I squatted down by the owlets and as I stroked them into a state of semi-somnolence I bargained with the Rose-Beetle Man. He was a good bargainer, which made the whole thing much more interesting, but it was also very peaceful bargaining with him for it was done in complete silence. We sat opposite one another like two great art connoisseurs at Agnew’s haggling, say, over a trio of Rembrandts. The lift of a chin, the minutest inclination or half-shake of the head was sufficient, and there were long pauses during which the Rose-Beetle Man tried to undermine my determination with the aid of music and some indigestible nougat which he had in his pocket. But it was a buyer’s market and he knew it; who else in the length and breadth of the island would be mad enough to buy not one but three baby eagle owls? Eventually the bargain was struck.
As I was temporarily embarrassed financially, I explained to the Rose-Beetle Man that he would have to wait for payment until the beginning of the next month when my pocket money was due. The Rose-Beetle Man had frequently been in this predicament himself so he understood the situation perfectly. I would, I explained, leave the money with our mutual friend Yani at the café on the crossroads where the Rose-Beetle Man could pick it up during one of his peregrinations across the countryside. Thus having dealt with the sordid, commercial side of the transaction, we shared a stone bottle of ginger beer from the Rose-Beetle Man’s capacious pack. Then I placed my precious owls carefully in their bag and continued on my way home, leaving the Rose-Beetle Man lying in the ditch among his wares and the spring flowers, playing on his flute.
It was the lusty cries the owlets gave on the way back to the villa that suddenly brought home to me the culinary implications of my new acquisitions. It was obvious that the Rose-Beetle Man had not fed his charges. I did not know how long he had had them, but judging from the noise they were making they were extremely hungry. It was a pity, I reflected, that my relations with Leslie were still slightly strained, for otherwise I could have persuaded him to shoot some sparrows or perhaps a rat or two for my new babies. As it was, I could see I would have to rely on my mother’s unfailing kindness of heart.
I found her ensconced in the kitchen, stirring frantically at a huge, aromatically bubbling cauldron, frowning at a cookbook in one hand, her spectacles misty, her lips moving silently as she read. I produced my owls with the air of one who is conferring a gift of inestimable value. My mother straightened her spectacles and glanced at the three hissing, swaying balls of down.
‘Very nice, dear,’ she said in an absent-minded tone of voice, ‘very nice. Put them somewhere safe, won’t you?’
I said they would be incarcerated in my room and that nobody would know that I had got them.
‘That’s right,’ said Mother, glancing nervously at the owls. ‘You know how Larry feels about more pets.’
I did indeed, and I intended to keep their arrival a secret from him at all costs. There was just one minor problem, I explained, and that was that the owls were hungry – were, in fact, starving to death.
‘Poor little things,’ said Mother, her sympathies immediately aroused. ‘Give them some bread and milk.’
I explained that owls ate meat and that I had used up the last of my meat supply. Had Mother perhaps a fragment of meat that she could lend me so that the owls did not die?
‘Well, I’m a bit short of meat,’ said Mother. ‘We’re having chops for lunch. Go and see what’s in the icebox.’
I went to the massive icebox in the larder that contained our perishable foodstuffs and peered into its icy, misty interior. All I could unearth were the ten chops for lunch and even these were hardly meal enough for three voracious eagle owls. I went back with this news to the kitchen.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mother. ‘Are you sure they won’t eat bread and milk?’
I was adamant. Owls would only eat meat.
At that moment, one of the babies swayed so violently he fell over and I was quick to point this out to Mother as an example of how weak they were getting.
‘Well, I suppose you’d better take the chops then,’ said Mother, harassed. ‘We’ll just have to have vegetable curry for lunch.’
Triumphantly, I carried the owls and the chops to my bedroom and stuffed the hungry babies full of meat.
As a consequence of the owls’ arrival we sat down to lunch rather late.
‘I’m sorry we’re not earlier,’ said Mother, uncovering a tureen and letting loose a cloud of curry-scented steam, ‘but the potatoes wouldn’t cook for some reason.’
‘I thought we were going to have chops,’ complained Larry aggrievedly. ‘I spent all morning getting my taste buds on tiptoe with the thought of chops. What happened to them?’
‘I’m afraid it’s the owls, dear,’ said Mother apologetically. ‘They have such huge appetites.’
Larry paused, a spoonful of curry halfway to his mouth.
‘Owls?’ he said, staring at Mother. ‘Owls? What do you mean, owls? What owls?’
‘Oh!’ said Mother, flustered, having realized that she had made a tactical error. ‘Just owls… birds, you know… nothing to worry about.’
‘Are we having a plague of owls?’ Larry inquired. ‘Are they attacking the larder and zooming out with bunches of chops in their talons?’
‘No, no, dear, they’re only babies. They wouldn’t do that. They have the most beautiful eyes, and they were simply starving, poor little things.’
‘Bet they’re some new creatures of Gerry’s,’ said Leslie sourly. ‘I heard him crooning to something before lunch.’
‘Then he’s got to release them,’ barked Larry.
I said I could not do this as they were babies.
‘Only babies, dear,’ said Mother placatingly. ‘They can’t help it.’
‘What do you mean, can’t help it?’ said Larry. ‘The damned things, stuffed to the gills with my chops…’
‘Our chops,’ Margo interrupted. ‘I don’t know why you have to be so selfish.’
‘It’s got to stop,’ Larry went on, ignoring Margo. ‘You indulge the boy too much.’
‘They’re just as much our chops as yours,’ said Margo.
‘Nonsense, dear,’ said Mother to Larry, ‘you do exaggerate. After all, it’s only some baby owls.’
‘Only!’ said Larry bitingly. ‘He’s already got one owl and we know that to our cost.’
‘Ulysses is a very sweet bird and no trouble,’ put in Mother defensively.
‘Well, he might be sweet to you,’ said Larry, ‘but he hasn’t come and vomited up all the bits of food he has no further use for all over your bed.’
‘That was a long time ago, dear, and he hasn’t done it again.’
‘And what’s it got to do with our chops, anyway?’ asked Margo.
‘It’s not only owls,’ said Larry, ‘though, God knows, if this goes on, we’ll start to look like Athene. You don’t seem to have any control over him. Look at that business with the turtle last week.’
‘That was a mistake, dear. He didn’t mean any harm.’
‘A mistake!’ said Larry witheringly. ‘He disembowelled the bloody thing all over the veranda. My room smelled like the interior of Captain Ahab’s boat. It’s taken me a week and the expenditure of about five hundred gallons of eau de cologne to freshen it up to the extent where I can enter it without fainting.’
‘We smelled it just as much as you did,’ said Margo indignantly. ‘Anyone would think that you were the only one to smell it.’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Leslie. ‘It smelled worse in my room. I had to sleep out on the back veranda. I don’t know why you think you’re the only one who ever suffers.’
‘I don’t,’ said Larry witheringly. ‘I’m just not interested in the suffering of lesser beings.’
‘The trouble with you is you’re selfish,’ said Margo, clinging to her original diagnosis.
‘All right,’ snapped Larry. ‘Don’t listen to me. You’ll all complain soon enough when your beds are waist-deep in owl vomit. I shall go and stay in a
hotel.’
‘I think we’ve talked quite enough about the owls,’ said Mother firmly. ‘Who’s going to be in for tea?’
It transpired that we were all going to be in for tea.
‘I’m making some scones,’ said Mother, and sighs of satisfaction ran round the table, for Mother’s scones, wearing cloaks of home-made strawberry jam, butter, and cream, were a delicacy all of us adored. ‘Mrs Vadrudakis is coming to tea so I want you to behave,’ Mother went on.
Larry groaned.
‘Who the hell is Mrs Vadrudakis?’ he asked. ‘Some old bore, I suppose?’
‘Now, don’t start,’ said Mother severely. ‘She sounds a very nice woman. She wrote me such a nice letter; she wants my advice.’
‘What on?’ asked Larry.
‘Well, she’s very distressed by the way the peasants keep their animals. You know how thin the dogs and cats are, and those poor donkeys with sores that we see. Well, she wants to start a society for the elimination of cruelty to animals here in Corfu, rather like the RSPCA, you know. And she wants us to help her.’
‘She doesn’t get my help,’ said Larry firmly. ‘I’m not helping any society to prevent cruelty to animals. I’d help them to promote cruelty.’
‘Now, Larry, don’t say things like that,’ said Mother severely. ‘You know you don’t mean it.’
‘Of course I do,’ said Larry, ‘and if this Vadrudakis woman spent a week in this house she’d feel the same. She’d go round strangling owls with her bare hands, if only to survive.’
‘Well, I want you all to be polite,’ said Mother firmly, adding, ‘and you’re not to mention owls, Larry. She might think we’re peculiar.’
‘We are,’ concluded Larry with feeling.
After lunch I discovered that Larry, as he so often did, had alienated the two people who might have been his allies in his anti-owl campaign, Margo and Leslie. Margo, on seeing the owlets, went into raptures. She had just acquired the art of knitting and, with lavish generosity, offered to knit anything I wanted for the owls. I toyed with the idea of having them all dressed in identical, striped pullovers but discarded this as impractical and reluctantly refused the kind suggestion.
Leslie’s offer of help was more practical. He said he would shoot a supply of sparrows for me. I asked whether he could do this every day.
‘Well, not every day,’ said Leslie. ‘I might not be here; I might be in town or something. But I will when I can.’
I suggested that he might do some bulk shooting for me, procuring enough sparrows to last me a week, perhaps.
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Leslie, struck by this. ‘You work out how many you need for the week and I’ll get ’em for you.’
Laboriously, for mathematics was not my strong point, I worked out how many sparrows (supplemented with meat) I would need a week and took the result to Leslie in his room, where he was cleaning the latest addition to his collection, a magnificent old Turkish muzzle-loader.
‘Yes… OK,’ he said, looking at my figures. ‘I’ll get ’em for you. I’d better use the air rifle; if I use the shotgun we’ll have bloody Larry complaining about the noise.’
So, armed with the air rifle and a large paper bag, we went round the back of the villa. Leslie loaded the gun, leaned back against the trunk of an olive tree, and started shooting. It was as simple as target shooting, for that year we had a plague of sparrows and the roof of the villa was thick with them. As they were picked off by Leslie’s excellent marksmanship they rolled down the roof and fell to the ground, where I would collect them and put them in my paper bag.
After the first few shots, the sparrows grew a little uneasy and retreated higher up until they were sitting on the apex of the roof. Here Leslie could still shoot them but they were precipitated over the edge of the roof and rolled down to fall on the veranda on the other side of the house.
‘Wait until I shoot a few more before you collect ’em,’ said Leslie, and so I dutifully waited.
He continued shooting for some time, rarely missing, and the faint ‘thunk’ of the rifle coincided with the collapse and disappearance of a sparrow from the rooftop.
‘Damn,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve lost count. How many’s that?’
I said that I hadn’t been counting either.
‘Well, go and pick up the ones on the veranda and wait there. I’ll pick off another six. That should do you.’
Clasping my paper bag, I went around to the front of the house, and saw, to my consternation, that Mrs Vadrudakis, whom we had forgotten, had arrived for tea. She and Mother were sitting somewhat stiffly on the veranda clasping cups of tea, surrounded by the bloodstained corpses of numerous sparrows.
‘Yes,’ Mother was saying, obviously hoping that Mrs Vadrudakis had not noticed the rain of dead birds, ‘yes, we’re all great animal lovers.’
‘I hear this,’ said Mrs Vadrudakis, smiling benevolently. ‘I hear you lof the animals like me.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mother. ‘We keep so many pets. Animals are a sort of passion with us, you know.’
She smiled nervously at Mrs Vadrudakis, and at that moment a dead sparrow fell into the strawberry jam.
It was impossible to cover it up and equally impossible to pretend it was not there. Mother stared at it as though hypnotized; at last, she moistened her lips and smiled at Mrs Vadrudakis, who was sitting with her cup poised, a look of horror on her face.
‘A sparrow,’ Mother pointed out weakly. ‘They… er… seem to be dying a lot this year.’
At that moment, Leslie, carrying the air rifle, strode out of the house.
‘Have I killed enough?’ he inquired.
The next ten minutes were fraught with emotion. Mrs Vadrudakis said she had never been so upset in her life and that we were all fiends in human shape. Mother kept saying that she was sure Leslie had not meant to cause offence and that, anyway, she was sure the sparrows had not suffered. Leslie, loudly and belligerently, went on repeating that it was a lot of bloody fuss about nothing and, anyway, owls ate sparrows and did Mrs Vadrudakis want the owls to starve, eh? But Mrs Vadrudakis refused to be comforted. She wrapped herself, a tragic and outraged figure, in her cloak, shudderingly picked her way through the sparrows’ corpses, got into her cab, and was driven away through the olive groves at a brisk trot.
‘I do wish you children wouldn’t do things like that,’ said Mother, shakily pouring herself a cup of tea while I picked up the sparrows. ‘It really was most… careless of you, Leslie.’
‘Well, how was I to know the old fool was out here?’ said Leslie indignantly. ‘I can’t be expected to see through the house, can I?’
‘You should be more careful, dear,’ said Mother. ‘Heaven knows what she must think of us.’
‘She thinks we’re savages,’ said Leslie, chuckling. ‘She said so. She’s no loss, silly old fool.’
‘Well, the whole thing’s given me a headache. Go and ask Lugaretzia to make some more tea, Gerry, will you?’
Two pots of tea and several aspirins later, Mother was beginning to feel better. I was sitting on the veranda giving her a lecture on owls, to which she was only half-listening, saying, ‘Yes, dear, how interesting,’ at intervals, when she was suddenly galvanized by a roar of rage from inside the villa.
‘Oh dear, I can’t stand it,’ she moaned. ‘Now what’s the matter?’
Larry strode out onto the veranda.
‘Mother!’ he shouted ‘This has got to stop. I won’t put up with it.’
‘Now, now, dear don’t shout. What’s the matter?’ Mother inquired.
‘It’s like living in a bloody natural history museum!’
‘What is, dear?’
‘This is! Life here. It’s intolerable. I won’t put up with it!’ shouted Larry.
‘But what’s the matter, dear?’ Mother asked, bewildered.
‘I go to get myself a drink from the icebox and what do I find?’
‘What do you find, dear?’ asked Mother with interest.
‘Sparrows!’ bellowed Larry. ‘Bloody great bags of suppurating unhygienic sparrows!’
It was not my day.
5
Fakirs and Fiestas
The Prince of Darkness is a Gentleman.
– SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
It was always during the late spring that my collection of animals swelled to a point where even Mother occasionally grew alarmed, for it was then that everything was arriving and hatching, and baby animals are, after all, easier to acquire than adults. It was also the time when the birds, newly arrived to nest and rear their young, were harried by the local gentry with guns in spite of the fact that it was out of season. Everything was grist to their mill, these townee sportsmen, for whereas the peasants would stick to the so-called game birds – thrushes, blackbirds, and the like – the hunters from the town would blast everything that flew. You would see them returning triumphantly, weighed down with guns and bandoliers of cartridges, their game bags full of a sticky, bloody, feathery conglomeration of anything from robins to redstarts, from nuthatches to nightingales. So in the spring my room and that portion of the veranda set aside for the purpose always had at least half a dozen cages and boxes containing gape-mouthed baby birds or birds that I had managed to rescue from the sportsmen and which were recuperating with makeshift splints on wings or legs.
The only good thing about this spring slaughter was that it gave me a pretty good idea of what birds were to be found in the island. Realizing I could not stop the killing, I at least turned it to good account. I would track down the brave and noble Nimrods and ask to see the contents of their game bags. I would then make a list of all the dead birds and, by pleading, save the lives of those that had only been wounded. It was by this means that Hiawatha came into my possession.