The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Now, now, dear,’ said Mother placatingly. ‘Gerry can’t help it if Roger kills chickens.’

  ‘Turkeys,’ said Leslie. ‘I bet he’ll want a hell of a lot for those.’

  ‘Have you cleaned up the veranda, dear?’ inquired Mother.

  Larry removed a large handkerchief, drenched in eau-de-Cologne, which he had spread over his face. ‘Does it smell as though he’s cleaned up the veranda?’ he inquired.

  I said hastily that I was just about to do it and followed Leslie to see the outcome of his conversation with the turkey owner.

  ‘Well,’ said Leslie belligerently, striding out onto the veranda, ‘what do you want?’

  The man cringed, humble, servile, and altogether repulsive.

  ‘Be happy, kyrié, be happy,’ he said, greeting Leslie.

  ‘Be happy,’ Leslie replied in a gruff tone of voice that implied he hoped the man would be anything but. ‘What do you wish to see me about?’

  ‘My turkeys, kyrié,’ explained the man. ‘I apologize for troubling you, but your dog, you see, he’s been killing my turkeys.’

  ‘Well,’ said Leslie, ‘how many has he killed?’

  ‘Five, kyrié,’ said the man, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Five of my best turkeys. I am a poor man, kyrié, otherwise I wouldn’t have dreamed…’

  ‘Five!’ said Leslie startled, and turned an inquiring eye on me.

  I said I thought it was quite possible. If five hysterical turkeys had leaped out of a myrtle bush, I could well believe that Roger would kill them all. For such a benign and friendly dog, he was a very ruthless killer when he got started.

  ‘Roger is a good dog,’ said Lugaretzia belligerently.

  She had joined us on the veranda and she obviously viewed the turkey owner with the same dislike as I did. Apart from this, in her eyes Roger could do no wrong.

  ‘Well,’ said Leslie, making the best of a bad job, ‘if he’s killed five turkeys, he’s killed five turkeys. Such is life. Where are the bodies?’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘The bodies, kyrié?’ queried the turkey owner tentatively.

  ‘The bodies, the bodies,’ said Leslie impatiently. ‘You know, the bodies of the turkeys. You know we can’t pay until you produce the bodies.’

  ‘But that’s not possible,’ said the turkey owner nervously.

  ‘What do you mean, not possible?’ inquired Leslie.

  ‘Well, it’s not possible to bring the bodies, kyrié,’ said the turkey owner with a flash of inspiration, ‘because your dog has eaten them.’

  The explosion that this statement provoked was considerable. We all knew that Roger was, if anything, slightly overfed, and that he was of a most fastidious nature. Though he would kill a chicken, nothing would induce him to feed upon the carcass.

  ‘Lies! Lies!’ shrilled Lugaretzia, her eyes swimming with tears of emotion. ‘He’s a good dog.’

  ‘He’s never eaten anything in his life that he’s killed,’ shouted Leslie. ‘Never.’

  ‘But five of my turkeys!’ said the little man. ‘Five of them he’s eaten!’

  ‘When did he kill them?’ roared Leslie.

  ‘This morning, kyrié, this morning,’ said the man, crossing himself. ‘I saw it myself, and he ate them all.’

  I interrupted to say that Roger had been out that morning in the Bootle-Bumtrinket with me and, intelligent dog though he was, I did not see how he could be consuming the prodigious quantity of five turkeys on this man’s farm and be out in the boat with me at the same time.

  Leslie had had a trying morning. All he had wanted was to lie peacefully on the sofa with his manual of ballistics, but first he had been almost asphyxiated by my investigations into the internal anatomy of the turtle and now he was being faced by a drunken little man, trying to swindle us for the price of five turkeys. His temper, never under the best of control, bubbled over.

  ‘You’re a two-faced liar and a cheat,’ he snarled. The little man backed away and his face went white.

  ‘You are the liar and the cheat,’ he said, with drunken belligerence. ‘You are the liar and the cheat. You let your dog kill everybody’s chickens and turkeys and then when they come to you for payment, you refuse. You are the liar and the cheat.’

  Even at that stage, I think that sanity could have prevailed, but the little man made a fatal mistake. He spat copiously and wetly at Leslie’s feet. Lugaretzia uttered a shrill wail of horror and grabbed hold of Leslie’s arm. Knowing his temper, I grabbed hold of the other one, too. The little man, appalled into a moment of sobriety, backed away. Leslie quivered like a volcano and Lugaretzia and I hung on like grim death.

  ‘Excreta of a pig,’ roared Leslie. ‘Illegitimate son of a diseased whore…’

  The fine Greek oaths rolled out, rich, vulgar, and biological, and the little man turned from white to pink and from pink to red. He had obviously been unaware of the fact that Leslie had such a command over the fruitier of the Greek insults.

  ‘You’ll be sorry,’ he quavered. ‘You’ll be sorry.’

  He spat once more with a pathetic sort of defiance and then turned and scuttled down the drive.

  It took the combined efforts of the family and Lugaretzia three quarters of an hour to calm Leslie down, with the aid of several large brandies.

  ‘Don’t you worry about him, kyrié Leslie,’ was Lugaretzia’s final summing up. ‘He’s well known in the village as a bad character. Don’t you worry about him.’

  But we were forced to worry about him, for the next thing we knew, he had sued Leslie for not paying his debts and for defamation of character.

  Spiro, when told the news, was furious.

  ‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells,’ he said, his face red with wrath. ‘Why don’ts yous lets Masters Leslies shoot the son of a bitch?’

  ‘I don’t think that would really solve anything, Spiro,’ said Mother. ‘What we want to know now is whether this man has any chance of winning his case.’

  ‘Winnings!’ said Spiro with fine scorn. ‘That bastard won’t wins anythings. You just leaves it to me. I’ll fixes it.’

  ‘Now, don’t go and do anything rash, Spiro,’ said Mother. ‘It’ll only make matters worse.’

  ‘I won’ts do anything rash, Mrs Durrells. But I’ll fixes that bastard.’

  For several days he went about with an air of conspiratorial gloom, his bushy eyebrows tangled in a frown of immense concentration, only answering our questions monosyllabically. Then, one day, a fortnight or so before the case was due to be heard, we were all in town on a shopping spree. Eventually, weighed down by our purchases, we made our way to the broad, tree-lined Esplanade and sat there having a drink and exchanging greetings with our numerous acquaintances who passed. Presently Spiro, who had been glaring furtively about him with the air of a man who had many enemies, suddenly stiffened. He hitched his great belly up and leaned across the table.

  ‘Master Leslies, you sees that mans over there, that one with the white hair?’

  He pointed a sausage-like finger at a small, neat little man who was placidly sipping a cup of coffee under the trees.

  ‘Well, what about him?’ inquired Leslie.

  ‘He’s the judges,’ said Spiro.

  ‘What judge?’ said Leslie, bewildered.

  ‘The judges who is going to tries your case,’ said Spiro. ‘I wants you go to over there and talks to him.’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ said Leslie. ‘He might think I’m trying to muck about with the course of justice and give me ten years in prison or something.’

  ‘Gollys, nos,’ said Spiro, aghast at such a thought. ‘He wouldn’t puts Master Leslies in prison. He knows better than to do thats while I ams here.’

  ‘But even so, Spiro, don’t you think he’ll think it a little funny if Leslie suddenly starts talking to him?’ asked Mother.

  ‘Gollys nos,’ said Spiro. He glanced about him to make sure that we weren’t overheard, leaned forward, and whispered, �
��He collects stamps.’

  The family looked bewildered.

  ‘You mean he’s a philatelist?’ said Larry at length.

  ‘No, no, Master Larrys,’ said Spiro. ‘He’s not one of them. He’s a married man and he’s gots two childrens.’

  The whole conversation seemed to be getting even more involved than the normal ones that we had with Spiro.

  ‘What,’ said Leslie patiently, ‘has his collecting stamps got to do with it?’

  ‘I will takes you over there,’ said Spiro, laying bare for the first time the Machiavellian intricacies of his plot, ‘and yous tells hims that you will get him some stamps from England.’

  ‘But that’s bribery,’ said Margo, shocked.

  ‘It isn’t bribery, Misses Margos,’ said Spiro. ‘He collects stamps. He wants stamps.’

  ‘I should think if you tried to bribe him with stamps he’d give you about five hundred years’ penal servitude,’ said Larry to Leslie judiciously.

  I asked eagerly whether, if Leslie was condemned, he would be sent to Vido, the convict settlement on a small island that lay in the sparkling sea half a mile or so from the town.

  ‘No, no, dear,’ said Mother, getting increasingly flustered. ‘Leslie won’t be sent to Vido.’

  I felt this was rather a pity. I already had one convict friend, serving a sentence for the murder of his wife, who lived on Vido. He was a ‘trusty’ and so had been allowed to build his own boat and row home for the week-ends. He had given me a monstrous black-backed gull which tyrannized all my pets and the family. I felt that, exciting though it was to have a real murderer as a friend, it would have been better to have Leslie incarcerated on Vido so that he too could come home for the week-ends. To have a convict brother would, I felt, be rather exotic.

  ‘I don’t see that if I just go and talk to him it can do any harm,’ said Leslie.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Margo. ‘Remember, there’s many a slip without a stitch.’

  ‘I do think you ought to be careful, dear,’ said Mother.

  ‘I can see it all,’ said Larry with relish. ‘Leslie with a ball and chain; Spiro too, probably, as an accessory. Margo knitting them warm socks for the winter, Mother sending them food parcels and anti-lice ointment.’

  ‘Oh, do stop it, Larry,’ said Mother crossly. ‘This is no laughing matter.’

  ‘All you’ve gots to dos is to talks to him, Master Leslies,’ said Spiro earnestly. ‘Honest to Gods you’ve got to, otherwise I can’t fixes it.’

  Spiro had, prior to this, never let us down. His advice had always been sound, and even if it hadn’t been legal, we had never so far come to grief.

  ‘All right,’ said Leslie. ‘Let’s give it a bash.’

  ‘Do be careful, dear,’ said Mother as Leslie and Spiro rose and walked over to where the judge was sitting.

  The judge greeted them charmingly and for half an hour Leslie and Spiro sat at his table sipping coffee while Leslie talked to him in voluble, but inaccurate, Greek. Presently the judge rose and left them with much handshaking and bowing. They returned to our table where we waited agog for the news.

  ‘Charming old boy,’ said Leslie. ‘Couldn’t have been nicer. I promised to get him some stamps. Who do we know in England who collects them?’

  ‘Well, your father used to,’ said Mother. ‘He was a very keen philatelist when he was alive.’

  ‘Gollys, don’t says that Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro, in genuine anguish.

  A short pause ensued while the family explained to him the meaning of the word philatelist.

  ‘I still don’t see how this is going to help the case,’ said Larry, ‘even if you inundate him with penny blacks.’

  ‘Never yous minds, Masters Larrys,’ said Spiro darkly. ‘I said I’d fixes it and I will. You just leaves it to me.’

  For the next few days Leslie, convinced that Spiro could obstruct the course of justice, wrote to everybody he could think of in England and demanded stamps. The result was that our mail increased threefold and that practically every free space in the villa was taken up by piles of stamps which, whenever a wind blew, would drift like autumn leaves across the room, to the vociferous, snarling delight of the dogs. As a result of this, many of the stamps began to look slightly the worse for wear.

  ‘You’re not going to give him those, are you?’ said Larry, disdainfully surveying a pile of mangled, semi-masticated stamps that Leslie had rescued from the jaws of Roger half an hour previously.

  ‘Well, stamps are supposed to be old, aren’t they?’ said Leslie belligerently.

  ‘Old, perhaps,’ said Larry, ‘but surely not covered with enough spittle to give him hydrophobia.’

  ‘Well, if you can think of a better bloody plan, why don’t you suggest it?’ inquired Leslie.

  ‘My dear fellow, I don’t mind,’ said Larry. ‘When the judge is running around biting all his colleagues and you are languishing in a Greek prison, don’t blame me.’

  ‘All I ask is that you mind your own bloody business,’ cried Leslie.

  ‘Now, now, dear, Larry’s only trying to be helpful,’ said Mother.

  ‘Helpful,’ snarled Leslie, making a grab at a group of stamps that were being blown off the table. ‘He’s just interfering as usual.’

  ‘Well, dear,’ said Mother, adjusting her spectacles, ‘I do think he may be right, you know. After all, some of those stamps do look a little, well, you know, second-hand.’

  ‘He wants stamps and he’s bloody well going to get stamps,’ said Leslie.

  And stamps the poor judge got, in a bewildering variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and stages of disintegration.

  Then another thing happened that increased Leslie’s confidence in winning the case a hundredfold. We discovered that the turkey man, whom Larry constantly referred to as Crippenopoulos, had been unwise enough to subpoena Lugaretzia as a witness for the prosecution. Lucretia, furious, wanted to refuse, until it was explained to her that she could not.

  ‘Imagine that man calling me as a witness to help him,’ she said. ‘Well, don’t you worry, kyrié Leslie, I’ll tell the court how he forced you to swear at him and call him…’

  The family rose in a body and vociferously informed Lugaretzia that she was not to do anything of the sort. It took us half an hour to impress upon her what she should and should not say. At the end of it, since Lugaretzia, like most Corfiotes, was not very strong on logic, we felt somewhat jaded.

  ‘Well, with her as witness for the prosecution,’ said Larry, ‘I should think you’ll probably get the death sentence.’

  ‘Larry dear, don’t say things like that,’ said Mother. ‘It’s not funny even in a joke.’

  ‘I’m not joking,’ said Larry.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Leslie uneasily. ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right.’

  ‘I think it would be much safer to disguise Margo as Lugaretzia,’ said Larry judicially. ‘With her sweeping command over the Greek language she would probably do you considerably less harm.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margo excitedly, struck for the first time by Larry’s perspicacity, ‘why can’t I be a witness?’

  ‘Don’t be damned silly,’ said Leslie. ‘You weren’t there. How can you be a witness?’

  ‘I was almost there,’ said Margo. ‘I was in the kitchen.’

  ‘That’s all you need,’ said Larry to Leslie. ‘Margo and Lugaretzia in the witness-box and you won’t even need a judge. You’ll probably be lynched by the mob.’

  When the day of the case dawned, Mother rallied the family.

  ‘It’s ridiculous for us all to go,’ said Larry. ‘If Leslie wants to get himself into prison, that’s his affair. I don’t see why we should be dragged into it. Besides, I wanted to do some writing this morning.’

  ‘It’s our duty to go,’ said Mother firmly. ‘We must put on a bold front. After all, I don’t want people to think that I’m rearing a family of gaol-birds.’

  So we all put on our best clothes and sat waiti
ng patiently until Spiro came to collect us.

  ‘Now, don’ts yous worrys, Master Leslies,’ he scowled, with the air of a warder in the condemned cell. ‘Everything’s going to be OK’s.’

  But in spite of this prophecy, Larry insisted on reciting ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ as we drove into town, much to Leslie’s annoyance.

  The court-room was a bustle of uncoordinated activity. People sipped little cups of coffee, other people shuffled through piles of papers in an aimless but dedicated way, and there was lots of chatter and laughter. Crippenopoulos was there in his best suit, but avoided our eye. Lugaretzia, for some reason best known to herself, was clad entirely in black. It was, as Larry pointed out, a premature move. Surely she should have reserved her mourning for after the trial.

  ‘Now, Master Leslies,’ said Spiro, ‘you stands there, and I stands there and translates for you.’

  ‘What for?’ inquired Leslie, bewildered.

  ‘Because you don’ts speaks Greeks,’ said Spiro.

  ‘Really, Spiro,’ protested Larry, ‘I admit his Greek is not Homeric, but it is surely perfectly adequate?’

  ‘Masters Larrys,’ said Spiro, scowling earnestly, ‘Master Leslies mustn’ts speaks Greeks.’

  Before we could inquire more deeply into this, there was a general scuffling and the judge came in. He took his seat and his eyes roved round the court and then, catching sight of Leslie, he beamed and bowed.

  ‘Hanging judges always smile like that,’ said Larry.

  ‘Larry dear, do stop it,’ said Mother. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  There was a long pause while what was presumably the Clerk of the Court read out the indictment. Then Crippenopoulos was called to give his evidence. He put on a lovely performance, at once servile and indignant, placating but belligerent. The judge was obviously impressed and I began to get quite excited. Perhaps I would have a convict for a brother after all. Then it was Leslie’s turn.

  ‘You are accused,’ said the judge, ‘of having used defamatory and insulting language to this man and endeavouring to deprive him of rightful payment for the loss of five turkeys, killed by your dog.’

  Leslie stared blank-faced at the judge.