Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me we’re going to have engine trouble,’ said Larry.

  Spiro, scowling, went to consult with Taki. We heard them muttering together and then suddenly Spiro’s voice, like the roar of a bull, raised in anger, heaping obscenities upon Taki’s head.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter?’ said Larry.

  ‘This stupids bastards,’ said Spiro, red with rage, pointing a stubby, quivering finger at Taki. ‘This stupids bastards – if you will excuses this words, Mrs Durrells – forgot to gets any more petrols.’

  ‘Why did he forget?’ we all asked in unison.

  ‘He says he meants to, but he forgot when he hads to go and gets the ice-boxes.’

  ‘There you are!’ said Mother. ‘I knew it! I knew you shouldn’t have moved that ice-box!’

  ‘Now don’t start on that again,’ said Larry. ‘Where’s the next place we can get petrol from?’

  Taki says it’s Metaloura,’ said Spiro.

  ‘Well, that’s simple enough,’ said Mactavish. ‘We can row there in the dinghy.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s escaped your notice or not,’ said Donald, ‘but we have no dinghy.’

  It was very curious that none of us had noticed this, for most benzinas, especially when doing a trip of this sort, trailed a small boat behind them.

  ‘Well,’ said Mactavish, flexing his muscles, ‘I’m as fit as a fiddle. I can swim there and get help.’

  ‘No, Mr Mactavish,’ said Spiro glumly, ‘it’s ten kilometres.’

  ‘Well, you can land on beaches and things and have a rest,’ said Mactavish. ‘Easily do it by nightfall. Be back in the morning.’

  Spiro scowled thoughtfully and then turned to Taki and translated Mactavish’s idea to him. But Taki was vehement. As from this bay to the next bay where petrol could be obtained it was practically all sheer cliffs, there would be nowhere one could go ashore for a rest.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mother, ‘what are we going to do?’

  ‘Well, just sit here,’ said Larry ‘It’s quite simple.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s quite simple?’ asked Mother.

  ‘Well, we just sit here and when a boat passes we signal it, and it will then go down the coast and bring us some petrol. I don’t know what you’re all getting so fussed about.’

  ‘Master Larry’s rights, Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro dismally. ‘We can’ts do anythings else.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s a delightful spot,’ said Larry; ‘I mean, if we had to break down we couldn’t have chosen a better place.’

  So we all got off the boat and sat about on the beach, leaving Taki sitting cross-legged in the bows of our immobilised craft, keeping a careful eye on the mouth of the bay for any fishing boat that could come to our rescue.

  The day passed pleasantly enough but no fishing boat passed, and by nightfall Mother was getting increasingly agitated.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop fussing, Mother,’ said Larry, ‘there’s sure to be one tomorrow, and we’ve got plenty of supplies.’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ said Mother, ‘we haven’t got plenty of supplies. I didn’t bring enough to allow for a break-down, and in any case the ice is melting so fast that if we don’t get a boat tomorrow half the food will go bad.’

  This was an aspect of our predicament which had not until then struck us. The little bay, with its towering cliffs, provided none of the amenities that Robinson Crusoe had found on his island. There was nothing but a tiny spring of fresh water that trickled down the face of the cliff and formed a stagnant pool in which Theodore had discovered so many forms of life that none of us felt it would be suitable for drinking should our supply of liquid run out.

  ‘Muzzer is not to worry,’ said Max, throwing his arms around her protectively. ‘If necessary ve vill all get behind de boat and push her back to Corfu.’

  ‘Damned silly suggestion,’ said Donald. ‘Just the sort of suggestion a Continental would make. God knows how many tons she weighs. Couldn’t possibly push her.’

  ‘I’m afraid Donald’s quite right,’ said Mactavish. ‘Fit though I am for my age, I feel that even united as we are, we couldn’t get her very far.’

  ‘I do wish you’d all stop carrying on like this,’ said Larry irritably; ‘after all, this whole coast is littered with fishing boats. There’s bound to be one along sometime tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ said Mother, ‘otherwise I’m going to have to ration the food.’

  ‘Also, I know it’s only a minor point, but some of these specimens I’ve got are quite rare,’ said Theodore, ‘and unless I can get them back to Corfu fairly soon, I’m afraid . . ., you know . . ., because they are so fragile, they are . . ., you know . . ., going to disintegrate.’

  We all went to bed in an uneasy frame of mind and Taki and Spiro took it in turns to sit in the bows of the benzina watching in case one of the night fishermen passed who they could spot by his carbo light. But dawn came and still there was no sign of rescue. To add to our plight, the ice – having decided to melt – was melting at an alarming rate and we had to dig a hole in the sand and bury quite a lot of the more delicate and perishable foodstuffs that Mother had brought. We had a very meagre lunch.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mother, ‘I do wish we hadn’t come.’

  ‘Do not worry, Muzzer,’ said Max, ‘help is on de way. I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘I think Larry’s right,’ said Donald. ‘Lots of fishing boats along this stretch of coast. One’s bound to come along sooner or later.’

  ‘Well, it had better be sooner than later,’ said Mother, ‘otherwise we’re all going to starve to death.’

  ‘It’s all Larry’s fault,’ said Leslie belligerently, for he was feeling hungry. ‘He suggested the trip.’

  ‘Now, don’t turn on me,’ said Larry angrily. ‘You were just as much in favour of it as I was. If the damned thing had been organised properly we wouldn’t be in this predicament.’

  ‘I agree with Leslie,’ said Margo. ‘It was Larry’s suggestion.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest we run out of petrol in a remote bay surrounded by unclimbable cliffs, ten kilometres away from the nearest source of supplies,’ said Larry.

  ‘Now, now, dears,’ said Mother, ‘don’t quarrel. I’m sure Donald’s right. There’ll be a fishing boat along soon.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ said Sven, ‘I will play to you, my dear Mrs Durrell, to soothe you.’

  It was unfortunate that he chose Bach since, as it apparently soothed him, he was under the impression it soothed everybody else.

  But the day passed and no fishing boat appeared. The ice was melting away with great rapidity as, indeed, were our food supplies. Our meal that night would have prompted any Oliver Twist to ask for more.

  ‘Bloody silly,’ said Larry. ‘All these damned fishing boats dashing up and down the coast. Why the hell don’t they fish in this area?’

  ‘Maybe there’ll be a night fisherman tonight,’ said Mactavish.

  Though Spiro and Taki kept watch, nothing passed the mouth of the bay. For breakfast we had a rather soggy peach each. Lunch consisted entirely of watermelons and bread.

  ‘What do our supplies consist of now?’ asked Larry when we had consumed this repast.

  ‘It’s rather fortunate that I am a small eater,’ said Theodore, adding hastily, ‘I mean, fortunate for me, that is.’

  ‘If this goes on I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ said Mother, who by now had worked herself into a sort of near panic in spite of everything everybody was trying to do to reassure her.

  ‘Resort to cannibalism,’ said Larry.

  ‘Larry dear, don’t joke like that,’ said Mother. ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘In any case, ha ha,’ said Mactavish, ‘you’d find me rather tough.’

  ‘Oh, we’d start on you,’ said Larry, fixing him with a baleful stare. ‘We’d have you as a rather indigestible hors d’oeuvre. But Leonora, cooked slowly in the sand as
they do it in Polynesia would, I feel, be absolutely delicious. Toes, buttocks and breast.’

  ‘Larry, don’t be disgusting,’ said Margo. ‘I couldn’t possibly eat a human being.’

  ‘Damned bad form,’ said Donald. ‘Only wogs eat each other.’

  ‘It’s surprising, though, what you can do when you have to,’ said Theodore. ‘I think it was in Bosnia where several villages were snowed up for an unprecedented number of months and, er . . ., quite a few of the villagers took to cannibalism.’

  ‘Now, will you all stop talking about cannibalism,’ said Mother. ‘You’ll only make matters worse.’

  ‘Well, you still haven’t answered my question,’ said Larry. ‘What are our supplies at the moment?’

  ‘Watermelons,’ said Mother, ‘three green peppers and two loaves of bread. Taki is trying to catch some fish but he says it isn’t a very good bay for fish.’

  ‘But surely there were a couple of legs of lamb left,’ said Larry.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Mother, ‘but the ice has melted now to such an extent that they’ve gone off and so I had to bury them.’

  ‘Dear God,’ said Larry, ‘it’ll have to be cannibalism.’

  The day passed and still no boat appeared. ‘That evening we had very dried-up bread, slightly shrivelled green peppers and watermelon.

  Taki and Spiro took up their watch in the bows of the benzina and we all went to bed feeling extremely hungry.

  The followed morning no boat had been sighted during the night. Our situation, from being slightly comic, was now becoming quite serious. We were all aboard the benzina holding a council of war. My suggestion that we could exist for another couple of days by eating limpets was immediately crushed underfoot.

  ‘My specimens, you know, are deteriorating quite fast,’ said Theodore in a worried tone of voice.

  ‘Oh, damn your bloody specimens,’ said Larry. ‘If only you’d collect something more substantial than microscopic life it would help keep us alive now.’

  ‘I really don’t know what we’re going to do,’ said Mother. We had one minute portion of bread each for breakfast and that was the end of our supplies.

  ‘I suppose we’ll all just die here,’ she went on, ‘and it’s not the sort of place that I would choose to be buried in.’

  ‘Muzzer will not die,’ said Max affectionately. ‘If necessary, I vill commit suicide and you can eat me.’

  Mother was rather taken aback by this lavish offer.

  ‘It’s awfully kind of you, Max,’ she said, ‘but I do hope that won’t be necessary.’

  Just at that precise moment Spiro, who had been standing in the bows of the boat, uttered one of his bull roars that made the cliffs echo and bounce.

  ‘Here! Here!’

  He was shouting and waving his arms and we saw a small boat with a tiny, rather decrepit engine attached to it passing across the mouth of the bay.

  ‘Here! Here!’ shouted Spiro again in Greek. ‘Come here!’

  So rich and deep was Spiro’s voice and such tremendous lung power lay in his stocky frame that, aided by the echo chamber of the cliffs that surrounded us, the man in the boat actually heard him and turned and looked in our direction. We all rushed to the bows of the boat and made wild gestures beckoning him to come to us. He switched off his engine and Spiro bellowed once more,

  ‘Come here! Come here!’

  ‘Who, me?’ said the man in the fishing boat.

  ‘But of course YOU,’ said Spiro, ‘who else?’

  ‘You want me to come to you? asked the man in the boat, getting things quite clear in his mind.

  Spiro called upon Saint Spiridion and several other local saints.

  ‘But of course YOU!’ he roared. ‘Who else is there?’

  The man looked around him carefully.

  ‘Nobody,’ he called back.

  ‘Well, it’s YOU that I want then,’ shouted Spiro.

  ‘What do you want?’ inquired the man interestedly.

  ‘If you come closer I can tell you,’ yelled Spiro, muttering to himself, ‘idiot!’

  ‘Alright,’ said the man.

  He switched on his engine and came zig-zagging towards us.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Mother in a trembling voice, ‘oh, thank God.’

  I must say that at that juncture we all shared her feelings.

  The little boat, some twelve feet long, came nosing up to us and the man switched his engine off and bumped gently against our side. He was as brown as a hazel nut, with enormous bluey-black eyes and a curly mop of hair, and it was quite obvious from the very beginning that if he wasn’t an idiot he was very close to being one.

  He grinned up at the assembled company ingratiatingly.

  ‘Kalimera,’ he said.

  With infinite relief in our voices we all said kalimera back.

  ‘Now, listen,’ said Spiro, taking charge of the situation, ‘we have . . .’

  ‘You are Greek?’ asked the fisherman, looking at Spiro with interest.

  ‘Of course I’m Greek,’ shouted Spiro, ‘but the thing is that . . .’

  ‘Are all of you Greek?’ inquired the fisherman.

  ‘No, no,’ said Spiro impatiently, ‘they’re foreigners. But the point is that . . .’

  ‘Oh, foreigners,’ said the fisherman, ‘I like foreigners.’

  He delicately shifted off his foot a dead octopus which had somehow bounced on to it when he had come alongside. ‘Would they like to buy fish?’ he inquired.

  ‘We don’t want to buy fish,’ roared Spiro.

  ‘But foreigners like fish,’ the fisherman pointed out.

  ‘Fool!’ roared Spiro, tried beyond endurance. ‘We don’t want fish. We want petrol.’

  ‘Petrol?’ said the fisherman in surprise. ‘But what do you want petrol for?’

  ‘For this boat,’ roared Spiro.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got enough for that,’ said the fisherman, glancing at his tiny petrol tin in the bows of his boat. ‘Tell me, where do they come from?’

  ‘They’re English,’ said Spiro, ‘but now listen. What I want . . .’

  ‘The English are a good people,’ said the fisherman. ‘There was one only the other day . . . bought two kilos of fish off me and I charged him double and he didn’t notice.’

  ‘Look!’ said Spiro, ‘what we want is petrol and what I want you to do . . .’

  ‘Is it a family?’ the fisherman inquired.

  ‘No, it’s not a family,’ said Spiro, ‘but what I want you to do . . .’

  ‘It looks like a family,’ said the fisherman.

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ said Spiro.

  ‘But he and she look like the mama and the papa,’ said the fisherman, pointing at Sven and Mother, ‘and the rest look just like their children. The one with the beard, I suppose, must be the grandfather. What part of England do they come from?’

  It was quite obvious that if this went on much longer Spiro would seize an empty wine bottle and bash the fisherman over the head with it.

  ‘Do you think perhaps I ought to have a few words with him?’ said Mactavish.

  ‘No,’ said Larry. ‘Here, Spiro, let me deal with him.’ He leaned over the side of the benzina and in his most mellifluous voice said in Greek,

  ‘Listen, my soul, we are an English family.’

  ‘Welcome,’ said the fisherman, smiling broadly.

  ‘We have come here in this boat,’ said Larry slowly and clearly, ‘and we have run out of petrol. Also we have run out of food.’

  ‘Run out of petrol?’ said the fisherman. ‘But you can’t move if you haven’t got petrol.’

  ‘That is exactly the point,’ said Larry. ‘So would you be kind enough to let us hire your boat so that we may go down to Metaloura, get some petrol and bring it back here?’

  The fisherman absorbed this information, wiggling his brown toes in the pile of red mullet, squid and octopus that was lying in the bottom of his boat.

  ‘You will pay me?�
� he inquired anxiously.

  ‘We will pay you fifty drachmas to take one of us to Metaloura and another fifty drachmas to bring that person back.’

  Briefly the man’s eyes widened with astonishment at this lavish offer.

  ‘You wouldn’t give me fifty-five drachmas, would you?’ he inquired, but without much hope in his voice, for he realised that the price was a very large sum of money for such a simple task.

  ‘Oh, now, my soul,’ said Larry, ‘my golden one, you know I’m offering you a fair price and that I will not cheat you. Would you have it said that you would try and cheat us? You, a Greek, to strangers in your country?’

  ‘Never!’ said the fisherman, his eyes flashing, having forgotten the story of the Englishman he had cheated. ‘A Greek never cheats a foreigner in his country.’

  ‘Now, here,’ said Larry, extracting two fifty-drachma notes, ‘is the money. I am giving it to this man who is a Greek like yourself and he will carry it with him, and when you come back with the petrol I will make sure that he gives it to you without cheating you.’

  So touched was the fisherman by this that he agreed instantly and Larry carefully placed the two fifty-drachma notes in the pocket of Spiro’s shirt.

  ‘Now, for God’s sake, Spiro,’ he said in English, ‘get into that bloody boat and go and get us some petrol.’

  With something of an effort, for he was a portly man, Spiro lowered gingerly over the side of the benzina and got into the fisherman’s boat, which sank several inches farther into the water with the addition of his weight.

  ‘Do you want me to go now or this evening?’ inquired the fisherman, looking up at Larry.

  ‘Now!’ said all the Greek-speaking members of the party in unison.

  The fisherman started his engine and they headed out into the bay, Spiro sitting like a massive, scowling gargoyle in the bows.

  ‘Oh, I say!’ said Donald, as the little boat disappeared round the headland. ‘How frightfully remiss of us!’

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ inquired Larry.

  ‘Well, if we had bought all his octopus and fish and things we could have had some lunch,’ said Donald plaintively.

  ‘By God, you’re right,’ said Larry. ‘Why didn’t you think of it, Mother?’