Mother wavered. She was very fond of Donald and Max. “Well, I... I suppose they could come,” she said.
“And Sven should be back by then,” said Larry. “He’d like to come, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I don’t mind Sven,” said Mother. “I like Sven.”
“And I could invite Mactavish,” said Leslie.
“Oh God, not that awful man,” Larry said disdainfully.
“I don’t see why you call him an awful man,” said Leslie belligerently. “We have to put up with your awful friends. Why shouldn’t you put up with mine?”
“Now, now, dears,” said Mother peaceably, “don’t argue. I suppose we could ask Mactavish, if you want to have him. But I don’t really understand what you see in him, Leslie.”
“He’s a jolly good pistol shot,” said Leslie, as if this was sufficient explanation.
“And I could invite Leonora,” said Margo excitedly.
“Now look! Stop it, all of you,” said Mother. “By the time you’re finished you’ll have the boat sinking with people. I thought the whole idea was to go away and have a rest from people.”
“But these aren’t people,” said Larry, “these are friends. All the difference in the world.”
“Well, just let’s leave it at that number then,” said Mother. “If I have to cook enough food for three days, that’s quite sufficient.”
“I’ll see Spiro, when he comes, about the boat,” said Leslie.
“What about taking the ice-box?” said Larry.
Mother put on her spectacles again and looked at him. “Taking the ice-box?” she asked. “Are you joking?”
“No, of course I’m not joking,” said Larry. “We want iced drinks and butter and things like that.”
“But, Larry dear,” said Mother, “don’t be ridiculous. You know what a major operation it was to get it into the house at all. We can’t move it.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Larry. “It’s perfectly possible if we put our minds to it.”
“Which generally means,” said Leslie, “that you give orders and let everybody else do the work.”
“Nonsense,” said Larry, “it’s perfectly simple. After all, if it was got into the house, it must be possible to get it out again.”
The ice-box they were referring to was Mother’s pride and joy. In those days in Corfu none of the outlying villas could boast of electricity, and if such a thing as a kerosene refrigerator had been invented, it certainly hadn’t reached Corfu. Mother, having decided that it was unhygienic to live without a refrigerator, had drawn a rather shaky plan of an ice-box similar to the ones that she had used in India when she was a girl. She had given the sketch to Spiro and asked him whether he could have something similar made.
Spiro had scowled over it and then said, “Leaves its to mes, Mrs Durrells,” and waddled off into town.
Two weeks had passed and then one morning a large cart drawn by four horses, with six men sitting on the front, appeared up the drive. On the back of the cart was a monstrous ice-box. It was fully six feet long and four feet wide and four feet high. It was built out of inch-thick plank and had been lined with zinc and then sawdust had been padded down between the zinc and the wood. It took the six men, brawny though they were, the entire morning to get it into the larder. In the end we had to take the french windows off the drawing-room and carry it in that way. Once installed it dwarfed everything. Periodically, Spiro would bring great, long, dripping blocks of ice from town in his car and we would stock the thing up with it. In this way we could keep butter and milk and eggs fresh for a considerable length of time.
“No,” said Mother firmly, “I’m not having the ice-box moved. Apart from anything else, you might ruin its mechanism.”
“It hasn’t got any mechanism,” Larry pointed out.
“Well, it might get damaged,” said Mother. “No, I’ve quite made up my mind, We’re not having it moved. We can take enough ice with us. If we wrap it up in sacks and things it should last.”
Larry said nothing, but I saw the gleam m his eye.
As it was Mother’s birthday that we were going to celebrate while, as it were, on the ocean, we all were busy working out our presents for her. After some thought, I had decided to give her a butterfly net since she evinced such a great interest in my butterfly collection. Margo bought her a dress length of material which she rather wanted herself. Larry bought her a book which he wanted to read, and Leslie bought her a small pearl-handled revolver. As he explained to me, it would make her feel safe when we left her alone in the house. As his room was already a bristling armoury of guns of various shapes and sizes, none of which Mother knew how to use, I felt this was a curious choice for a present, but I said nothing.
The plans for our great venture went forward. Food was ordered and cooked. Sven, Donald and Max, Leonora and Mactavish were alerted. Theodore at first, as we had expected, said that he wouldn’t come as he was so prone to seasickness, but as we told him that there were a number of interesting ponds and little streams that we could stop at on the coastline, he wavered. Ardent freshwater biologist as he was, he felt it might be worth risking seasickness in order to investigate these, so he decided to come after all.
We had arranged that the benzina would come to the villa and there we would load it up. Then it would go back into the town, we would follow in the car, pick up all the other members of our party, and set off from there.
The morning that the benzina was supposed to arrive Mother and Margo had gone into town to do some last-minute shopping with Spiro. I was upstairs, putting a dead snake into spirits, when I heard strange thumping and banging noises downstairs. Wondering what on earth was afoot, I sped down. The noise seemed to be coming from the larder. I went in there and found six stalwart young village lads, being directed by Leslie and Larry, trying to move the monstrous ice-box. They had managed to shift it some considerable way, having knocked half the plaster off one wall, and Yani had dropped one end on his toe and was hobbling around with a bloodstained handkerchief tied around his foot.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked. “You know Mother doesn’t want that moved.”
“Now, you shut up and don’t interfere,” said Leslie. “We’ve got everything under control.”
“Just go away,” said Larry. “Go away and don’t get in the way. Why don’t you go down to the jetty and see whether the benzina’s come?”
I left them sweating and heaving on the giant ice-box and made my way down the hillside, across the road and onto our jetty. Standing at the end of it, I peered hopefully out towards the town of Corfu and there, sure enough, heading along the coast, came a benzina. I watched it as it drew closer and closer and wondered why it didn’t come in to shore towards the jetty. It was quite obvious that it was going to go straight past. Spiro, I thought, couldn’t have given the right instructions. I jumped up and down on the end of the jetty and waved my arms and shouted, and eventually I attracted the attention of the man in the boat.
In a leisurely fashion he turned the benzina’s nose in and brought it up to the jetty, flung his anchor over the back and let the nose of the boat bump gently against the woodwork.
“Good morning,” I said, “are you Taki?”
He was a little, fat, brown man, with pale, golden chrysanthemum-coloured eyes. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I’m Taki’s cousin.”
“Oh,” I said, “oh, well, that’s alright. They won’t be a minute. They’re just bringing the ice-box down.”
“The ice-box?” he asked.
“Yes, the ice-box. It’s rather large but,” I said, “I think it’ll go there.”
“Alright,” he said resignedly.
At that moment, at the top of the hillside, appeared the sweating, panting, arguing group of peasant lads carrying in their midst the ice-box, with Larry and Leslie dancing around them. They looked like a group of drunken dung beetles with a monstrous great ball of dung. Slowly, slipping and sliding and almost falling, and at one point almost dropping the ice-box so it rolled down the hill, they made their way down to the road, paused for a rest, and then got on to the jetty.