11
The Enchanted Archipelago
As the summer grew hotter and hotter we decided that it required too much effort to row the Sea Cow down the coast to our bathing bay, so we invested in an outboard engine. The acquisition of this machine opened up a vast area of coastland for us, for we could now venture much farther afield, making trips along the jagged coastline to remote and deserted beaches golden as wheat, or lying like fallen moons among the contorted rocks. It was thus that I became aware of the fact that stretching along the coast for miles was a scattered archipelago of small islands, some fairly extensive, some that were really outsize rocks with a wig of greenery perched precariously on top. For some reason, which I could not discover, the sea faunæ were greatly attracted by this archipelago, and round the edges of the islands, in rock-pools and sandy bays the size of a large table, there was a bewildering assortment of life. I managed to inveigle the family into several trips to these islets, but as these had few good bathing spots the family soon got bored with having to sit on sun-baked rocks while I fished interminably in the pools and unearthed at intervals strange and, to them, revolting sea-creatures. Also, the islands were strung out close to the coast, some of them being separated from the mainland only by a channel twenty feet wide, and there were plenty of reefs and rocks. So guiding the Sea Cow through these hazards and making sure the propeller did not strike and break made any excursion to the islands a difficult navigational problem. Our trips there became less and less frequent, in spite of all arguments on my part, and I was tortured by the thought of all the wonderful animal life waiting in the limpid pools to be caught; but I was unable to do anything about it, simply because I had no boat. I suggested that I might be allowed to take the Sea Cow out myself, say once a week, but the family were, for a variety of reasons, against this. But then, just when I had almost given up hope, I was struck with a brilliant idea: my birthday was due fairly soon, and if I dealt with the family skilfully I felt sure I could get not only a boat but a lot of other equipment as well. I therefore suggested to the family that, instead of letting them choose my birthday presents, I might tell them the things which I wanted most. In this way they could be sure of not disappointing me. The family, rather taken aback, agreed, and then, somewhat suspiciously, asked me what I wanted. Innocently, I said that I hadn’t thought about it much, but that I would work out a list for each person, and they could then choose one or more items on it.
My list took a lot of time and thought to work out, and a considerable amount of applied psychology. Mother, for instance, I knew would buy me everything on her list; so I put down some of the most necessary and expensive equipment: five wooden cases, glass-topped, cork-lined, to house my insect collection; two dozen test-tubes; five pints of methylated spirits, five pints of formalin, and a microscope. Margo’s list was a little more difficult, for the items had to be chosen so that they would encourage her to go to her favourite shops. So from her I asked for ten yards of butter muslin, ten yards of white calico, six large packets of pins, two bundles of cotton wool, two pints of ether, a pair of forceps, and two fountain-pen fillers. It was, I realized resignedly, quite useless to ask Larry for anything like formalin or pins, but if my list showed some sort of literary leaning I stood a good chance. Accordingly I made out a formidable sheet covered with the titles, authors’ names, publishers, and prices of all the natural history books I felt in need of, and put an asterisk against those that would be most gratefully received. Since I had only one request left, I decided to tackle Leslie verbally instead of handing him a list, but I knew I should have to choose my moment with care. I had to wait some days for what I considered to be a propitious moment.
I had just helped him to the successful conclusion of some ballistic experiments he was making, which involved tying an ancient muzzle-loader to a tree and firing it by means of a long string attached to the trigger. At the fourth attempt we achieved what apparently Leslie considered to be success: the barrel burst and bits of metal whined in all directions. Leslie was delighted and made copious notes on the back of an envelope. Together we set about picking up the remains of the gun. While we were thus engaged I casually asked him what he would like to give me for my birthday.
‘Hadn’t thought about it,’ he replied absently, examining with evident satisfaction a contorted piece of metal. ‘I don’t mind… anything you like… you choose.’
I said I wanted a boat. Leslie, realizing how he had been trapped, said indignantly that a boat was far too large a present for a birthday, and anyway he couldn’t afford it. I said, equally indignantly, that he had told me to choose what I liked. Leslie said yes, he had, but he hadn’t meant a boat, as they were terribly expensive. I said that when one said anything one meant anything, which included boats, and anyway I didn’t expect him to buy me one. I had thought, since he knew so much about boats, he would be able to build me one. However, if he thought that would be too difficult…
‘Of course it’s not difficult,’ said Leslie, unguardedly, and then added hastily, ‘Well… not terribly difficult. But it’s the time. It would take ages and ages to do. Look, wouldn’t it be better if I took you out in the Sea Cow twice a week?’
But I was adamant; I wanted a boat and I was quite prepared to wait for it.
‘Oh, all right, all right,’ said Leslie exasperatedly, ‘I’ll build you a boat. But I’m not having you hanging around while I do it, understand? You’re to keep well away. You’re not to see it until it’s finished.’
Delightedly I agreed to these conditions, and so for the next two weeks Spiro kept turning up with car-loads of planks, and the sounds of sawing, hammering, and blasphemy floated round from the back veranda. The house was littered with wood shavings, and everywhere he walked Leslie left a trail of sawdust. I found it fairly easy to restrain my impatience and curiosity, for I had, at that time, something else to occupy me. Some repairs had just been completed to the back of the house, and three large bags of beautiful pink cement had been left over. These I had appropriated, and I set to work to build a series of small ponds in which I could keep not only my freshwater fauna, but also all the wonderful sea creatures I hoped to catch in my new boat. Digging ponds in midsummer was harder work than I had anticipated, but eventually I had some reasonably square holes dug, and a couple of days splashing around in a sticky porridge of lovely coral-pink cement soon revived me. Leslie’s trails of sawdust and shavings through the house were now interwoven with a striking pattern of pink footprints.
The day before my birthday the entire family made an expedition into the town. The reasons were threefold. Firstly, they wanted to purchase my presents. Secondly, the larder had to be stocked up. We had agreed that we would not invite a lot of people to the party; we said we didn’t like crowds, and so ten guests, carefully selected, were the most we were prepared to put up with. It would be a small but distinguished gathering of people we liked best. Having unanimously decided on this, each member of the family then proceeded to invite ten people. Unfortunately they didn’t all invite the same ten, with the exception of Theodore, who received five separate invitations. The result was that Mother, on the eve of the party, suddenly discovered we were going to have not ten guests but forty-six. The third reason for going to town was to make sure that Lugaretzia attended the dentist. Recently her teeth had been her chief woe, and Doctor Androuchelli, having peered into her mouth, had uttered a series of popping noises indicative of horror, and said that she must have all her teeth out, since it was obvious that they were the cause of all her ailments. After a week’s arguing, accompanied by floods of tears, we managed to get Lugaretzia to consent, but she had refused to go without moral support. So, bearing her, white and weeping, in our midst, we swept into town.
We returned in the evening, exhausted and irritable, the car piled high with food, and Lugaretzia lying across our laps like a corpse, moaning frightfully. It was perfectly obvious that she would be in no condition to assist with the cooking and other work on
the morrow.
Spiro, when asked to suggest a solution, gave his usual answer. ‘Nevers you minds,’ he scowled; ‘leaves everything to me.’
The following morning was full of incident. Lugaretzia had recovered sufficiently to undertake light duties, and she followed us all round the house, displaying with pride the gory cavities in her gums, and describing in detail the agonies she had suffered with each individual tooth. My presents having been duly inspected and the family thanked, I then went round to the back veranda with Leslie, and there lay a mysterious shape covered with a tarpaulin. Leslie drew this aside with the air of a conjuror, and there lay my boat. I gazed at it rapturously; it was surely the most perfect boat that anyone had ever had. Gleaming in her coat of new paint she lay there, my steed to the enchanted archipelago.
The boat was some seven feet long, and almost circular in shape. Leslie explained hurriedly – in case I thought the shape was due to defective craftsmanship – that the reason for this was that the planks had been too short for the frame, an explanation I found perfectly satisfactory. After all, it was the sort of irritating thing that could have happened to anyone. I said stoutly that I thought it was a lovely shape for a boat, and indeed I thought it was. She was not sleek, slim, and rather predatory looking, like most boats, but rotund, placid, and somehow comforting in her circular solidarity. She reminded me of an earnest dungbeetle, an insect for which I had great affection. Leslie, pleased at my evident delight, said deprecatingly that he had been forced to make her flat-bottomed, since, for a variety of technical reasons, this was the safest. I said that I liked flat-bottomed boats the best, because it was possible to put jars of specimens on the floor without so much risk of them upsetting. Leslie asked me if I liked the colour scheme, as he had not been too sure about it. Now, in my opinion, the colour scheme was the best thing about it, the final touch that completed the unique craft. Inside she was painted green and white, while her bulging sides were tastefully covered in white, black, and brilliant orange stripes, a combination of colours that struck me as being both artistic and friendly. Leslie then showed me the long, smooth cypress pole he had cut for a mast, but explained that it could not be fitted into position until the boat was launched. Enthusiastically I suggested launching her at once. Leslie, who was a stickler for procedure, said you couldn’t launch a ship without naming her, and had I thought of a name yet? This was a difficult problem, and the whole family were called out to help me solve it. They stood clustered round the boat, which looked like a gigantic flower in their midst, and racked their brains.
‘Why not call it the Jolly Roger?’ suggested Margo.
I rejected this scornfully; I explained that I wanted a sort of fat name that would go with the boat’s appearance and personality.
‘Arbuckle,’ suggested Mother vaguely.
That was no use, either; the boat simply didn’t look like an Arbuckle.
‘Call it the Ark,’ said Leslie, but I shook my head.
There was another silence while we all stared at the boat. Suddenly I had it, the perfect name: Bootle, that’s what I’d call her.
‘Very nice, dear,’ approved Mother.
‘I was just about to suggest the Bumtrinket,’ said Larry.
‘Larry, dear!’ Mother reproved. ‘Don’t teach the boy things like that.’
I turned Larry’s suggestion over in my mind; it was certainly an unusual name, but then so was Bootle. They both seemed to conjure up the shape and personality of the boat. After much thought I decided what to do. A pot of black paint was produced and laboriously, in rather trickly capitals, I traced her name along the side: THE BOOTLE-BUMTRINKET. There it was; not only an unusual name, but an aristocratically hyphenated one as well. In order to ease Mother’s mind I had to promise that I would refer to the boat only as the Bootle in conversation with strangers. The matter of the name being settled, we set about the task of launching her. It took the combined efforts of Margo, Peter, Leslie, and Larry to carry the boat down the hill to the jetty, while Mother and I followed behind with the mast and a small bottle of wine with which to do the launching properly. At the end of the jetty the boat-bearers stopped, swaying with exhaustion, and Mother and I struggled with the cork of the wine-bottle.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Larry irritably. ‘For Heaven’s sake hurry up; I’m not used to being a slipway.’
At last we got the cork from the bottle, and I announced in a clear voice that I christened this ship the Bootle-Bumtrinket. Then I slapped her rotund backside with the bottle, with the unhappy result that half a pint of white wine splashed over Larry’s head.
‘Look out, look out,’ he remonstrated. ‘Which one of us are you supposed to be launching?’
At last they cast the Bootle-Bumtrinket off the jetty with a mighty heave, and she landed on her flat bottom with a report like a cannon, showering sea-water in all directions, and then bobbed steadily and confidently on the ripples. She had the faintest suggestion of a list to starboard, but I generously attributed this to the wine and not to Leslie’s workmanship.
‘Now!’ said Leslie, organizing things. ‘Let’s get the mast in… Margo, you hold her nose… that’s it… Now, Peter, if you’ll get into the stern, Larry and I will hand you the mast… all you have to do is stick it in that socket.’
So, while Margo lay on her tummy holding the nose of the boat, Peter leaped nimbly into the stern and settled himself, with legs apart, to receive the mast which Larry and Leslie were holding.
‘This mast looks a bit long to me, Les,’ said Larry, eyeing it critically.
‘Nonsense! It’ll be fine when it’s in,’ retorted Leslie. ‘Now… are you ready, Peter?’
Peter nodded, braced himself, clasped the mast firmly in both hands, and plunged it into the socket. Then he stood back, dusted his hands, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket, with a speed remarkable for a craft of her circumference, turned turtle. Peter, clad in his one decent suit which he had put on in honour of my birthday, disappeared with scarcely a splash. All that remained on the surface of the water was his hat, the mast, and the Bootle-Bumtrinket’s bright orange bottom.
‘He’ll drown! He’ll drown!’ screamed Margo, who always tended to look on the dark side in a crisis.
‘Nonsense! It’s not deep enough,’ said Leslie.
‘I told you that mast was too long,’ said Larry unctuously.
‘It isn’t too long,’ Leslie snapped irritably; ‘that fool didn’t set it right.’
‘Don’t you dare call him a fool,’ said Margo.
‘You can’t fit a twenty-foot mast onto a thing like a washtub and expect it to keep upright,’ said Larry.
‘If you’re so damn clever why didn’t you make the boat?’
‘I wasn’t asked to… Besides, you’re supposed to be the expert, though I doubt if they’d employ you on Clydeside.’
‘Very funny. It’s easy enough to criticize… just because that fool—’
‘Don’t you call him a fool… How dare you?’
‘Now, now, don’t argue about it, dears,’ said Mother peaceably.
‘Well, Larry’s so damn patronizing…’
‘Thank God! He’s come up,’ said Margo in fervent tones as the bedraggled and spluttering Peter rose to the surface.
We hauled him out and Margo hurried him up to the house to try to get his suit dry before the party. The rest of us followed, still arguing. Leslie, incensed at Larry’s criticism, changed into trunks and, armed with a massive manual on yacht construction and a tape measure, went down to salvage the boat. For the rest of the morning he kept sawing bits off the mast until she eventually floated upright, but by then the mast was only about three feet high. Leslie was very puzzled, but he promised to fit a new mast as soon as he’d worked out the correct specification. So the Bootle-Bumtrinket, tied to the end of the jetty, floated there in all her glory, looking like a very vivid, overweight Manx cat.
Spiro arrived soon after lunch, bringing with him a tall, elderly man who had the
air of an ambassador. This, Spiro explained, was the King of Greece’s ex-butler, who had been prevailed upon to come out of retirement and help with the party. Spiro then turned everyone out of the kitchen and he and the butler closeted themselves in there together. When I went round and peered through the window, I saw the butler in his waistcoat, polishing glasses, while Spiro, scowling thoughtfully and humming to himself, was attacking a vast pile of vegetables. Occasionally he would waddle over and blow vigorously at the seven charcoal fires along the wall, making them glow like rubies.
The first guest to arrive was Theodore, sitting spick and span in a carriage, his best suit on, his boots polished, and, as a concession to the occasion, without any collecting gear. He clasped in one hand a walking-stick, and in the other a neatly tied parcel. ‘Ah-ha! Many… er… happy returns of the day,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘I have brought you a… er… small… er… memento… a small gift, that is to say, present to er… commemorate the occasion… um.’
On opening the parcel I was delighted to find that it contained a fat volume entitled Life in Ponds and Streams.
‘I think you will find it a useful… um… addition to your library,’ said Theodore, rocking on his toes. ‘It contains some very interesting information on… er… general freshwater life.’
Gradually the guests arrived, and the front of the villa was a surging mass of carriages and taxis. The great drawing-room and dining-room were full of people, talking and arguing and laughing, and the butler, who to Mother’s dismay had donned a tail-coat, moved swiftly through the throng like an elderly penguin, serving drinks and food with such a regal air that a lot of the guests were not at all sure if he was a real butler, or merely some eccentric relative we had staying with us. Down in the kitchen Spiro drank prodigious quantities of wine as he moved among the pots and pans, his scowling face glowing redly in the light from the fires, his deep voice roaring out in song. The air was full of the scent of garlic and herbs, and Lugaretzia was kept hobbling to and fro from kitchen to drawing-room at considerable speed. Occasionally she would succeed in backing some unfortunate guest into a corner and, holding a plate of food under his nose, would proceed to give him the details of her ordeal at the dentist, giving the most lifelike and repulsive imitation of what a molar sounded like when it was torn from its socket, and opening her mouth wide to show her victims the ghastly havoc that had been wrought inside.
My Family and Other Animals Page 16