Fillets of Plaice

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘I don’t see why I should be expected to think of everything, dear,’ she protested. ‘I thought he was going to tow us down the coast.’

  ‘Well, we can always have limpets for lunch,’ I said.

  ‘If you mention those disgusting things once more, I shall be sick,’ said Margo.

  ‘Yes, shut up,’ said Leonora. ‘We’ve got enough problems on our hands without you interfering.’

  So we tried to distract our minds from our empty stomachs. Mactavish gave Leslie lessons in how to draw the pearl-handled revolver rapidly from his hip. Leonora and Margo alternately sun bathed and swam. Larry, Sven, Donald and Max argued in a desultory fashion about art and literature. Mother completed some complicated piece of knitting, dropping more than the regulation number of stitches. Theodore, having remarked to everybody’s irritation once again that it was a good thing that he was a small eater, pottered off to collect some more specimens in the stagnant pool at the bottom of the cliffs. I took my penknife round to the rocks and fed ravenously on limpets.

  Having nothing to eat, we all got rather drunk on the large supply of wine which we still had left, so towards evening Donald and Max were dancing another complicated middle-European dance while Larry was endeavouring to teach Sven to play ‘The Eton Boating Song’ on his accordion. Mother, now secure in her mind at the idea of rescue, had slept peacefully through this raucous party, but it got later and later and all of us, although we didn’t say anything, had the same thought in mind. Had Spiro, in fact, accompanied by the mad fisherman, reached his destination or were they marooned as we were in some remote bay? For the fisherman had looked as though his knowledge of navigation was practically nil. As the light was fading even the effects of the wine did not make us convivial and we sat in a morose bunch, exchanging only an occasional and generally acrimonious remark. It was like the tail end of a good party when everybody wishes everybody would go home. It was the dying embers of pleasure, and the approach of night was putting ash on them to kill them. Even the sky, which had decided that night to be like burnished copper streaked with gold, elicited no response.

  Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the little fishing boat slid round on the gold-blue water into the bay. There in the stern sat our mad fisherman and there in the bows, like a massive bulldog, sat Spiro. Immediately all the complicated and beautiful patterning the sunset had made upon the sea and the sky became twice as vivid. Here was rescue. They had returned!

  We gathered in an anxious bunch at the end of the beach as the little boat drew nearer and nearer. Then the fisherman switched off his engine and the boat, under its own impetus, headed towards us.

  Immediately the sound of the engine and its echo died away, Spiro shouted in his Minotaurian voice, ‘Don’ts you worrys, Mrs Durrells, I’ve fixed it.’

  Simultaneously we heaved a sigh of relief, for when Spiro said that he had fixed something we knew it was fixed. The boat came drifting in, nosed and scrunched its way gently onto the sand and we saw that lying between the fisherman and Spiro was a whole roasted sheep on a spit and beside it a great basket containing all the fruits of the season.

  Spiro scrambled clumsily out of the boat and waded massively ashore like some strange sea monster.

  ‘I broughts us foods,’ he said, ‘but they hadn’t gots any petrols.’

  ‘To hell with the petrol,’ said Larry, ‘let’s get that food ashore and eat!’

  ‘No, no, Master Larrys, it doesn’t matters abouts the petrols,’ said Spiro.

  ‘But if we haven’t got any petrol we’re never going to get away from here,’ said Mother. ‘And that sheep won’t last for long in this heat now that all the ice has melted in the ice-box.’

  ‘Don’ts you worrys, Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro, ‘I tells you I’d fix it and I fixed it. I gots all the fishermens to come down and fetch us.’

  ‘What fishermen?’ asked Larry. ‘The only one we’ve seen is this fugitive from a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘No, no, Master Larrys,’ said Spiro, ‘I mean the fishermens from Corfus. The ones that comes out at nights.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Larry.

  ‘I know,’ I said, eager to display my superior knowledge. ‘It’s a whole fleet of benzinas that come out to fish at night with lights. They fish with nets and lights and I got some of my best specimens from them.’

  ‘Did you get those extraordinary Argonauta argus from them?’ inquired Theodore with interest.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I also got a Duck’s Foot Starfish.’

  ‘Well, I hope to God they’re reliable,’ said Larry.

  ‘I fixed it, Master Larrys,’ said Spiro in a faintly indignant tone of voice. ‘They says that they’ll be heres at about twos o’clocks.’

  ‘After they’ve finished their fishing, though?’ inquired Theodore.

  ‘Yes,’ said Spiro.

  ‘They might have procured some interesting specimens,’ said Theodore.

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought,’ I said.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop talking about specimens and let’s get the food out,’ said Larry. ‘I don’t know about anybody else but I’m ravenous.’

  Carefully we extracted the sheep’s carcass, burnt and polished by the flames like fumed oak, and the basket of fruit. We transported it to our benzina so that not one morsel of it should be touched with sand, and there we had the most glorious meal.

  Now it was night and the moon striped the water orange, yellow and white. We were replete with food and had drunk far too much wine. Sven played his accordion incessantly while the rest of us all endeavoured to do polkas and waltzes and complicated Austrian dances suggested by Max. So vigorously did we dance that Leonora fell over the side in a glorious chrysanthemum burst of phosphorescence.

  Then at two o’clock the fishing fleet arrived and stationed itself, lights gleaming like a string of white pearls across the mouth of our bay. Then one benzina detached itself and came chugging in and, after the normal amount of Greek altercation, which made the cliffs echo and tremble, we were hitched up to it, towed away and then joined on to the main fleet.

  Then the fleet started heading for Corfu and, with their lights burning, it seemed to me that we were like the tail end of a comet shooting across the dark waters of space.

  As our pilot boat nosed us in gently to the jetty beneath the old fort, Mother said with infinite feeling,

  ‘Well, it has been enjoyable in a way, but I’m so glad it’s over.’

  At that precise moment about sixteen drunken fishermen who had entered into the spirit of the whole affair as only Greeks can do, were, under Spiro’s instructions, moving the ice-box from our benzina onto the jetty. Owing to the fact that they could not move it one way, after some discussion they all turned round and moved it the other way, with the result that half the fishermen and the ice-box dropped into about two fathoms of water.

  ‘You see!’ said Mother. ‘It’s the last straw! I knew we shouldn’t have brought that ice-box.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Larry, ‘tomorrow morning we can get it out of there as easily as anything.’

  ‘But without the ice-box what am I going to do?’ exclaimed Mother. ‘I’ll have to re-organise all the food for at least three or four days.’

  ‘Oh, do stop fussing,’ said Larry. ‘Really, one would think it was a major catastrophe. Spiro can bring the food up to us.’

  ‘Well, it may not be a major catastrophe as far as you’re concerned,’ said Mother frigidly, ‘but it is as far as I am concerned.’

  Having embraced and said farewell to the rest of the party, we got into Spiro’s car and he drove us out to the villa. Although Larry hummed merrily and although Leslie showed Mother the beauty and intricacies of the pearl-handled revolver, although Margo tried to persuade her that the dress length would be absolutely ideal for her, and although even I tried to lighten her spirits by telling her about a rare butterfly that I had managed to catch with her birthday butterfly net
, Mother maintained a frigid silence until we reached the villa. Obviously the loss of her precious ice-box had wounded her very deeply.

  When we got in she poured herself a very stiff brandy and sat on the sofa, obviously trying to work out menus that one could cope with without an ice-box until it was retrieved from the depths of the sea, as we all – including Spiro – assured her it would be.

  Larry had found some mail waiting for him. Filling a glass with wine, he started to open the letters with interest.

  ‘Oh good!’ he exclaimed when he got to the second letter, ‘The Grubensteins are coming . . . and they’re bringing Gertrude with them.’

  Mother came out of her gastronomic trance.

  ‘Grubensteins?’ she said. ‘You don’t mean that awful greasy little man who looks as though he hasn’t washed for about six weeks and that gipsy-like wife of his?’

  ‘Great talent,’ said Larry. ‘He’s going to make a fine poet. She paints awfully well. Gertrude’s very interesting, too. You’ll like her.’

  ‘The less I see of them,’ said Mother with dignity, ‘the better I’ll be pleased. I don’t know about this Gertrude woman, but the Grubensteins left a great deal to be desired.’

  ‘What d’you mean, the less you see of them?’ said Larry with surprise. ‘They’re coming to stay here.’

  ‘You haven’t invited them here!’ Mother said, startled.

  ‘Of course I have,’ said Larry, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, ‘They’ve got no money to stay anywhere else.’

  Mother took a large gulp of brandy, put on her spectacles and what she considered to be her most fierce expression.

  ‘Now look here, Larry,’ she said in a firm tone of voice, ‘this has got to stop. I will not have you inviting all these people, at least not without letting me know. When are they supposed to be arriving?’

  The day after tomorrow,’ said Larry.

  ‘Well, it’s got to stop,’ said Mother, ‘my nerves won’t stand it.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re carping about,’ said Larry irritably; ‘they’re a very nice trio. And anyway, you’ve just had a nice holiday, haven’t you?’

  3. A Transport of Terrapins

  Towards the end of 1939, when it looked as though war was inevitable, my family uprooted itself from Corfu and came back to England. We settled for a time in a flat in London while my mother made repeated forays into different parts of the English countryside in search of a house. And while she was doing this I was free to explore London. Although I have never been a lover of big cities I found London, at that time, fascinating. After all, the biggest metropolis I was used to was the town of Corfu, which was about the size of a small English market town, and so the great sprawling mass of London had hundreds of exciting secrets for me to discover. There was, of course, the Natural History Museum, and the inevitable visits to the Zoo, where I got on quite intimate terms with some of the keepers. This only strengthened my belief that working in a zoo was the only real vocation for anyone, and confirmed me in my desire to possess a zoo of my own.

  Quite close to the flat where we were staying was a shop which always had my undivided attention. It was a place called ‘The Aquarium’, and its window was full of great tanks full of brightly coloured fish and, what was even more interesting, rows of glassfronted boxes that contained grass snakes, pine snakes, great green lizards and bulbous-eyed toads. I used to gaze longingly in the window at these beautiful creatures and I had a great desire to possess them. But as I already had a whole host of birds, two magpies and a marmoset in the flat, I felt that the introduction of any other livestock of any shape or form would bring down the wrath of the family upon me, and so I could only gaze longingly at these lovely reptiles.

  Then, one morning, when I happened to pass the shop, my attention was riveted by a notice that was leaning up against an aquarium. It said, ‘Wanted: Young, reliable assistant’. I went back to the flat and thought about it for some time.

  ‘They’ve got a job going in that pet shop down the road,’ I said to my mother.

  ‘Have they, dear?’ she said, not really taking any notice.

  ‘Yes. They say they want a young, reliable assistant. I . . . I thought of applying for it,’ I said carelessly.

  ‘What a good idea,’ said Larry ‘Then, perhaps, you could take all your animals there.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d let him do that, dear,’ said my mother.

  ‘How much do you think they’d pay for a job like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very much, I shouldn’t think,’ said Larry. ‘I doubt that you are what they mean by reliable.’

  ‘Anyway, they’d have to pay me something, wouldn’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Are you old enough to be employed?’ inquired Larry.

  ‘Well, I’m almost sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘Well, go and have a shot at it,’ he suggested.

  So the following morning I went down to the pet shop and opened the door and went in. A short, slender, dark man with very large horn-rimmed spectacles danced across the floor towards me.

  ‘Good morning! Good morning! Good morning, sir!’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You, um . . ., you want an assistant . . .’ I said.

  He cocked his head on one side and his eyes grew large behind his spectacles.

  ‘An assistant,’ he said. ‘Do you mean to say you want the job?’

  ‘Er . . ., yes,’ I said.

  ‘Have you had any experience?’ be inquired doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, I’ve had plenty of experience,’ I said. ‘I’ve always kept reptiles and fish and things like that. I’ve got a whole flatful of things now.’

  The little man looked at me.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Sixteen . . . nearly seventeen,’ I lied.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can’t afford to pay very much, you know. The overheads on this shop are something extraordinary. But I could start you off at one pound ten.’

  ‘That’s alright,’ I said. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘You’d better start on Monday,’ he said. ‘I think on Monday because then I can get all your cards stamped up and straight. Otherwise we get in such a muddle, don’t we? Now, my name’s Mr Romilly.’

  I told him my name and we shook hands rather formally, and then we stood looking at each other. It was obvious that Mr Romilly had never employed anybody before and did not know quite what the form was. I thought perhaps I ought to help him out.

  ‘Perhaps you could just show me round,’ I suggested, ‘and tell me a few things that you will want me to do.’

  ‘Oh, what an excellent idea,’ said Mr Romilly. ‘An excellent idea!’

  He danced round the shop waving his hands like butterfly wings and showed me how to clean out a fish tank, how to drop the mealworms into the cages of frogs and toads, and where the brush and broom were kept that we swept the floor with. Under the shop was a large cellar where various fish foods, nets and other things were kept, and it included a constantly running tap that dripped into a large bowl containing what at first glance appeared to be a raw sheep’s heart. This, on close inspection, turned out to be a closely knitted ball of threadlike tubifex worms. These bright red worms were a favourite food of all the fish and some of the amphibians and reptiles as well. I discovered that as well as the delightful things in the window there were hosts of other creatures in theshopbesides – cases full of lizards, toads, tortoises and treacle shiny snakes, tanks full of moist, gulping frogs, and newts with frilled tails like pennants. After having spent so many months in dry, dusty and desiccated London, the shop was, as far as I was concerned, a Garden of Eden.

  ‘Now,’ said Mr Romilly, when he had shown me everything, ‘you start on Monday, hm? Nine o’clock sharp. Don’t be late, will you?’

  I did not tell Mr Romilly that nothing short of death would have prevented me from being there at nine o’clock on Monday.

  So at ten to nine on
Monday morning I paced the pavement outside the shop and eventually Mr Romilly appeared, clad in a long black coat and a black Homburg hat, waving his bunch of keys musically.

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ he trilled. ‘I’m glad to see you’re on time. What a good start.’

  So we went into the shop and I started on the first chores of the day, which were to sweep the comparatively spotless floor clean and then to go round feeding little knots of wriggling tubifex to the fishes.

  I very soon discovered that Mr Romilly, though a kindly man, had little or no knowledge of the creatures in his care. Most of the cages were most unsuitably decorated for the occupants’ comfort and, indeed, so were the fish tanks. Also, Mr Romilly worked on the theory that if you got an animal to eat one thing, you then went on feeding it with that thing incessantly. I decided that I would have to take a hand both in the cage decoration and also in brightening up the lives of our charges, but I knew I would have to move cautiously for Mr Romilly was nothing if not conservative.

  ‘Don’t you think the lizards and toads and things would like a change from mealworms, Mr Romilly?’ I said one day.

  ‘A change?’ said Mr Romilly, his eyes widening behind his spectacles. ‘What sort of a change?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘how about wood lice? I always used to feed my reptiles on wood lice.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Mr Romilly.

  ‘Quite sure,’ I said.

  ‘It won’t do them any harm, will it?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘they love wood lice. It gives them a bit of variety in their diet.’

  ‘But where are we going to get them?’ asked Mr Romilly despondently.

  ‘Well, I expect there are plenty in the parks,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can get some, shall I?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mr Romilly reluctantly, ‘if you’re quite sure they won’t do them any harm.’

  So I spent one afternoon in the park and collected a very large tin full of wood lice, which I kept in decaying leaves down in the cellar, and when I thought that the frogs and the toads and the lizards had got a bit bored with the mealworms, I would try them on some mealworm beetles, and then, when they had had a surfeit of those, I would give them some wood lice. At first, Mr Romilly used to peer into the cages with a fearful look on his face, as though he expected to see all the reptiles and amphibians dead. But when he found that they not only thrived on this new mixture but even started to croak in their cages, his enthusiasm knew no bounds.