Gerald Durrell (2 page)

Finally, I would
like to exonerate my companion from any blame in foisting this history upon the
public. Having suffered much at my hands in the tropics, he now has to suffer
once more in print; that he will do this with his usual placidity, I have no
doubt. But I would like to place it on record that when I told him I was writing
a book about our trip he made the following statement: “Take my advice, old
boy,” he said earnestly, “and
don’t.
. . .”

PRELUDE

THE ship nosed
its way through the morning mist, across a sea as smooth as milk. A faint and
exciting smell came to us from the invisible shore, the smell of flowers, damp
vegetation, palm oil, and a thousand other intoxicating scents drawn up from
the earth by the rising sun, a pale, moist-looking nimbus of light seen dimly
through the mists. As it rose higher and higher, the heat of its rays
penetrated and loosened the hold the mist had on land and sea. Slowly it was
drawn up towards the sky in long lethargically coiling columns, and gradually
the bay and the coastline came into view and gave me my first glimpse of Africa.

Across the
glittering waters were scattered a handful of tiny islands, each a cone-shaped
mass of vegetation, so overloaded that it seemed they must topple into the
waters under the weight of this climbing tower of leaves Behind them the
coastlands climbed upwards, covered with a thick, unbroken quilt of trees, to
where, dim and gigantic, Mount Cameroon crouched, gilded by the morning light.
The colours of this landscape, after the pale pastel shades of England, seemed
over-bright, almost garish, hurting the eyes with their fierce intensity. Over
the islands flocks of grey parrots wheeled in strong, rapid flight, and faintly
their clownish screams and whistles came to us. In the glistening wake of the
ship two brown kites circled in an anxious search for something edible, and out
of the remaining skeins of mist being drawn up into the sky a fishing eagle
suddenly appeared, heavy and graceful, its black and white plumage shining.
Over all this, the land and sea seen obscurely through the shifting, coiling mist,
lay the magic smell we had noticed before, but now it was stronger, richer,
intoxicating with its promise of deep forest, of lush reedy swamps, and wide
magical rivers under a canopy of trees.

We landed as in
a dream, and were rudely brought bath to earth by a nerve-shattering half-hour
with the Customs, trying to explain our eccentric baggage. At last we were
speeding along the road to Victoria, a red earth road lined with hibiscus
hedges aflame with flower, and copses of the yellow, feathery, pungent-smelling
mimosa. We arrived at the little white rest-house on the hill where we were to
live for a week, and proceeded to look around. We had much to do, and in any
other place it would probably have seemed irksome; as it was we were
interviewed, our numerous papers stamped, we purchased vast quantities of
stores, went to dinner with numbers of kind people, swam in the sea, and did a
great many other things in a sort of dream-like trance. Everywhere we went
there was something new to see. The straggling town lay along the side of the
bay, filled with rustling palms, hibiscus and bougainvillaea hedges glowing
with flowers, and in every compound and garden stood sedate rows of canna
lilies, like vivid flames on thin green candlesticks. It was an enchanting place,
but even so we yearned for the day when we should move up-country. At last it
dawned.

The lorry had
been ordered to arrive at the rest-house at seven-thirty for loading, and by
eight-thirty we thought we should be well on the road. It was very apparent
that we were new to Africa. At ten o’clock we were pacing round and round our
mountain of luggage on the veranda, cursing and fuming impotently, scanning the
road for the truant lorry. At eleven o’clock a cloud of dust appeared on the
horizon and in its midst, like a beetle in a whirlwind, was the lorry. It
screeched to a halt below, and the driver dismounted. I noticed an assortment
of odd passengers sitting in the back, about twelve of them, chatting happily
to each other with their goats, chickens, bags of yams, calabashes of palm
wine, and other necessities of travel spread out around them in the lorry. I
stormed down to interview the driver, and it was then I learned that it is
better not to inquire why a lorry is late in the Cameroons: I was treated to at
least six different and contradictory reasons, none of which satisfied anyone
except the driver. Wisely leaving this subject, I turned my attention to the
crowd in the back of the vehicle. It transpired that this was the driver’s
wife, this was the driver’s wife’s cousin, this was the father of the
motor-boy, and this was the motor-boy’s mother-in-law, and so on. After a
prolonged altercation which for shrillness and incomprehensibility could not
have been rivalled by any race on earth, they were removed, together with their
household goods and livestock. The driver then had to turn the lorry for
loading, and my faith in his abilities was rudely shattered when he backed
twice into the hibiscus hedge, and once into the rest-house wall. Our baggage
was then loaded with a speed and lack of care that was frightening, and, as I
watched, I wondered how much of our equipment would be left intact on arrival
in Mamfe. I need not have worried. It turned out later that only the most
indispensable and irreplaceable things got broken.

During my
tête-à-tête with the driver, and my careful genealogical investigation of the
passengers, John had taken no part. Now, as the pandemonium lessened, he
wandered round the front of the lorry and discovered something that amused him
greatly. Above the windscreen, in large white uneven letters, had been printed
“THE GODSPEED . . . VICTORIA TO KUMBA”. That a lorry with such an imposing name
should be two and a half hours late struck him as being funny. It was not until
later that we discovered what a gross euphemism the name really was. At twelve
o’clock we were off, flying through the streets of Victoria in a cloud of dust
and frightened chickens, the engine of the “Godspeed” roaring manfully to try
and live up to its name.

Almost as soon
as you leave Victoria you start to climb in a series of gentle loops, through
apparently endless palm plantations. We had progressed some ten miles, and were
just settling down. We lit cigarettes, and were arguing as to how long it would
be before we reached real forest, when the engine gave a sharp hiccup,
recovered itself, hiccupped again, and then slowly and apologetically faded
away. We came to a gentle standstill.

“Camp Number
One,” said John, gazing at the endless rows of palm trees about us, serried
ranks, their drooping fronds whispering in the slightest breeze.

Everyone
gathered round the engine, all talking at and getting their fingers burnt
pointing out to each other what was wrong. After about half an hour the
dismembered engine was lying about all over the road, and at least four people
were under the lorry, arguing loudly. I began to have a horrible feeling that
this uninteresting palm grove might have to be camp number one, so I suggested
to John that we should walk on up the road, and they could follow when the
lorry was mended. He gazed at the bits of engine in the road, at the black legs
protruding from under the bonnet, and sighed: “Yes, I suppose we can walk on.
If we take it easy we have a fair chance of them catching up with us before we
reach Mamfe.” So we walked, but it was very dull. The palms did not foster bird
life, and there were few insects in the dusty fringe of undergrowth at the
roadside. Presently the lorry caught us up, everybody grinning and cheering
like mad.

“I fear,” said
John, “that their confidence in their combined mechanical powers is misplaced.”

As the
“Godspeed” broke down again five miles farther on, I was inclined to agree with
him. The third time broke down we had just left the last of the plantations and
were entering real forest country, so it was with pleasure we dismounted and
walked off down the road. The jabbering of the amateur mechanics faded away, we
turned a corner, and the silence of the forest descended on us. This was our
first experience of real forest, and we ambled slowly along, drinking in the
sights and sounds, captivated by everything, drugged by so much beauty and
colour. On one side of the road was a deep ravine, choked with undergrowth, on
the other side the hillside sloped steeply upwards. On each side rose
tremendous trees, straddling on their huge buttress roots, each with its cloak
of parasitic plants, ferns, and moss. Through this tangle the lianas threaded
their way, from base to summit, in loops and coils and intricate convolutions.
On reaching the top they would drop to the forest floor as straight as a
plumbline. In places there were gaps where one of the giant trees had been
felled, or had fallen of its own accord, and here the secondary growth ran riot
over the carcase, and everything was hung with the white and deep yellow
flowers of the convolvulus, and another pink star-like flower in great
profusion. In and out of these blooms flipped the Sunbirds, glinting
metallically in the sun, hanging before the flowers for a brief instant on
blurred and trembling wings. On the dead trees, bleached white as coral against
the green, there were groups of Pygmy Kingfishers, small as a wren, brilliant
in their azure blue, orange and buff plumage, with their crimson beaks and
feet. Flocks of hornbills would be startled at the sight of us as they fed in
the tree-tops, and would fly wildly across the road uttering loud maniacal
honkings, their great untidy wings beating the air with a sound like gigantic
blacksmith’s bellows. We crossed numbers of wooden bridges which spanned
shallow rapid streams glinting on beds of pure white sand. On the banks, where
it was moist and cool, with broken sunlight dappling the grass, rested hosts of
butterflies. At our approach they rose and fluttered like a small firework
display in the shade, blue-gold, yellow, green and orange, shifting and
changing like a kaleidoscopic picture.

Occasionally we
would pass a village, a straggle of huts along the side of the road, surrounded
by small fields of feathery cassava bushes and forlorn plantain trees with
tattered leaves hanging listlessly in the sun. A band of hysterically barking
curs would chase the lorry, and the pot-bellied children would stand in the
ditch, white teeth gleaming, pink palms waving madly. At one such village we
stopped and bought a massive bunch of bananas for sixpence, and then gorged
ourselves on the delicately scented fruit until we felt sick. Kumba was reached
in the brief green twilight, as the grey parrots were screaming overhead into the
jungle to their roosts. I made it abundantly clear to the lorry personnel that
we wanted an early start in the morning. Then we ate, and crept tiredly under
our mosquito nets.

To our surprise
we were on the road by eight o’clock, and, as if to make up for the previous
day, the “Godspeed” went like a bird. At midday we lunched at the roadside
under the massive trees, drinking warm beer, contesting ownership of the
sandwiches with the local ants and surveying our surroundings with the
field-glasses. Bird life, as before, seemed the most prominent: Yellow-casque
Hornbills honking and swishing in the tree-tops, kingfishers glittering on the
dead tree stumps, a beautiful rich brown and yellow Coucal with a shrike-like
beak, that peered fascinated at us while we ate. A lovely blood-red dragon-fly
zoomed down the road, flicked sideways, and landed on the rim of my glass of
beer. Six large ants crawled slowly and methodically up my trouser leg, and
they were presently joined by a small green caterpillar that swung suddenly out
of the sky on an almost invisible thread.