Alecko padded a few paces towards Larry and yarped at him again.
‘Call him off,’ Larry commanded. ‘Gerry, get the damn thing under control; it’s attacking me.’
‘Just stand still. He won’t hurt you,’ advised Leslie.
‘It’s all very well for you; you’re behind me. Gerry, catch that bird at once, before it does me irreparable damage.’
‘Don’t shout so, dear; you’ll frighten it.’
‘I like that! A thing like a roc flapping about on the floor attacking everyone, and you tell me not to frighten it.’
I managed to creep up behind Alecko and grab him; then, amid his deafening protests, I removed the handkerchief from his beak. When I let him go again he shuddered indignantly, and snapped his beak two or three times with a sound like a whip-crack.
‘Listen to it!’ exclaimed Larry. ‘Gnashing its teeth!’
‘They haven’t got teeth,’ observed Leslie.
‘Well, it’s gnashing something. I hope you’re not going to let him keep it, Mother? It’s obviously a dangerous brute; look at his eyes. Besides, it’s unlucky.’
‘Why unlucky?’ asked Mother, who had a deep interest in superstition.
‘It’s a well-known thing. Even if you have just the feathers in the house everyone goes down with plague, or goes mad or something.’
‘That’s peacocks you’re thinking of, dear.’
‘No, I tell you it’s albatrosses. It’s well known.’
‘No, dear, it’s peacocks that are unlucky.’
‘Well, anyway, we can’t have that thing in the house. It would be sheer lunacy. Look what happened to the Ancient Mariner. We’ll all have to sleep with crossbows under our pillows.’
‘Really, Larry, you do complicate things,’ said Mother. ‘It seems quite tame to me.’
‘You wait until you wake up one morning and find you’ve had your eyes gouged out.’
‘What nonsense you talk, dear. It looks quite harmless.’
At this moment Dodo, who always took a little while to catch up with rapidly moving events, noticed Alecko for the first time. Breathing heavily, her eyes protruding with interest, she waddled forward and sniffed at him. Alecko’s beak flashed out, and if Dodo had not turned her head at that moment – in response to my cry of alarm – her nose would have been neatly sliced off; as it was she received a glancing blow on the side of the head that surprised her so much that her leg leaped out of joint. She threw back her head and let forth a piercing yell. Alecko, evidently under the impression that it was a sort of vocal contest, did his best to out-scream Dodo, and flapped his wings so vigorously that he blew out the nearest lamp.
‘There you are,’ said Larry in triumph. ‘What did I say? Hasn’t been in the house five minutes and it kills the dog.’
Mother and Margo massaged Dodo back to silence, and Alecko sat and watched the operation with interest. He clicked his beak sharply, as if astonished at the frailty of the dog tribe, decorated the floor lavishly, and wagged his tail with the swagger of one who had done something clever.
‘How nice!’ said Larry. ‘Now we’re expected to wade about the house waist deep in guano.’
‘Hadn’t you better take him outside, dear?’ suggested Mother. ‘Where are you going to keep him?’
I said that I had thought of dividing the Magenpies’ cage and keeping Alecko there. Mother said this was a very good idea. Until his cage was ready I tethered him on the veranda, warning each member of the family in turn as to his whereabouts.
‘Well,’ observed Larry as we sat over dinner, ‘don’t blame me if the house is hit by a cyclone. I’ve warned you; I can do no more.’
‘Why a cyclone, dear?’
‘Albatrosses always bring bad weather with them.’
‘It’s the first time I’ve heard a cyclone described as bad weather,’ observed Leslie.
‘But it’s peacocks that are unlucky, dear, I keep telling you,’ Mother said plaintively. ‘I know, because an aunt of mine had some of the tail-feathers in the house and the cook died.’
‘My dear Mother, the albatross is world famous as a bird of ill-omen. Hardened old salts are known to go white and faint when they see one. I tell you, we’ll find the chimney covered with Saint Elmo’s fire one night, and before we know where we are we’ll be drowned in our beds by a tidal wave.’
‘You said it would be a cyclone,’ Margo pointed out.
‘A cyclone and a tidal wave,’ said Larry, ‘with probably a touch of earthquake and one or two volcanic eruptions thrown in. It’s tempting Providence to keep that beast.’
‘Where did you get him, anyway?’ Leslie asked me.
I explained about my meeting with Kosti (omitting any mention of the water-snakes, for all snakes were taboo with Leslie) and how he had given me the bird.
‘Nobody in their right senses would give somebody a present like that,’ observed Larry. ‘Who is this man, anyway?’
Without thinking, I said he was a convict.
‘A convict?’ quavered Mother. ‘What d’you mean, a convict?’
I explained about Kosti’s being allowed home for the weekends, because he was a trusted member of the Vido community. I added that he and I were going fishing the next morning.
‘I don’t know whether it’s very wise, dear,’ Mother said doubtfully. ‘I don’t like the idea of your going about with a convict. You never know what he’s done.’
Indignantly, I said I knew perfectly well what he’d done. He killed his wife.
‘A murderer?’ said Mother, aghast. ‘But what’s he doing wandering round the countryside? Why didn’t they hang him?’
‘They don’t have the death penalty here for anything except bandits,’ explained Leslie; ‘you get three years for murder and five years if you’re caught dynamiting fish.’
‘Ridiculous!’ said Mother indignantly. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so scandalous.’
‘I think it shows a nice sense of the importance of things,’ said Larry. ‘Whitebait before women.’
‘Anyway, I won’t have you wandering around with a murderer,’ said Mother to me. ‘He might cut your throat or something.’
After an hour’s arguing and pleading I finally got Mother to agree that I should go fishing with Kosti, providing that Leslie came down and had a look at him first. So the next morning I went fishing with Kosti, and when we returned with enough food to keep Alecko occupied for a couple of days, I asked my friend to come up to the villa, so that Mother could inspect him for herself.
Mother had, after considerable mental effort, managed to commit to memory two or three Greek words. This lack of vocabulary had a restrictive effect on her conversation at the best of times, but when she was faced with the ordeal of exchanging small talk with a murderer she promptly forgot all the Greek she knew. So she had to sit on the veranda, smiling nervously, while Kosti in his faded shirt and tattered pants drank a glass of beer, and while I translated his conversation.
‘He seems such a nice man,’ Mother said, when Kosti had taken his leave; ‘he doesn’t look a bit like a murderer.’
‘What did you think a murderer looked like?’ asked Larry – ‘someone with a hare lip and a club foot, clutching a bottle marked “Poison” in one hand?’
‘Don’t be silly, dear; of course not. But I thought he’d look… well, you know, a little more murderous.’
‘You simply can’t judge by physical appearance,’ Larry pointed out; ‘you can only tell by a person’s actions. I could have told you he was a murderer at once.’
‘How, dear?’ asked Mother, very intrigued.
‘Elementary,’ said Larry with a deprecating sigh. ‘No one but a murderer would have thought of giving Gerry that albatross.’
18
An Entertainment with Animals
The house was humming with activity. Groups of peasants, loaded with baskets of produce and bunches of squawking hens, clustered round the back door. Spiro arrived twice, and sometimes three tim
es, a day, the car piled high with crates of wine, chairs, trestle tables, and boxes of foodstuffs. The Magenpies, infected with the excitement, flapped from one end of their cage to the other, poking their heads through the wire and uttering loud raucous comments on the bustle and activity. In the dining-room Margo lay on the floor, surrounded by huge sheets of brown paper on which she was drawing large and highly coloured murals in chalk; in the drawing-room Leslie was surrounded by huge piles of furniture, and was mathematically working out the number of chairs and tables the house could contain without becoming uninhabitable; in the kitchen Mother (assisted by two shrill peasant girls) moved in an atmosphere like the interior of a volcano, surrounded by clouds of steam, sparkling fires, and the soft bubbling and wheezing of pots; the dogs and I wandered from room to room helping where we could, giving advice and generally making ourselves useful; upstairs in his bedroom Larry slept peacefully. The family was preparing for a party.
As always, we had decided to give the party at a moment’s notice, and for no other reason than that we suddenly felt like it. Overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the family had invited everyone they could think of, including people they cordially disliked. Everyone threw themselves into the preparations with enthusiasm. Since it was early September we decided to call it a Christmas party, and, in order that the whole thing should not be too straightforward, we invited our guests to lunch, as well as to tea and dinner. This meant the preparation of a vast quantity of food, and Mother (armed with a pile of dog-eared recipe books) disappeared into the kitchen and stayed there for hours at a time. Even when she did emerge, her spectacles misted with steam, it was almost impossible to conduct a conversation with her that was not confined exclusively to food.
As usual, on the rare occasions when the family were unanimous in their desire to entertain, they started organizing so far in advance, and with such zest, that by the time the day of the festivities dawned they were generally exhausted and irritable. Our parties, needless to say, never went as we envisaged. No matter how we tried there was always some last-minute hitch that switched the points and sent our carefully arranged plans careering off on a completely different track from the one we had anticipated. We had, over the years, become used to this, which is just as well, for otherwise our Christmas party would have been doomed from the outset, for it was almost completely taken over by the animals. It all started, innocently enough, with goldfish.
I had recently captured, with the aid of Kosti, the ancient terrapin I called Old Plop. To have obtained such a regal and interesting addition to my collection of pets made me feel that I should do something to commemorate the event. The best thing would be, I decided, to reorganize my terrapin pond, which was merely an old tin wash-tub. I felt it was far too lowly a hovel for such a creature as Old Plop to inhabit, so I obtained a large, square stone tank (which had once been used as an olive-oil store) and proceeded to furnish it artistically with rocks, water-plants, sand, and shingle. When completed it looked most natural, and the terrapins and water-snakes seemed to approve. However, I was not quite satisfied. The whole thing, though undeniably a remarkable effort, seemed to lack something. After considerable thought I came to the conclusion that what it needed to add the final touch was goldfish. The problem was, where to get them? The nearest place to purchase such a thing would be Athens, but this would be a complicated business, and, moreover, take time. I wanted my pond to be complete for the day of the party. The family were, I knew, too occupied to be able to devote any time to the task of obtaining goldfish, so I took my problem to Spiro. He, after I had described in graphic detail what goldfish were, said that he thought my request was impossible; he had never come across any such fish in Corfu. Anyway, he said he would see what he could do. There was a long period of waiting, during which I thought he had forgotten, and then, the day before the party, he beckoned me into a quiet corner, and looked around to make sure we were not overheard.
‘Master Gerrys, I thinks I can gets you them golden fishes,’ he rumbled hoarsely. ‘Donts says anythings to anyones. You comes into towns with me this evenings, whens I takes your Mothers in to haves her hairs done, and brings somethings to puts them in.’
Thrilled with this news, for Spiro’s conspiratorial air lent a pleasant flavour of danger and intrigue to the acquisition of goldfish, I spent the afternoon preparing a can to bring them home in. That evening Spiro was late, and Mother and I had been waiting on the veranda some considerable time before his car came honking and roaring up the drive, and squealed to a halt in front of the villa.
‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells, I’m sorrys I’m lates,’ he apologized as he helped Mother into the car.
‘That’s all right, Spiro. We were only afraid that you might have had an accident.’
‘Accidents?’ said Spiro scornfully. ‘I never has accidents. No, it was them piles again.’
‘Piles?’ said Mother, mystified.
‘Yes, I always gets them piles at this times,’ said Spiro moodily.
‘Shouldn’t you see a doctor if they’re worrying you?’ suggested Mother.
‘Doctors?’ repeated Spiro, puzzled. ‘Whats fors?’
‘Well, piles can be dangerous, you know,’ Mother pointed out.
‘Dangerous?’
‘Yes, they can be if they’re neglected.’
Spiro scowled thoughtfully for a minute. ‘I mean them aeroplane piles,’ he said at last.
‘Aeroplane piles?’
‘Yes. French I thinks theys are.’
‘You mean aeroplane pilots.’
‘Thats whats I says, piles,’ Spiro pointed out indignantly.
It was dusk when we dropped Mother at the hairdressers, and Spiro drove me over to the other side of the town, parking outside some enormous wrought-iron gates. He surged out of the car, glanced around surreptitiously, then lumbered up to the gates and whistled. Presently an ancient and bewhiskered individual appeared out of the bushes, and the two of them held a whispered consultation. Spiro came back to the car.
‘Gives me the cans, Master Gerrys, and yous stay heres,’ he rumbled. ‘I wonts be longs.’
The bewhiskered individual opened the gates, Spiro waddled in, and they both tip-toed off into the bushes. Half an hour later Spiro reappeared, clutching the tin to his massive chest, his shoes squelching, his trouser legs dripping water.
‘Theres you ares, Master Gerrys,’ he said, thrusting the tin at me. Inside swam five fat and gleaming goldfish.
Immensely pleased, I thanked Spiro profusely.
‘Thats all rights,’ he said, starting the engine; ‘only donts says a things to anyones, eh?’
I asked where it was he had got them; whom did the garden belong to?
‘Nevers you minds,’ he scowled; ‘jus’ you keeps thems things hidden, and donts tells a soul about them.’
It was not until some weeks later that, in company with Theodore, I happened to pass the same wrought-iron gates, and I asked what the place was. He explained that it was the palace in which the Greek King (or any other visiting royalty) stayed when he descended on the island. My admiration for Spiro knew no bounds; to actually burgle a palace and steal goldfish from the King’s pond struck me as being a remarkable achievement. It also considerably enhanced the prestige of the fish as far as I was concerned, and gave an added lustre to their fat forms as they drifted casually among the terrapins.
It was on the morning of the party that things really started to happen. To begin with, Mother discovered that Dodo had chosen this day, of all days, to come into season. One of the peasant girls had to be detailed to stand outside the back door with a broom to repel suitors so that Mother could cook uninterruptedly, but even with this precaution there were occasional moments of panic when one of the bolder Romeos found a way into the kitchen via the front of the house.
After breakfast I hurried out to see my goldfish and discovered, to my horror, that two of them had been killed and partially eaten. In my delight at getting the fish, I had for
gotten that both terrapins and the water-snakes were partial to a plump fish occasionally. So I was forced to move all the reptiles into kerosene tins until I could think of a solution to the problem. By the time I had cleaned and fed the Magenpies and Alecko I had still thought of no way of being able to keep the fish and reptiles together, and it was nearing lunch-time. The arrival of the first guests was imminent. Moodily I wandered round to my carefully arranged pond, to discover, to my horror, that someone had moved the water-snakes’ tin into the full glare of the sun. They lay on the surface of the water so limp and hot that for a moment I thought they were dead; it was obvious that only immediate first aid could save them, and picking up the tin I rushed into the house. Mother was in the kitchen, harassed and absent-minded, trying to divide her attention between the cooking and Dodo’s followers.
I explained the plight of the snakes and said that the only thing that would save them was a long, cool immersion in the bath. Could I put them in the bath for an hour or so?
‘Well, yes, dear; I suppose that would be all right. Make sure everyone’s finished, though, and don’t forget to disinfect it, will you?’ she said.
I filled the bath with nice cool water and placed the snakes tenderly inside; in a few minutes they showed distinct signs of reviving. Feeling well satisfied, I left them for a good soak, while I went upstairs to change. On coming down again I sauntered out onto the veranda to have a look at the lunch table, which had been put out in the shade of the vine. In the centre of what had been a very attractive floral centrepiece perched the Magenpies, reeling gently from side to side. Cold with dismay I surveyed the table. The cutlery was flung about in a haphazard manner, a layer of butter had been spread over the side plates, and buttery footprints wandered to and fro across the cloth. Pepper and salt had been used to considerable effect to decorate the smeared remains of a bowl of chutney. The water jug had been emptied over everything to give it that final, inimitable Magenpie touch.
There was something decidedly queer about the culprits, I decided; instead of flying away as quickly as possible they remained squatting among the tattered flowers, swaying rhythmically, their eyes bright, uttering tiny chucks of satisfaction to each other. Having gazed at me with rapt attention for a moment, one of them walked very unsteadily across the table, a flower in his beak, lost his balance on the edge of the cloth, and fell heavily to the ground. The other one gave a hoarse cluck of amusement, put his head under his wing, and went to sleep. I was mystified by this unusual behaviour. Then I noticed a smashed bottle of beer on the flagstones. It became obvious that the Magenpies had indulged in a party of their own, and were very drunk. I caught them both quite easily, though the one on the table tried to hide under a butter-bespattered napkin and pretend he was not there. I was just standing with them in my hands, wondering if I could slip them back in their cage and deny all knowledge of the outrage, when Mother appeared carrying a jug of sauce. Caught, as it were, red-handed I had no chance of being believed if I attributed the mess to a sudden gale, or to rats, or any one of the excuses that had occurred to me. The Magenpies and I had to take our medicine.