We apologised for being late, which nobody seemed to have noticed, had a drink while Spiro collected some of the more perishable goods, and made our way down to where the benzina awaited us.
We climbed on board, the final parcels of foodstuff were packed away in the ice-box, the engine was started and we cruised out across the placid water.
“I’ve bought some, um..., you know..., seasick pills,” said Theodore gravely, casting a suspicious glance at the water, which looked as though it had been painted. “I thought perhaps there might be a little motion, you know, and as I’m such a bad sailor I thought I’d take the precaution.”
“Well, if there’s any motion, you can give me one,” said Mother. “I’m a very bad sailor, too.”
“Muzzer von’t get seasick,” said Max, patting her on the shoulder. “I von’t let Muzzer get seasick.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to stop it,” said Mother.
“Garlic,” said Max, “garlic. It’s an old Austrian remedy. It is excellent.”
“What do you mean, raw garlic?” said Margo. “How disgusting.”
“No, no, Margo dear, it is not disgusting,” said Max. “It is very good for you, very good indeed.”
“I can’t stand men who smell of garlic,” said Margo. “They simply blow you to pieces.”
“But if you took de garlic too,” said Max, “den you could blow dem to pieces.”
“Danmed bad form, eating garlic,” said Donald. “Damned bad form. Only Continentals do it.”
“It’s supposed to be, um..., exceedingly good for one,” said Theodore, “according to medical evidence.”
“Well, I always put it in the food when I’m cooking,” said Mother. “I think it adds to the flavour.”
“But it’s such a terribly dreary smell,” said Leonora, draping herself like a Persian cat on the deck. “I travelled on a bus out to Perema the other day and, my dear, I nearly suffocated, Everybody was chewing the most enormous cloves of garlic and breathing it all back at me. I felt quite faint by the time we got there.”
Sven unhitched his accordion and hung it round his waist.
“My dear Mrs Durrell, what would you like me to play?” he inquired.
“Oh, er..., I don’t mind, Sven,” said Mother. “Something gay.”
“How about ‘There is a Tavern in the Town’?” suggested Theodore. This was the one tune that he could hear incessantly with great pleasure.
“Very well,” said Sven, and started playing.
Leslie and Mactavish were up in the bows. Periodically Mactavish would do a few knee-bends or press-ups. He was a health fiend, among other things. He had been in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at one time during his career and very seldom let you forget it. He always endeavoured to be the life and soul of the party, and the thing that he was proudest of was the fact that he was in tip-top physical condition. He would slap his stomach and say, “Look at that, look at that! Not bad for a man of forty-five, eh?”
So the benzina chugged its way across the channel that separated Corfu from the mainland, with Theodore vigorously singing “There is a Tavern in the Town”.
The trip over seemed extraordinarily short for me. There was so much to watch for — flying fish, seagulls — and I was constantly having to drag Theodore away from the adult company to ask his erudite advice on bits of seaweed and similar things of interest that were passing the boat.
Then, eventually we reached the extraordinary brown and eroded coast between Albania and Corfu which spread on into Greece, and as we drew closer and closer to the coast we passed towering pinnacles of rock like the carunculated, melted remains of a million multicoloured candles. Eventually, as night was falling, we discovered a bay that looked as though it had been bitten out of the hard rock by some gigantic sea monster. It was a perfect half moon, and here we thought we would make landfall. The sand was white, the cliffs tall and somehow protective, and so gently the benzina was brought in, the anchor was thrown over the side, and we came to a halt.
This was the moment when the ice-box came into its own. Out of it Mother and Spiro unpacked an incredible assortment of foodstuffs: legs of lamb stuffed with garlic, lobsters, and various extraordinary things that Mother had made which she called curry puffs. Some of them were in fact curry puffs but others were stuffed with different delicacies. And so we lay around on the deck and gorged ourselves.
In the forequarters of the boat we had a great pile of watermelons that looked like an array of pudgy footballs, green with whitish stripes on them. Periodically, one of these would be popped into the ice-box and then brought out so that we could cut it open. The pink and beautiful inside was as crisp as any ice cream that you could ever wish for. I got a certain amount of pleasure out of spitting the black pips from the watermelons over the side of the boat and watching all the small fish rush madly towards them, and then they would mouth them and reject them. There were some bigger ones, however, who, to my astonishment, came up like Hoovers and absorbed them.
After that we all bathed, with the exception of Mother, Theodore and Sven, who had a very esoteric conversation on the subject of witchcraft, haunted houses and vampires, while Spiro and Taki did the washing up.
It was fantastic to dive from the side of the boat into the dark waters, for as you hit them they burst into a firework display of greeny-gold phosphorescence so that you felt as though you were diving into a fire. Swimming under water, people left trails of phosphorescence behind them like a million tiny stars and when finally Leonora, who was the last one to come aboard, hauled herself up, her whole body for a brief moment looked as though it was encased in gold.
“My God, she’s lovely,” said Larry admiringly, “but I’m sure she’s a Lesbian. She resists all my advances.”
“Larry dear,” said Mother, “you shouldn’t say things like that about people.”
“She’s certainly very lovely,” said Sven, “so beautiful, in fact, that it almost makes me wish I weren’t a homosexual However, there are advantages to being homosexual.”
“I think to be bisexual is best,” said Larry, “then you’ve got the best of both worlds, as it were.”
“Larry dear,” said Mother, “you may find this conversation fascinating, but I don’t and I do wish you wouldn’t talk about it in front of Gerry.”
Mactavish was doing a series of complicated keep-fit exercises in the front of the boat.
“God, that man does irritate me,” said Larry, pouring out some more wine. “What’s he keep fit for? He never appears to do anything.”
“Really, dear,” said Mother, “I do wish you would stop making comments about people like this. It’s very embarrassing on a small boat like this. He might hear you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind if he kept fit in order to go around raping all the girls in Corfu,” said Larry, “but he never does anything.”
While doing his exercises, Mactavish was, for about the eighty-fourth time, telling Leslie, who was lounging near him, of his experiences as a Mountie. All of them were very thrilling and inevitably ended up with Mactavish getting his man.
“Ooooooh!” screeched Margo suddenly, with such vehemence that we all jumped and Larry upset his glass of wine.
“I do wish you wouldn’t make those sudden seagull-like cries,” he said irritably.
“But I just remembered,” said Margo, “it’s Mother’s birthday to-morrow.”
“Muzzer has a birzday to-morrow?” said Max. “But vy didn’t you tell us?”
“Well, that’s why we came over here — to celebrate Mother’s birthday, to give her a holiday,” said Margo.