The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘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. 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, collect 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 god-parent 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 favourite 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. 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,’ replied 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, water spouts, typhoons, and 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, 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 boatbuilding was almost circular and flat-bottomed, so that, with her attractive colour 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 prone to do in moments of stress. 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 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. 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, 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 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 dwelled 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; with their pop eyes and thick lips they are vaguely reminiscent of a hippopotamus. In the breeding season the males became most colourful, with a dark spot behind the eyes edged with sky blue, a dull orange hump-like 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 light olive with pale blue spots and leaf-green fins. I was anxious to capture some of these colourful little fish, since it was their breeding season, and I was hoping to 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 multi-coloured weeds. On the rocks were the dark purple, black pin-cushions of the sea urchins, their spines turning to and fro like compass needles. Here and there, stuck to the rocks like enlarged woodlice, 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. 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 favoured. It was not long before I spotted a fine male, brilliant and almost iridescent in his courting outfit of many colours. 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 a
nd 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 terracotta 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 the bigger containers in the boat.

  Flushed with success I continued my hunting, and by lunch-time 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, to sit under the olive trees and eat my lunch. The air was heavy with the scent of broom and full of the zinging cries of 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 swallowtails rarely sit 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, began to row home so that I could settle my blennies in their aquariums. Reaching the villa, I placed the male blenny, together with his pot, in the centre 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 while the females gulped and pouted with equal zest 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 inside, 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 to get my breakfast and ate it squatting in front of the aquarium, my gaze fixed on the blennies. The family, who had hitherto regarded fish as the least of potential trouble-makers 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 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 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, when he happened to wander up to the entrance of the pot. Immediately the male blenny emerged, glowing with iridescent colours, 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 turned tail and scuttled off. This left the blenny, glowing virtuously, as the victor and he sat just outside his pot looking 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 colouring seemed to glow all the more. Then suddenly 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 behaviour in amazement until I 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 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 sheepdog 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 birds’ nest out of reach you could use the mirror as a 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 disappearing into the pot. With great caution, so as not to disturb them, I lowered the mirror on the bamboo into the water and manoeuvred it until it was at the entrance of the pot. When I had jiggled it into position, I found I not only got a good view of the interior of the pot, but that the sunlight reflected off the mirror and lit up the inside beautifully.

  To begin with the two fish stayed close together, there was a lot of fin waving but nothing much else. The male’s attacks on the female ceased, now she was safely in the pot, and he seemed more conciliatory towards her. After about ten minutes the female moved from the position alongside him and proceeded to lay a small cluster of transparent eggs which were 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 came to lay 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 eyes. Not wishing to have a double case of infanticide on my conscience, and lacking aquarium space, I put the second 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 multi-coloured offspring of his own.

  Three days later the Count appeared. He was tall and slender, with tightly curled hair as golden as a silkworm cocoon, shining with oil, a delicately curled moustache of a similar hue, and slightly protuberant eyes of a 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 his 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 that 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 with which he came in contact that one could have been pardoned for thinking him the reincarnation of a goat.

  He arrived, unfortunately, in time for lunch, a
nd 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 five people of such different character apparently without even being aware of doing so, inside two hours of arrival. 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 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; in any case, it was well known that the French produced the best guns, swords, and other offensive weapons. 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 condemned himself in my eyes by calling the dogs ‘village curs’ and compared them unfavourably to his selection of labradors, setters, retrievers, and spaniels, all French-bred, of course. Furthermore, he was puzzled why I kept so many pets, all of which were uneatable. ‘In France 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. 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.