Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘But you can’t go to Gouvia,’ I shouted. ‘You can’t. You’re supposed to take us to the mainland. And you’ve got our ice-box!’

  But the noise of the engine was too loud and, in any case, even if he heard me he ignored me. He turned the bow of the benzina seawards and chug-chug-chugged off along the coast. I watched him with dismay. What on earth could we do now?

  I ran back along the jetty, jumped over the broken part, and scampered up on to the road. I felt I must get up to the villa as soon as possible and tell Larry what had happened. Just at that moment they appeared at the top of the hill, carrying picnic baskets and various other things. And almost at the same moment Spiro’s car drove up along the road with Mother and Margo in the back.

  Larry and Leslie and their peasant helpers arrived at the road simultaneously with the car.

  ‘What are you doing, dear?’ said Mother, getting out of the car.

  ‘We’re just bringing the things down to put them in the benzina,’ said Larry. And then he glanced at the jetty. ‘Where the hell is it?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you,’ I said. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ said Leslie. ‘How could he have gone?’

  ‘Well, he has,’ I said. ‘Look, there he is.’

  They peered and saw the benzina disappearing down the coast.

  ‘But where’s he gone to?’ asked Larry.

  ‘He said he was going to Gouvia.’

  ‘Well, what’s he going to Gouvia for? He’s supposed to take us to the mainland.’

  ‘That’s what I told him but he wouldn’t take any notice of me.’

  ‘But he’s got the ice-box,’ said Leslie.

  ‘He’s got the what?’ asked Mother.

  ‘The ice-box,’ said Larry irritably. ‘We put the bloody ice-box on board and he’s got that.’

  ‘I told you not to touch that ice-box,’ said Mother. ‘I told you not to move it. Really, Larry, you do make me angry.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, do stop fussing,’ said Larry. ‘The thing is to get the damn’ thing back again now. What do you think this fool is up to, Spiro? You employed him.’

  ‘That’s not Taki’s benzinas,’ said Spiro scowling thoughtfully.

  ‘No, it wasn’t Taki,’ I said, ‘It was his cousin.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ asked Mother, distraught.

  ‘We’ll have to go after him,’ said Larry.

  ‘I’ll takes your mothers up to the house,’ said Spiro, ‘and then I’ll goes to Gouvia.’

  ‘But you can’t bring the ice-box back in a car,’ said Larry.

  Just at that moment the sound of another benzina engine made itself heard and, looking round, we saw a second boat approaching from the town.

  ‘Ah,’ said Spiro, ‘that’s Taki’s benzinas.’

  ‘Well, let him give chase,’ said Larry. ‘Let him give chase. As soon as he gets here, tell him to give chase and get that bloody ice-box back. I don’t know what that fool was playing at, taking it away like that.’

  ‘Didn’t he show any surprise,’ asked Leslie of me, ‘when you asked him to put the ice-box on board?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he just looked blank.’

  ‘As well he might,’ said Mother. ‘I would look blank, too, in similar circumstances.’

  When Taki’s boat eventually made the jetty we explained the predicament to him. He was a nice, wiry little man and grinned amicably, showing large quantities of gold teeth.

  ‘Here, these boys had better go with him,’ said Larry. ‘Otherwise we’ll never get the ice-box from one benzina to the other.’

  The six peasant boys, delighted at the idea of a sea trip, clambered on board chattering and laughing excitedly.

  ‘Leslie, you’d better go with them,’ said Larry.

  ‘Alright,’ said Leslie, ‘I suppose I’d better.’

  He got on board the boat and it chugged off in pursuit of the first one.

  ‘I simply can’t understand it,’ said Mother. ‘What did the man think he was doing?’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ said Margo, ‘you know what it’s like in Corfu. Everybody’s mad.’

  ‘Yes, but not that mad,’ said Mother. ‘You don’t bring a benzina in and pick up a complete stranger’s ice-box and go off with it, just like that.’

  ‘Maybes hes comes from Zante,’ said Spiro, as if this explained everything.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Really!’ said Mother. ‘What a start to the whole thing! You children do make me angry.’

  ‘Now, I think that’s unfair, Mother,’ said Margo. ‘After all, Larry and Leslie weren’t to know they’d put it on the wrong benzina.’

  ‘They should have asked,’ said Mother. ‘We might never get it back.’

  ‘Don’ts yous worrys, Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro, scowling, ‘I’ll gets its backs. Yous comes ups to the house.’

  So we all went up to the house and waited there. After about three and a half hours Mother’s nerves were in shreds.

  ‘I’m sure they’ve dropped it into the sea,’ she said. ‘Really, I shall never forgive you, Larry. And I explicitly told you not to move the ice-box.’

  At that moment we heard dimly, far away, the put-put-put of a benzina. I ran out with the field glasses and peered out across the sea. Sure enough, there was Taki’s benzina coming towards the jetty, with the ice-box carefully installed on it. I ran back with the news to Mother.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s something, I suppose. Now perhaps we can get off. Really, I feel as though I’ve aged another year even though I haven’t had my birthday.’

  So we carried all our things once more down to the jetty and packed them on board the benzina. Then we piled into the car and drove into town.

  In town we found our friends gathered together having a drink under the cool shade of the columns on the Esplanade. There was Sven, who looked like a great, moon-faced baby with his almost bald head and his tattered wispy fringe of grey hair, clasping his precious accordion – an instrument without which he never travelled. There was Theodore, immaculately clad in a suit, with a Panama hat, his beard and moustache twinkling golden in the sun. Beside his chair he had his cane with a little net on the end of it and his box containing his precious test tubes and bottles for collecting. There was Donald, who looked pale and aristocratic; Max, tall and gangling, with curly hair and a brown moustache perched like a butterfly on his upper lip; Leonora, blonde, nubile and very beautiful; and Mactavish, a stocky man with a brown, lined face and thinning grey hair.

  We apologised for being late, which nobody seemed to have noticed, had a drink while Spiro collected some of the more perishable goods, and made our way down to where the benzina awaited us.

  We climbed on board, the final parcels of foodstuffs were packed away in the ice-box, the engine was started and we cruised out across the placid water.

  ‘I’ve bought some, um . . ., you know . . ., seasick pills,’ said Theodore gravely, casting a suspicious glance at the water, which looked as though it had been painted. ‘I thought perhaps there might be a little motion, you know, and as I’m such a bad sailor I thought I’d take the precaution.’

  ‘Well, if there’s any motion, you can give me one,’ said Mother. ‘I’m a very bad sailor, too.’

  ‘Muzzer von’t get seasick,’ said Max, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I von’t let Muzzer get seasick.’

  ‘I don’t see how you’re going to stop it,’ said Mother.

  ‘Garlic,’ said Max, ‘garlic. It’s an old Austrian remedy. It is excellent.’

  ‘What do you mean, raw garlic?’ said Margo. ‘How disgusting.’

  ‘No, no, Margo dear, it is not disgusting,’ said Max. ‘It is very good for you, very good indeed.’

  ‘I can’t stand men who smell of garlic,’ said Margo. ‘They simply blow you to pieces.’

  ‘But if you took de garlic too,’ said Max, ‘den you could blow dem to pieces.’

  �
�Damned bad form, eating garlic,’ said Donald. ‘Damned bad form. Only Continentals do it.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be, um . . ., exceedingly good for one,’ said Theodore, ‘according to medical evidence.’

  ‘Well, I always put it in the food when I’m cooking,’ said Mother. ‘I think it adds to the flavour.’

  ‘But it’s such a terribly dreary smell,’ said Leonora, draping herself like a Persian cat on the deck. ‘I travelled on a bus out to Perema the other day and, my dear, I nearly suffocated. Everybody was chewing the most enormous cloves of garlic and breathing it all back at me. I felt quite faint by the time we got there.’

  Sven unhitched his accordion and hung it round his waist.

  ‘My dear Mrs Durrell, what would you like me to play?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh, er . . ., I don’t mind, Sven,’ said Mother. ‘Something gay.’

  ‘How about “There is a Tavern in the Town”?’ suggested Theodore. This was the one tune that he could hear incessantly with great pleasure.

  ‘Very well,’ said Sven, and started playing.

  Leslie and Mactavish were up in the bows. Periodically Mactavish would do a few knee-bends or press-ups. He was a health fiend, among other things. He had been in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at one time during his career and very seldom let you forget it. He always endeavoured to be the life and soul of the party, and the thing that he was proudest of was the fact that he was in tip-top physical condition. He would slap his stomach and say, ‘Look at that, look at that! Not bad for a man of forty-five, eh?’

  So the benzina chugged its way across the channel that separated Corfu from the mainland, with Theodore vigorously singing ‘There is a Tavern in the Town’.

  The trip over seemed extraordinarily short for me. There was so much to watch for – flying fish, seagulls – and I was constantly having to drag Theodore away from the adult company to ask his erudite advice on bits of seaweed and similar things of interest that were passing the boat.

  Then, eventually we reached the extraordinary brown and eroded coast between Albania and Corfu which spread on into Greece, and as we drew closer and closer to the coast we passed towering pinnacles of rock like the carunculated, melted remains of a million multicoloured candles. Eventually, as night was falling, we discovered a bay that looked as though it had been bitten out of the hard rock by some gigantic sea monster. It was a perfect half moon, and here we thought we would make landfall. The sand was white, the cliffs tall and somehow protective, and so gently the benzina was brought in, the anchor was thrown over the side, and we came to a halt.

  This was the moment when the ice-box came into its own. Out of it Mother and Spiro unpacked an incredible assortment of foodstuffs: legs of lamb stuffed with garlic, lobsters, and various extraordinary things that Mother had made which she called curry puffs. Some of them were in fact curry puffs but others were stuffed with different delicacies. And so we lay around on the deck and gorged ourselves.

  In the forequarters of the boat we had a great pile of watermelons that looked like an array of pudgy footballs, green with whitish stripes on them. Periodically, one of these would be popped into the ice-box and then brought out so that we could cut it open. The pink and beautiful inside was as crisp as any ice cream that you could ever wish for. I got a certain amount of pleasure out of spitting the black pips from the watermelons over the side of the boat and watching all the small fish rush madly towards them, and then they would mouth them and reject them. There were some bigger ones, however, who, to my astonishment, came up like Hoovers and absorbed them.

  After that we all bathed, with the exception of Mother, Theodore and Sven, who had a very esoteric conversation on the subject of witchcraft, haunted houses and vampires, while Spiro and Taki did the washing up.

  It was fantastic to dive from the side of the boat into the dark waters, for as you hit them they burst into a fire-work display of greeny-clad phosphorescence so that you felt as though you were diving into a fire. Swimming under water, people left trails of phosphorescence behind them like a million tiny stars and when finally Leonora, who was the last one to come aboard, hauled herself up, her whole body for a brief moment looked as though it was encased in gold.

  ‘My God, she’s lovely,’ said Larry admiringly, ‘but I’m sure she’s a lesbian. She resists all my advances.’

  ‘Larry dear,’ said Mother, ‘you shouldn’t say things like that about people.’

  ‘She’s certainly very lovely,’ said Sven, ‘so beautiful, in fact, that it almost makes me wish I weren’t a homosexual. However, there are advantages to being homosexual.’

  ‘I think to be bisexual is best,’ said Larry, ‘then you’ve got the best of both worlds, as it were.’

  ‘Larry dear,’ said Mother, ‘you may find this conversation fascinating, but I don’t and I do wish you wouldn’t talk about it in front of Gerry.’

  Mactavish was doing a series of complicated keep-fit exercises in front of the boat.

  ‘God, that man does irritate me,’ said Larry, pouring out some more wine. ‘What’s he keep fit for? He never appears to do anything.’

  ‘Really, dear,’ said Mother, ‘I do wish you would stop making comments about people like this. It’s very embarrassing on a small boat like this. He might hear you.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind if he kept fit in order to go around raping all the girls in Corfu,’ said Larry, ‘but he never does anything.’

  While doing his exercises, Mactavish was, for about the eighty-fourth time, telling Leslie, who was lounging near him, of his experiences as a Mountie. All of them were very thrilling and inevitably ended up with Mactavish getting his man.

  ‘Ooooooh!’ screeched Margo suddenly, with such vehemence that we all jumped and Larry upset his glass of wine.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t make those sudden seagull-like cries,’ he said irritably.

  ‘But I just remembered,’ said Margo, ‘it’s Mother’s birthday tomorrow.’

  ‘Muzzer has a birzday tomorrow?’ said Max. ‘But vy didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘Well, that’s why we came over here – to celebrate Mother’s birthday, to give her a holiday,’ said Margo.

  ‘But if Muzzer has a birzday, ve have no present to give her,’ said Max.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Mother, ‘I really shouldn’t be having birthdays at my age.’

  ‘Damned bad form to come to a birthday party without bringing a present,’ said Donald. ‘Damned bad form.’

  ‘Oh, now, do stop fussing,’ said Mother, ‘you make me quite embarrassed.’

  ‘I shall play to you endlessly throughout the day, my dear Mrs Durrell,’ said Sven. ‘I shall give you a birthday gift of music.’

  Although Sven could play such things as ‘There is a Tavern in the Town’, his real favourite was Bach, and I could see Mother wince visibly at the thought of a whole day spent with Sven playing Bach to her.

  ‘No, no,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you mustn’t make a fuss.’

  ‘Vell, ve vill have a tremendous celebration tomorrow,’ said Max. ‘Ve vill find a special place and ve vill celebrate Muzzer’s birzday in true Continental style.’

  Presently the mattresses that we had brought with us were unrolled and gradually we all drifted into sleep as a moon as red as a robin’s breast edged its way up over the mountains above us and gradually turned to lemon yellow and then silver.

  The following morning at dawn we were all startled – and, in consequence, irritated – by Sven waking us playing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on his accordion. He was crouched on his knees, gazing raptly into Mother’s face to see the effect it would have. Mother, not being used to having an accordion played six inches away from her ear, woke with a squeak of alarm.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Are we sinking?’ she gasped.

  ‘Sven, for God’s sake,’ said Larry, ‘it’s five o’clock.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Max drowsily, ‘but it’s Muzzer
’s birzday. Ve must now start to celebrate. Now, come, ve all sing togezzer.’

  He leapt to his feet, banged his head on the mast, and then waved his long arms and said,

  ‘Now, Sven, play it again. All togezzer now.’

  Sleepily, reluctantly, we all had to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ while Mother sat there making desperate attempts not to fall asleep again.

  ‘Shalls I makes some teas, Mrs Durrells?’ said Spiro.

  ‘I think that would be a very good idea,’ said Mother.

  Our various presents were brought out and given to her, and she expressed delight at each one, including the pearl-handled revolver, though she did say that she felt that Leslie ought to keep it in his room as it would be safer there. If, as he had suggested, she kept it under her pillow, it might suddenly go off in the night and do her a serious injury.

  The application of tea and a quick swim revived us all.

  The sun was now coming up and the night mist was being drawn up from the water in pale skeins. It was as though the sea were a great blue sheep that the sun was delicately shearing. After a breakfast consisting of fruit and hardboiled eggs, the engine was started and we chugged off down the coast.

  ‘Ve must find de most superb spot for Muzzer’s lunch,’ said Max. ‘It must be a Garden of Eden.’

  ‘By Jove, yes,’ said Donald, ‘we must find a really superb spot.’

  ‘Then I can play to you, my dear Mrs Durrell,’ said Sven. Presently we chugged our way round a headland that looked as though it had been constructed out of immense bricks of red, gold and white rock, with a huge umbrella pine perched on top of it, clinging precariously to the edge and leaning dangerously seawards. As we rounded it, we saw that it guarded a small bay where there was a tiny village, and on the slopes of the mountain behind the village were the remains of an old Venetian fort.

  ‘That looks interesting,’ said Larry. ‘Let’s pop in here and have a look at it.’

  ‘I wouldn’ts goes theres, Master Larrys,’ said Spiro, scowling.

  ‘Why ever not?’ asked Larry. ‘It looks a charming little village and that fort looks interesting.’

  ‘They’s practically Turks,’ said Spiro.