Authors: Gerald Durrell
I had just decided that this was the point where I should step in to add a mantis and a gecko to my menagerie when another protagonist entered the arena. From the shadows of the grapevine a scutigera slid into view, a moving carpet of legs, skimming purposefully towards the still-twitching moth. It reached it, poured itself over the body, and sank its jaws into the moth’s soft thorax. It was a fascinating scene; the mantis bent almost double, slashing downwards with her needle-sharp claws at the gecko who, with eyes protruding with excitement, was hanging on grimly though he was being whipped to and fro by his large antagonist. The scutigera meanwhile, deciding it could not move the moth, lay draped over it like a pelmet, sucking out its vital juices.
It was at that point that Theresa Olive Agnes Dierdre, known as Dierdre for short, made her appearance. Dierdre was one of a pair of enormous common toads that I had found, tamed with comparative ease, and established in the tiny walled garden below the veranda. Here they lived a blameless life among the geraniums and tangerine trees, venturing up onto the veranda when the lights were lit to take their share of the insect life.
So taken up was I by the strange foursome in front of me that I had forgotten all about Dierdre and when she appeared on the scene I was unprepared, lying as I was on my stomach with my nose some six inches from the battlefield. Unbeknownst to me, Dierdre had been watching the skirmishing from beneath a chair. She now hopped forward fatly, paused for a brief second, then, before I could do anything, leaped forward in the purposeful way that toads have, opened her huge mouth and with the aid of her tongue flipped both scutigera and moth into her capacious maw. She paused again, gulping so that her protuberant eyes disappeared briefly, and then turned smartly to the left and flapped both mantis and gecko into her mouth. Only for a moment did the gecko’s tail protrude, wriggling like a worm between Dierdre’s thick lips, before she stuffed it firmly into her mouth, toad-fashion, with her thumbs.
I had read about food chains and the survival of the fittest but this I felt was carrying things too far.
Apart from anything else, I was annoyed with Dierdre for spoiling what was proving to be an absorbing drama. So that she would not interfere with anything else I carried her back to the walled garden she shared with her husband, Terence Oliver Albert Dick, under a stone trough full of marigolds. I reckoned she had eaten quite enough for one evening anyway.
So it was to a house baked crisp as a biscuit, hot as a baker’s oven, and teeming with animal life that Adrian Fortescue Smythe made his appearance. Adrian, a school friend of Leslie’s, had
spent one holiday with us in England and as a result had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with Margo, much to her annoyance. We were all spread out on the veranda reading our fortnightly mail when the news of Adrian’s imminent arrival was broken to us by Mother.
‘Oh, how nice,’ she said. ‘That will be nice.’
We all stopped reading and looked at her suspiciously.
‘
What
will be nice?’ asked Larry.
‘I’ve had a letter from Mrs Fortescue Smythe,’ said Mother.
‘I don’t see anything nice about
that
,’ said Larry.
‘What does the old hag want?’ Leslie inquired.
‘Leslie, dear, you mustn’t call her an old hag. She was very kind to you, remember.’
Leslie grunted derisively
‘What’s she want anyway?’
‘Well, she says Adrian’s doing a tour of the Continent and could he come to Corfu and stay with us for a bit.’
‘Oh good,’ said Leslie, ‘it’ll be nice to have Adrian to stay.’
‘Yes, he’s a nice boy,’ admitted Larry magnanimously.
‘Isn’t he!’ said Mother enthusiastically. ‘Such nice manners.’
‘Well,
I’m
not pleased he’s coming,’ contributed Margo. ‘He’s one of the most boring people I know. He makes me yawn just to look at him. Can’t you say we’re full up, Mother?’
‘But I thought you liked Adrian,’ said Mother, surprised. ‘He certainly liked you, if I remember.’
‘That’s just the point. I don’t want him drooling all over the place like a sex-starved spaniel.’
Mother straightened her spectacles and looked at Margo.
‘Margo, dear, I don’t think you ought to talk about Adrian like that, I don’t know where you get these expressions. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. I never saw him look like a… like a… well… like what you said. He seemed perfectly well behaved to me.’
‘Of course he was,’ said Leslie belligerently. ‘It’s just Margo; she thinks every man is after her.’
‘I don’t,’ said Margo indignantly. ‘I just don’t like him. He’s squishy. Every time you looked around, there he was, dribbling.’
‘Adrian never dribbled in his life.’
‘He did. Nothing but dribble, dribble, drool.’
‘
I
never saw him dribbling,’ said Mother, ‘and anyway I can’t say he mustn’t stay just because he dribbles, Margo. Do be reasonable.’
‘He’s Les’ friend. Let him dribble over Les.’
‘He doesn’t dribble. He’s never dribbled.’
‘Well,’ said Mother, with the air of one solving a problem. ‘There’ll be plenty for him to do so I dare say he won’t have time to dribble.’
A fortnight later a starving, exhausted Adrian arrived, having cycled with practically no money all the way from Calais on a bicycle, which had given up the unequal struggle and fallen to bits at Brindisi. For the first few days we saw little of him since Mother insisted he went to bed early, got up late, and had another helping of everything. When he did put in an appearance I watched him narrowly for signs of dribbling, for of all the curious friends we had had staying with us, we had never had one that dribbled before and I was anxious to witness this phenomenon. But apart from a tendency to go scarlet every time Margo entered the room and to sit looking at her with his mouth slightly open (when honesty compelled me to admit he did look rather like a spaniel), he betrayed no other signs of eccentricity. He had extravagantly curly hair, large, very gentle hazel eyes, and his hormones had just allowed him to achieve a hairline moustache of which he was extremely proud. He had bought, as a gift for Margo, a record of a song which he obviously considered to be the equivalent of Shakespearian sonnets set to music. It was called ‘At Smokey Joe’s’ and we all grew to hate it intensely,
for Adrian’s day was not complete unless he had played this cacophonous ditty at least twenty times.
‘Dear God,’ Larry groaned at breakfast one morning as he heard the hiss of the record, ‘not
again
, not at this hour.’
‘At Smokey Joe’s in Havana,’ the gramophone proclaimed loudly in a nasal tenor voice, ‘I lingered quenching my thirst…’
‘I can’t bear it. Why can’t he play something else?’ Margo wailed.
‘Now, now, dear. He likes it,’ said Mother placatingly.
‘Yes, and he bought it for
you
,’ said Leslie. ‘It’s your bloody present. Why don’t you tell him to stop?’
‘No, you can’t do that, dear,’ said Mother. ‘After all, he is a guest.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ snapped Larry. ‘Just because he’s tone deaf, why should we all have to suffer? It’s Margo’s record. It’s her responsibility.’
‘But it seems so impolite,’ said Mother worriedly. ‘After all, he brought it as a present; he thinks we like it.’
‘I know he does. I find it hard to credit such depths of ignorance,’ said Larry. ‘D’you know he took off Beethoven’s Fifth yesterday
halfway through
to put on that emasculated yowling! I tell you he’s about as cultured as Attila the Hun.’
‘Sshh, he’ll hear you, Larry dear,’ said Mother.
‘What, with that row going on? He’d need an ear trumpet.’
Adrian, oblivious to the family’s restiveness, now joined the recorded voice to make a duet. As he had a nasal tenor voice remarkably similar to the vocalist’s the result was pretty horrible.
‘I saw a damsel there… That was really where… I saw her first… Oh, Mama Inez… Oh, Mama Inez… Oh, Mama Inez… Mama Inez…’ warbled Adrian and the gramophone more or less in unison.
‘God in heaven!’ Larry exploded. ‘That’s really too much! Margo, you’ve got to speak to him.’
‘Well, do it politely, dear,’ said Mother. ‘We don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
‘I feel just like hurting his feelings,’ said Larry.
‘I know,’ said Margo, ‘I’ll tell him Mother’s got a headache.’
‘That will only give us a temporary respite,’ pointed out Larry.
‘
You
tell him Mother’s got a headache and
I’ll
hide the needle,’ suggested Leslie triumphantly. ‘How about that?’
‘Oh, that’s a brainwave,’ Mother exclaimed, delighted that the problem had been solved without hurting Adrian’s feelings.
Adrian was somewhat mystified by the disappearance of the needles and the fact that everyone assured him they could not be obtained in Corfu. However, he had a retentive memory, if no ability to carry a tune, so he hummed ‘At Smokey Joe’s’ all day long, sounding like a hive of distraught tenor bees.
As the days passed, his adoration for Margo showed no signs of abating; if anything, it grew worse, and Margo’s irritation waxed with it. I began to feel very sorry for Adrian, for it seemed that nothing he could do was right. Because Margo said she thought his moustache made him look like an inferior gentlemen’s hairdresser, he shaved it off, only to have her proclaim that moustaches were a sign of virility. Furthermore, she was heard to say in no uncertain terms that she much preferred the local peasant boys to any English import.
‘They’re so handsome and so sweet,’ she said to Adrian’s obvious chagrin. ‘They all sing so well. They have such nice manners. They play the guitar. Give me one of them instead of an Englishman any day. They have a sort of ordure about them.’
‘Don’t you mean aura?’ asked Larry.
‘Anyway,’ Margo continued, ignoring this, ‘they’re what I call
men
, not namby-pamby dribbling wash-outs.’
‘Margo, dear,’ said Mother, glancing nervously at the wounded Adrian. ‘I don’t think that’s very kind.’
‘I’m not trying to be kind,’ said Margo, ‘and most of cruelty is kindness if it’s done in the right way.’
Leaving us with this baffling piece of philosophy, she went off to see her latest conquest, a richly tanned fisherman with a luxuriant moustache. Adrian was so obviously mortified that the family felt it must try and alleviate his mood of despair.
‘Don’t take any notice of Margo, Adrian dear,’ said Mother soothingly. ‘She doesn’t mean what she says. She’s very headstrong, you know. Have another peach.’
‘Pig-headed,’ said Leslie. ‘And
I
ought to know.’
‘I don’t see
how
I can be more like the peasant boys,’ mused Adrian, puzzled. ‘I suppose I could take up the guitar.’
‘No, no, don’t do that,’ said Larry hastily, ‘that’s quite unnecessary. Why not try something simple? Try chewing garlic.’
‘Garlic?’ asked Adrian, surprised. ‘Does Margo like garlic?’
‘Sure to,’ said Larry, ‘you heard what she said about those peasant lads’ auras. Well, what’s the first bit of their aura that hits you when you go near them? Garlic!’
Adrian was much struck by the logic of this and chewed a vast quantity of garlic, only to be told by Margo, with a handkerchief over her nose, that he smelled like the local bus on market day.
Adrian seemed to me to be a very nice person; he was gentle and kind and always willing to do anything that anyone asked of him. I felt it my duty to do something for him, but short of locking Margo in his bedroom – a thought which I dismissed as impractical and liable to be frowned on by Mother – I could think of nothing very sensible. I decided to discuss the matter with Mr Kralefsky in case he could suggest anything. When we were having our coffee break I told him about Adrian’s unsuccessful pursuit of Margo, a welcome respite for us both from the insoluble mysteries of the square on the hypotenuse.
‘Aha!’ he said. ‘The paths of love never run smooth. One is tempted to wonder, indeed, if life would not be a trifle dull if the road to one’s goal were always smooth.’
I was not particularly interested in my tutor’s philosophical flights but I waited politely. Mr Kralefsky picked up a biscuit
delicately in his beautifully manicured hands, held it briefly over his coffee cup and then christened it in the brown liquid before popping it into his mouth. He chewed methodically, his eyes closed.
‘It seems to me,’ he said at last, ‘that this young Lochinvar is trying too hard.’
I said that Adrian was English but, in any case, how could one try too hard; if one didn’t try hard one didn’t achieve success.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Kralefsky archly, ‘but in matters of the heart things are different. A little bit of indifference sometimes works wonders.’
He put his fingertips together and gazed raptly at the ceiling. I could tell that we were about to embark on one of his flights of fancy with his favourite mythological character, ‘a lady’.
‘I remember once I became greatly enamoured of a certain lady,’ said Kralefsky. ‘I tell you this in confidence, of course.’
I nodded and helped myself to another biscuit. Kralefsky’s stories were apt to be a bit lengthy.
‘She was a lady of such beauty and accomplishments that every eligible man flocked round her, like… like… bees round a honey pot,’ said Mr Kralefsky, pleased with this image. ‘From the moment I saw her I fell deeply, irrevocably, inconsolably in love and felt that she in some measure returned my regard.’
He took a sip of coffee to moisten his throat, then he trellised his fingers together and leaned across the desk, his nostrils flaring, his great, soulful eyes intense.
‘I pursued her relentlessly as a… as a… hound on the scent, but she was cold and indifferent to my advances. She even mocked the love that I offered her.’
He paused, his eyes full of tears, and blew his nose vigorously.
‘I cannot describe to you the torture I went through, the burning agony of jealousy, the sleepless nights of pain. I lost twenty-four kilos; my friends began to worry about me, and, of course, they all tried to persuade me that the lady in question
was not worthy of my suffering. All except one friend… a… an experienced man of the world, who had, I believe, had several affairs of the heart himself, one as far away as Baluchistan. He told me that I was trying too hard, that as long as I was casting my heart at the lady’s feet she would be, like all females, bored by her conquest. But if I showed a little indifference, aha! my friend assured me, it would be a very different tale.’