My Family and Other Animals

by Gerald Durrell

  I burst into the house, hot, tear-stained, covered with mud, my shirt bulging with puppies, Lulu trotting at my heels, delighted with this sudden and unexpected outing for herself and her offspring. Mother was, as usual, embedded in the kitchen making various delicacies for Margo who had been away touring the mainland of Greece to recover from yet another unfortunate affair of the heart. Mother listened to my incoherent and indignant account of the puppies’ premature burial and was duly shocked.

  ‘Really!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘These peasants! I can’t understand how they can be so cruel. Burying them alive! I never heard of such a barbarous thing. You did quite right to save them, dear. Where are they?’

  I ripped open my shirt, as though committing hara-kiri, and a cascade of wriggling puppies fell out on to the kitchen table where they started to grope their way blindly about, squeaking.

  ‘Gerry, dear, not on the table where I’m rolling pastry,’ said Mother. ‘Really, you children! Yes, well, even if it’s clean mud we don’t want it in the pies. Get a basket.’

  I got a basket and we put the puppies into it. Mother peered at them.

  ‘Poor little things,’ she said. ‘There do seem to be an awful lot of them. How many? Eleven! Well, I don’t know what we’ll do with them. We can’t have eleven dogs with the ones we’ve got.’

  I said hastily that I had got it all worked out; as soon as the puppies were old enough we would find homes for them. I added that Margo, who would be home by then, could help me; it would be an occupation for her and keep her mind off sex.

  ‘Gerry, dear!’ said Mother, aghast. ‘Don’t say things like that. Whoever told you that?’

  I explained that Larry had said that she needed her mind taken off sex and so I thought that the puppies’ arrival would achieve this happy result.

  ‘Well, you mustn’t talk like that,’ said Mother. ‘Larry’s got no business to say things like that. Margo’s just… just… a bit… emotional, that’s all. Sex has nothing to do with it; that’s something quite different. Whatever would people think if they heard you? Now go and put the puppies somewhere safe.’

  So I took the puppies to a convenient olive tree near the veranda, tied Lulu to it and cleaned the puppies with a damp cloth. Lulu, deciding that baskets were very effete places in which to bring up puppies, immediately excavated a burrow between the friendly roots of the tree and carefully transferred her puppies to it one by one. To his annoyance, I spent more time cleaning up my special puppy than the others and tried to think of a name for him. Finally, I decided to call him Lazarus, Laz for short. I placed him carefully with his brothers and sisters and went to change my mud- and urine-stained shirt.

  I arrived at the lunch table in time to hear Mother telling Leslie and Larry about the puppies.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Leslie, ‘I don’t think they mean to be cruel; they just don’t think. Look at the way they shove wounded birds into their game bags. So what happened? Did Gerry drown the puppies?’

  ‘No he did not,’ said Mother indignantly. ‘He brought them here, of course.’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Larry. ‘Not more dogs! We’ve got four already.’

  ‘They’re only puppies,’ said Mother, ‘poor little things.’

  ‘How many are there?’ asked Leslie.

  ‘Eleven,’ said Mother reluctantly.

  Larry put down his knife and fork and stared at her. ‘Eleven?’ he repeated. ‘Eleven? Eleven puppies! You must be mad.’

  ‘I keep telling you, they’re only puppies – tiny little things,’ said Mother, flustered. ‘And Lulu’s very good with them.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Lulu?’ asked Larry.

  ‘Their mother – she’s a dear,’ said Mother.

  ‘So that’s twelve bloody dogs.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose it is,’ said Mother. ‘I hadn’t really counted.’

  ‘That’s the trouble round here,’ snapped Larry. ‘Nobody counts! And before you know where you are you’re knee deep in animals. It’s like the bloody creation all over again, only worse. One owl turns into a battalion before you know where you are; sex-mad pigeons defying Marie Stopes in every room of the house; the place is so full of birds it’s like a bloody poulterer’s shop, to say nothing of snakes and toads and enough small fry to keep Macbeth’s witches in provender for years. And on top of all that you go and get twelve more dogs. It’s a perfect example of the streak of lunacy that runs in this family.’

  ‘Nonsense, Larry, you do exaggerate,’ said Mother. ‘Such a lot of fuss over a few puppies.’

  ‘You call eleven puppies a few? The place will look like the Greek branch of Crufts’ Dog Show and they’ll probably all turn out to be bitches and come into season simultaneously. Life will deteriorate into one long canine sexual orgy.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mother, changing the subject. ‘You’re not to go around saying Margo’s sex mad. People will get the wrong idea.’

  ‘Well, she is,’ said Larry. ‘I see no reason to cover up the truth.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ said Mother firmly; ‘I won’t have you saying things like that. Margo’s just romantic. There’s a lot of difference.’

  ‘Well, all I can say is,’ said Larry, ‘when all those bitches you’ve brought into the house come into season together Margo’s going to have a lot of competition.’

  ‘Now, Larry, that’s quite enough,’ said Mother. ‘Anyway I don’t think we ought to discuss sex at lunch.’

  A few days after this, Margo returned from her travels, bronzed and well and with her heart apparently healed. She talked incessantly about her trip and gave us graphic thumbnail pictures of the people she had met, inevitably ending with, ‘and so I told them if they came to Corfu to come and see us’.

  ‘I do hope you didn’t invite everyone you met, Margo dear,’ said Mother, slightly alarmed.

  ‘Oh, of course not, Mother,’ said Margo impatiently, having just told us about a handsome Greek sailor and his eight brothers to whom she had issued this lavish invitation. ‘I only asked the interesting ones. I would have thought you’d be glad to have some interesting people around.’

  ‘I get enough interesting people that Larry invites, thank you,’ said Mother acidly, ‘without you starting.’

  ‘This trip has opened my eyes,’ concluded Margo dramatically. ‘I’ve realized that you’re all simply stagnating here. You’re becoming narrow-minded and… and… insulated.’

  ‘I don’t see that objecting to unexpected guests is being narrow-minded, dear,’ said Mother. ‘After all, I’m the one that has to do the cooking.’

  ‘But they’re not unexpected,’ explained Margo haughtily, ‘I invited them.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Mother, obviously feeling that she was not making much headway with this argument. ‘I suppose if they write and let us know they’re coming we can manage.’

  ‘Of course they’ll let us know,’ said Margo coldly. ‘They’re my friends; they wouldn’t be so ill-mannered as not to let us know.’

  As it happened, she was wrong.

  I returned to the villa after a very pleasant afternoon spent drifting up the coast in my boat looking for seals and, bursting, sun-glowing and hungry, into the drawing-room in search of tea and the mammoth chocolate cake I knew Mother had made, I came upon a sight so curious that I stopped in the doorway, my mouth open in amazement while the dogs, clustered round my legs, started to bristle and growl with astonishment. Mother was seated on the floor, perched uncomfortably on a cushion, gingerly holding in one hand a piece of rope to which was attached a small, black, and excessively high-spirited ram. Sitting around Mother, cross-legged on cushions, were a fierce-looking old man in a tarboosh and three heavily veiled women. Also ranged on the floor were lemonade, tea, and plates of biscuits, sandwiches, and the chocolate cake. As I entered the room, the old man had leaned forward, drawn a huge, heavily ornate dagger from his sash, and cut himself a large hunk of cake which he stuffed into his
mouth with every evidence of satisfaction. It looked rather like a scene out of the Arabian Nights. Mother cast me an anguished look.

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve come, dear,’ she said, struggling with the ram, who had gambolled into her lap by mistake. ‘These people don’t speak English.’

  I inquired who they were.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mother desperately. ‘They just appeared when I was making tea; they’ve been here for hours. I can’t understand a word they say. They insisted on sitting on the floor. I think they’re friends of Margo’s; of course, they may be friends of Larry’s but they don’t look highbrow enough.’

  I tried tentatively talking in Greek to the old man and he leaped to his feet, delighted that someone understood him. He had a swooping, eagle nose, an immense white moustache like a frosty sheaf of corn, and black eyes that seemed to snap and crackle with his mood. He was wearing a white tunic with a red sash in which his dagger reposed, enormous baggy pants, long white cotton socks, and red, upturned charukias with immense pompoms on the toes. So I was the adorable signorina’s brother, was I, he roared excitedly, bits of chocolate cake trembling on his moustache as he talked. What an honour to meet me. He clasped me to him and kissed me so fervently that the dogs, fearing for my life, all started barking. The ram, faced with four vociferous dogs, panicked; it ran round and round Mother, twisting the rope around her. Then, at a particularly snarling bark from Roger, it uttered a frantic bleat and fled towards the French windows and safety, pulling Mother onto her back in a welter of spilled lemonade and chocolate cake. Things became confused.

  Roger, under the impression that the old Turk was attacking both myself and Mother, launched an assault on the Turk’s charukias and got a firm grip on one of the pom-poms. The old boy aimed a kick at Roger with his free foot and promptly fell down. The three women were sitting absolutely still, cross-legged on their cushions, screaming loudly behind their yashmaks. Mother’s dog, Dodo, who had long ago decided that anything in the nature of a rough house was acutely distressing to a Dandie Dinmont of her lineage, sat soulfully in a corner and howled. The old Turk, who was surprisingly lithe for his age, had drawn his dagger and was making wild but ineffectual swipes at Roger, who was darting from pom-pom to pom-pom growling savagely, evading the blade with ease. Widdle and Puke were trying to round up the ram, and Mother, desperately unravelling herself, was shouting incoherent instructions to me.

  ‘Get the lamb! Gerry, get the lamb! They’ll kill it,’ she squeaked, covered with lemonade and bits of chocolate cake.

  ‘Black son of the devil! Illegitimate offspring of a witch! My shoes! Leave my shoes! I will kill you… destroy you!’ panted the old Turk, slashing away at Roger.

  ‘Ayii! Ayii! Ayii! His shoes! His shoes!’ screamed the women in a chorus, immobile on their cushions.

  With difficulty avoiding a stab wound myself, I managed to tear the ravening Roger off the old Turk’s pom-poms and get him and Widdle and Puke out onto the veranda. Then I opened the sliding doors and shut the lamb in the dining-room as a temporary measure while I soothed the old Turk’s wounded feelings. Mother, smiling nervously and nodding vigorously at everything I said although she did not understand it, was making an attempt to clean herself up, but this was rather ineffectual as the chocolate cake had been one of her larger and more glutinous creations, oozing cream, and she had put her elbow into the exact centre of it as she fell backwards. At length I managed to soothe the old man, and while Mother went up to change her dress I dished out brandy to the Turk and his three wives. My helpings were liberal, so by the time Mother came back faint hiccups were coming from behind at least one of the veils and the Turk’s nose had turned fiery red.

  ‘Your sister is… how shall I tell you?… magical… God-given. Never have I seen a girl like her,’ he said, holding out his glass eagerly. ‘I, who, as you see, have three wives, I have never seen a girl like your sister.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Mother, eyeing his dagger nervously. I repeated what the Turk had said.

  ‘Disgusting old man,’ said Mother. ‘Really, Margo should be more careful.’

  The Turk drained his glass and held it out again, beaming convivially at us.

  ‘Your maid here,’ he said, jerking a thumb at Mother, ‘she is a little bit soft, huh? She doesn’t speak Greek.’

  ‘What does he say?’ asked Mother.

  Dutifully, I translated.

  ‘Impertinent man!’ said Mother indignantly. ‘Really, I could smack Margo. Tell him who I am, Gerry.’

  I told the Turk, and the effect on him was more than Mother could have wished. With a roar, he leaped to his feet, rushed across to her, seized her hands and covered them with kisses. Then, still holding her hands in a vice-like grip, he peered into her face, his moustache trembling.

  ‘The mother,’ he intoned, ‘the mother of my Almond-blossom.’

  ‘What’s he say?’ asked Mother tremulously.

  But before I could translate, the Turk had barked out an order to his wives, who showed their first sign of animation. They leaped from their cushions, rushed to Mother, lifted their yashmaks, and kissed her hands with every symptom of veneration.

  ‘I do wish they wouldn’t keep kissing me,’ gasped Mother. ‘Gerry, tell them it’s quite unnecessary.’

  But the Turk, having got his wives re-established on their cushions, turned once again to Mother. He threw a powerful arm round her shoulders, making her squeak and threw out his other arm oratorically.

  ‘Never did I think,’ he boomed, peering into Mother’s face, ‘never did I think that I should have the honour of meeting the mother of my Almond-blossom.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Mother agitatedly, trapped in the Turk’s bear-like hug.

  Again I translated.

  ‘Almond-blossom? What’s he talking about? The man’s mad,’ she said.

  I explained that the Turk was apparently greatly enamoured of Margo and that this was his name for her. This confirmed Mother’s worst fears about the Turk’s intentions.

  ‘Almond-blossom, indeed!’ she said indignantly. ‘Just wait until she gets back – I’ll give her Almond-blossom!’

  Just at that moment, cool and fresh from aswim, Margo herself appeared in a very revealing bathing costume.

  ‘Ooooh!’ she screamed delightedly. ‘Mustapha! And Lena, and Maria, and Telina! How lovely!’

  The Turk rushed across to her and kissed her hands reverently while his wives clustered round making muffled noises of pleasure.

  ‘Mother, this is Mustapha,’ said Margo, glowing.

  ‘We have already met,’ said Mother grimly, ‘and he’s ruined my new dress, or, rather his lamb has. Go and put some clothes on.’

  ‘His lamb?’ asked Margo, bewildered. ‘What lamb?’

  ‘The lamb he brought for his Almond-blossom, as he calls you,’ said Mother accusingly.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a nickname,’ said Margo colouring, ‘he doesn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘I know what these dirty old men are,’ said Mother ominously. ‘Really, Margo, you should know better.’

  The old Turk was listening to this exchange with quick glances from his bright eyes and a beatific smile on his face; however, I could see that my powers of translation would be stretched to their limit if Mother and Margo started arguing so I opened the sliding doors and let the lamb in. He came in pertly, prance-footed, black and curly as a storm cloud.

  ‘How dare you!’ said Margo. ‘How dare you insult my friends. He’s not a dirty old man; he’s one of the cleanest old men I know.’

  ‘I don’t care whether he’s clean or not,’ said Mother, coming to the end of her patience. ‘He can’t stay here with all his… his… women. I’m not cooking for a harem.’

  ‘It is wonderful to hear the mother and daughter talk together,’ the Turk confided to me. ‘It’s like the sound of sheep bells.’

  ‘You’re beastly,’ said Margo, ‘you’re beastly! You don’t want me to have an
y friends. You’re narrow-minded and suburban!’

  ‘You can’t call it suburban to object to three wives,’ said Mother indignantly.

  ‘It reminds me,’ said the Turk, his eyes moist, ‘of the singing of the nightingales in my valley.’

  ‘He can’t help it if he’s a Turk,’ shrilled Margo. ‘He can’t help it if he’s got to have three wives.’

  ‘Any man can avoid having three wives if he puts his mind to it,’ said Mother firmly.

  ‘I expect,’ said the Turk confidingly, ‘Almond-blossom is telling her mother what a happy time we had in my valley, huh?’

  ‘You always try to repress me,’ said Margo. ‘Everything I do is wrong.’

  ‘The trouble is I give you too much licence. I let you go away for a few days and you come back with this… this… old roué and his dancing girls,’ said Mother.

  ‘There you are, that’s what I mean – you repress me,’ said Margo triumphantly. ‘Now you expect me to have a licence for a Turk.’

  ‘How I would like to take them back to my village,’ said the Turk, gazing at them fondly. ‘Such wonderful time we would have… dancing, singing, wine…’

  The lamb seemed disappointed that no one was taking any notice of him; he had gambolled a little, decorated the floor, and done two nicely executed pirouettes, but he felt that no one was paying him the attention he deserved, so he put down his head and charged Mother. It was a beautifully executed charge. I could speak with some authority, for during my expeditions through the surrounding olive groves I had frequently met with eager and audacious young rams and fought them matador fashion, using my shirt as a cloak, to our mutual satisfaction. While deploring the result, I had to confess that the charge was excellent, well thought out, as it was, and with the full power of the ram’s wiry body and bony head landing with precision on the back of Mother’s knees. Mother was projected on to our extremely uncomfortable horsehair sofa as if propelled by a cannon, and she lay there gasping. The Turk, horrified at what his gift had done, leaped in front of her, arms outstretched, to protect her from further attack, which seemed imminent, for the ram, pleased with itself, had retreated to a corner of the room and was prancing and bucking rather in the manner of a boxer limbering up in his corner of the ring.