The Corfu Trilogy (72 page)

‘His lamb?’ asked Margo, bewildered. ‘What lamb?’

‘The lamb he brought for his Almond-blossom, as he calls you,’ said Mother accusingly.

‘Oh, it’s just a nickname,’ said Margo colouring, ‘he doesn’t mean any harm.’

‘I know what these dirty old men are,’ said Mother ominously. ‘Really, Margo, you should know better.’

The old Turk was listening to this exchange with quick glances from his bright eyes and a beatific smile on his face; however, I could see that my powers of translation would be stretched to their limit if Mother and Margo started arguing so I opened the sliding doors and let the lamb in. He came in pertly, prance-footed, black and curly as a storm cloud.

‘How dare you!’ said Margo. ‘How dare you insult my friends. He’s not a dirty old man; he’s one of the cleanest old men I know.’

‘I don’t care whether he’s clean or not,’ said Mother, coming to the end of her patience. ‘He can’t stay here with all his… his… women. I’m not cooking for a harem.’

‘It is wonderful to hear the mother and daughter talk together,’ the Turk confided to me. ‘It’s like the sound of sheep bells.’

‘You’re beastly,’ said Margo, ‘you’re beastly! You don’t want me to have any friends. You’re narrow-minded and suburban!’

‘You can’t call it suburban to object to three wives,’ said Mother indignantly.

‘It reminds me,’ said the Turk, his eyes moist, ‘of the singing of the nightingales in my valley.’

‘He can’t help it if he’s a Turk,’ shrilled Margo. ‘He can’t help it if he’s got to have three wives.’

‘Any man can avoid having three wives if he puts his mind to it,’ said Mother firmly.

‘I expect,’ said the Turk confidingly, ‘Almond-blossom is telling her mother what a happy time we had in my valley, huh?’

‘You always try to repress me,’ said Margo. ‘Everything I do is wrong.’

‘The trouble is I give you too much licence. I let you go away for a few days and you come back with this… this… old roué and his dancing girls,’ said Mother.

‘There you are, that’s what I mean – you repress me,’ said Margo triumphantly. ‘Now you expect me to have a licence for a Turk.’

‘How I would like to take them back to my village,’ said the Turk, gazing at them fondly. ‘Such wonderful time we would have… dancing, singing, wine…’

The lamb seemed disappointed that no one was taking any notice of him; he had gambolled a little, decorated the floor, and done two nicely executed pirouettes, but he felt that no one was paying him the attention he deserved, so he put down his head and charged Mother. It was a beautifully executed charge. I could speak with some authority, for during my expeditions through the surrounding olive groves I had frequently met with eager and audacious young rams and fought them matador fashion, using my shirt as a cloak, to our mutual satisfaction. While deploring the result, I had to confess that the charge was excellent, well thought out, as it was, and with the full power of the ram’s wiry body and bony head landing with precision on the back of Mother’s knees. Mother was projected on to our extremely uncomfortable
horsehair sofa as if propelled by a cannon, and she lay there gasping. The Turk, horrified at what his gift had done, leaped in front of her, arms outstretched, to protect her from further attack, which seemed imminent, for the ram, pleased with itself, had retreated to a corner of the room and was prancing and bucking rather in the manner of a boxer limbering up in his corner of the ring.

‘Mother, Mother, are you all right?’ screamed Margo.

Mother was too breathless to answer her.

‘Ah-ha! You see, he has spirit like me, Almond-blossom,’ cried the Turk. ‘Come on then, my brave one, come on!’

The ram accepted the invitation with a speed and suddenness that took the Turk by surprise. It moved across the room in a black blur, its feet machine-gunning on the scrubbed boards, hit the Turk on his shins with a crack, and precipitated him onto the sofa with Mother, where he lay uttering loud criesofrage and pain. I had been charged in the shins like that and so I could sympathize.

The Turk’s three wives, aghast at their master’s downfall, were standing immobile, uttering noises like three minarets at sundown. It was into this interesting situation that Larry and Leslie intruded. They stood riveted in the doorway, drinking in the scene with unbelieving eyes. There was I pursuing a recalcitrant lamb round the room, Margo comforting three ululating ladies in veils, and Mother apparently rolling around on the sofa with an elderly Turk.

‘Mother, don’t you think you’re getting a little old for this sort of thing?’ Larry asked with interest.

‘By Jove, look at that marvellous dagger,’ said Leslie, eyeing the still-writhing Turk with interest.

‘Don’t be stupid, Larry,’ said Mother angrily, massaging the backs of her legs. ‘It’s all Margo’s Turk’s fault.’

‘You can’t trust Turks,’ said Leslie, still eyeing the dagger. ‘Spiro says so.’

‘But what are you doing rolling about with a Turk at this hour?’ Larry inquired. ‘Practising to be Lady Hester Stanhope?’

‘Now, Larry, I’ve had quite enough this afternoon. Stop making me angry. The sooner this man is out of here, the better I’ll be pleased,’ said Mother. ‘Kindly ask him to go.’

‘You can’t, you can’t. He’s my Turk,’ squeaked Margo tearfully. ‘You can’t treat my Turk like that.’

‘I’m going upstairs to put some witch hazel on my bruises,’ said Mother, hobbling towards the door, ‘and I want that man out of here by the time I come down.’

By the time she had returned, both Larry and Leslie had struck up a firm friendship with the Turk and to Mother’s annoyance he and his wives stayed on for several hours, imbibing gallons of sweet tea and biscuits before we could finally manage to get them into a
caraccino
and back to town.

‘Well, thank heaven
that’s
over,’ said Mother, limping towards the dining-room for our evening meal. ‘At least they’re not staying here, and that’s one mercy. But really, Margo, you should be careful who you invite.’

‘I’m sick of the way you criticize my friends,’ said Margo. ‘He’s a perfectly ordinary, harmless Turk.’

‘He would have made a charming son-in-law, don’t you think?’ asked Larry. ‘Margo could have called the first son Ali Baba and the daughter Sesame.’

‘Don’t joke like that, Larry dear,’ said Mother.

‘I’m not joking,’ said Larry. ‘The old boy told me his wives were getting a bit long in the tooth and that he rather fancied Margo as number four.’

‘Larry! he didn’t! Disgusting old brute,’ said Mother. ‘It’s a good thing he didn’t say that to me. I’d have given him a piece of my mind. What did
you
say?’

‘He was rather put off when I told him what Margo’s dowry was,’ said Larry.

‘Dowry? What dowry?’ asked Mother, mystified.

‘Eleven unweaned puppies,’ explained Larry.

Take heed o’ the foul fiend.

– S
HAKESPEARE,
King Lear

Throughout the year Thursday was, as far as I was concerned, the most important day of the week, for that was the day that Theodore visited us. Sometimes it would be a long family day – a drive down south and a picnic on a remote beach, or something similar; but, normally, Theo and I would set off alone on one of our excursions, as Theodore insisted on calling them. Bedecked with our collecting equipment and bags, nets, bottles, and test tubes and accompanied by the dogs, we would set out to explore the island in much the same spirit of adventure as filled the bosoms of Victorian explorers who ventured into Darkest Africa.

But not many of the Victorian explorers had the benefit of Theodore as a companion; as a handy encyclopaedia to take along on a trip, he could not be bettered. To me, he was omniscient as a god, but much nicer since he was tangible. It was not only his incredible erudition that astonished everyone who met him but his modesty. I remember how we would sit on the veranda, surrounded by the remnants of one of Mother’s sumptuous teas, listening to the tired cicadas singing the evening in, plying Theodore with questions. Meticulously dressed in his tweed suit, his blonde hair and beard immaculate, his eyes would sparkle with interest as each new subject was introduced.

‘Theodore,’ Larry would ask, ‘there’s a painting up in the
monastery at Paleocastritsa that the monks say was done by Panioti Dokseras. D’you think it is?’

‘Well,’ Theodore would say cautiously, ‘I’m afraid it’s a subject about which I know very little. But I believe I’m right in saying that it’s more likely to be the work of Tsadzanis… er… he did that most interesting little picture… in the Patera Monastery… you know, the one on the upper road leading north of Corfu. Now, he of course…’

During the next half-hour he would give an all-embracing and succinct lecture on the history of painting in the Ionian Islands since about 1242 and then end by saying: ‘But if you want an
expert
opinion, there’s Doctor Paramythiotis who’d give you much more information than I can.’

It was small wonder that we treated him like an oracle. The phrase ‘Theo says’ set the seal of authenticity on whatever item of information the person was going to vouchsafe; it was the touchstone for getting Mother’s agreement to anything from the advisability of living entirely on fruit to the innocuousness of keeping scorpions in one’s bedroom. Theodore was everything to everyone. With Mother he could discuss plants, particularly herbs and recipes, while keeping her supplied with reading matter from his capacious library of detective novels. With Margo he could talk of diets, exercises, and the various unguents supposed to have a miraculous effect on spots, pimples, and acne. He could keep pace effortlessly with any idea that entered the mercurial mind of my brother Larry, from Freud to peasant belief in vampires; while Leslie he could enlighten on the history of firearms in Greece or the winter habits of the hare. As far as I was concerned, with a hungry, questing, and ignorant mind, Theodore represented a fountain of knowledge on every subject from which I drank greedily.

On Thursday, Theodore would generally arrive at about ten, sitting sedately in the back of the horse-drawn cab, silver Homburg on his head, his collecting box on his knees, his walking-stick
with its little gauze net on the end by his side. I, who had been up since six and peering down through the olive groves to see if he were coming, would by now have decided in despair that he had forgotten what day it was or that he had fallen down and broken his leg or that some other catastrophe had overtaken him. My relief at seeing him, grave, sedate, and intact in the back of the cab, would be considerable. The sun, up until then suffering from an eclipse, would start to shine again. Having shaken me by the hand courteously, Theodore would pay the cab-man and remind him to return at the appropriate hour in the evening. Then, hoisting his collecting bag onto his shoulders, he would contemplate the ground, rising and falling on his well-polished boots.

‘I think… er… you know…’ he would say, ‘we might investigate those little ponds near… er… Kontokali. That is to say, unless there is somewhere else… er… you know… that you would prefer to go.’

I would say happily that the little ponds near Kontokali would suit me fine.

‘Good,’ Theodore would say. ‘One of the reasons I particularly want to go… er… that way… is because the path takes us past a very good ditch… er… you know… that is to say, a ditch in which I have found a number of rewarding specimens.’

Talking cheerfully, we would set out, and the dogs, tongues lolling, tails wagging, would leave the shade of the tangerine trees and follow us. Presently, a panting Lugaretzia would catch up with us, carrying the bag containing our lunch which we had both forgotten.

We would make our way through the olive groves, chattering together, stopping periodically to examine a flower or a tree, bird or caterpillar; everything was grist to our mill, and Theodore knew something about everything.

‘No I don’t know of any way you could preserve mushrooms for your collection; whatever you use, they would… um… er
… you know… shrivel up. The best way would be to draw or paint them, or, perhaps, you know,
photograph
them. You could collect the spore patterns, though, and they are remarkably pretty. What…? Well, you remove the cup of the… er… you know… the mushroom or toadstool and place it on a white card. The fungus must be ripe, of course, or it won’t drop its spores. After a time, you remove the cap carefully from the card… that is to say, you take care not to smudge the spores, and you will find an attractive… er… sort of pattern is left.’

The dogs would fan out ahead of us, cocking their legs, snuffling in the dark holes that honeycombed the great, ancient olive trees, and dashing off in noisy and futile pursuit of the swallows that skimmed millimetres high over the ground down the long meandering avenues of trees. Presently, we would reach more open country where the olive groves would give way to small fields of fruit trees and maize or vineyards.

‘Aha!’ Theodore would say, stopping by a weedy, water-filled ditch and peering into it, his eyes gleaming, his beard bristling with enthusiasm. ‘Now here’s something interesting. There, do you see? Just by the end of my stick.’

I would strain my eyes but see nothing. Theodore, attaching his net to the end of his walking-stick, would make a neat dipping motion, like a man taking a fly out of his soup, and would then haul in the net.

‘There, you see? It’s the egg sac of the
Hydrophilus piceus
… er… that is to say, the great silver water beetle. It’s the female, as you know, that spins… er… makes this sac. It may have up to fifty eggs in it; the curious thing is… Just a minute, while I get my forceps… Um… there… you see? Now, this… um… you might say, chimney, though perhaps “mast” would be better, is filled with air so the whole thing is rather like a little boat which can’t capsize. The… er… air-filled mast prevents it… Yes, if you put it in your aquarium it should hatch out, though I must warn you that the larvae are very… er… you
know… very
fierce
and will probably eat your other specimens. Let’s see if we can catch an adult.’