But the fleas were not the most objectionable of the lesser inhabitants of the house. The tiny scorpions, black as ebony, infested the bathroom where it was cool. Leslie going in late one night to clean his teeth was ill-advised enough to go barefoot and was stung on the toe. The scorpion was only half an inch long but the agony of the bite was out of all proportion to the size of the beast and it was some days before Leslie could walk. The larger scorpions preferred the kitchen area, where they would quite blatantly sit on the ceiling looking like misshapen aerial lobsters.
At night when the lamps were lit, thousands of insects appeared; moths of all shapes, from tiny fawn-coloured ones with wings shaped like tattered feathers, to the great big, striped, pink and silver hawk moths, whose death dives at the light were capable of breaking the lantern chimney. Then there were the beetles, some as black as mourners, some gaily striped and patterned, some with short, club-shaped antennae, others with antennae as long and thin as a Mandarin’s moustache. With these came a multitude of lesser forms of life, most of them so small that you needed a magnifying glass to make out their incredible shapes and colours.
Naturally, this conglomeration of insects was marvellous as far as I was concerned. Each evening I hung about the lights, my collecting boxes and bottles at the ready, vying with the other predators for choice specimens. I had to look sharp, for the competition was brisk. On the ceiling were the geckoes, pale, pink-skinned, spread-fingered, bulbous-eyed, stalking the moths and beetles with minuscule care. Alongside them were the green, swaying, hypocritical mantis with their mad eyes and chinless faces, moving on slender, prickly legs like green vampires.
On ground level I had to contend with enormous chocolate-coloured spiders like lanky, furry wolves, who would lurk in the shadows and scuttle out and snatch a specimen almost from my very fingers. They were aided and abetted by the fat map toads in their handsome patchwork skins of green and silvery grey who hopped and gulped their way, wide-eyed with astonishment, through this largesse of food, and the swift, furtive, and somehow sinister scutigera. This form of centipede had a body some three inches long and as thick as a pencil and flattened; around the perimeter was a hedge, a fringe of long, slender legs. When it moved, as each pair of legs came into action, these fringes appeared to undulate in waves, and the animal progressed as smoothly as a stone on ice, silent and unnerving, for scutigera were among the most ferocious and skilful of hunters.
One evening, the lights had been lit and I was waiting patiently to see what they were going to add to my collection; it was still fairly early so that most of the predators, apart from myself and a few bats, had not put in an appearance. The bats whipped up and down the veranda as fast as whiplashes, taking the moths and other succulent dainties from within inches of the lamp, the wind from their wings making the flames shudder and leap. Gradually, the pale dragon-green afterglow of the sunset faded, the crickets started their prolonged musical trills, the gloom of the olive trees was lit by the cold lights of the fireflies, and the great house, creaking and groaning with sunburn, settled down for the night.
The wall behind the lamp was already covered by a host of various insects which, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, were clinging there to recover themselves before trying again. At the base of the wall, from a minute crack in the plaster, emerged one of the smallest and fattest geckoes I had ever seen. He must have been newly hatched for he measured only about an inch and a half in length, but obviously the short time he had been in the world had not prevented him from eating prodigiously for his body and tail were so fat as to make him appear almost circular. His mouth was set in a wide, shy smile and his large dark eyes were wide and wondering, like the eyes of a child that sees a table set for a banquet. Before I could stop him he had waddled slowly up the wall and started his supper with a lacewing fly; these creatures, with their transparent wings like green lace and their large green-gold eyes, were favourites of mine and so I was annoyed with him.
Gulping down the last bit of gauzy wing, the baby gecko paused, clinging to the wall, and mused for a bit, occasionally blinking his eyes. I could not think why he had chosen the lacewing, which was a bulky thing to handle, when he was surrounded on all sides by a variety of small insects which would have been easier for him to catch and eat. But it soon became apparent that he was a glutton whose eyes were bigger than his stomach. Having hatched from an egg – and, therefore, lacking a mother’s guidance – he was under the strong but erroneous impression that all insects were edible and that the bigger they were the quicker they would assuage his hunger. He did not even seem to be aware of the fact that for a creature of his size some insects could be dangerous. Like an early missionary, he was so concerned with himself that it never occurred to him that somebody might look upon him simply as a meal.
Ignoring a convention of small and eminently edible moths sitting near him, he stalked a great, fat, hairy oak eggar whose body was almost bigger than his own; he misjudged his run-in, however, and merely caught her by the tip of one wing. She flew off and such was the power of her brown wings that she almost tore the gecko’s grip from the wall and carried him with her. Nothing daunted, after a brief rest, the gecko launched an assault on a longicorn beetle his own size. He would never have been able to swallow such a hard, prickly monster, but this apparently did not occur to him. However, he could not get a grip on the beetle’s hard and polished body, and all he succeeded in doing was knocking it to the floor.
He was just having another brief rest and surveying the battlefield when, with a crisp rustle of wings, an enormous mantis flew on to the veranda and alighted on the wall some six inches away. She folded her wings with a noise like the crumpling of tissue paper and, with viciously pronged arms raised in mock prayer, stared about her with lunatic eyes, twisting her head from side to side as she surveyed the array of insects assembled for her benefit.
The gecko, it was fairly obvious, had never seen a mantis before and did not realize how lethal they could be; as far as he was concerned, it was an enormous green dinner of the sort that he had dreamed about but never hoped to obtain. Without more ado, and ignoring the fact that the mantis was some five times his size, he began to stalk her. The mantis, meanwhile, had singled out a silver-Y moth and was moving towards it on its attenuated, elderly spinster legs, pausing occasionally to sway to and fro, the personification of evil. Hard in her wake came the gecko, head down, grimly determined, pausing whenever the mantis did, and lashing his ridiculous little fat tail to and fro like an excited puppy.
The mantis reached the oblivious moth, paused, swaying, then lashed out with her foreclaws and seized it. The moth, which was a large one, started fluttering frantically and it required all the strength of the mantis’ cruelly barbed forelegs to hold it. As she was struggling with it, looking like a rather inept juggler, the gecko, who had lashed himself into a fury with his fat tail, launched his attack. He darted forward and laid hold of the mantis’ wing case like a bulldog. The mantis was busy trying to juggle the moth round in her claws and so this sudden attack from the rear knocked her off balance. She fell to the ground, carrying with her the moth and the gecko. When she landed she still had the gecko hanging grimly to her wing case. She relinquished the moth, which was by now almost dead, so as to leave her sabre-sharp front claws free to do battle with the gecko.
I had just decided that this was the point where I should step in to add a mantis and a gecko to my menagerie when another protagonist entered the arena. From the shadows of the grapevine a scutigera slid into view, a moving carpet of legs, skimming purposefully towards the still-twitching moth. It reached it, poured itself over the body, and sank its jaws into the moth’s soft thorax. It was a fascinating scene; the mantis bent almost double, slashing downwards with her needle-sharp claws at the gecko who, with eyes protruding with excitement, was hanging on grimly though he was being whipped to and fro by his large antagonist. The scutigera meanwhile, deciding it could not move the moth, lay draped over it like a pe
lmet, sucking out its vital juices.
It was at that point that Theresa Olive Agnes Dierdre, known as Dierdre for short, made her appearance. Dierdre was one of a pair of enormous common toads that I had found, tamed with comparative ease, and established in the tiny walled garden below the veranda. Here they lived a blameless life among the geraniums and tangerine trees, venturing up onto the veranda when the lights were lit to take their share of the insect life.
So taken up was I by the strange foursome in front of me that I had forgotten all about Dierdre and when she appeared on the scene I was unprepared, lying as I was on my stomach with my nose some six inches from the battlefield. Unbeknownst to me, Dierdre had been watching the skirmishing from beneath a chair. She now hopped forward fatly, paused for a brief second, then, before I could do anything, leaped forward in the purposeful way that toads have, opened her huge mouth and with the aid of her tongue flipped both scutigera and moth into her capacious maw. She paused again, gulping so that her protuberant eyes disappeared briefly, and then turned smartly to the left and flapped both mantis and gecko into her mouth. Only for a moment did the gecko’s tail protrude, wriggling like a worm between Dierdre’s thick lips, before she stuffed it firmly into her mouth, toad-fashion, with her thumbs.
I had read about food chains and the survival of the fittest but this I felt was carrying things too far.
Apart from anything else, I was annoyed with Dierdre for spoiling what was proving to be an absorbing drama. So that she would not interfere with anything else I carried her back to the walled garden she shared with her husband, Terence Oliver Albert Dick, under a stone trough full of marigolds. I reckoned she had eaten quite enough for one evening anyway.
So it was to a house baked crisp as a biscuit, hot as a baker’s oven, and teeming with animal life that Adrian Fortescue Smythe made his appearance. Adrian, a school friend of Leslie’s, had spent one holiday with us in England and as a result had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with Margo, much to her annoyance. We were all spread out on the veranda reading our fortnightly mail when the news of Adrian’s imminent arrival was broken to us by Mother.
‘Oh, how nice,’ she said. ‘That will be nice.’
We all stopped reading and looked at her suspiciously.
‘What will be nice?’ asked Larry.
‘I’ve had a letter from Mrs Fortescue Smythe,’ said Mother.
‘I don’t see anything nice about that,’ said Larry.
‘What does the old hag want?’ Leslie inquired.
‘Leslie, dear, you mustn’t call her an old hag. She was very kind to you, remember.’
Leslie grunted derisively
‘What’s she want anyway?’
‘Well, she says Adrian’s doing a tour of the Continent and could he come to Corfu and stay with us for a bit.’
‘Oh good,’ said Leslie, ‘it’ll be nice to have Adrian to stay.’
‘Yes, he’s a nice boy,’ admitted Larry magnanimously.
‘Isn’t he!’ said Mother enthusiastically. ‘Such nice manners.’
‘Well, I’m not pleased he’s coming,’ contributed Margo. ‘He’s one of the most boring people I know. He makes me yawn just to look at him. Can’t you say we’re full up, Mother?’
‘But I thought you liked Adrian,’ said Mother, surprised. ‘He certainly liked you, if I remember.’
‘That’s just the point. I don’t want him drooling all over the place like a sex-starved spaniel.’
Mother straightened her spectacles and looked at Margo.
‘Margo, dear, I don’t think you ought to talk about Adrian like that, I don’t know where you get these expressions. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. I never saw him look like a… like a… well… like what you said. He seemed perfectly well behaved to me.’
‘Of course he was,’ said Leslie belligerently. ‘It’s just Margo; she thinks every man is after her.’
‘I don’t,’ said Margo indignantly. ‘I just don’t like him. He’s squishy. Every time you looked around, there he was, dribbling.’
‘Adrian never dribbled in his life.’
‘He did. Nothing but dribble, dribble, drool.’
‘I never saw him dribbling,’ said Mother, ‘and anyway I can’t say he mustn’t stay just because he dribbles, Margo. Do be reasonable.’
‘He’s Les’ friend. Let him dribble over Les.’
‘He doesn’t dribble. He’s never dribbled.’
‘Well,’ said Mother, with the air of one solving a problem. ‘There’ll be plenty for him to do so I dare say he won’t have time to dribble.’
A fortnight later a starving, exhausted Adrian arrived, having cycled with practically no money all the way from Calais on a bicycle, which had given up the unequal struggle and fallen to bits at Brindisi. For the first few days we saw little of him since Mother insisted he went to bed early, got up late, and had another helping of everything. When he did put in an appearance I watched him narrowly for signs of dribbling, for of all the curious friends we had had staying with us, we had never had one that dribbled before and I was anxious to witness this phenomenon. But apart from a tendency to go scarlet every time Margo entered the room and to sit looking at her with his mouth slightly open (when honesty compelled me to admit he did look rather like a spaniel), he betrayed no other signs of eccentricity. He had extravagantly curly hair, large, very gentle hazel eyes, and his hormones had just allowed him to achieve a hairline moustache of which he was extremely proud. He had bought, as a gift for Margo, a record of a song which he obviously considered to be the equivalent of Shakespearian sonnets set to music. It was called ‘At Smokey Joe’s’ and we all grew to hate it intensely, for Adrian’s day was not complete unless he had played this cacophonous ditty at least twenty times.
‘Dear God,’ Larry groaned at breakfast one morning as he heard the hiss of the record, ‘not again, not at this hour.’
‘At Smokey Joe’s in Havana,’ the gramophone proclaimed loudly in a nasal tenor voice, ‘I lingered quenching my thirst…’
‘I can’t bear it. Why can’t he play something else?’ Margo wailed.
‘Now, now, dear. He likes it,’ said Mother placatingly.
‘Yes, and he bought it for you,’ said Leslie. ‘It’s your bloody present. Why don’t you tell him to stop?’
‘No, you can’t do that, dear,’ said Mother. ‘After all, he is a guest.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ snapped Larry. ‘Just because he’s tone deaf, why should we all have to suffer? It’s Margo’s record. It’s her responsibility.’
‘But it seems so impolite,’ said Mother worriedly. ‘After all, he brought it as a present; he thinks we like it.’
‘I know he does. I find it hard to credit such depths of ignorance,’ said Larry. ‘D’you know he took off Beethoven’s Fifth yesterday halfway through to put on that emasculated yowling! I tell you he’s about as cultured as Attila the Hun.’
‘Sshh, he’ll hear you, Larry dear,’ said Mother.
‘What, with that row going on? He’d need an ear trumpet.’
Adrian, oblivious to the family’s restiveness, now joined the recorded voice to make a duet. As he had a nasal tenor voice remarkably similar to the vocalist’s the result was pretty horrible.
‘I saw a damsel there… That was really where… I saw her first… Oh, Mama Inez… Oh, Mama Inez… Oh, Mama Inez… Mama Inez…’ warbled Adrian and the gramophone more or less in unison.
‘God in heaven!’ Larry exploded. ‘That’s really too much! Margo, you’ve got to speak to him.’
‘Well, do it politely, dear,’ said Mother. ‘We don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
‘I feel just like hurting his feelings,’ said Larry.
‘I know,’ said Margo, ‘I’ll tell him Mother’s got a headache.’
‘That will only give us a temporary respite,’ pointed out Larry.
‘You tell him Mother’s got a headache and I’ll hide the needle,’ suggested Les
lie triumphantly. ‘How about that?’
‘Oh, that’s a brainwave,’ Mother exclaimed, delighted that the problem had been solved without hurting Adrian’s feelings.
Adrian was somewhat mystified by the disappearance of the needles and the fact that everyone assured him they could not be obtained in Corfu. However, he had a retentive memory, if no ability to carry a tune, so he hummed ‘At Smokey Joe’s’ all day long, sounding like a hive of distraught tenor bees.
As the days passed, his adoration for Margo showed no signs of abating; if anything, it grew worse, and Margo’s irritation waxed with it. I began to feel very sorry for Adrian, for it seemed that nothing he could do was right. Because Margo said she thought his moustache made him look like an inferior gentlemen’s hairdresser, he shaved it off, only to have her proclaim that moustaches were a sign of virility. Furthermore, she was heard to say in no uncertain terms that she much preferred the local peasant boys to any English import.
‘They’re so handsome and so sweet,’ she said to Adrian’s obvious chagrin. ‘They all sing so well. They have such nice manners. They play the guitar. Give me one of them instead of an Englishman any day. They have a sort of ordure about them.’
‘Don’t you mean aura?’ asked Larry.
‘Anyway,’ Margo continued, ignoring this, ‘they’re what I call men, not namby-pamby dribbling wash-outs.’
‘Margo, dear,’ said Mother, glancing nervously at the wounded Adrian. ‘I don’t think that’s very kind.’
‘I’m not trying to be kind,’ said Margo, ‘and most of cruelty is kindness if it’s done in the right way.’
Leaving us with this baffling piece of philosophy, she went off to see her latest conquest, a richly tanned fisherman with a luxuriant moustache. Adrian was so obviously mortified that the family felt it must try and alleviate his mood of despair.
My Family and Other Animals Page 69