The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  My fat friend was most impressed. He turned over the pages muttering appreciative ‘po po po po’s’ to himself. My Mother, he said, must be a remarkable woman to have written such a book. The reason I wished she was there at this moment, I went on, was because she had never seen a hoopoe. She had seen every other bird on the island, including the rare kingfisher; to prove it I took the scalp of a dead kingfisher I had found and used as a talisman in my collecting bag and laid it in front of him. He was struck with this little skull-cap of bright blue feathers. They were much prettier than hoopoe feathers when one considered it, I said. It took a little time for the thought to penetrate but I soon had him begging that I would take the hoopoe to my mother, in exchange for the scrap of velvety blue feathers. I put on a nice display of astonished reluctance fading into grovelling gratitude, put the wounded hoopoe inside my shirt and hurried home with it, leaving my hunter friend sitting on his olive root looking like Tweedledum and trying happily to fix the kingfisher scalp to his hat with a pin.

  When I got home I took my new acquisition to my room and examined it carefully. To my relief, its long, curved rubbery beak, like a slender scimitar, was intact, for without the use of this delicate organ I knew that the bird could not survive. Apart from exhaustion and fright the only thing wrong with it appeared to be a broken wing. The break was high in the upper wing and, on investigating it gently, I found that it was a clean break, the bone having been snapped like a dry twig and not smashed and splintered like a green one. I carefully cut away the feathers with my dissecting scissors, washed the scab of blood and feathers away with warm water and disinfectant, splinted the bone with two curved slivers of bamboo, and bound the whole thing up tight. It was quite a professional job and I was proud of it. The only trouble was that it was too heavy and when I released the bird it fell over on its side, dragged down by the weight of the splint. After some experiment, I managed to make a much lighter splint out of bamboo and sticking plaster, and with a thin strip of bandage bound the whole thing firmly to the bird’s side. Then, with a pipette, I gave it a drink of water and placed it in a cardboard box covered with a cloth to recover.

  I called the hoopoe Hiawatha and the family greeted its arrival in our midst with unqualified approval, for they liked hoopoes and, moreover, it was the only exotic bird species they could all recognize at twenty paces. Finding things to eat for Hiawatha kept me very busy during the first few days of her convalescence, for she was a finicky patient, would only eat live food and was choosy about that. I had to release her on the floor of my room and throw the tit-bits at her – the succulent grasshoppers, as green as jade, locusts with plump thighs, their wings as crisp as biscuits, small lizards and tiny frogs. These she would grab and bang vigorously on any suitable hard surface – a chair or bed leg, the edge of the door or table – until she was sure that they were dead. Then, a couple of quick gulps and she would be ready for the next course. One day, when the family had all assembled in my room to watch Hiawatha feed, I gave her an eight-inch slow-worm. With her delicate beak, her finely banded crest, and her beautiful pink and black colour scheme, she looked a very demure bird, even more so because she generally kept her crest folded back against her skull. But now she took one look at the slow-worm and changed into a predatory monster. Her crest rose and spread itself, quivering like a peacock’s tail, her throat puffed out, she uttered a strange little purring grunt deep in her throat and hopped rapidly and purposefully towards where the slow-worm was dragging along its burnished copper body, oblivious of its fate. Hiawatha paused and, with her splinted and her good wings spread out, she leaned forward and pecked at the slow-worm – a rapid, rapier-thrust of her beak, so quick it was difficult to see. The slow-worm, at the blow, writhed into a lashing figure of eight and I saw to my amazement that Hiawatha’s first blow had completely crushed the reptile’s eggshell fragile skull.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Larry, equally amazed. ‘Now, that’s what I call a useful bird to have around the house. A few dozen of those around and we wouldn’t have to worry about snakes.’

  ‘I don’t think they could tackle a big one,’ said Leslie judiciously.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind if they just cleaned up the small ones,’ said Larry. ‘That’d be a start.’

  ‘You talk as if the house were full of snakes, dear,’ put in Mother.

  ‘It is,’ answered Larry austerely. ‘What about the Medusa-wig of snakes Leslie found in the bath?’

  ‘They were only water snakes,’ said Mother.

  ‘I don’t care what they were. If Gerry’s going to be allowed to fill the bath with snakes then I shall carry a brace of hoopoes around with me.’

  ‘Ooh, look at it now!’ squeaked Margo.

  Hiawatha had delivered a number of rapid blows down the length of the slow-worm’s body and she was now picking up the still-writhing length and dashing it onto the floor rhythmically, as the fishermen would beat an octopus against the rocks to make it tender. After a time there was no discernible life left in the body; Hiawatha stared down at it, crest up, head on one side. Satisfied, she seized the head in her beak. Slowly, gulping and throwing her head back, she swallowed it inch by inch. In a couple of minutes there was only half an inch of tail protruding from the corner of her beak.

  Hiawatha never grew really tame and she was always nervous, but she learned to tolerate human beings in fairly close proximity to her. When she had settled down I used to take her out onto the veranda where I kept various other birds and let her walk about in the shade of the grape vine. It was not unlike a hospital ward, for at that time I had six sparrows recovering from concussion brought about by being caught in break-back mousetraps set by peasant boys, four blackbirds and a thrush who had been caught by baited fish-hooks set in the olive groves, and half a dozen assorted birds ranging from a tern to a magpie recovering from the effects of gunshot wounds. In addition, there was a nest of young goldfinches and an almost-fledged greenfinch which I was hand-rearing. Hiawatha did not seem to mind the proximity of these other birds but she kept herself to herself, pacing slowly up and down the flagstones, brooding with half-closed eyes, aloofly aristocratic like a beautiful queen imprisoned in some castle. At the sight of a worm, frog, or grasshopper, of course, her behaviour would become anything but queenly.

  About a week after Hiawatha had entered my avian clinic I set off one morning to meet Spiro. This was a sort of daily ritual; he would blow loud blasts on his horn when he reached the edge of the property, which was some fifty acres in extent, and I and the dogs would tear through the olive groves to intercept him somewhere along the drive. Panting for breath, I would burst out of the olive groves, the dogs barking hysterically in front of me, and we would hold up the great, gleaming Dodge, its hood back, Spiro in his peaked cap crouching, massive, brown, and scowling behind the wheel. I would take my place on the running board, holding tight to the windscreen, and Spiro would drive on, the dogs in an ecstasy of mock fierceness trying to bite the front tyres. The conversation every morning was also a ritual that never varied.

  ‘Good mornings, Master Gerrys,’ Spiro would say. ‘Hows are yous?’

  Having ascertained that I had not developed any dangerous disease during the night, he would inquire after the rest of us.

  ‘And hows the familys?’ he would ask. ‘Hows your mothers? And Master Larrys? And Master Leslies? And Missy Margos?’

  By the time I had reassured him as to their health we would have reached the villa, where he would lumber from one member of the family to the other checking as to whether my information was correct. I was rather bored by the daily, almost journalistic interest Spiro took in the family’s health, as if they were royalty, but he persisted as if some awful fate might have overtaken them during the night. One day, in a fit of devilry, I told him, in response to his earnest inquiry, that they were all dead; the car swerved off the drive and crashed straight into a large oleander bush, showering Spiro and myself with pink blossoms and nearly knocking me off the runnin
g board.

  ‘Gollys, Master Gerrys! You mustn’t say things like thats!’ he roared, pounding the wheel with his fist. ‘You makes me scarce when you say things likes that. You makes me sweats! Don’t you ever say that agains.’

  This particular morning, having reassured himself as to the health of each member of the family, he lifted a small strawberry basket covered with a fig leaf from the seat by his side.

  ‘Here,’ he said, scowling at me. ‘I gots a presents for you.’

  I took the leaf off the basket. Inside crouched two naked and repulsive-looking birds. I was enchanted and thanked Spiro profusely, for they were baby jays, as I could see by their sprouting wing-feathers. I had never had jays before. I was so pleased with them that I took them with me when I went to my studies with Mr Kralefsky. This was the advantage of having a tutor who was as mad about birds as I was. Together we spent an exciting and interesting morning trying to teach them to open their mouths and feed, when we should have been committing the glittering pageantry of English history to memory. But the babies were singularly stupid and refused to accept either Kralefsky or myself as a substitute mother.

  I took them back home at lunch-time and during the afternoon tried to get them to behave sensibly, but without success. They would only take food if I forced their beaks open and pushed it down their throats with my finger, a process that they strongly objected to, as well they might. Eventually, having shoved enough down them to keep them more or less alive, I left them in their strawberry basket on the veranda and went to fetch Hiawatha, who had shown a marked preference for having her food served on the veranda rather than in the privacy of my room. I placed her on the flagstones and started to throw her the grasshoppers I had caught for her. She hopped eagerly, snapped up the first, killed it, and swallowed it with almost indecent haste.

  As she sat there gulping, looking rather like an elderly, angular dowager duchess who had swallowed a sorbet the wrong way at a ball, the two baby jays, lolling their heads, bleary-eyed, over the edge of their basket, caught sight of her. Immediately, they started to call wheezily, open-mouthed, their heads wobbling from side to side like two very old men looking over a fence. Hiawatha put up her crest and stared at them. I did not expect her to take much notice, for she always ignored the other baby birds when they called out to be fed, but she hopped nearer the basket and surveyed the baby jays interestedly. I threw her a grasshopper and she grabbed it, killed it, and then, to my complete astonishment, hopped up to the basket and crammed the insect down the gaping maw of one of the jays. Both babies wheezed and screamed and flapped their wings in delight and Hiawatha looked as startled as I was at what she had done. I threw her another grasshopper and she killed it and fed the other baby. After this, I would feed Hiawatha in my room and then bring her down onto the veranda periodically where she would act the part of mother to the baby jays.

  She never showed any other maternal feelings for the babies; she would not, for example, seize the little encapsulated blobs of excreta from the babies’ behinds when they cocked them over the edge of the nest. This task of cleaning up was left to me. Once she had fed the babies so that they stopped screaming, she lost all interest in them. I concluded it must be something in the timbre of their call that aroused her maternal instincts, for although I experimented with the other babies I possessed and they screamed their lungs out, she took no notice at all. Gradually, the baby jays decided to let me feed them and as soon as they stopped calling at her appearance Hiawatha took no further notice of them. It was not simply that she ignored them; she seemed unaware of their existence.

  When her wing had healed, I removed the splint and found that although the bone had set well the wing muscles had become weak with lack of use, and Hiawatha tended to favour the wing, always walking rather than flying. To make her exercise it I used to take her down into the olive groves and throw her up into the air so that she was forced to use her wings to make a safe landing. Gradually, she started to take short flights as the wing strengthened and I began to think that I would be able to release her, when she met her death. I had taken her out onto the veranda one day and while I was feeding my assortment of babies Hiawatha flew or, rather, glided down to a nearby olive grove to practise her flying and make a light snack on some daddy long-legs that were just hatching.

  I was absorbed in feeding the babies and was not taking much notice when suddenly I heard hoarse, despairing cries from Hiawatha. I vaulted over the veranda rail and raced through the trees, but I was too late. A large, mangy, battle-scarred feral cat was standing with the limp form of the hoopoe in his mouth, his great green eyes staring at me over her pink body. I gave a shout and ran forward; the cat turned with oil-like fluidity and leaped into the myrtle bushes carrying Hiawatha’s body with him. I gave chase but once the cat had reached the tangled sanctuary of the myrtles it was impossible to track him down. I returned, furious and upset, to the olive grove, where all that was left to remind me of Hiawatha were some pink feathers and a few drops of blood scattered like rubies on the grass. I swore that if I ever came across the cat again I would kill it if I could. Apart from anything else, it presented a threat to the rest of my bird collection.

  But my mourning for Hiawatha was cut short by the arrival in our midst of something slightly more exotic than a hoopoe and much more trouble. Larry had suddenly announced that he was going to stay with some friends of his in Athens and do some research work. After the flurry of his departure, tranquillity descended on the villa. Leslie spent most of his time pottering about with a gun and Margo, who at that moment was not engaged in any hectic affair of the heart, had taken up soap sculpture. Ensconced in the attic, she was producing somewhat lopsided and slippery pieces of sculpture out of an acrid-smelling yellow soap and appearing in a flowered smock and an artistic trance at mealtimes.

  Mother, seizing on this unexpected period of calm, decided to do a job that had long wanted doing. The previous year had been an exceptionally good one for fruit and Mother had spent hours preparing various jams and chutneys, some from her grandmother’s recipes from India dating back to the early eighteen hundreds. Everything went fine and the big cool larder was a-glint with battalions of bottles. Unfortunately, during a particularly savage storm in the winter, the larder roof had leaked and in consequence Mother had come down one morning and found all the labels had come off. She was faced with several hundred jars, the contents of which were difficult to identify unless you opened the jar. Now, given a moment’s respite by her family, she determined to do this necessary job. Since it involved tasting, I offered to help. Between us we had got some hundred and fifty jars of preserves on the kitchen table, armed ourselves with spoons and new labels, and were just about to start on the mammoth tasting when Spiro arrived.

  ‘Good afternoons, Mrs Durrells. Goods afternoons, Master Gerrys,’ he rumbled, lumbering into the kitchen like a chestnut-brown dinosaur. ‘I’s gots a telegrams for you, Mrs Durrells.’

  ‘A telegram, Spiro?’ Mother quavered. ‘Who from, I wonder? I hope it’s not bad news.’

  ‘No, don’t you worry, it’s not bad news, Mrs Durrells,’ he said, handing her the telegram. ‘I gots the man in the post office to reads it to me. It’s from Master Larrys.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mother, with foreboding.

  The telegram said simply: ‘Forgot to tell you Prince Jeejeebuoy arriving eleventh short stay. Athens wonderful. Love. Larry.’

  ‘Really, Larry is the most annoying creature!’ Mother exclaimed angrily. ‘What does he go and invite a prince for? He knows we haven’t got the right rooms for royalty. And he won’t be here to entertain him. What am I supposed to do with a prince?’

  She gazed at us in a distraught fashion but neither Spiro nor I could give her any intelligent advice. We could not even telegraph Larry and demand his return, for, characteristically, he had gone off and omitted to give us his friends’ address.

  ‘The eleventh is tomorrow, isn’t it? He’ll be coming on the boat from B
rindisi, I expect. Spiro, would you meet him and bring him out? And will you bring some lamb for lunch? Gerry, go and tell Margo to put some flowers in the spare room and to make sure the dogs haven’t put any fleas in there, and tell Leslie he must go down to the village and tell Red Spiro we want some fish. Really, it’s too bad of Larry… I shall give him a piece of my mind when he gets back. I can’t be bothered with entertaining princes at my age.’ Mother bustled angrily and aimlessly around the kitchen, banging saucepans and frying pans about.

  ‘I’ll brings you some of my dahlias for the tables. Do you wants any champagne?’ asked Spiro, who obviously felt that the prince should be treated properly.

  ‘No, if he thinks I’m paying a pound a bottle for champagne, he’s mistaken. He can just drink ouzo and wine like the rest of us, prince or no prince,’ said Mother firmly, and then added, ‘Well, I suppose you’d better bring a crate. We needn’t give him any and it always comes in useful.’

  ‘Don’ts you worrys, Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro comfortingly, ‘I fixes anythings you wants. You wants I gets the King’s butler again?’

  The King’s butler, an ancient and aristocratic old boy, was dragged out of retirement by Spiro every time we had a big party.

  ‘No, no, Spiro, we’re not going to go to a lot of trouble. After all, he’s coming unexpectedly so he’ll just have to take us as he finds us. He’ll just have to take pot-luck… and… and… muck in. And if he doesn’t like it… well, it’s just too bad,’ said Mother, shelling peas with trembling hands and dropping more on the floor than into the colander. ‘And, Gerry, go and ask Margo if she could run up those new curtains for the dining-room. The material’s in my bedroom. The old ones don’t look the same since Les set fire to them.’