Authors: Gerald Durrell
‘What the bloody hell do
you
want?’ he inquired.
I explained about the two characters in the cab and that they had said they had been invited to drinks.
‘Oh, Christ!’ said Larry. ‘Just tell them I’ve gone to Dubrovnik.’
I explained that I could not very well do this as by now Margo would have lured them into the house and that Mother, in her fragile condition, must not be disturbed. Groaning, Larry got out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and slippers and together we went down the creaking stairs to the drawing-room. Here we found Max, lanky, flamboyant, good-natured, sprawled in a chair waving his candelabra at Margo, all the candles of which had gone out. Donald sat hunched and gloomy in another chair, looking like an undertaker’s assistant.
‘Your eyes, they are tender blue,’ said Max, waving a long finger at Margo. ‘Ve vas singing about blue eyes, vere ve not, Donald?’
‘We
were
singing about blue eyes,’ said Donald.
‘Dat’s what I said,’ said Max benevolently.
‘You said “was,”’ said Donald.
Max thought about this for a brief moment.
‘Anyvay,’ he said, ‘de eyes vas blue.’
‘Were blue,’ said Donald.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Margo, breathlessly, as Larry and I came in. ‘I think these are friends of yours, Larry.’
‘Larry!’ bellowed Max, lurching up with the ungainly grace of a giraffe. ‘Ve have come like you told us.’
‘How very nice,’ said Larry, forcing his sleep-crumpled features into something approaching an ingratiating smile. ‘Do you mind keeping your voice down, because my mother’s sick?’
‘Muzzers,’ said Max, with immense conviction, ‘are de most important thing in de vorld.’
He turned to Donald, laid a long finger across his moustache, and said ‘Shush’ with such violence that Roger, who had sunk into a peaceful sleep, immediately leaped to his feet and started barking wildly. Widdle and Puke joined in vociferously.
‘Damned bad form that,’ observed Donald between the barks. ‘Guest should not make his host’s dogs bark.’
Max went down on his knees and engulfed the still barking Roger in his long arms, a manoeuvre that I viewed with some alarm, since Roger, I felt, was quite capable of misinterpreting it.
‘Hush, Bow Wow,’ said Max, beaming into Roger’s bristling and belligerent face.
To my astonishment, Roger immediately stopped barking and started to lick Max’s face extravagantly.
‘Would you… er… like a drink?’ said Larry. ‘I can’t ask you to stop long, of course, because unfortunately my mother’s ill.’
‘Very civil of you,’ said Donald. ‘Very civil indeed. I must apologize for him. Foreigner, you know.’
‘Well, I think I’ll just go back to bed,’ said Margo, edging tentatively towards the door.
‘No, you won’t,’ Larry barked. ‘Somebody’s got to pour out the drinks.’
‘Do not,’ said Max, reclining on the floor with Roger in his arms and gazing at her piteously, ‘do not remove doze eyes from my orbit.’
‘Well, I’ll go and get the drinks, then,’ said Margo breathlessly.
‘And I vill help you,’ said Max, casting Roger from him and leaping to his feet.
Roger had been under the misguided impression that Max had intended to spend the rest of the night cuddling him in front of the dying fire, and so was not unnaturally put out when he was thrown aside like this. He started barking again.
The door of the drawing-room burst open and Leslie, stark naked except for a shot-gun under his arm, made his appearance.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Leslie,
do
go and put some clothes on,’ said Margo. ‘These are friends of Larry’s.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Leslie dismally, ‘not
more
.’
He turned and made his way back upstairs.
‘Drinks!’ said Max, rapturously seizing Margo in his arms and waltzing her round to the accompaniment of almost hysterical barks on the part of Roger.
‘I do wish you would try to be more quiet,’ said Larry. ‘
Max
, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Damned bad form,’ said Donald.
‘Remember my mother,’ said Larry, since this reference had obviously struck a chord in Max’s soul.
Immediately he ceased waltzing with the breathless Margo and came to a halt.
‘Vere is your Muzzer?’ he inquired. ‘De lady is sick… take me to her dat I may secure her.’
‘Succour,’ said Donald.
‘I’m here,’ said Mother in a slightly nasal tone of voice from the doorway. ‘What
is
going on?’
She was clad in her nightie and wearing, for reasons of her cold, a voluminous shawl over her shoulders. She carried under one arm the drooping, panting, apathetic figure of Dodo, her Dandie Dinmont terrier.
‘Why, you’re just in time, Mother,’ said Larry. ‘I want you to meet Donald and Max.’
With the first sign of animation that he had shown, Donald rose to his feet, marched swiftly across the room to Mother, seized her hand, and gave a slight bow over it.
‘Enchanted,’ he said. ‘Terribly sorry about the disturbance. My friend, you know. Continental.’
‘How nice to see you,’ said Mother, summoning up all her resources.
At her entrance, Max had thrown his arms wide and was now gazing upon her with all the devoutness of a Crusader catching his first sight of Jerusalem.
‘Muzzer!’ he intoned dramatically. ‘You are de Muzzer!’
‘How do you do,’ said Mother uncertainly.
‘You are,’ Max asked, getting his facts straight, ‘de sick Muzzer?’
‘Oh, it’s just a bit of a cold,’ said Mother deprecatingly.
‘Ve have voked you,’ said Max, clasping his breast, his eyes brimming with tears.
‘Awoken or woken,’ said Donald
sotto voce
.
‘Come,’ said Max and put his long arms round Mother and ushered her to a chair near the fire, pressing her into it with the utmost delicacy. He took off his coat and spread it gently about her knees. Then he squatted by her side, took her hand and peered earnestly into her face.
‘Vhat,’ he inquired, ‘does Muzzer vant?’
‘An uninterrupted night’s sleep,’ said Leslie, who had just returned, more conventionally garbed in a pair of pyjama trousers and sandals.
‘Max,’ said Donald sternly, ‘stop monopolizing the conversation. Remember what we have come for.’
‘Of course,’ said Max delightedly. ‘Ve have vunderful news, Larry. Donald has decided to become an author.’
‘Had to,’ murmured Donald modestly. ‘Seeing all you chaps living in the lap of luxury. Royalties pouring in. Felt I must try my hand at it.’
‘That’s jolly good,’ said Larry, with a certain lack of enthusiasm.
‘I’ve just completed the first chapter,’ said Donald, ‘and so we came out hot-foot, as it were, so that I could read it to you.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Larry, horrified. ‘No, Donald, really. My critical faculties are completely dehydrated at half past two in the morning. Can’t you leave it here and I’ll read it tomorrow?’
‘It’s short,’ said Donald, taking no notice of Larry and producing a small sheet of paper from his pocket, ‘but I think you will find the style interesting.’
Larry gave an exasperated sigh, and we all sat back and listened expectantly while Donald cleared his throat.
‘Suddenly,’ he began in a deep vibrant voice, ‘suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, there he was and then suddenly, there she
was, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly. And suddenly he looked at her, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, and she suddenly looked at him, suddenly. She suddenly opened her arms, suddenly, suddenly, and he opened his arms, suddenly. Then suddenly they came together and, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, he could feel the warmth of her body and suddenly, suddenly she could feel the warmth of his mouth on hers as they suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly fell on the couch together.’
There was a long pause while we waited for Donald to go on. He gulped once or twice as though overcome with emotion at his own writing, folded the piece of paper carefully and put it back in his pocket.
‘What do you think?’ he inquired of Larry.
‘Well, it’s a bit short,’ said Larry cautiously.
‘Ah, but what do you think of the style?’ said Donald.
‘Well, it’s, um, interesting,’ said Larry. ‘I think you’ll find it’s been done before, though.’
‘Couldn’t have been,’ explained Donald. ‘You see, I only thought of it tonight.’
‘I don’t think he ought to have any more to drink,’ said Leslie loudly.
‘Hush, dear,’ said Mother. ‘What do you intend to call it, Donald?’
‘I thought,’ said Donald owlishly, ‘I thought I would call it
The Suddenly Book
.’
‘A very trenchant title,’ said Larry. ‘I feel, however, that your main characters could be padded out a little bit, in depth, as it were, before you get them all tangled up on the sofa.’
‘Yes,’ said Donald. ‘You could well be right.’
‘Well, that
is
interesting,’ said Mother, sneezing violently. ‘And now I think we really all ought to have a cup of tea.’
‘I vill make de tea for you, Muzzer,’ said Max, leaping to his feet and starting all the dogs barking again.
‘I will help you,’ said Donald.
‘Margo, dear, you had better go with them and just make sure they find everything,’ said Mother.
When the three of them had left the room, Mother looked at Larry.
‘And these are the people,’ she said coldly, ‘you say are not eccentric.’
‘Well, Donald’s not eccentric,’ said Larry. ‘He’s just a bit high.’
‘And suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly he was drunk,’ intoned Leslie, putting some more logs on the fire and kicking it into some semblance of a blaze.
‘They are both of them very good chaps,’ said Larry. ‘Donald’s already laid half of Corfu by its ears.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Mother.
‘Well, you know how the Corfiotes love to worm every hidden secret out of you,’ said Larry. ‘They’re all convinced that since he appears to have private means and is so incredibly British that he must have a terribly posh background. So he has been amusing himself by telling them all different stories. He has so far, I have been assured, been the elder son of a duke, the cousin of the Bishop of London, and the illegitimate son of Lord Chesterfield. He has been educated at Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, and, to my delight, this morning Mrs Papanopoulos assured me that he had assured her that his formal education had been undertaken at Girton.’
Just at that moment Margo came back into the drawing-room, looking slightly distraught.
‘I think you had better come and do something with them, Larry,’ she said. ‘Max has just lighted the kitchen fire with a five-pound note and Donald has disappeared and keeps shouting “Cooee” at us and we can’t see where he’s gone.’
All of us trooped down to the gigantic stone-flagged kitchen where a kettle was starting to sing on one of the charcoal fires and Max was contemplating, woefully, the charred remains of a five-pound note which he held in one hand.
‘Really, Max,’ said Mother, ‘what a silly thing to do.’
Max beamed at her.
‘No expense spared for Muzzer,’ he said, and then, pressing the remains of the fiver into her hand, ‘Keep it, Muzzer, as a souvenir.’
‘Cooee,’ came a doleful, echoing cry.
‘That’s Donald,’ said Max proudly.
‘Where is he?’ said Mother.
‘I don’t know,’ said Max. ‘Ven he vants to hide, he vants to hide.’
Leslie strode to the back door and flung it open.
‘Donald,’ he called, ‘are you there?’
‘Cooee,’ came a quavering cry from Donald with subtle, echoing overtones.
‘Christ!’ said Leslie. ‘The silly bastard’s fallen down the well.’
In the garden at the back of the kitchen there was a large well some fifty feet deep with a thick, round, iron pipe running right down the shaft. From the echoing qualities of Donald’s voice, we were quite sure that Leslie’s guess was right. Carrying a lamp, we made our way hurriedly up to the edge of the well and peered, in a circle, down into its dark depths. Half-way down the pipe was Donald, his arms and legs entwined firmly round it. He gazed up at us.
‘Cooee,’ he said coyly.
‘Donald, don’t be a bloody fool,’ said Larry exasperatedly. ‘Come up out of there. If you fall into that water you’ll drown. Not that I worry about that, but you’ll pollute our entire water supply.’
‘Shan’t,’ said Donald.
‘Donald,’ said Max, ‘ve vant you. Come. It is cold down dere. Come and have some tea with Muzzer and ve vill talk more about your book.’
‘Do you insist?’ asked Donald.
‘Yes, yes, we insist,’ said Larry impatiently.
Slowly and laboriously Donald climbed up the pipe, while we watched him breathlessly. When he was within easy reach, Max and the entire family leaned over the well, grabbed various portions of his anatomy, and hauled him to safety. Then we escorted our guests back into the house and plied them with vast quantities of hot tea until they seemed as sober as they were likely to be without having slept.
‘I think you had better go home now,’ said Larry firmly, ‘and we’ll meet you in town tomorrow.’
We escorted them out onto the veranda. The cab stood, with the horse drooping forlornly between the shafts. The cab driver was nowhere to be seen.
‘Did they have a cab driver?’ Larry asked of me.
I said that, quite honestly, I had been so captivated by the sight of their candelabras that I had not noticed.
‘I vill drive,’ said Max, ‘and Donald shall sing to me.’
Donald arranged himself carefully in the back of the cab with the candelabras and Max took to the driving seat. He cracked the whip in a most professional manner and the horse aroused itself from its comatose condition, gave a sigh, and then shambled off down the drive.
‘Good night,’ shouted Max, waving his whip.
We waited until they had disappeared from sight behind the olive trees and then trooped back inside the house and with sighs of heartfelt relief, closed the front door.
‘Really, Larry, you shouldn’t invite people at this hour of night,’ said Mother.
‘I
didn’t
invite them at this hour of the night,’ said Larry, annoyed. ‘They just
came
. I invited them for drinks.’