'What have you been doing, dear?' she asked.
Doing? What do you think I've been doing? I've been shooting.'
'But how did you get like that, dear? You're sopping. Did you fall in?
'Really, Mother, you and Margo have such remarkable perspicacity I sometimes wonder how you survive.'
'I only asked, dear,' said Mother.
'Well, of course I fell in; what did you think I'd been doing?
'You must change, dear, or you'll catch cold.'
'I can manage,' said Larry with dignity; 'I've had quite enough attempts on my life for one day.'
He refused all offers of assistance, collected a bottle of brandy from the larder, and retired to his room, where, on his instructions, Lugaretzia built a huge fire. He sat muffled up in bed, sneezing and consuming brandy. By lunch-time he sent down for another bottle, and at tea-time we could hear him singing lustily, interspersed with gigantic sneezes. At supper-time Lugaretzia had paddled upstairs with the third bottle, and Mother began to get worried. She sent Margo up to see if Larry was all right. There was a long silence, followed by Larry's voice raised in wrath, and Margo's pleading plaintively. Mother, frowning, stumped upstairs to see what was happening, and Leslie and I followed her.
In Larry's room a fire roared in the grate, and Larry lay concealed under a towering pile of bedclothes. Margo, clasping a glass, stood despairingly by the bed.
'What's the matter with him?' asked Mother, advancing determinedly.
'He's drunk,' said Margo despairingly, 'and I can't get any sense out of him. I'm trying to get him to take his Epsom salts, otherwise he'll feel awful tomorrow, but he won't touch it. He keeps hiding under the bedclothes and saying I'm trying to poison him.'
Mother seized the glass from Margo's hand and strode to the bedside.
'Now come on, Larry, and stop being a fool,' she snapped briskly; 'drink this down at once.''
The bedclothes heaved and Larry's tousled head appeared from the depths. He peered blearily at Mother, and blinked thoughtfully to himself.
'You're a horrible old woman ... I'm sure I've seen you somewhere before,' he remarked, and before Mother had recovered from the shock of this observation he had sunk into a deep sleep.
'Well,' said Mother, aghast, 'he must have had a lot. Anyway, he's asleep now, so let's just build up the fire and leave him. He'll feel better in the morning.'
It was Margo who discovered, early the following morning, that a pile of glowing wood from the fire had slipped down between the boards of the room and set fire to the beam underneath. She came flying downstairs in her nightie, pale with emotion, and burst into Mother's room.
'The house is on fire. . . . Get out. . . get out. . . she yelled dramatically.
Mother leapt out of bed with alacrity.
'Wake Gerry . . . wake Gerry,' she shouted, struggling, for some reason best known to herself, to get her corsets on over her nightie.
'Wake up wake up.... Fire... fire!' screamed Margo at the top of her voice.
Leslie and I tumbled out on to the landing.
'What's going on?' demanded Leslie.
'Fire!' screamed Margo in his ear. 'Larry's on fire!'
Mother appeared, looking decidedly eccentric with her corsets done up crookedly over her nightie.
'Larry's on fire? Quick, save him,' she screamed, and rushed upstairs to the attic, closely followed by the rest of us. Larry's room was full of acrid smoke, which poured up from between the floor-boards. Larry himself lay sleeping peacefully. Mother dashed over to the bed and shook him vigorously.
'Wake up, Larry; for heaven's sake wake up.'
'What's the matter?' he asked, sitting up sleepily.
'The room's on fire.'
'I'm not surprised,' he said, lying down again. 'Ask Les to put it out.'
Tour something on it,' shouted Les, 'get something to pour on it.'
Margo, acting on these instructions, seized a half-empty brandy bottle and scattered the contents over a wide area of floor. The flames leapt up and crackled merrily.
'You fool, not brandy V yelled Leslie; 'water ... get some water.'
But Margo, overcome at her contribution to the holocaust, burst into tears. Les, muttering wrathfully, hauled the bedclothes off the recumbent Larry and used them to smother the flames. Larry sat up indignantly.
'What the hell's going on?' he demanded.
'The room's on fire, dear.'
'Well, I don't see why I should freeze to death . . . why tear all the bedclothes off? Really, the fuss you all make. It's quite simple to put out a fire.'
'Oh, shut up,' snapped Leslie, jumping up and down on the bedclothes.
'I've never known people for panicking like you all do,' said Larry; 'it's simply a matter of keeping your head. Les has the worst of it under control; now if Gerry fetches the hatchet, and you, Mother, and Margo fetch some water, we'll soon have it out.'
Eventually, while Larry lay in bed and directed operations, the rest of us managed to rip up the planks and put out the smouldering beam. It must have been smouldering throughout the night, for the beam, a twelve-inch-thick slab of olive wood, was charred half-way through. When, eventually, Lugaretzia appeared and started to clean up the mass of smouldering bedclothes, wood splinters, water, and brandy, Larry lay back on the bed with a sigh.
'There you are,' he pointed out; 'all done without fuss and panic. It's just a matter of keeping your head. I would like someone to bring me a cup of tea, please; I've got the most splitting headache.'
'I'm not surprised; you were as tiddled as an owl last night,' said Leslie.
'If you can't tell the difference between a high fever due to exposure and a drunken orgy it's hardly fair to besmirch my character,' Larry pointed out.
'Well, the fever's left you with a good hangover, anyway,' said Margo.
'It's not a hangover,' said Larry with dignity, 'it's just the strain of being woken up at the crack of dawn by an hysterical pack of people and having to take control of a crisis.'
'Fat lot of controlling you did, lying in bed,' snorted Leslie.
'It's not the action that counts, it's the brainwork behind it, the quickness of wit, the ability to keep your head when all about you are losing their's. If it hadn't been for me you would probably all have been burnt in your beds.'
Conversation
SPRING had arrived and the island was sparkling with flowers. Lambs with flapping tails gambolled under the olives, crushing the yellow crocuses under their tiny hooves. Baby donkeys with bulbous and uncertain legs munched among the asphodels. The ponds and streams and ditches were tangled in chains of spotted toads' spawn, the tortoises were heaving aside their winter bedclothes of leaves and earth, and the first butterflies, winter-faded and frayed, were flitting wanly among the flowers.
In the crisp, heady weather the family spent most of its time on the veranda, eating, sleeping, reading, or just simply arguing. It was here, once a week, that we used to congregate to read our mail which Spiro had brought out to us. The bulk of it consisted of gun catalogues for Leslie, fashion magazines for Margo, and animal journals for myself. Larry's post generally contained books and interminable letters from authors, artists, and musicians, about authors, artists, and musicians. Mother's contained a wedge of mail from various relatives, sprinkled with a few seed catalogues. As we browsed we would frequently pass remarks to one another, or read bits aloud. This was not done with any motive of sociability (for no other member of the family would listen, anyway), but merely because we seemed unable to extract the full flavour of our letters and magazines unless they were shared. Occasionally, however, an item of news would be sufficiently startling to rivet the family's attention on it, and this happened one day in spring when the sky was like blue glass, and we sat in the dappled shade of the vine, devouring our mail.