With March came the spring, and the island was flower-filled, scented, and a-flutter with new leaves. The cypress-trees that had tossed and hissed during the winds of winter now stood straight and sleek against the sky, covered with a misty coat of greenish-white cones. Waxy yellow crocuses appeared in great clusters, bubbling out among the tree-roots and tumbling down the banks. Under the myrtles, the grape-hyacinths lifted buds like magenta sugar-drops, and the gloom of the oak-thickets was filled with the dim smoke of a thousand blue day-irises. Anemones, delicate and easily wind-bruised, lifted ivory flowers the petals of which seemed to have been dipped in wine. Vetch, marigold, asphodel, and a hundred others flooded the fields and woods. Even the ancient olives, bent and hollowed by a thousand springs, decked themselves in clusters of minute creamy flowers, modest and yet decorative, as became their great age. It was no half-hearted spring, this: the whole island vibrated with it as though a great, ringing chord had been struck. Everyone and everything heard it and responded. It was apparent in the gleam of flower-petals, the flash of bird wings and the sparkle in the dark, liquid eyes of the peasant girls. In the water-filled ditches the frogs that looked newly enamelled snored rapturous chorus in the lush weeds. In the village coffee-shops the wine seemed redder and, somehow, more potent. Blunt, work-calloused fingers plucked at guitar strings with strange gentleness, and rich voices rose in lilting, haunting song.
Spring affected the family in a variety of ways. Larry bought himself a guitar and a large barrel of strong red wine. He interspersed his bouts of work by playing haphazardly on the instrument and singing Elizabethan love-songs in a meek tenor voice, with frequent pauses for refreshment. This would soon induce a mood of melancholy, and the love-songs would become more doleful, while between each Larry would pause to inform whichever member of the family happened to be present that spring, for him, did not mean the beginning of a new year, but the death of the old one. The grave, he would proclaim, making the guitar rumble ominously, yawned a little wider with each season.
One evening the rest of us had gone out and left Mother and Larry alone together. Larry had spent the evening singing more and more dismally, until he had succeeded in working them both into a fit of acute depression. They attempted to alleviate this state with the aid of wine, but unfortunately this had the reverse effect, for they were not used to the heavy wines of Greece. When we returned we were somewhat startled to be greeted by Mother, standing at the door of the villa with a hurricane lantern. She informed us with lady-like precision and dignity that she wished to be buried under the rose-bushes. The novelty of this lay in the fact that she had chosen such an accessible place for the disposal of her remains. Mother spent a lot of her spare time choosing places to be buried in, but they were generally situated in the most remote areas, and one had visions of the funeral cortege dropping exhausted by the wayside long before it had reached the grave.
When left undisturbed by Larry, however, spring for Mother meant an endless array of fresh vegetables with which to experiment, and a riot of new flowers to delight her in the garden. There streamed from the kitchen a tremendous number of new dishes, soups, stews, savouries, and curries, each richer, more fragrant, and more exotic than the last. Larry began to suffer from dyspepsia. Scorning the simple remedy of eating less, he procured an immense tin of bicarbonate of soda, and would solemnly take a dose after every meal.
'Why do you eat so much if it upsets you, dear?' Mother asked.
'It would be an insult to your cooking to eat less,' Larry replied unctuously.
'You're getting terribly fat,' said Margo; 'it's very bad for you.'
Nonsense!' said Larry in alarm.I'm not getting fat, Mother, am I?
'You look as though you've put on a little weight,' Mother admitted, surveying him critically.
'It's your fault,' Larry said unreasonably. 'You will keep tempting me with these aromatic delicacies. You're driving me to ulcers. I shall have to go on a diet. What's a good diet, Margo?
'Well,' said Margo, launching herself with enthusiasm into her favourite topic, 'you could try the orange-juice and salad one; that's awfully good. There's the milk and raw vegetable one . . . that's good too, but it takes a little time. Or there's the boiled fish and brown bread one. I don't know what that's like, I haven't tried it yet.'
'Dear God!' exclaimed Larry, genuinely shocked, 'are those diets?
'Yes, and they're all very good ones/ said Margo earnestly. 'I've been trying the orange-juice one and it's done wonders for my acne.'
'No,' said Larry firmly. 'I'm not going to do it if it means that I have to champ my way like a damned ungulate through bushels of raw fruit and vegetables. You will all have to resign yourselves to the fact that I shall be taken from you at an early age, suffering from fatty degeneration of the heart.'
At the next meal he took the precaution of having a large dose of bicarbonate beforehand, and then protested bitterly that the food tasted queer.
Margo was always badly affected by the spring. Her personal appearance, always of absorbing interest to her, now became almost an obsession. Piles of freshly laundered clothes filled her bedroom, while the washing-line sagged under the weight of clothes newly washed. Singing shrilly and untunefully she would drift about the villa, carrying piles of flimsy underwear or bottles of scent. She would seize every opportunity to dive into the bathroom, in a swirl of white towels, and once in there she was as hard to dislodge as a limpet from a rock. The family in turn would bellow and batter on the door, getting no more satisfaction than an assurance that she was nearly finished, an assurance which we had learnt by bitter experience not to have any faith in. Eventually she would emerge, glowing and immaculate, and drift from the house, humming, to sunbathe in the olive-groves or go down to the sea and swim. It was during one of these excursions to the sea that she met an over-good-looking young Turk. With unusual modesty she did not inform anyone of her frequent bathing assignations with this paragon, feeling, as she told us later, that we would not be interested. It was, of course, Spiro who discovered it. He watched over Margo's welfare with the earnest concern of a St Bernard, and there was precious little she could do without Spiro knowing about it. He cornered Mother in the kitchen one morning, glanced surreptitiously round to make sure they were not overheard, sighed deeply, and broke the news to her.
'I'm very sorrys to haves to tells you this, Mrs. Durrells,' he rumbled, 'buts I thinks you oughts to knows.'
Mother had by now became quite used to Spiro's conspiratorial air when he came to deliver some item of information about the family, and it no longer worried her.
'What's the matter now, Spiro?' she asked.
'It's Missy Margo,' said Spiro sorrowfully.
'What about her?'
Spiro glanced round uneasily.
'Dos you knows shes meetings a mans?' he inquired in a vibrant whisper.
'A man? Oh ... er ... yes, I did know,' said Mother, lying valiantly.
Spiro hitched up his trousers over his belly and leant forward.
'But dids you knows he's a Turk?' he questioned in tones of blood-curdling ferocity.
'A Turk?' said Mother vaguely. 'No, I didn't know he was a Turk. What's wrong with that?'
Spiro looked horrified.
'Gollys, Mrs. Durrells, whats wrongs with it? He's a Turk. I wouldn't trust a sonofabitch Turk with any girls.
He'll cuts her throats, thats what he'll do. Honest to Gods, Mrs. Durrells, its not safe, Missy Margo swimmings with hims.'