The Corfu Trilogy (82 page)

Having ascertained that I had not developed any dangerous disease during the night, he would inquire after the rest of us.

‘And hows the familys?’ he would ask. ‘Hows your mothers? And Master Larrys? And Master Leslies? And Missy Margos?’

By the time I had reassured him as to their health we would have reached the villa, where he would lumber from one member of the family to the other checking as to whether my information was correct. I was rather bored by the daily, almost journalistic interest Spiro took in the family’s health, as if they were royalty, but he persisted as if some awful fate might have overtaken them during the night. One day, in a fit of devilry, I told him, in response to his earnest inquiry, that they were all dead; the car swerved off the drive and crashed straight into a large oleander bush, showering Spiro and myself with pink blossoms and nearly knocking me off the running board.

‘Gollys, Master Gerrys! You mustn’t say things like thats!’ he roared, pounding the wheel with his fist. ‘You makes me scarce when you say things likes that. You makes me sweats! Don’t you ever say that agains.’

This particular morning, having reassured himself as to the health of each member of the family, he lifted a small strawberry basket covered with a fig leaf from the seat by his side.

‘Here,’ he said, scowling at me. ‘I gots a presents for you.’

I took the leaf off the basket. Inside crouched two naked and repulsive-looking birds. I was enchanted and thanked Spiro profusely, for they were baby jays, as I could see by their sprouting wing-feathers. I had never had jays before. I was so pleased with them that I took them with me when I went to my studies with Mr Kralefsky. This was the advantage of having a tutor who was as mad about birds as I was. Together we spent an exciting and interesting morning trying to teach them to open their mouths and feed, when we should have been committing the glittering pageantry of English history to memory. But the babies were singularly stupid and refused to accept either Kralefsky or myself as a substitute mother.

I took them back home at lunch-time and during the afternoon tried to get them to behave sensibly, but without success. They would only take food if I forced their beaks open and pushed it down their throats with my finger, a process that they strongly objected to, as well they might. Eventually, having shoved enough down them to keep them more or less alive, I left them in their strawberry basket on the veranda and went to fetch Hiawatha, who had shown a marked preference for having her food served on the veranda rather than in the privacy of my room. I placed her on the flagstones and started to throw her the grasshoppers I had caught for her. She hopped eagerly, snapped up the first, killed it, and swallowed it with almost indecent haste.

As she sat there gulping, looking rather like an elderly, angular dowager duchess who had swallowed a sorbet the wrong way at
a ball, the two baby jays, lolling their heads, bleary-eyed, over the edge of their basket, caught sight of her. Immediately, they started to call wheezily, open-mouthed, their heads wobbling from side to side like two very old men looking over a fence. Hiawatha put up her crest and stared at them. I did not expect her to take much notice, for she always ignored the other baby birds when they called out to be fed, but she hopped nearer the basket and surveyed the baby jays interestedly. I threw her a grasshopper and she grabbed it, killed it, and then, to my complete astonishment, hopped up to the basket and crammed the insect down the gaping maw of one of the jays. Both babies wheezed and screamed and flapped their wings in delight and Hiawatha looked as startled as I was at what she had done. I threw her another grasshopper and she killed it and fed the other baby. After this, I would feed Hiawatha in my room and then bring her down onto the veranda periodically where she would act the part of mother to the baby jays.

She never showed any other maternal feelings for the babies; she would not, for example, seize the little encapsulated blobs of excreta from the babies’ behinds when they cocked them over the edge of the nest. This task of cleaning up was left to me. Once she had fed the babies so that they stopped screaming, she lost all interest in them. I concluded it must be something in the timbre of their call that aroused her maternal instincts, for although I experimented with the other babies I possessed and they screamed their lungs out, she took no notice at all. Gradually, the baby jays decided to let me feed them and as soon as they stopped calling at her appearance Hiawatha took no further notice of them. It was not simply that she ignored them; she seemed unaware of their existence.

When her wing had healed, I removed the splint and found that although the bone had set well the wing muscles had become weak with lack of use, and Hiawatha tended to favour the wing, always walking rather than flying. To make her exercise it I used
to take her down into the olive groves and throw her up into the air so that she was forced to use her wings to make a safe landing. Gradually, she started to take short flights as the wing strengthened and I began to think that I would be able to release her, when she met her death. I had taken her out onto the veranda one day and while I was feeding my assortment of babies Hiawatha flew or, rather, glided down to a nearby olive grove to practise her flying and make a light snack on some daddy long-legs that were just hatching.

I was absorbed in feeding the babies and was not taking much notice when suddenly I heard hoarse, despairing cries from Hiawatha. I vaulted over the veranda rail and raced through the trees, but I was too late. A large, mangy, battle-scarred feral cat was standing with the limp form of the hoopoe in his mouth, his great green eyes staring at me over her pink body. I gave a shout and ran forward; the cat turned with oil-like fluidity and leaped into the myrtle bushes carrying Hiawatha’s body with him. I gave chase but once the cat had reached the tangled sanctuary of the myrtles it was impossible to track him down. I returned, furious and upset, to the olive grove, where all that was left to remind me of Hiawatha were some pink feathers and a few drops of blood scattered like rubies on the grass. I swore that if I ever came across the cat again I would kill it if I could. Apart from anything else, it presented a threat to the rest of my bird collection.

But my mourning for Hiawatha was cut short by the arrival in our midst of something slightly more exotic than a hoopoe and much more trouble. Larry had suddenly announced that he was going to stay with some friends of his in Athens and do some research work. After the flurry of his departure, tranquillity descended on the villa. Leslie spent most of his time pottering about with a gun and Margo, who at that moment was not engaged in any hectic affair of the heart, had taken up soap sculpture. Ensconced in the attic, she was producing somewhat
lopsided and slippery pieces of sculpture out of an acrid-smelling yellow soap and appearing in a flowered smock and an artistic trance at mealtimes.

Mother, seizing on this unexpected period of calm, decided to do a job that had long wanted doing. The previous year had been an exceptionally good one for fruit and Mother had spent hours preparing various jams and chutneys, some from her grandmother’s recipes from India dating back to the early eighteen hundreds. Everything went fine and the big cool larder was a-glint with battalions of bottles. Unfortunately, during a particularly savage storm in the winter, the larder roof had leaked and in consequence Mother had come down one morning and found all the labels had come off. She was faced with several hundred jars, the contents of which were difficult to identify unless you opened the jar. Now, given a moment’s respite by her family, she determined to do this necessary job. Since it involved tasting, I offered to help. Between us we had got some hundred and fifty jars of preserves on the kitchen table, armed ourselves with spoons and new labels, and were just about to start on the mammoth tasting when Spiro arrived.

‘Good afternoons, Mrs Durrells. Goods afternoons, Master Gerrys,’ he rumbled, lumbering into the kitchen like a chestnut-brown dinosaur. ‘I’s gots a telegrams for you, Mrs Durrells.’

‘A telegram, Spiro?’ Mother quavered. ‘Who from, I wonder? I hope it’s not bad news.’

‘No, don’t you worry, it’s not bad news, Mrs Durrells,’ he said, handing her the telegram. ‘I gots the man in the post office to reads it to me. It’s from Master Larrys.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mother, with foreboding.

The telegram said simply: ‘Forgot to tell you Prince Jeejeebuoy arriving eleventh short stay. Athens wonderful. Love. Larry.’

‘Really, Larry is the most annoying creature!’ Mother exclaimed angrily. ‘What does he go and invite a prince for? He knows we haven’t got the right rooms for royalty. And he won’t
be here to entertain him. What am I supposed to do with a prince?’

She gazed at us in a distraught fashion but neither Spiro nor I could give her any intelligent advice. We could not even telegraph Larry and demand his return, for, characteristically, he had gone off and omitted to give us his friends’ address.

‘The eleventh is tomorrow, isn’t it? He’ll be coming on the boat from Brindisi, I expect. Spiro, would you meet him and bring him out? And will you bring some lamb for lunch? Gerry, go and tell Margo to put some flowers in the spare room and to make sure the dogs haven’t put any fleas in there, and tell Leslie he must go down to the village and tell Red Spiro we want some fish. Really, it’s too bad of Larry… I shall give him a piece of my mind when he gets back. I can’t be bothered with entertaining princes at my age.’ Mother bustled angrily and aimlessly around the kitchen, banging saucepans and frying pans about.

‘I’ll brings you some of my dahlias for the tables. Do you wants any champagne?’ asked Spiro, who obviously felt that the prince should be treated properly.

‘No, if he thinks I’m paying a pound a bottle for champagne, he’s mistaken. He can just drink ouzo and wine like the rest of us, prince or no prince,’ said Mother firmly, and then added, ‘Well, I suppose you’d better bring a crate. We needn’t give him any and it always comes in useful.’

‘Don’ts you worrys, Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro comfortingly, ‘I fixes anythings you wants. You wants I gets the King’s butler again?’

The King’s butler, an ancient and aristocratic old boy, was dragged out of retirement by Spiro every time we had a big party.

‘No, no, Spiro, we’re not going to go to a lot of trouble. After all, he’s coming unexpectedly so he’ll just have to take us as he finds us. He’ll just have to take pot-luck… and… and… muck in. And if he doesn’t like it… well, it’s just too bad,’ said Mother,
shelling peas with trembling hands and dropping more on the floor than into the colander. ‘And, Gerry, go and ask Margo if she could run up those new curtains for the dining-room. The material’s in my bedroom. The old ones don’t look the same since Les set fire to them.’

So the villa was transformed into a hive of activity. The wooden floor of the spare room was scrubbed until it was a pale cream colour, just in case the dogs had put any fleas in there; Margo ran up the new curtains in record time and did flower arrangements everywhere; and Leslie cleaned his guns and boat in case the prince should want to go shooting or yachting. Mother, scarlet with heat, trotted frantically around the kitchen making scones, cakes, apple turnovers, and brandysnaps, stews, pies, jellies, and trifles. I was merely told to remove all my animals from the veranda and to keep them under control, to go and have my hair cut and to make sure I put on a clean shirt. So the following day, all dressed up by Mother’s orders, we sat on the veranda and waited patiently for the prince to be brought out to us by Spiro.

‘What’s he a prince
of
?’ asked Leslie.

‘Well, I don’t really know,’ said Mother. ‘One of those small states the maharajas have, I expect.’

‘It’s a very odd name, Jeejeebuoy,’ said Margo, ‘are you sure it’s real?’

‘Of course it’s real, dear,’ said Mother. ‘There are lots of Jeejeebuoys in India. It’s a very old family, like… um… like…’

‘Smith?’ suggested Leslie.

‘No, no, not nearly as common as that. No, the Jeejeebuoys go right back in history. There must have been Jeejeebuoys long before my grandparents went to India.’

‘His ancestors probably organized the Mutiny,’ suggested Leslie with relish. ‘Let’s ask him if his grandfather invented the Black Hole of Calcutta.’

‘Oh, yes, let’s,’ said Margo. ‘D’you think he did? What was it?’

‘Leslie, dear, you shouldn’t say things like that,’ said Mother. ‘After all, we must forgive and forget.’

‘Forgive and forget what?’ asked Leslie, bewildered, not having followed Mother’s train of thought.

‘Everything,’ said Mother firmly, adding, rather obscurely, ‘I’m sure they
meant
well.’

Before Leslie could investigate this further, the car roared up the drive and drew up below the veranda with an impressive squeal of brakes. Sitting in the back, dressed in black, and with a beautifully arranged turban as white as a snowdrop bud, sat a slender, diminutive Indian with enormous, glittering almond-shaped eyes that were like pools of liquid agate fringed with eyelashes as thick as a carpet. He opened the door deftly and leaped out of the car. His smile of welcome was like a lightning flash of white in his brown face.

‘Vell, vell, here ve are at last,’ he cried excitedly, spreading his slender brown hands like butterfly wings and dancing up onto the veranda. ‘You must be Mrs Durrell, of course. Such charm. And you are the hunter of the family… Leslie. And Margo, the beauty of the island, vitout doubt… And Gerry the savant, the naturalist
par excellence
. I can’t tell you how hot it makes me to meet you all.’

‘Oh… well… er… er… yes, we’re delighted to meet you, Your Highness,’ Mother began.

Jeejeebuoy uttered a yelp and slapped his forehead.

‘Desh and demnation!’ he said. ‘My foolish name again! My dear Mrs Durrell, how can I apologize? Prince is my Christian name. A vhim on my mother’s part to make our humble family royal, you understand? A mother’s love, hm? Dream son vill aspire to golden heights, huh? No, no, poor voman, ve must forgive her, uh? I am plain Prince Jeejeebuoy, at your service.’