There was no question at all that she wouldn’t go, but her almost dismissive and seemingly casual response, when he tried to discuss how they would keep their relationship going when apart, unsettled him.
Sally moved to Leeds and her family helped her to settle in. The threads that bound them together slowly unwound day by day, text by text, call by call. By the autumn, Dimitris looked towards home and realized he needed to sit in the sun with friends and family, on the terrace of his parents’ house, and press the pause button on his life for a moment. A few days before he was due to fly home, his uncle stepped into the office, closed the door and, ashen-faced, told him that his sister, Dimitris’s mother, had died.
He didn’t remember packing and leaving, his heart heavy with grief and guilt.
A different Dimitris arrived back at Corfu airport and threw his arms around his father, who waited there for him.
Two years on, the visceral effect of his mother’s loss, and that of the woman he’d imagined he’d spend the rest of his life with, had mostly healed, but the experience had left him wary. Love was the thing that hurt. If he could avoid it for now, he would. Even if that meant hiding in plain sight on his island.
Chapter 13
Sunday awoke with the scent of lemons, as Penny absorbed the first heat of the day from her balcony. From below came the muted but bright sounds of chatter from the villa next door, as the neighbouring family readied themselves for a trip to the water park in the middle of the island.
Penny had planned to meet the ‘Three Musketeers’, as she’d dubbed Guy, Rich, and Lily, outside the Athena. Guy had been a bit vague in a text he’d sent about the route and the Durrell locations: Sort of know where we’re going. We’ll head towards Benitses and Perama first, then have a think. Some great places to stop before Corfu Town. We may have time for Mouse Island too.
Finding traces of the Durrells’ life on the island was clearly not an exact science for Guy, but as he’d said, it was more about being roughly in the right area and using your imagination.
She wondered, as she dressed, what the Durrell family would have thought of all the fuss if they’d still been here. They could never have dreamed that decades later their own steps on the island would be followed as a kind of homage.
When she looked at the titles of each chapter in My Family and Other Animals they were, she thought, really a shorthand for the jewels that made up the treasure chest of the island: the family villas – Strawberry, Daffodil Yellow, Snow White; then the seasons, captured in every chapter, but most poignantly in ‘The Sweet Spring Conversation’ and ‘The Woodcock Winter Conversation’; and last but not least, as you’d expect in the memoir of a budding 10-year-old naturalist, the episodes featuring the animals and insects with whom he shared this Eden – ‘A Treasure of Spiders’, ‘The Pageant of Fireflies’, and ‘The Tortoise Hills’.
Each chapter was woven seamlessly and delightfully into tales, some perhaps tall, but all with a grain of warmth and truth that only such joy, lovingly remembered twenty years later, deserved. It was difficult not to fall in love with them all, each member of the family – animal or human – unique, flawed, and unforgettable.
When Penny read the book, she’d envisaged the moonlight guiding them down to the beach for a swim, had smelt the rotting turtle being merrily dissected by Gerry on the veranda, and heard the screams of anger from Leslie as he discovered the snakes cooling down in the bath, where his young brother had left them.
As she walked towards the restaurant, the luminosity of the lemons against their emerald leaves and the crushed-blue-silk sky beyond, all shimmering in the heat, caught her illustrator’s eye. She captured these jewels on her phone, sometimes a rose in all its stages, from tightly closed green and red-tinged bud, through to its tentative blossoming, and then at its full-blown blousiest. She curated the things rarely noticed, regularly missed, yet always beautiful, to be used at some point in the future to depict a story that had probably not even been written yet.
It was one of the features of her work, her trademark, to include details of flora and fauna, drawn with fineness and compelling accuracy, wherever she could fit them in. They weren’t just clever copies of nature, but realistic and textured, reacting to light as though they were real on the page. They brought the narrative to life with an honesty and heart that lifted the story and helped the reader live in the moment as they read the book.
Someone had once asked her why, particularly in fairy tales, she didn’t just invent the flowers and landscapes. Her answer was simple: there was nothing she could create that was as beautiful as what already existed.
‘Hi!’ Guy waved at her from the end of the lane.
‘On my way,’ she called back, popping her phone back into her rucksack, next to the obligatory sketchbook and small watercolour palette.
It was a morning to bottle, she thought, as she spotted Lily and Rich standing outside the Athena. As Penny unlocked the car, Rich opened the back door for Lily, and Guy claimed the front passenger seat and calling out, ‘I know where we’re going. Guide’s perks.’
Rich didn’t look remotely disappointed as he sat in the back, smiling at Lily as she waved at Tess. Penny lowered the car window and shouted across: ‘Guy’s our official tour guide today. So if we’re not back before sundown, send out a search party.’
Theo looked up from his book and waved, Guy calling out that they’d bring him something back as a treat.
‘I haven’t got a snake yet,’ he suggested.
Tess smiled down at Theo and mouthed, ‘No snakes’, behind her son’s back.
Benitses and Perama clung to the ribbon of road that hugged the coastline south of Corfu Town. Each had a unique charm, moulded by geography, the sea, the seasons, and the thousands of people who visited each year. Benitses, huddling cosily between the towering hills and mountains rising up into the ether behind her and the sea that lapped at her feet, had begun life as a traditional village and been one of the first resorts on Corfu.
They passed scattered roadside houses, some hidden from view, only their roofs visible, built on the hillsides to be closer to the sea, where some enjoyed private access to the shingled beach below.
Guy sat back in the passenger seat, looking like an extra from a Noel Coward play set on the French Riviera, dressed in crisp linen shirt and shorts. There was an elegance about him, Penny thought, even when casually dressed, that she guessed was probably carefully created. She glanced in the rear-view mirror at Lily and Rich. Lily fiddled with her phone, while Rich looked at her, then abstractedly out of the window, as though desperately searching for something to say.
Penny decided to step in and end his agony. ‘Lily, I know Rich and Guy are at the same university, but did you know each other before you came out here?’
Lily took an earbud out. ‘No, we met here a few weeks ago, at the start of the season. I didn’t know anyone when I came.’
‘Didn’t you know Tess? I thought that’s how you ended up working at the Athena,’ Rich said.
‘No, not really. My aunt knows Tess and heard she was looking for someone for the season, as she was let down at the last minute. So, she put me in touch. Tess interviewed me online and I arrived two weeks later.’
‘She seems lovely,’ Penny said, her eye caught for a second by a new signpost.
Guy whispered, ‘Straight on.’
‘She is. I can’t believe I have my own little room, a tiny kitchen, and a balcony, all so close to my work. I just walk down the track and I’m there. I’ve almost perfected getting up, showering, having breakfast, and getting to the Athena within twenty-five minutes. Extra sleep time.’
Lily paused for a minute, looking out of the window deep in thought, then said, ‘I don’t know how Tess does it. She runs the Athena and the holiday apartments, orders all the food, keeps all the accounts, and looks after Theo.’
‘But she has her father-in-law and Nic to help out,’ Penny said.
‘I think there’s a bit more to Nic’
s support than meets the eye though,’ Lily said. ‘Have you noticed the way he looks at Tess when she’s chatting to customers at the bar? I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it, but Anna’s noticed it too.’
Lily looked out of the window again, leaving her fellow passengers to muse in their own different ways on the news that Nic might be in love with Tess.
They were brought sharply back into the moment as Lily pointed to the sea and exclaimed, ‘Oh, I love the way that little wooden pier goes out across the bay.’
They glanced to the right and saw a rustic pier, along which tables with fluttering cloths caught the cooling breeze, under a long white canopy. Smiling diners relaxed with cold drinks or nursed their coffees after a late breakfast.
‘It reminds me of the pier scene in La La Land,’ Lily said, her face suffused with a grin.
Rich stared out of the window, wondering how Ryan Gosling had managed to quickly become, in spirit, the fifth member of the party on a day for which he had entertained such high hopes.
Chapter 14
As they approached Benitses, Guy told Penny to pull over and park next to the marina. ‘Is this where the Strawberry Villa is? I thought we needed to be in Perama,’ she asked as she steered into a parking space.
‘Not quite yet,’ Guy said mysteriously. ‘Trust me, you’ll want to make this stop, and we have plenty of time.’
They crossed the road, following Guy’s lead and watching out for cars and coaches. Within a couple of minutes, they strolled among charming open-air tavernas and cafés, looking up at buildings that had been part of a thriving fishing hub.
The mountains towered on the horizon, behind the bustling market which offered everything from painted, ceramic vases to jars of honey that caught the sun and reflected it back in a liquid, amber glow.
‘Here we are.’ said Guy, with a flourish of his hand directing them towards a table in one of the outdoor cafés. ‘You won’t regret this detour,’ he declared and went off to order.
He soon returned and, a few minutes later, a young man arrived at the table with their drinks order and large, lustrous slices of baklava.
‘This is my friend Philip, who’s here on the good ship Corfu for a summer stint, the same as us – Penny excepted, of course, who seems to be here of her own free will. He normally resides in Athens.’
Philip smiled in greeting. ‘I thought you might like to try the baklava and tell everyone how good it is. My aunt made it. This is her and my uncle’s business.’
The pastry oozed honey and promise. Nuts and cinnamon wrapped in filo pastry gave off a heavenly aroma of the freshly baked and homemade. It had been eaten by their senses before they even took a bite.
Lily watched Philip with enough interest to give Penny a pang of sympathy for Rich, who, his focus on the baklava, had not noticed her glance at Philip’s retreating back.
The baklava lived up to its promise: syrupy honey, intermingled with flaky, crisp pastry and toasted nuts, all melted together in a cinnamon-infused taste sensation that necessitated an appreciative, companionable silence.
As she washed it down with coffee, Penny considered how random everything was. Here she was sitting with people who only days ago had been strangers, living on an island more than 1,500 miles away from home. Every day had endless possibilities.
She realized that one of the first casualties of her grief had been the optimism she’d always naturally exuded and relied upon, which had carried her through so many days of uncertainty. At this moment, the sun was a gift, the baklava a bonus, and courage was dropping gently back into her soul.
The Durrells had been here. They had looked at the same jagged peaks and turquoise sea, perhaps from this very spot, and gazed over the same ancient olive groves. Larry and his wife Nancy had left a trail of lighted torches in their wake for the family to follow.
Penny’s dream, a pleasing diversion as she’d stared out of the window at school, then college, home – or more recently, the hospice – had merged into reality. The narrative in her head, the adventure of transforming the places from a novel into somewhere she had actually visited, had already begun.
‘Ready?’ Guy looked across at Penny, who smiled and stood up.
‘Absolutely,’ she replied. The trio meandered back to the car, with Lily turning to wave a casual goodbye to Philip.
They had only been back in the car for two minutes when Guy pointed across Penny and said, ‘There they are: Mouse Island and, just across the water, closer to us, the old monastery.’
The two islets, like siblings that had turned away from each other, arms folded after an argument, were jewel-like in their azure setting. One reached by boat, the other by a causeway, Mouse Island had a bleached white church and the other had the Vlacherna Monastery, the latter resplendent with a bell tower and a rustic red-tiled roof.
‘I can’t believe Margo and Gerry Durrell used to swim across from Perama to Mouse Island.’ Penny glanced at the watery blue expanse between the island and Perama. Please, tell me there’s a boat!’
‘Oh yes, there’s a boat, which I’m reliably informed is the fun bit. Now take this road here.’ Guy pointed and Penny pulled off the main road. Just as the road began to rise Guy told her to stop the car.
‘This is as close as we can get without looking like we’re tourists or voyeurs,’ Guy said as he stepped out of the car. ‘Bear in mind that the house has been rebuilt. So although it’s still lovely, if you know what it looked like in the 1930s you’ll have to adjust your expectations.’
They were on a small road, lined with established, lush green trees, set against a picture-book blue sky, with no sense of the remoteness of the landscape of the 1930s, described so richly in Penny’s beloved book. No braying donkeys to annoy aspiring writers or overwhelming flora and fauna tumbling in a cultivated and wild mixture down the hillside. But the air still exuded the rich scent of flowers and closer to the houses, the aroma of lemon and garlic might easily have stolen out of the kitchen window – the hallmark of any house on Corfu – with mother, Louisa Durrell, in residence, cooking with her favourite aromatic herbs and spices.
Lily and Rich followed, but weren’t really sure what they were looking at, or looking for. ‘I’ve seen a few episodes of The Durrells on TV. Is this the house where they actually lived?’ Lily asked. ‘It looks different from the one I remember, which was right next to the sea. The sea was part of the front garden and there was a terrace.’
Before Penny began to speak, she checked herself, trying to balance her enthusiasm for her Durrell family with an understanding that once she began, there was a danger that she might have to retell their whole story.
‘The main family lived in three different houses on Corfu – the Strawberry Villa, the Daffodil Yellow and finally the Snow White. The fourth house associated with the Durrells is the White House in Kalami Bay, where Larry and his wife Nancy lived.’
They walked towards the terracotta roof of the villa beyond the trees. Penny continued: ‘This is the Strawberry Villa. Guy, you were right . . . it has changed since the Durrells’ day; a lot if you compare it to the drawing Gerry made of it in childhood, which shows the house all on one level with two windows either side of the central front door and the gardens full of ornate flower beds. But I suppose, it’s now wearing its new clothes.’
The villa, although walled and private, no longer lay in splendid isolation as it shared the hillside with more houses. The rebuilt, two-storey, russet-pink house embodied the Venetian style, complete with a white-columned entrance. The garden boasted a swimming pool overlooked by beautifully proportioned, white-shuttered windows, and the villa was without doubt now a smart, sparkling holiday destination; no longer small and faded, with bubbling, cracking paint on ageing shutters, as described so lovingly in My Family and Other Animals.
After a while, Penny said, ‘This was where the Durrells lived when they first arrived in 1935, followed by two other houses. The Venetian villa they used in the TV series is qui
te close to their second house, the Daffodil Yellow Villa, near Kontokali, but all the houses are now privately owned, so not open to the public. Except of course this one, which anyone can book for a holiday.’
As silence settled on the little group the soundtrack and aroma of the pine trees filled the air: the humming chorus of flying insects, alongside the chirping of cicadas and occasional birdsong. The natural songscape still captivated the onlooker, but lacked the chorus of a peasant song rising above it all, taught to the young Gerry on his many wanderings by an elderly Corfiot woman, who had become one of the small English boy’s many friends. A cavalcade of characters crowded into Penny’s mind: the eccentric and transient Rose-Beetle Man; Agathi, the singer and teacher of songs; Theo Stephanides, oracle and inspiration; even Achilles the tortoise pushed his way in.
She suddenly wanted to sit down, make contact with the earth, close her eyes, and try to conjure up those who had gone before but were now as elusive as the wind. And she realized abruptly that, along with the Durrells, her dad no longer inhabited the earth she lived on, and existed only in her mind and memory. How sad and strange that felt.
Penny wondered if it was possible to hear the echoes of the past if she concentrated and remained motionless for a moment. She closed her eyes and imagined running, sandalled feet; the sharp crack of gunshots from a bored Leslie’s gun, as he practised hitting tins cans across the garden; Lugaretzia, the maid, sharing the story of her latest ailment in mournful tones; or the rumble of an old Dodge motor car, which signalled the arrival of the Durrells’ dear friend and Mr Fixit, Spiro.
This, after all, was the place where their great adventure had begun; the location that had launched a thousand days of discovery, that had shaped a life – Gerald Durrell’s lifetime’s mission and labour of love in the natural world. A man who David Attenborough had described as ‘magic’.
Penny reopened her eyes, weaving into her memory the picture before her that she felt must still resemble the scene from 1935. She sensed the pure, undiluted joy of being 10 years old and landing on this island; an island so rich in wildlife, with many worlds to explore, and seasons to astonish and enchant – the Garden of the Gods, which the grown-up Gerry had written about so vividly, with such warmth, humour, and poignancy.
Looking for the Durrells Page 7