My Family and Other Animals

by Gerald Durrell

  This was one of the best storms we had ever experienced and Margo and I were thoroughly enjoying it, for after the heat and stillness we found the stinging rain and the noise exhilarating. Adrian did not share our view; he was one of those unfortunate people who were terrified of lightning, so to him the whole thing was monstrous and alarming. We tried to take his mind off the storm by singing but the thunder was so loud that he could not hear us. We struggled on grimly and at last, through the gloomy, rain-striped, olive groves we saw the welcoming lights of the villa. As we reached it and Adrian staggered in through the front door, seeming more dead than alive, Mother appeared in the hall.

  ‘Where have you children been? I was getting quite worried,’ she said, and then, catching sight of Adrian; ‘Good heavens, Adrian dear, what have you been doing?’

  She might well have asked, for those parts of Adrian’s anatomy that were not scarlet with sunburn were interesting shades of blue and green; he could hardly walk and his teeth were chattering so violently that he could not talk. Being scolded and commiserated in turns, he was whisked away to bed by Mother, where he lay, with mild sun-stroke, a severe cold and septic feet, for the next few days.

  ‘Really, Margo, you do make me angry sometimes,’ said Mother. ‘You know he’s not strong. You might have killed him.’

  ‘Serves him jolly well right,’ said Margo callously. ‘He shouldn’t have said I was boring. It’s an eye for an ear.’

  Adrian, however, unwittingly got his own back; when he recovered he found a shop in the town that stocked gramophone needles.

  8

  The Merriment of Friendship

  The sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick.

  EZEKIEL 5

  It was towards the end of summer that we held what came to be known as our Indian party. Our parties, whether carefully planned or burgeoning onthe spur of the moment out ofnothing, were always interesting affairs since things seldom went exactly as we planned them. In those days, living as we did in the country, without the dubious benefits of radio or television, we had to rely on such primitive forms of amusement as books, quarrelling, parties, and the laughter of our friends, so naturally parties – particularly the more flamboyant ones – became red-letter days, preceded by endless preparations. Even when they were successfully over, they provided days of delightfully acrimonious argument as to how they could have been better managed.

  We had had a fairly tranquil patch for a month or so; we had not had a party, and no one had turned up to stay, so Mother had relaxed and become very benign. We were sitting on the veranda one morning reading our mail when the party was hatched. In her mail Mother had just received a mammoth cookery book entitled A Million Mouthwatering Oriental Recipes, lavishly illustrated with colour reproductions so lurid and glossy that you felt you could eat them. Mother was enchanted with it and kept reading bits aloud to us.

  ‘Madras Marvels!’ she exclaimed delightedly. ‘Oh, they’re lovely. I remember them, they were a favourite of your father’s when we lived in Darjeeling. And, look! Konsarmer’s Delights! I’ve been looking for a recipe for them for years. They’re simply delicious, but so rich.’

  ‘If they’re anything like the illustrations,’ said Larry, ‘you’d have to live on a diet of bicarbonate of soda for the next twenty years after you ate one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear. The ingredients are absolutely pure – four pounds of butter, sixteen eggs, eight pints of cream, the flesh of ten young coconuts…’

  ‘God!’ said Larry, ‘it sounds like a breakfast for a Strasbourg goose.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll like them, dear. Your father was very fond of them.’

  ‘Well, I’m supposed to be on a diet,’ said Margo. ‘You can’t go forcing me to have stuff like that.’

  ‘Nobody’s forcing you, dear,’ said Mother. ‘You can always say no.’

  ‘Well, you know I can’t say no, so that’s forcing.’

  ‘Go and eat in another room,’ suggested Leslie, flipping through the pages of a gun catalogue, ‘if you haven’t got the will power to say no.’

  ‘But I have got the will power to say no,’ said Margo indignantly. ‘I just can’t say no when Mother offers it to me.’

  ‘Jeejee sends his salaams,’ said Larry, looking up from the letter he was perusing. ‘He says he’s coming back here for his birthday.’

  ‘His birthday!’ exclaimed Margo. ‘Ooh, good! I’m glad he remembered.’

  ‘Such a nice boy,’ said Mother. ‘When’s he coming?’

  ‘As soon as he gets out of hospital,’ said Larry.

  ‘Hospital? Is he ill?’

  ‘No, he’s just having trouble with his levitation; he’s got a busted leg. He says his birthday’s on the sixteenth so he’ll try and make it by the fifteenth.’

  ‘I am glad,’ said Mother. ‘I grew very fond of Jeejee and I’m sure he’ll love this book.’

  ‘I know, let’s give him a huge birthday party,’ said Margo excitedly. ‘You know, a really huge party.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Leslie. ‘We haven’t had a decent party for ages.’

  ‘And I could make some of the recipes out of this book,’ contributed Mother, obviously intrigued by the thought.

  ‘An oriental feast,’ exclaimed Larry. ‘Tell everyone to come in turbans, with jewels in their navels.’

  ‘No, I think that’s going too far,’ said Mother. ‘No, let’s just have a nice, quiet little…’

  ‘You can’t have a nice, quiet little party for Jeejee,’ said Leslie. ‘Not after you told him you always travelled with four hundred elephants. He expects something a bit spectacular.’

  ‘It wasn’t four hundred elephants, dear. I only said we went camping with elephants. You children do exaggerate. And, anyway, we can’t produce elephants here; he wouldn’t expect that.’

  ‘No, but you’ve got to put on some sort of show,’ said Leslie.

  ‘I’ll do all the decorations,’ offered Margo. ‘Everything will be oriental – I’ll borrow Mrs Papadrouya’s Burmese screens and there are the ostrich feathers that Lena’s got…’

  ‘We’ve still got a wild boar and some duck and stuff left in the cold room in town,’ said Leslie. ‘Better use it up.’

  ‘I’ll borrow Countess Lefraki’s piano,’ said Larry.

  ‘Now, look all of you… stop it,’ cried Mother, alarmed. ‘It’s not a durbar we’re having, just a birthday party.’

  ‘Nonsense, Mother, it’ll do us good to let off a little steam,’ said Larry indulgently.

  ‘Yes, in for a penny, in for a pound,’ said Leslie.

  ‘And you might as well be hung for anox as anass,’ contributed Margo.

  ‘Or your neighbour’s wife, if it comes to that,’ added Larry.

  ‘Now it’s a question of who to invite,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Theodore, of course,’ said the family in unison.

  ‘Then there’s poor old Creech,’ said Larry.

  ‘Oh no, Larry,’ Mother protested. ‘You know what a disgusting old brute he is.’

  ‘Nonsense, Mother, the old boy loves a party.’

  ‘And then there’s Colonel Ribbindane,’ said Leslie.

  ‘No!’ Larry exclaimed vehemently. ‘We’re not having that quintessence of boredom, even if he is the best shot on the island.’

  ‘He’s not a bore,’ said Leslie belligerently. ‘He’s no more boring than your bloody friends.’

  ‘None of my friends is capable of spending an entire evening telling you in words of one syllable and a few Neanderthal grunts how he shot a hippo on the Nile in 1904.’

  ‘It’s jolly interesting,’ retorted Leslie hotly. ‘A damned sight more interesting than listening to all your friends going on about bloody art.’

  ‘Now, now, dears,’ said Mother peaceably, ‘there’ll be plenty of room for everyone.’

  I left them to the normal uproar that went on while the guest list for any party was b
eing compiled; as far as I was concerned, so long as Theodore was coming the party was assured ofsuccess. I could leave the choice of other guests to my family.

  The preparations for the party gathered momentum. Larry succeeded in borrowing Countess Lefraki’s enormous grand piano and a tiger-skin rug to place alongside it. The piano was conveyed to us with the utmost tenderness, for it had been the favourite instrument of the late Count, on the back of a long, flat cart drawn by four horses. Larry, who had been to supervise the removal, removed the tarpaulins that had been covering the instrument against the sun, mounted the cart and ran off a quick rendering of ‘Walking My Baby Back Home’, to make sure that it had not suffered from its journey. It seemed in good shape, if a trifle jangly, and after a prodigious effort we managed to get it into the drawing-room. Planted, black and gleaming as an agate, in the corner, the magnificent tiger skin lying in front of it, the mounted head snarling in defiance, it gave the whole room a rich, oriental air.

  This was added to by Margo’s decorations – tapestries that she had painted on huge sheets of paper and hung on the walls, pictures of minarets, peacocks, cupola-palaces, and bejewelled elephants. Everywhere there were vases of ostrich feathers dyed all the colours of the rainbow, and bunches of multi-coloured balloons like crops of strange tropical fruit. The kitchen, of course, was like the interior of Vesuvius; in the flickering ruby light of half a dozen charcoal fires, Mother and her minions scurried to and fro. The sound of beating and chopping and stirring was so loud that it precluded speech, while the aromatic smells that drifted upstairs were so rich and heavy it was like being wrapped in an embroidered cloak of scent.

  Over all this, Spiro presided, like a scowling, brown genie; he seemed to be everywhere, bull-voiced, barrel-bodied, carrying enormous boxes of food and fruit to the kitchen in his ham-like hands, sweating and roaring and cursing as three dining-tables were insinuated into the dining-room and joined together, appearing with everlasting flowers for Margo, strange spices and other delicacies for Mother. It was during moments like this that you realized Spiro’s true worth, for you could ask the impossible of him and he would achieve it. ‘I’ll fixes that,’ he would say, and fix it he would, whether it was out-of-season fruit or procuring such a thing as a piano tuner, a species of human being that had been extinct in the island since 1890 so far as anyone knew. It was extremely unlikely, in fact, that any of our parties would have got beyond the planning stage if it had not been for Spiro.

  At last everything was ready. The sliding doors between the dining-room and drawing-room had been pulled back and the vast room thus formed was a riot of flowers, balloons and paintings, the long tables with their frost-white cloths sparkling with silver, the side tables groaning under the weight of the cold dishes. A suckling pig, brown and polished as a mummy, with an orange in his mouth, lay beside a haunch of wild boar, sticky with wine and honey marinade, thick with pearls of garlic and the round seeds of coriander; a bank of biscuit-brown chickens and young turkeys was interspersed with wild duck stuffed with wild rice, almonds and sultanas, and woodcock skewered on lengths of bamboo; mounds of saffron rice, yellow as a summer moon, were treasure-troves that made one feel like an archaeologist, so thickly were they encrusted with fragile pink strips of octopus, toasted almonds and walnuts, tiny green grapes, carunculated hunks of ginger and pine seeds. The kefalia I had brought from the lake were now browned and charcoal blistered, gleaming in a coating of oil and lemon juice, spattered with jade-green flecks of fennel; they lay in ranks on the huge plates, looking like a flotilla of strange boats tied up in harbour.

  Interspersed with all this were the plates of small things – crystallized orange and lemon rind, sweet corn, flat thin oat cakes gleaming with diamonds of sea salt, chutney and pickles in a dozen colours and smells and tastes to tantalize and soothe the taste buds. Here was the peak of the culinary art – here a hundred strange roots and seeds had given up their sweet essence; vegetables and fruits had sacrificed their rinds and flesh to wash the fowl and the fish in layers of delicately scented gravies and marinades. The stomach twitched at this bank of edible colour and smell; you felt you would be eating a magnificent garden, a multi-coloured tapestry, and that the cells of your lungs would be so filled with layer upon layer of fragrance that you would be drugged and immobile like a beetle in the heart of a rose. The dogs and I tiptoed several times into the room to look at this succulent display; we would stand until the saliva filled our mouths and then reluctantly go away. We could hardly wait for the party.

  Jeejee, whose boat had been delayed, arrived on the morning of his birthday, dressed in a ravishing peacock-blue outfit, his turban immaculate. He was leaning heavily on a stick but otherwise showed no signs of his accident, and was as ebullient as ever. To our embarrassment, when showed the preparation we had made for his birthday, he burst into tears.

  ‘To think that I, the son of a humble sweeper, an untouchable, should be treated like this,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing really,’ said Mother, rather alarmed by his reaction. ‘We often have little parties.’

  As our living-room looked like a cross between a Roman banquet and the Chelsea Flower Show, this gave the impression that we always entertained on the scale that would have been envied by the Tudor court.

  ‘Nonsense, Jeejee,’ said Larry. ‘You an untouchable! Your father was a lawyer.’

  ‘Vell,’ said Jeejee, drying his eyes, ‘I vould have been untouchable if my father had been a different caste. The trouble with you, Lawrence, is that you have no sense of the dramatic. Think vhat a poem I could have vritten, “The Untouchable Banquet”.’

  ‘What’s an untouchable?’ Margo asked Leslie in a penetrating whisper.

  ‘It’s a disease, like leprosy,’ he explained solemnly.

  ‘My God!’ said Margo dramatically. ‘I hope he’s sure he hasn’t got it. How does he know his father isn’t infected?’

  ‘Margo, dear,’ said Mother quellingly. ‘Go and stir the lentils, will you?’

  We had a riotous picnic lunch on the veranda, with Jeejee regaling us with stories of his trip to Persia, singing Persian love songs to Margo with such verve that all the dogs howled in unison.

  ‘Oh, you must sing one of those tonight,’ said Margo delighted. ‘You must, Jeejee. Everyone’s going to do something.’

  ‘Vat you mean, Margo dear?’ asked Jeejee, mystified.

  ‘We’ve never done it before – it’s a sort of cabaret. Everyone’s going to do something,’ Margo explained. ‘Lena’s going to do a bit of opera – something out of the Rosy Cavalier… Theodore and Kralefsky are going to do a trick by Houdini… you know, everyone’s going to do something… so you must sing in Persian.’

  ‘Vy couldn’t I do something more in keeping with Mother India?’ said Jeejee, struck by the thought. ‘I could levitate.’

  ‘No,’ said Mother, interrupting firmly, ‘I want this party to be a success. No levitation.’

  ‘Why don’t you be something typically Indian?’ suggested Margo. ‘I know, be a snake charmer!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Larry, ‘the humble, typical, untouchable, Indian snake charmer.’

  ‘My God! Vat a vonderful idea!’ cried Jeejee, his eyes shining. ‘I vill do so.’

  Anxious to be of service, I said I could lend him a basket of small and harmless slow-worms for his act, and he was delighted with the idea that he would have some real snakes to charm. Then we all went to siesta and to prepare ourselves for the great evening.

  The sky was striped green, pink and smoke-grey, and the first owls had started to chime in the dark olives when the guests began to arrive. Among the first was Lena, clasping a huge book of operatic music under her arm and wearing a flamboyant evening dress of orange silk in spite of the fact that she knew the party was informal.

  ‘My dears,’ she said thrillingly, her black eyes flashing, ‘I’m in great voice tonight. I feel I shall do justice to the master. No, no, not ouzo, it might afflict my vocal chord.
I will have a tiny champagne and brandy. Yes, I can feel my throat vibrate, you know – like a harp.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Mother insincerely. ‘I’m sure we shall all enjoy it.’

  ‘She’s got a lovely voice, Mother,’ said Margo. ‘It’s a mezzotint.’

  ‘Soprano,’ said Lena coldly.

  Theodore and Kralefsky arrived together, carrying a coil of ropes and chains and several padlocks.

  ‘I hope,’ said Theodore, rocking up and down on his toes, ‘I hope our… er… little… you know… our little illusion will be successful. We have, of course, never done it before.’

  ‘I have done it before,’ said Kralefsky with dignity. ‘It was Houdini himself who showed me. He even went so far as to compliment me on my dexterity. “Richard,” he said – for we were on intimate terms, you understand, “Richard, I’ve never seen anyone except myself so nimble-fingered.” ’

  ‘Really?’ said Mother. ‘Well, I’m sure it will be a great success.’

  Captain Creech arrived wearing a battered top hat, his face strawberry-red, his thistledown hair looking as though the slightest breeze would blow it from his head and chin. He staggered even more than usual and his broken jaw looked particularly lop-sided; it was obvious that he had been priming himself well prior to his arrival. Mother stiffened and gave a forced smile as he lurched through the front door.