‘Merde!’ said the Count, proving that he was at least keeping his mouth above water.
He tried to get up once but, at the terrible, gobbling clutch of the mud, uttered a despairing cry like a bereaved seagull and lay still. Indeed, he was so frightened of the mud that when I reached him and tried to pull him shorewards he screamed and shouted and accused me of trying to push him in deeper. He was so absurdly childlike that I had a fit of the giggles and this of course only made him worse. He had relapsed into French, which he was speaking with the rapidity of a machine gun so, with my tenuous command of the language, I was unable to understand him. Eventually, I got my unmannerly laughter under control, once more seized him under the armpits and started to drag him shorewards. Then it suddenly occurred to me how ludicrous our predicament would seem to an onlooker, a twelve-year-old boy trying to rescue a six-foot man, and I was overcome again and sat down in the mud and laughed till I cried.
‘Vy you laughing? Vy you laughing?’ screamed the Count, trying to look over his shoulder at me. ‘You no laughing, you pulling, vite, vite!’
Eventually, swallowing great hiccups of laughter, I started to pull at the Count again and eventually got him fairly close to the shore. Then I left him and climbed out onto the bank. This provoked another bout of hysteria.
‘No going avay, no going avay!’ he yelled, panic-stricken. ‘I am sonk. No going avay!’
I ignored him. Choosing seven of the tallest bamboos in the vicinity, I bent them over one by one until their stems splintered but did not snap; then I twisted them round until they reached the Count and formed a sort of green bridge between him and the shore. Acting on my instructions, he turned on his stomach and pulled himself along until at last he reached dry land. When he eventually got shakily to his feet he looked as though the lower half of his body had been encased in melting chocolate. Knowing that this glutinous mud could dry hard in record time, I offered to scrape some of it off him with a piece of bamboo. He gave me a murderous look.
‘Espèce de con!’ he said vehemently.
My shaky knowledge of the Count’s language did not allow me to translate this but the enthusiasm with which it was uttered led me to suppose that it was worth retaining in my memory. We started to walk home, the Count simmering vitriolically. As I had anticipated, the mud on his legs dried at almost magical speed and within a short time he looked as though he were wearing a pair of trousers made out of a pale brown jigsaw puzzle. From the back, he reminded me so much of the armour-clad rear of an Indian rhinoceros that I almost got the giggles again.
It was unfortunate, perhaps, that the Count and I should have arrived at the front door of the villa just as the huge Dodge driven by our scowling, barrel-shaped self-appointed guardian angel, Spiro Hakiopoulos, drew up with the family, flushed with wine, in the back of it. The car came to a halt and the family stared at the Count with disbelieving eyes. It was Spiro who recovered first.
‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells,’ he said, twisting his massive head round and beaming at Mother, ‘Master Gerrys fixes the bastards.’
This was obviously the sentiment of the whole family but Mother threw herself into the breach.
‘My goodness, Count,’ she said in well-simulated tones of horror, ‘what have you been doing with my son?’
The Count was so overcome with the audacity of this remark that he could only look at Mother open-mouthed.
‘Gerry dear,’ Mother went on, ‘go and change out of those wet things before you catch cold, there’s a good boy.’
‘Good boy!’ repeated the Count, shrilly and unbelievingly. ‘C’est un assassin! C’est une espèce de…’
‘Now, now, my dear fellow,’ said Larry, throwing his arm round the Count’s muddy shoulders, ‘I’m sure it’s been a mistake. Come and have a brandy and change your things. Yes, yes, rest assured that my brother will smart for this. Of course he will be punished.’
Larry led the vociferous Count into the house and the rest of the family converged on me.
‘What did you do to him?’ asked Mother.
I said I had not done anything; the Count and the Count alone was responsible for his condition.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Margo. ‘You always say that.’
I protested that had I been responsible I would be proud to confess. The family were impressed by the logic of this.
‘It doesn’t matter a damn if Gerry did it or not,’ said Leslie. ‘It’s the end result that counts.’
‘Well, go and get changed, dear,’ said Mother, ‘and then come to my room and tell us all about how you did it.’
But the affair of the Bootle-Bumtrinket did not have the effect that everyone hoped for; the Count stayed on grimly, as if to punish us all, and was twice as offensive as before. However, I had ceased feeling vindictive towards the Count; whenever I thought of him thrashing about in the canal I was overcome with helpless laughter; which was worth any amount of insults. Furthermore, the Count had unwittingly added a fine new phrase to my French vocabularly. I tried it out one day when I made a mistake in my French composition and I found it tripped well off the tongue. The effect on my tutor, Mr Kralefsky, was, however, very different. He had been pacing up and down the room, hands behind him, looking like a humpbacked gnome in a trance. At my expression, he came to a sudden stop, wide-eyed, looking like a gnome who had just had an electric shock from a toadstool.
‘What did you say?’ he asked in a hushed voice.
I repeated the offending phrase. Mr Kralefsky closed his eyes, his nostrils quivered, and he shuddered.
‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked.
I said I had learned it from a Count who was staying with us.
‘Oh. Well, you must never say it again, do you understand,’ Mr Kralefsky said, ‘never again! You… you must learn that in this life sometimes even aristocrats let slip an unfortunate phrase in moments of stress. It does not behove us to imitate them.’
I did see what Kralefsky meant. Falling into a canal, for a Count, could be called a moment of stress, I supposed.
But the saga of the Count was not yet over. A week or so after he had departed, Larry, one morning at breakfast, confessed to feeling unwell. Mother put on her glasses and stared at him critically.
‘How do you mean, unwell?’ she asked.
‘Not my normal, manly, vigorous self.’
‘Have you got any pains?’
‘No,’ Larry admitted, ‘no actual pains. Just a sort of lassitude, a feeling of ennui, a debilitated, drained feeling, as if I had spent the night with Count Dracula, and I feel that, for all his faults, our late guest was not a vampire.’
‘Well, you look all right,’ said Mother, ‘though we’d better get you looked at. Dr Androuchelli is on holiday, so I’ll have to get Spiro to bring Theodore.’
‘All right,’ said Larry listlessly, ‘and you’d better tell Spiro to nip in and alert the British cemetery.’
‘Larry, don’t say things like that,’ said Mother, getting alarmed. ‘Now, you go up to bed and, for heaven’s sake, stop there.’
If Spiro could be classified as our guardian angel to whom no request was impossible of fulfilment, Dr Theodore Stephanides was our oracle and guide to all things. He arrived, sitting sedately in the back of Spiro’s Dodge, immaculately dressed in a tweed suit, his Homburg at just the correct angle, his beard twinkling in the sun.
‘Yes, it was really… um… very curious,’ said Theodore, having greeted us all, ‘I was just thinking to myself how nice a trip… er… was an especially beautiful day… um… not too hot, and that sort of thing, you know… er… and suddenly Spiro turned up at the laboratory. Most fortuitous.’
‘I’m so glad that my agony is of benefit to someone,’ said Larry.
‘Aha! What… er… you know… seems to be the trouble?’ asked Theodore, eyeing Larry with interest.
‘Nothing concrete,’ Larry admitted. ‘Just a general feeling of death being imminent. All my strength seems to have drained a
way. I’ve probably, as usual, been giving too much of myself to my family.’
‘I don’t think that’s what’s wrong with you,’ said Mother decisively.
‘I think you’ve been eating too much,’ said Margo; ‘what you want is a good diet.’
‘What he wants is a little fresh air and exercise,’ contributed Leslie. ‘If he took the boat out a bit…’
‘Yes, well, Theodore will tell us what’s wrong,’ said Mother.
‘I can’t find anything… er… you know… organically wrong,’ said Theodore judiciously, rising and falling on his tiptoes, ‘except that he is perhaps a trifle overweight.’
‘There you are! I told you he needed a diet,’ said Margo triumphantly.
‘Hush, dear,’ said Mother. ‘So what do you advise, Theodore?’
‘I should keep him in bed for a day or so,’ said Theodore. ‘Give him a light diet, you know, nothing very oily, and I’ll send out some medicine… er… that is to say… a tonic for him. I’ll come out the day after tomorrow and see how he is.’
Spiro drove Theodore back to town and in due course reappeared with the medicine.
‘I won’t drink it,’ said Larry eyeing the bottle askance. ‘It looks like essence of bat’s ovaries.’
‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said Mother, pouring some into a spoon, ‘it will do you good.’
‘It won’t. It’s the same stuff as my friend Dr Jekyll took, and look what happened to him.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked Mother, unthinkingly.
‘They found him hanging from the chandelier, scratching himself and saying he was Mr Hyde.’
‘Come on now, Larry, stop fooling about,’ said Mother firmly.
With much fussing, Larry was prevailed upon to take the medicine and retire to bed.
The following morning we were all woken at an inordinately early hour by roars of rage coming from Larry’s room.
‘Mother! Mother!’ he was roaring. ‘Come and look what you’ve done!’
We found him prancing round his room, naked, a large mirror in one hand. He turned on Mother belligerently and she gasped at the sight of him. His face was swollen up to about twice normal size and was the approximate colour of a tomato.
‘What have you been doing dear?’ asked Mother faintly.
‘Doing? It’s what you’ve done,’ he shouted, articulating with difficulty. ‘You and bloody Theodore and your damned medicine – it’s affected my pituitary. Look at me! It’s worse than Jekyll and Hyde.’
Mother put on her spectacles and gazed at Larry.
‘It looks to me as though you’ve got mumps,’ she said puzzled.
‘Nonsense! That’s a child’s disease,’ said Larry impatiently. ‘No, it’s that damned medicine of Theodore’s, I tell you, it’s affected my pituitary. If you don’t get the antidote straight away I shall grow into a giant.’
‘Nonsense, dear, I’m sure it’s mumps,’ said Mother. ‘But it’s very funny because I’m sure you’ve had mumps. Let’s see, Margo had measles in Darjeeling in 1920… Leslie had sprue in Rangoon – no, I’m wrong, that was 1900 in Rangoon and you had sprue, then Leslie had chickenpox in Bombay in 1911… or was it 12? I can’t quite remember, and then you had your tonsils out in Rajputana in 1922, or it may have been 1923, I can’t remember exactly, and then after that, Margo got…’
‘I hate to interrupt this Old Moore’s Almanac of Family Ailments,’ said Larry coldly, ‘but would somebody like to send for the antidote before I get so big that I can’t leave the room?’
Theodore, when he appeared, agreed with Mother’s diagnosis.
‘Yes… er… clearly a case of mumps,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, clearly, you charlatan?’ said Larry, glaring at him from watering and swollen eyes. ‘Why didn’t you know what it was yesterday? And anyhow, I can’t get mumps, it’s a child’s disease.’
‘No, no,’ said Theodore. ‘Children generally get it but quite often adults get it too.’
‘Why didn’t you recognize a common disease like that when you saw it?’ demanded Larry. ‘Can’t you even recognize a mump? You ought to bedrummed out of the medical council or whatever it is that they do for malpractice.’
‘Mumps are very difficult to diagnose in the… er… early stages,’ said Theodore, ‘until the swellings appear.’
‘Typical of the medical profession,’ said Larry bitterly. ‘They can’t even spot a disease until the patient is twice life size. It’s a scandal.’
‘As long as it doesn’t affect your… um… you know… um… your… er… lower quarters,’ said Theodore thoughtfully, ‘you should be all right in a few days.’
‘Lower quarters?’ Larry asked, mystified, ‘what lower quarters?’
‘Well, er… you know… mumps causes swelling of the glands,’ explained Theodore, ‘and so if it travels down the body and affects the glands in your… um… lower quarters it can be very painful indeed.’
‘You mean I’ll swell up and start looking like a bull elephant?’ asked Larry in horror.
‘Mmm, er… yes,’ said Theodore, finding he could not better this description.
‘It’s a plot to make me sterile!’ shouted Larry. ‘You and your bloody tincture of bat’s blood! You’re jealous of my virility.’
To say that Larry was a bad patient was putting it mildly. He had an enormous hand-bell by the bed which he rang incessantly for attention and Mother had to examine his nether regions about twenty times a day to assure him that he was not in any way affected. When it was discovered that it was Leonora’s baby that had given him mumps he threatened to excommunicate it!
‘I’m its godfather,’ he said. ‘Why can’t I excommunicate the ungrateful little bastard?’
By the fourth day, we were all beginning to feel the strain. Captain Creech then appeared to see Larry. Captain Creech, a retired mariner of lecherous habits, was mother’s bête noire. His determined pursuit of anything female, and Mother in particular, in spite of his seventy-odd years, was a constant source of annoyance to her, as was the captain’s completely uninhibited behaviour and one-track mind.
‘Ahoy!’ he shouted, staggering into the bedroom, his lopsided jaw waggling, his wispy beard and hair standing on end, his rheumy eyes watering. ‘Ahoy, there! Bring out your dead!’
Mother, who was examining Larry for the fourth time that day, straightened up and glared at him.
‘Do you mind, captain?’ she said coldly. ‘This is supposed to be a sick-room, not a bar parlour.’
‘Got you in the bedroom at last!’ said Creech, beaming, taking no notice of Mother’s expression. ‘Now, if the boy moves over we can have a little cuddle.’
‘I’m far too busy to cuddle, thank you,’ said Mother frostily.
‘Well, well,’ said the captain, seating himself on the bed, ‘what’s this namby-pamby mumps thing you’ve got, huh, boy? Child stuff! If you want to be ill, be ill properly, like a man. Why, when I was your age nothing but a dose of clap would have done for me.’
‘Captain, I would be glad if you would not reminisce in front of Gerry,’ said Mother firmly.
‘It hasn’t affected the old manhood, has it?’ asked the captain with concern. ‘Terrible when it gets you in the crutch. Can ruin a man’s sex life, mumps in the crutch.’
‘Larry is perfectly all right, thank you,’ said Mother with dignity.
‘Talking of crutches,’ said the captain, ‘have you heard about the young Hindu virgin from Kutch, who kept two tame snakes in her crutch, she said when they wriggle, it’s a bit of a giggle, but my boyfriends don’t like my crutch much. Ha ha ha!’
‘Really, captain!’ said Mother, outraged, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t recite poetry in front of Gerry.’
‘Got your mail when I was passing the post office,’ the captain went on, oblivious of Mother’s strictures, pulling some letters and cards out of his pocket and tossing them on to the bed. ‘My, they’ve got a nice little bit serving in there now. She’d win a
prize for the best marrows in any horticultural show.’
But Larry was not listening; he had extracted a postcard from the mail Captain Creech had brought. Having read it, he started to laugh uproariously.
‘What is it, dear?’ asked Mother.
‘A postcard from the Count,’ said Larry, wiping his eyes.
‘Oh, him,’ sniffed Mother, ‘well, I don’t want to know about him.’
‘Oh yes you will,’ said Larry. ‘It’s worth being ill just to be able to get this. I’m starting to feel better already.’
He picked up the postcard and read it out to us. The Count had obviously got someone to write the card for him whose command of English was fragile but inventive.
‘I have reeching Rome,’ it began. ‘I am in clinic inflicted by disease called moops. Have inflicted all over. I finding I cannot arrange myself. I have no hunger and impossible I am sitting. Beware yourself the moops. Count Rossignol.’
‘Poor man,’ said Mother without conviction when we had all stopped laughing. ‘We shouldn’t laugh really.’
‘No,’ said Larry. ‘I’m going to write and ask him if Greek moops are inferior in virulence to French moops.’
4
The Elements of Spring
A habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
ISAIAH 34:13
Spring, in its season, came like a fever; it was as though the island shifted and turned uneasily in the warm, wet bed of winter and then, suddenly and vibrantly, was fully awake, stirring with life under a sky as blue as a hyacinth bud into which a sun would rise, wrapped in mist as fragile and as delicately yellow as a newly completed silkworm cocoon. For me, spring was one of the best times, for all the animal life of the island was astir and the air full of hope. Maybe today I would catch the biggest terrapin I had ever seen or fathom the mystery of how a baby tortoise, emerging from its egg as crushed and wrinkled as a walnut, would, within an hour, have swelled to twice its size and have smoothed out most of its wrinkles in consequence. The whole island was a-bustle and ringing with sound. I would awake early, breakfast hurriedly under the tangerine trees already fragrant with the warmth of the early sun, gather my nets and collecting boxes, whistle for Roger, Widdle, and Puke, and set off to explore my kingdom.