry, irritated.

“Well, he’s your friend … I mean, your friend’s friend … I mean, well, whatever he is, he’s yours,” said Mother, “and it’s up to you to keep him out of the way as much as possible.”

“Or I’ll pepper his arse for him,” said Leslie, “the smelly little – ”

“Leslie,” said Mother, “that’s quite enough.”

“Well, he is,” said Leslie doggedly.

“I know he is, dear, but you shouldn’t say so,” Mother explained.

“Well, I’ll try,” said Larry, “but don’t blame me if he comes down to the kitchen to give you a cookery lesson.”

“I’m warning you,” said Mother mutinously, “if that man sets foot in my kitchen, I shall walk out … I shall go … I shall go and….”

“Be a hermit?” suggested Larry.

“No, I shall go and stay in an hotel until he’s gone,” said Mother, uttering her favorite threat, “and this time I really mean it.”

To give Larry his due, he did strive manfully with Count Rossignol for the next few days. He took him to the library and museum in town, he showed him the kaiser’s summer palace with all its repulsive statuary, he even took him to the top of the highest point in Corfu, Mount Pantocrator, and showed him the view. The count compared the library unfavorably with the Bibliothèque Nationale, said that the museum was not a patch on the Louvre, said the kaiser’s palace was inferior in size, design and furnishings to the cottage he had for his head gardener, and said that the view from Pantocrator was not to be mentioned in the same breath with any view to be seen from any high spot in France.

“The man’s intolerable,” said Larry, refreshing himself with brandy in Mother’s bedroom, where we had all repaired to escape the count’s company. “He’s got an obsession with France; I can’t think why he ever left the place. He even thinks their telephone service is the best in the world! And he’s so humorless about everything, one would think he were a Swede.”

“Never mind, dear,” said Mother, “it’s not for long now.”

“I’m not sure I shall last the course,” said Larry. “So far about the only thing he hasn’t claimed for France is God.”

“Ah, but they probably believe in Him better in France,” Leslie pointed out.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do something really nasty to him?” said Margo wistfully. “Something really horrible.”

“No, Margo,” said Mother firmly, “we’ve never done anything nasty to anyone that’s stayed with us – I mean, except as a joke or by accident – and we’re not going to start. We’ll just have to put up with him; after all, it’s only for a few more days. It’ll soon pass.”

“Dear God!” said Larry suddenly. “I’ve just remembered. It’s the bloody christening on Monday!”

“I do wish you wouldn’t swear so much,” said Mother. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Can you imagine taking him to a christening?” asked Larry. “No, he’ll just have to go off somewhere on his own.”

“I don’t think we ought to let him go wandering off on his own,” said Mother, as if she were talking about a dangerous animal. “I mean, he might meet one of our friends.”

We all sat and thought about the problem.

“Why doesn’t Gerry take him somewhere?” said Leslie suddenly. “After all, he doesn’t want to come to a boring christening.”

“That’s a brain wave,” said Mother delightedly. “The very thing!”

Immediately all my instincts for self-preservation came to the fore. I said that I did want to go to the christening, I had been looking forward to it, it was the only chance I would ever have of seeing Larry being a godfather, and he might drop the baby or something and I would miss it; and anyway, the count did not like snakes and tortoises and birds and things, so what could I do with him? There was silence while the family, like a jury, examined the strength of my case.

“I know, take him out in your boat,” suggested Margo brightly.

“Excellent!” said Larry, “I’m sure he’s got a straw hat and a striped blazer among his sartorial effects. Perhaps we can borrow a banjo.”

“It’s a very good idea,’ said Mother. “After all, it’s only for a couple of hours, dear. You surely wouldn’t mind that.”

I stated in no uncertain terms that I would mind it very much indeed.

“I tell you what,” said Leslie, “they’re having a fish drive down at the lake on Monday. If I get the chap who’s in charge to let you go, will you take the count?”

I wavered, for I had long wanted to see a fish drive. I knew I was going to have the count for the afternoon, so it was simply a matter of what I could get out of it.

“And then we can see about that new butterfly cabinet you want,” said Mother.

“And Margo and I will give you some money for books,” said Larry, generously anticipating Margo’s participation in the bribery.

“And I’ll give you that clasp knife you wanted,” said Leslie.

I agreed. I felt that if I had to put up with the count for an afternoon, I was at least being fairly compensated for it. That evening at dinner, Mother explained the situation and went into such detailed eulogies about the fish drives that you would have thought she had personally invented them.

“Ees eating?” asked the count.

“Yes, yes,” said Mother. “The fish are called kefalias and they’re delicious.”

“No, ees eating on ze lack?” asked the count. “Ees eating wiz sun?”

“Oh … oh, I see,” said Mother. “Yes, it’s very hot. Be sure to wear a hat.”

“We go in ze enfant’s yacht?” asked the count, who liked to get things clear.

“Yes,” said Mother.

The count outfitted himself for the expedition in pale blue linen trousers, elegant chestnut-bright shoes, a white silk shirt with a blue and gold cravat knotted carelessly at the throat, and an elegant yachting cap. While the Bootle Bumtrinket was ideal for my purposes, I would have been the first to admit that she had none of the refinements of an oceangoing yacht, and this the count was quick to perceive when I led him down to the canal in the maze of old Venetian salt pans below the house, where I had the boat moored.

“Zis … is yacht?” he asked in surprise and some alarm.

I said that indeed this was our craft, stalwart and stable, and, he would note, a flat bottom to make it easier to walk about in. Whether he understood me, I do not know; perhaps he thought the Bootle Bumtrinket was merely the dinghy in which he was to be rowed out to the yacht, but he climbed in delicately, spread his handkerchief fastidiously over the seat and sat down gingerly. I leapt aboard and with the aid of a pole started punting the craft down the canal, which at this point was some twenty feet wide and two feet deep. I congratulated myself on the fact that only the day before I had decided that the Bootle Bumtrinket was starting to smell almost as pungently as the count, for over a period a lot of dead shrimps, seaweed and other debris had collected under her boards. I had sunk her in some two feet of sea water and given her bilges a thorough cleaning, so now, for this expedition, she was sparkling clean and smelt beautifully of sun-hot tar and paint and salt water.

The old salt pans lay along the edge of the brackish lake, forming a giant chessboard with the cross-hatching of these placid canals, some as narrow as a chair, some thirty feet wide. Most of these waterways were only a couple of feet deep, but below the water lay an almost unplumbable depth of fine black silt. The Bootle Bumtrinket, by virtue of her shape and flat bottom, could be propelled up and down these inland waterways with comparative ease, for one did not have to worry about sudden gusts of wind or a sudden, bouncing cluster of wavelets, two things that always made her a bit alarmed. But the disadvantage of the canals was that they were fringed on each side with tall, rustling bamboo breaks which, while providing shade, precluded the wind, so the atmosphere was still, dark, hot and as richly odoriferous as a manure heap. For a time the artificial smell of the count vied with the scents of nature, but eventually nature won.

“Ees smell,” the count pointed out. “In France ze water ees hygiene.”

I said it would not be long before we left the canal and were out on the lake, where there would be no smell.

“Ees heating,” was the count’s next discovery, mopping his face and moustache with a scent-drenched handkerchief, “ees heating much.”

His pale face had, as a matter of fact, turned a light shade of heliotrope. I was just about to say that that problem, too, would be overcome once we reached the open lake when, to my alarm, I noticed something wrong with the Bootle Bumtrinket. She had settled sluggishly in the brown water and hardly moved to my punting. For a moment I could not imagine what was wrong with her; we had not run aground and I knew that there were no sandbanks in this canal. Then suddenly I noticed the swirl of water coiling up over the boards in the bottom of the boat. Surely, I thought, she could not have sprung a leak. Fascinated, I watched the water rise to engulf the bottom of the oblivious count’s shoes, and I suddenly realized what must have happened. When I had cleaned out the bilges I had, of course, removed the bung in the Bumtrinket’s bottom to let the fresh seawater in; apparently I had not replaced it with enough care, and now the canal water was pouring into the bilges. My first thought was to pull up the boards, find the bung and replace it, but the count was now sitting with his feet in about two inches of water and it seemed to me imperative that I turn the Bootle Bumtrinket towards the bank while I could still maneuver a trifle and get my exquisite passenger on shore. I did not mind being deposited in the canal by the Bootle Bumtrinket; after all, it was not her fault and, anyway, I was always in and out of the canals like a water rat in pursuit of water snakes, terrapins, frogs and other small fry, but I knew that the count would look askance at gamboling in two feet of water and an undetermined amount of mud, so my efforts to turn the leaden, waterlogged boat towards the bank were superhuman. Gradually, I felt the dead weight of the boat responding and her bows turning sluggishly towards the shore. Inch by inch I eased her towards the bamboos, and we were within ten feet of the bank when the count noticed what was happening.

“Mon dieu!” he cried shrilly, “ve are submerge. My shoe is submerge. Ze boat, she ave sonk.”

I stopped poling briefly to soothe the count. I told him that there was no danger; all he had to do was to sit still until I got him to the bank.

“My shoe! Regardez my shoe!” he said, pointing at his now dripping and discolored footwear with such an expression of outrage and horror that it was all I could do not to giggle.

A moment, I said to him, and I should have him on dry land, and indeed if he had done what I had said, this would have been the case, for I had managed to get the Bootle Bumtrinket to within six feet of the bamboos. But the count was worried about the state of his shoes, and this prompted him to do something very silly. He looked over his shoulder and saw land looming close, and in spite of my warning shout, he got to his feet and leapt onto the Bootle Bumtrinket’s minute foredeck. His intention was to leap from there to safety when I had maneuvered the boat a little closer, but he had not reckoned with the Bootle Bumtrinket’s temperament. A placid boat, she had nevertheless a few quirks, and one thing she did not like was anyone standing on her foredeck; she simply gave an odd sort of bucking twist, rather like a trained horse in a cowboy film, and, as it were, slid you over her shoulder. She did this to the count now.

He fell into the water with a yell, spread-eagled like an ungainly frog, and his proud yachting cap floated towards the bamboo roots while he thrashed about in a porridge of water and mud. I was filled with a mixture of alarm and delight; I was delighted that the count had fallen in – though I knew my family would never believe that I had not engineered it – but I was alarmed at the way he was thrashing about. It is an instinctive action, when finding you are in shallow water, to try to stand up, but this action only makes you sink deeper into the glutinous mud. Once, Larry had fallen into one of these canals while out shooting and had made such a fuss and got himself so deeply embedded that it had required the united efforts of Margo, Leslie and myself to get him out. If the count got himself too wedged in the canal bottom, I would not have the strength to extricate him single-handed, and by the time I got help he might well have disappeared altogether beneath the gleaming mud. I abandoned ship and leapt into the canal to help him. Firstly, I knew how to walk in mud, and secondly, I weighed only a quarter of what the count weighed so I did not sink in so far. I shouted to him to keep quite still until I got to him.

“Merde!” said the count, proving that he was at least keeping his mouth above water.

He tried to get up once, but at the terrible, gobbling clutch of the mud, he uttered a despairing cry like a bereaved sea gull and lay still. Indeed, he was so frightened of the mud that when I reached him and tried to pull him shorewards he screamed and shouted and accused me of trying to push him in deeper. He was so absurdly childlike that I had a fit of the giggles, and this of course only made him worse. He had relapsed into French, which he was speaking with the rapidity of a machine gun, so with my tenuous command of the language I was unable to understand him. Eventually I got my unmannerly laughter under control and once more seized him under the armpits and started to drag him shorewards, but it suddenly occurred to me how ludicrous our predicament would seem to an onlooker – a twelve-year-old boy trying to rescue a six-foot man – and I was overcome again and sat down in the mud and laughed till I cried.

“Vy you laughing? Vy you laughing?” screamed the count, trying to look over his shoulder at me. “You no laughing, you pulling, vite, vite!”

Eventually, swallowing great hiccups of laughter, I started to pull the count again and eventually got him fairly close to the shore. Then I left him and climbed out onto the bank. This provoked another bout of hysteria.

“No going avay! No going avay!” he yelled, panic-stricken. “I am sonk. No going avay!”

I ignored him, and choosing seven of the tallest bamboos in the vicinity, I bent them over one by one until their stems splintered but did not snap, and then I twisted them round until they reached the count and formed a sort of green bridge between him and the shore. Acting on my instructions, he turned on his stomach and pulled himself along on this until at last he reached dry land. When he eventually got somewhat shakily to his feet, he looked as though the lower half of his body had been encased in melting chocolate. Knowing that this glutinous mud could dry hard in record time, I offered to scrape some of it off him with a piece of bamboo. He gave me a murderous look.

“Espèce de con!” he said vehemently.

My shaky knowledge of the count’s language did not allow me to translate this, but the enthusiasm with which it was uttered led me to suppose that it was worth retaining in my memory, which I did. We started to walk home, the count simmering vitriolically. As I had anticipated, the mud on his legs dried at an almost magical speed and within a short time he looked as though he were wearing a pair of trousers made out of a pale brown jigsaw puzzle. From the back, he reminded me so much of the armor-clad rear of an Indian rhinoceros that I almost got the giggles again.

It was unfortunate, perhaps, that the count and I should have arrived at the front door of the villa just as the huge Dodge driven by our scowling, barrel-shaped, self-appointed guardian angel, Spiro Halikiopoulos, drew up with the family, flushed with wine, in the back of it. The car came to a halt and the family stared at the count with disbelieving eyes. It was Spiro who recovered first.

“Gollys, Mrs. Durrells,” he said, twisting his massive head round and beaming at Mother, “Master Gerrys fixes the bastards.”

This was obviously the sentiment of the whole family, but Mother threw herself into the breach.

“My goodness, Count,” she said in well-simulated tones of horror, “what have you been doing with my son?”

The count was so overcome with the audacity of this remark that he could only look at Mother open-mouthed.

“Gerry dear,” Mother went on, “go and change out of those wet things before you catch cold, there’s a good boy.”

“Good boy!” repeated the count, shrilly and unbelievingly. “C’est un assassin! C’est une espèce de – ”

“Now, now, my dear fellow,” said Larry, throwing his arm round the count’s muddy shoulders, “I’m sure it’s been a mistake. Come and have a brandy and change your things. Yes, yes, rest assured that my brother will smart for this. Of course he will be punished.”

Larry led the vociferous count into the house, and the rest of the family converged on me.

“What did you do to him?” asked Mother.

I said I had not done anything; the count and the count alone was responsible for his condition.

“I don’t believe you,” said Margo. “You always say that.”

I protested that had I been responsible I would be proud to confess. The family were impressed by the logic of this.

“Well, it doesn’t matter a damn if Gerry did it or not,” said Leslie. “It’s the end result that counts.”

“Well, go and get changed, dear,” said Mother, “and then come to my room and tell us all about how you did it.”

But the affair of the Bootle Bumtrinket did not have the effect that everyone hoped for; the count stayed on grimly, as if to punish us all, and was twice as offensive as before. However, I had ceased feeling vindictive towards him; whenever I thought of him thrashing about in the canal, I was overcome with helpless laughter, which was worth any amount of insults. And, furthermore, the count had unwittingly added a fine new phrase to my French vocabulary. I tried it out one day when I made a mistake in my French composition and I found it tripped well off the tongue. The effect on my tutor, Mr. Kralefsky, was, however, very different. He had been pacing up and down the room, hands behind him, looking like a humpbacked gnome in a trance. At my expression, he came to a sudden stop, wide-eyed, looking like a gnome who had just had an electric shock from a toadstool.

“What did you say?” he asked in a hushed voice.

I repeated the offending phrase. Mr. Kralefsky closed his eyes, his nostrils quivered, and he shuddered.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked.

I said I had learned it from a count who was staying with us.

“Oh. Well, you must never say it again, do you understand,” Mr. Kralefsky said, “never again! You … you must learn that in this life sometimes even aristocrats let slip an unfortunate phrase in moments of stress. It does not behoove us to imitate them.”

I did see what Kralefsky meant. Falling into a canal, for a count, could be called a moment of stress, I supposed.

But the saga of the count was not yet over. A week or so after he had departed, Larry, one morning at breakfast, confessed to feeling unwell. Mother put on her glasses and stared at him critically.

“How do you mean, unwell?” she asked.

“Not my normal, manly, vigorous self,” said Larry.

“Have you got any pains?” asked Mother.

“No,” Larry admitted, “no actual pains. Just a sort of lassitude, a feeling of ennui, a debilitated, drained feeling, as if I had spent the night with Count Dracula; and I feel that, for all his faults, our late guest was not a vampire.”

“Well, you look all right,” said Mother, “though we’d better get you looked at. Dr. Androccelli is on holiday, so I’ll have to get Spiro to bring Theodore.”

“All right,” said Larry listlessly, “and you’d better tell Spiro to nip in and alert the British cemetery.”

“Larry, don’t say things like that,” said Mother, getting alarmed. “Now, you go up to bed and, for heaven’s sake, stop there.”

If Spiro could be classified as our guardian angel to whom no request was impossible of fulfillment, Dr. Theodore Stephanides was our oracle and guide to all things. He arrived, sitting sedately in the back of Spiro’s Dodge, immaculately dressed in a tweed suit, his homburg at just the correct angle, his beard twinkling in the sun.

“Yes, it was really … um … very curious,” said Theodore, having greeted us all, “I was just thinking to myself how nice a trip … that is to say, a spin in the country would be as it … er … was an especially beautiful day … um … not too hot, and that sort of thing, you know … er … and suddenly Spiro turned up at the laboratory. Most fortuitous.”

“I’m so glad that my agony is of some benefit to someone,” said Larry.

“Aha! What … er … you know … seems to be the trouble?” asked Theodore, eyeing Larry with interest.

“Nothing concrete,” Larry admitted, “just a general feeling of death being very imminent. All my strength seems to have drained away. I’ve probably, as usual, been giving too much of myself to my family.”

“I don’t think that’s what’s wrong with you,” said Mother decisively.

“I think you’ve been eating too much,” said Margo. “What you want is a good diet.”

“What he wants is a little fresh air and exercise,” said Leslie. “If he took the boat out a bit …”

“Yes, well, Theodore will tell us what’s wrong,” said Mother.

Theodore examined Larry and reappeared in half an hour’s time.

“I can’t find anything … er … you know … organically wrong,” said Theodore judiciously, rising and falling on his tiptoes, “except that he is perhaps a trifle overweight.”

“There you are! I told you he needed a diet,” said Margo triumphantly.

“Hush, dear,” said Mother. “So what do you advise, Theodore?”

“I should keep him in bed for a day or so,” said Theodore. “Give him a light diet, you know, nothing very oily, and I’ll send out some medicine … er … that is to say … a tonic for him. I’ll come out the day after tomorrow and see how he is.”

Spiro drove Theodore back to town and in due course reappeared with the medicine.

“I won’t drink it,” said Larry, eyeing the bottle askance, “it looks like essence of bat’s ovaries.”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Mother, pouring some into a spoon, “it will do you good.”

“It won’t,” said Larry. “It’s the same stuff that my friend Dr. Jekyll took, and look what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?” asked Mother, unthinkingly.

“They found him hanging from the chandelier, scratching himself and saying he was Mr. Hyde.”

“Come on now, Larry, stop fooling about,” said Mother firmly.

With much fussing, Larry was prevailed upon to take the medicine and retire to bed.

The following morning we were all woken at an inordinately early hour by roars of rage coming from Larry’s room.

“Mother! Mother!” he was roaring. “Come and look what you’ve done!”

We found him prancing around his room, naked, a large mirror in one hand. He turned on Mother belligerently, and she gasped at the sight of him. His face was swollen up to about twice normal size and was the approximate color of a tomato.

“What have you been doing, dear?” asked Mother faintly.

“Doing? It’s what you’ve done,” he shouted, articulating with difficulty. “You and bloody Theodore and your damned medicine. It’s affected my pituitary. Look at me! It’s worse than Jekyll and Hyde.”

Mother put on her spectacles and gazed at Larry.

“It looks to me as though you’ve got mumps,” she said, puzzled.

“Nonsense! That’s a child’s disease,” said Larry impatiently. “No, it’s that damned medicine of Theodore’s. I tell you, it’s affected my pituitary. If you don’t get the antidote straight away, I shall grow into a giant.”

“Nonsense, dear, I’m sure it’s mumps,” said Mother, “but it’s very funny, because I’m sure you’ve had mumps. Let’s see, Margo had measles in Darjeeling in 1920 … Leslie had sprue in Rangoon – no, I’m wrong, that was 1900 in Rangoon and you had sprue. Then Leslie had chicken pox in Bombay in 1911 … or was it 12? I can’t quite remember. And then you had your tonsils out in Rajaputana in 1922, or it may have been 1923, I can’t remember exactly, and then after that, Margo got – ”

“I hate to interrupt this Old Moore’s Almanac of Family Ailments,” said Larry coldly, “but would somebody like to send for the antidote before I get so big I can’t leave the room?”

Theodore, when he appeared, agreed with Mother’s diagnosis.

“Yes … er … um … clearly a case of mumps,” he said.

“What do you mean, clearly, you charlatan?” said Larry, glaring at him from watering and swollen eyes. “Why didn’t you know what it was yesterday? And anyhow, I can’t get mumps, it’s a child’s disease.”

“No, no,” said Theodore. “Children generally get it, but quite often adults get it too.”

“Why didn’t you recognize a common disease like that when you saw it?” demanded Larry. “Can’t even recognize a mump when you see it? You ought to be drummed out of the medical council or whatever it is that they do for malpractice.”

“Mumps are very difficult to diagnose in the … er … early stages,” said Theodore, “until the swellings appear.”

“Typical of the medical profession,” said Larry bitterly. “They can’t even spot a disease until the patient is twice life-size. It’s a scandal.”

“As long as it doesn’t affect your … um … you know … um … your … er … lower quarters,” said Theodore thoughtfully, “you should be all right in a few days.”

“Lower quarters?” Larry asked, mystified. “What lower quarters?”

“Well, er … you know … mumps causes swelling of the glands,” explained Theodore, “and so if it travels down the body and affects the glands in your … um … lower quarters, it can be very painful indeed.”

“You mean I’ll swell up and start looking like a bull elephant?” asked Larry in horror.

“Mmm, er … yes,” said Theodore, finding he could not better this description.

“It’s a plot to make me sterile!” shouted Larry. “You and your bloody tincture of bat’s blood! You’re jealous of my virility.”

To say that Larry was a bad patient would be putting it mildly. He had an enormous hand-bell by the bed which he rang incessantly for attention, and Mother had to examine his nether regions about twenty times a day to assure him that he was not in any way affected. When it was discovered that it was Leonora’s baby that had given him mumps, he threatened to excommunicate it.

“I’m its godfather,” he said. “Why can’t I excommunicate the ungrateful little bastard?”

By the fourth day we were all beginning to feel the strain, and then Captain Creech appeared to see Larry. Captain Creech, a retired mariner of lecherous habits, was mother’s bête noire. His determined pursuit of anything female, and Mother in particular, in spite of his seventy-odd years, was a constant source of annoyance to her, as were the captain’s completely uninhibited behavior and one-track mind.

“Ahoy!” he shouted, staggering into the bedroom, his lopsided jaw waggling, his wispy beard and hair standing on end, his rheumy eyes watering. “Ahoy, there! Bring out your dead!”

Mother, who was just examining Larry for the fourth time that day, straightened up and glared at him.

“Do you mind, Captain?” she said coldly. “This is supposed to be a sickroom, not a bar parlor.”

“Got you in the bedroom at last!” said Creech, beaming, taking no notice of Mother’s expression. “Now, if the boy moves over; we can have a little cuddle.”

“I’m far too busy to cuddle, thank you,” said Mother frostily.

“Well, well,” said the captain, seating himself on the bed, “what’s this namby-pamby mumps thing you’ve got, huh, boy? Child stuff! If you want to be ill, be ill properly, like a man. Why, when I was your age, nothing but a dose of clap would have done for me.”

“Captain, I would be glad if you would not reminisce in front of Gerry,” said Mother firmly.

“It hasn’t affected the old manhood, has it?” asked the captain with concern. “Terrible when it gets you in the crutch. Can ruin a man’s sex life, mumps in the crutch.”

“Larry is perfectly all right, thank you,” said Mother with dignity.

“Talking of crutches,” said the captain, “have you heard about the young Hindu virgin from Kutch? Who kept two tame snakes in her crutch? She said when they wriggle, it’s a bit of a giggle, but my boyfriends don’t like my crutch much. Ha ha ha!”

“Really, Captain!” said Mother, outraged. “I do wish you wouldn’t recite poetry in front of Gerry.”

“Got your mail. I was passing the post office,” the captain went on, oblivious of Mother’s strictures, pulling it out of his pocket and tossing it onto the bed. “My, they’ve got a nice little bit serving in there now. She’d win a prize for the best marrows in any horticultural show.”

But Larry was not listening; he had extracted a postcard from the mail Captain Creech had brought and, having read it, he started to laugh uproariously.

“What is it, dear?” asked Mother.

“A postcard from the count,” said Larry, wiping his eyes.

“Oh, him,” sniffed Mother, “well, I don’t want to know about him.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Larry. “It’s worth being ill just to be able to get this. I’m starting to feel better already.”

He picked up the postcard and read it out to us. The count had obviously got someone to write the card for him, and the person’s command of English was fragile but inventive.

“I have reeching Rome,” it began. “I am in clinic inflicted by disease called moops. Have inflicted all over. I finding I cannot arrange myself. I have no hunger and impossible I am sitting. Beware yourself the moops. Count Rossignol.”

“Poor man,” said Mother without conviction when we had all stopped laughing, “we shouldn’t really laugh.”

“No,” said Larry. “I’m going to write and ask him if Greek moops are inferior in virulence to French moops.”