I said I thought it was a great pity that it should happen to anybody as nice as Andreas, but he was lucky to be alive. I presumed that when he was better he would be arrested and sent to Vido for five years.
‘No, no,’ said Papa Demetrios. ‘The policeman said he thought Andreas had been punished quite enough, so he told the hospital that Andreas had caught his hand in some machinery.’
The corn had now started to explode, banging on to the tin like the explosions of miniature cannons. Papa Demetrios lifted the pan off the fire and took the lid off. There was each grain of corn exploded into a little yellow-and-white cumulus cloud, scrunchy and delicious. Papa Demetrios took a twist of paper from his pocket and unwrapped it. It was full of coarse grains of grey sea-salt, and into this we dipped the little clouds of corn and scrunched them up with relish.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ said the old man at last, wiping his moustache carefully with a large red-and-white handkerchief. ‘Another one of those terrible animals that you are so eager to get.’
Stuffing my mouth with the remains of the popcorn and wiping my fingers on the grass, I asked him eagerly what it was.
‘I’ll fetch it,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘It’s a very curious thing. I’ve never seen one like it before.’
I waited impatiently while he went into the olive press and reappeared carrying a battered tin, the neck of which he had stuffed with leaves.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Be careful, because it smells.’
I pulled out the plug of leaves and peered into the tin and discovered that Papa Demetrios was quite right; it smelt as strongly of garlic as a peasant bus on market day. In the bottom was crouched a medium-size, rather smooth-skinned, greenish-brown toad with enormous amber eyes and a mouth set in a perpetual, but rather insane, grin. As I put my hand into the tin to pick him up, he ducked his head between his forelegs, retracted his protuberant eyes into his skull in the odd way that toads have, and uttered a sharp bleating cry rather like that of a miniature sheep. I lifted him out of the tin and he struggled violently, exuding a terrible odour of garlic. I noticed that on each hind foot he had a horny black excrescence, blade-shaped, like a ploughshare. I was delighted with him, for I had spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to track down spade-footed toads without success. Thanking Papa Demetrios profusely, I carried him home triumphantly and installed him in an aquarium in my bedroom.
I had placed earth and sand to a depth of two or three inches at the bottom of the aquarium and Augustus, having been christened and released, immediately set to work to build himself a home. With a curious movement of his hind legs, working backwards, using the blades of his feet as spades, he very rapidly dug himself a hole and disappeared from view with the exception of his protuberant eyes and grinning face.
Augustus, I soon discovered, was a remarkably intelligent beast and had many endearing traits of character which made themselves apparent as he got tamer. When I went into the room, he would scuttle out of his hole and make desperate endeavours to reach me through the glass walls of the aquarium. If I took him out and placed him on the floor, he would hop round the room after me and then, if I sat down, would climb laboriously up my leg until he reached my lap, where he would recline in a variety of undignified attitudes, basking in the heat of my body, blinking his eyes slowly, grinning up at me, and gulping. It was then that I discovered he liked to lie on his back and have his stomach gently massaged by my forefinger, and so from this unusual behaviour he derived the surname of Tickletummy. He would also, I learned, sing for his food. If I held a large, writhing earthworm over the top of the aquarium, Augustus would go into paroxysms of delight, his eyes seeming to protrude more and more with excitement, and he would utter a series of little pig-like grunts and the strange bleating cry he had given when I first picked him up. When the worm was finally dropped in front of him, he would nod his head vigorously, as if in thanks, grab one end of it and proceed to stuff it into his mouth with his thumbs. Whenever we had any guests, they were treated to an Augustus Tickletummy recital and they all agreed, gravely, that he had the best voice and repertoire of any toad they had met.
It was round about this time that Larry introduced Donald and Max into our life. Max was an immensely tall Austrian with curly blond hair, a blond moustache perched like an elegant butterfly on his lip, and intensely blue and kindly eyes. Donald, on the other hand, was short and pale-faced; one of those Englishmen who give you a first impression of being not only inarticulate, but completely devoid of personality.
Larry had run into this ill-assorted couple in the town and had lavishly invited them up to have drinks. The fact that they arrived, mellowed by a variety of alcoholic stimuli, at two o’clock in the morning did not strike any of us as being particularly curious, since, by that time, we were inured, or almost inured, to Larry’s acquaintances.
Mother had gone to bed early with a severe cold, and the rest of the family had also retired to their rooms. I was the only member of the household awake. The reason for this was that I was waiting for Ulysses to return to the bedroom from his nightly wanderings and devour his supper of meat and minced liver. As I lay there reading, I heard a dim, blurred sound echoing through the olive groves. I thought at first it was a party of peasants returning late from a wedding, and took no notice. Then the cacophony grew closer and closer and from the clop and jingle accompanying it I realized it was some late night revellers passing on the road below in a cab. The song they were singing did not sound particularly Greek and I wondered who they could be. I got out of bed and leaned out the window, staring down through the olive trees. At that moment the cab turned off the road and started up the long drive towards the house. I could see it quite clearly because whoever was sitting in the back had apparently lighted a small bonfire. I watched this, puzzled and intrigued, as it flickered and shook through the trees on its way up to us.
At that moment Ulysses appeared out of the night sky, like a silently drifting dandelion clock, and endeavoured to perch on my naked shoulder. I shook him off and went and fetched his plate of food, which he proceeded to peck and gobble at, uttering tiny throaty noises to himself and blinking his brilliant eyes at me.
By this time the cab had made slow but steady progress and had entered the forecourt of the house. I leaned out the window enraptured by the sight.
It was not, as I had thought, a bonfire in the back of the cab. There were two individuals sitting there, each clasping an enormous silver candelabra in which had been stuck some of the great white candles that one normally bought to put inthe church of St Spiridion. They were singing loudly and untunefully, but with great panache, a song from The Maid of the Mountains, endeavouring, wherever possible, to harmonize.
The cab rolled to a halt at the steps that led up to the veranda.
‘At seventeen…’ sighed a very British baritone.
‘At seventeen!’ intoned the other singer in a rather heavy middle-European accent.
‘He falls in love quite madly,’ said the baritone, waving his candelabra about wildly, ‘with eyes of tender blue.’
‘Tender blue,’ intoned the middle-European accent, giving a lechery to these simple words that had to be heard to be believed.
‘At twenty-five,’ continued the baritone, ‘he thinks he’s got it badly.’
‘Badly,’ said the middle-European accent dolefully.
‘With eyes of different hue,’ said the baritone, making such a wild gesture with his candelabra that the candles sped out of their sockets like rockets and fell sizzling onto the grass.
My bedroom door opened and Margo, clad in yards of lace and what appeared to be butter muslin, came in.
‘What on earth’s that noise?’ she asked in a hoarse, accusing whisper. ‘You know Mother’s not well.’
I explained that the noise was nothing whatsoever to do with me, but apparently we had company. Margo leaned out the window and peered down at the cab where the singers had just reached
the next verse of their song.
‘I say,’ she called, in muted tones, ‘do you mind not making quite so much noise. My mother’s sick.’
Immediate silence enveloped the cab and then a tall, gangling figure rose unsteadily to its feet. He held his candelabra aloft and gazed earnestly up at Margo.
‘Must not dear lady,’ he intoned sepulchrally, ‘must not disturb Muzzer.’
‘No, by Jove,’ agreed the English voice from the interior of the cab.
‘Who do you think they are?’ Margo whispered to me in agitation.
I said that to me the thing was perfectly clear; they must be friends of Larry’s.
‘Are you friends of my brother’s?’ Margo fluted out the window.
‘A noble being,’ said the tall figure, waving the candelabra at her. ‘He invited us for drinks.’
‘Er… Just a minute, I’ll come down,’ said Margo.
‘To look you closer would be to fulfil the ambition of a lifetime,’ said the tall man, bowing somewhat uncertainly.
‘See you closer,’ corrected a quiet voice from the back of the cab.
‘I’ll go downstairs,’ said Margo to me, ‘and get them inside and keep them quiet. You go and wake Larry.’
I pulled on a pair of shorts, picked up Ulysses unceremoniously (who, with half-closed eyes, was digesting his food), and went to the window and threw him out.
‘Extraordinary!’ said the tall man, watching Ulysses fly away over the moon-silvered olive tops. ‘Dis like the house of Dracula, no, Donald?’
‘By Jove, yes,’ said Donald.
I pattered down the corridor and burst into Larry’s room. It took me some time to shake him awake, for, under the firm impression that Mother had been breathing her cold germs over him, he had taken the precaution of consuming half a bottle of whisky before he went to bed. Eventually he sat up blearily and looked at me.
‘What the bloody hell do you want?’ he inquired.
I explained about the two characters in the cab and that they had said they had been invited to drinks.
‘Oh, Christ!’ said Larry. ‘Just tell them I’ve gone to Dubrovnik.’
I explained that I could not very well do this as by now Margo would have lured them into the house and that Mother, in her fragile condition, must not be disturbed. Groaning, Larry got out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and slippers and together we went down the creaking stairs to the drawing-room. Here we found Max, lanky, flamboyant, good-natured, sprawled in a chair waving his candelabra at Margo, all the candles of which had gone out. Donald sat hunched and gloomy in another chair, looking like an undertaker’s assistant.
‘Your eyes, they are tender blue,’ said Max, waving a long finger at Margo. ‘Ve vas singing about blue eyes, vere ve not, Donald?’
‘We were singing about blue eyes,’ said Donald.
‘Dat’s what I said,’ said Max benevolently.
‘You said “was,”’ said Donald.
Max thought about this for a brief moment.
‘Anyvay,’ he said, ‘de eyes vas blue.’
‘Were blue,’ said Donald.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Margo, breathlessly, as Larry and I came in. ‘I think these are friends of yours, Larry.’
‘Larry!’ bellowed Max, lurching up with the ungainly grace of a giraffe. ‘Ve have come like you told us.’
‘How very nice,’ said Larry, forcing his sleep-crumpled features into something approaching an ingratiating smile. ‘Do you mind keeping your voice down, because my mother’s sick?’
‘Muzzers,’ said Max, with immense conviction, ‘are de most important thing in de vorld.’
He turned to Donald, laid a long finger across his moustache, and said ‘Shush’ with such violence that Roger, who had sunk into a peaceful sleep, immediately leaped to his feet and started barking wildly. Widdle and Puke joined in vociferously.
‘Damned bad form that,’ observed Donald between the barks. ‘Guest should not make his host’s dogs bark.’
Max went down on his knees and engulfed the still barking Roger in his long arms, a manoeuvre that I viewed with some alarm, since Roger, I felt, was quite capable of misinterpreting it.
‘Hush, Bow Wow,’ said Max, beaming into Roger’s bristling and belligerent face.
To my astonishment, Roger immediately stopped barking and started to lick Max’s face extravagantly.
‘Would you… er… like a drink?’ said Larry. ‘I can’t ask you to stop long, of course, because unfortunately my mother’s ill.’
‘Very civil of you,’ said Donald. ‘Very civil indeed. I must apologize for him. Foreigner, you know.’
‘Well, I think I’ll just go back to bed,’ said Margo, edging tentatively towards the door.
‘No, you won’t,’ Larry barked. ‘Somebody’s got to pour out the drinks.’
‘Do not,’ said Max, reclining on the floor with Roger in his arms and gazing at her piteously, ‘do not remove doze eyes from my orbit.’
‘Well, I’ll go and get the drinks, then,’ said Margo breathlessly.
‘And I vill help you,’ said Max, casting Roger from him and leaping to his feet.
Roger had been under the misguided impression that Max had intended to spend the rest of the night cuddling him in front of the dying fire, and so was not unnaturally put out when he was thrown aside like this. He started barking again.
The door of the drawing-room burst open and Leslie, stark naked except for a shot-gun under his arm, made his appearance.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Leslie, do go and put some clothes on,’ said Margo. ‘These are friends of Larry’s.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Leslie dismally, ‘not more.’
He turned and made his way back upstairs.
‘Drinks!’ said Max, rapturously seizing Margo in his arms and waltzing her round to the accompaniment of almost hysterical barks on the part of Roger.
‘I do wish you would try to be more quiet,’ said Larry. ‘Max, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Damned bad form,’ said Donald.
‘Remember my mother,’ said Larry, since this reference had obviously struck a chord in Max’s soul.
Immediately he ceased waltzing with the breathless Margo and came to a halt.
‘Vere is your Muzzer?’ he inquired. ‘De lady is sick… take me to her dat I may secure her.’
‘Succour,’ said Donald.
‘I’m here,’ said Mother in a slightly nasal tone of voice from the doorway. ‘What is going on?’
She was clad in her nightie and wearing, for reasons of her cold, a voluminous shawl over her shoulders. She carried under one arm the drooping, panting, apathetic figure of Dodo, her Dandie Dinmont terrier.
‘Why, you’re just in time, Mother,’ said Larry. ‘I want you to meet Donald and Max.’
With the first sign of animation that he had shown, Donald rose to his feet, marched swiftly across the room to Mother, seized her hand, and gave a slight bow over it.
‘Enchanted,’ he said. ‘Terribly sorry about the disturbance. My friend, you know. Continental.’
‘How nice to see you,’ said Mother, summoning up all her resources.
At her entrance, Max had thrown his arms wide and was now gazing upon her with all the devoutness of a Crusader catching his first sight of Jerusalem.
‘Muzzer!’ he intoned dramatically. ‘You are de Muzzer!’
‘How do you do,’ said Mother uncertainly.
‘You are,’ Max asked, getting his facts straight, ‘de sick Muzzer?’
‘Oh, it’s just a bit of a cold,’ said Mother deprecatingly.
‘Ve have voked you,’ said Max, clasping his breast, his eyes brimming with tears.
‘Awoken or woken,’ said Donald sotto voce.
‘Come,’ said Max and put his long arms round Mother and ushered her to a chair near the fire, pressing her into it with the utmost delicacy. He took off his coat and spread it gently about her k
nees. Then he squatted by her side, took her hand and peered earnestly into her face.
‘Vhat,’ he inquired, ‘does Muzzer vant?’
‘An uninterrupted night’s sleep,’ said Leslie, who had just returned, more conventionally garbed in a pair of pyjama trousers and sandals.
‘Max,’ said Donald sternly, ‘stop monopolizing the conversation. Remember what we have come for.’
‘Of course,’ said Max delightedly. ‘Ve have vunderful news, Larry. Donald has decided to become an author.’
‘Had to,’ murmured Donald modestly. ‘Seeing all you chaps living in the lap of luxury. Royalties pouring in. Felt I must try my hand at it.’
‘That’s jolly good,’ said Larry, with a certain lack of enthusiasm.
‘I’ve just completed the first chapter,’ said Donald, ‘and so we came out hot-foot, as it were, so that I could read it to you.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Larry, horrified. ‘No, Donald, really. My critical faculties are completely dehydrated at half past two in the morning. Can’t you leave it here and I’ll read it tomorrow?’
‘It’s short,’ said Donald, taking no notice of Larry and producing a small sheet of paper from his pocket, ‘but I think you will find the style interesting.’
Larry gave an exasperated sigh, and we all sat back and listened expectantly while Donald cleared his throat.
‘Suddenly,’ he began in a deep vibrant voice, ‘suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, there he was and then suddenly, there she was, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly. And suddenly he looked at her, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, and she suddenly looked at him, suddenly. She suddenly opened her arms, suddenly, suddenly, and he opened his arms, suddenly. Then suddenly they came together and, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, he could feel the warmth of her body and suddenly, suddenly she could feel the warmth of his mouth on hers as they suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly fell on the couch together.’
The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy) Page 45