No wonder I preferred the ANIMA
The sun-drenched TV drama enchanted millions. Now, launching a glorious summer series, the Mail presents Gerald Durrell’s timeless memoir about his madcap family — and the start of their magical adventure ...
A BITING wind had ushered in a leaden August sky. Along the Bournemouth seafront a sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque grey sheets whenever the wind caught it.
It was the sort of weather calculated to try anyone’s endurance, and brought with it the usual selection of ailments to which my family was prone.
For me, aged ten, lying on the floor and labelling my collection of shells, it was catarrh, which filled my skull like cement.
For my brother Leslie, 19, hunched and glowering by the fire, it was his ears, inflamed and bleeding delicately.
To my 18-year-old sister Margo the weather had delivered a fresh dappling of acne spots to a face that was already blotched like a red veil. And for my widowed mother Louisa there was a rich, bubbling cold, with a twinge of rheumatism to season it. Only my eldest brother, Larry, then 23, was untouched.
He had become increasingly irritable as the days wore on. ‘Why do we stand this bloody climate?’ he asked suddenly one afternoon, gesturing towards the rain-distorted window. ‘Look at it! And, if it comes to that, look at us!
‘There’s Margo swollen up like a plate of scarlet porridge,’ he went on, ‘and Leslie wandering around with miles of cotton wool in each ear. And you,’ he said, turning on Mother. ‘Look at you! You’re looking more decrepit and hag-ridden every day.’
Mother peered over the top of the book she was reading. ‘Indeed I’m not,’ she said indignantly. ‘You are,’ Larry insisted. ‘And your family looks like a series of illustrations from a medical encyclopedia.’
He was into his stride now. ‘What we all need is sunshine,’ Larry continued. ‘A country where we can grow.’
‘Yes, dear, that would be nice,’ agreed Mother, not really listening.
‘I had a letter from [my friend] George this morning,’ said Larry. ‘He says Corfu’s wonderful. Why don’t we pack up and go to Greece?’
‘Very well, dear, if you like,’ said Mother unguardedly. Where Larry was concerned she was generally very careful not to commit herself.
‘When?’ asked Larry, buoyed by this surprising co-operation. ‘Well,’ replied Mother, realising her tactical error, ‘I think it would be a sensible idea if you were to go on ahead and arrange things. Then you can write and tell me if it’s nice, and we all can follow.’
‘No,’ said Larry firmly. ‘If we’re going to Greece, let’s all go together.’
‘But I can’t go just like that,’ protested Mother. ‘I have to arrange something about this house.’
‘Arrange what, for heaven’s sake?’ retorted Larry. ‘Sell it!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous’ said Mother firmly. ‘That’s quite out of the question. It would be madness.’
And so in the summer of 1935 we sold the house in Bournemouth and fled from the gloom of the English summer like a flock of migrating swallows.
WE THREADED our way out of the noise and confusion of the Customs shed into the brilliant sunshine on the quay.
Around us the old town rose steeply, tiers of multi-coloured houses piled haphazardly, green shutters folded back from their windows like the wings of a thousand moths.
Behind us lay the bay, smooth as a plate, smouldering with the enamelled blue of a jay’s eye. Our life in Corfu had begun.
Nobody who has not been househunting with my mother can possibly imagine what it is like.
We drove around the island in a cloud of dust the following morning while Mr Beeler, the guide from our hotel, showed us villa after villa in a bewildering selection of sizes, colours, and situations. Mother shook her head firmly at them all.
At last we had contemplated the tenth and final villa on Mr Beeler’s list, and Mother had shaken her head once again. ‘Madame Durrell,’ he said at last, ‘I have shown you every villa I know, yet you do not want any. What is the matter with these villas?’ Mother regarded him with astonishment. ‘Didn’t you notice?’ she asked. ‘None of them had a bathroom.’
Mr Beeler stared at Mother with bulging eyes. ‘But Madame,’ he wailed in genuine anguish, ‘what for you want a bathroom? Have you not got the sea?’
We returned in silence to the hotel. By the following morning Mother had decided that we would hire a car and go out house-hunting on our own.
She was convinced that somewhere on the island there lurked a villa with a bathroom. We did not share her confidence, and so it was a slightly irritable group that she herded to the taxi rank in the main square in Corfu Old Town.
The taxi-drivers, registering our innocent appearance, scrambled from inside their cars and flocked round us like vultures, each trying to out-shout his compatriots. Their voices grew louder and they began clutching hold of us.
Not yet used to the local customs, we began to fear we were in danger of our lives.
At that moment everyone was startled into silence by a voice that rumbled out above the uproar, a deep, rich, vibrant sound, the sort of voice you would expect a volcano to have. ‘Hoy!’ roared the voice. ‘Whys donts yous have someones who can talks your own language?’
Turning, we saw an ancient Dodge parked by the kerb.
Behind the wheel sat a short, barrel-bodied individual with hamlike hands and a leathery, scowling face surmounted by a jauntily tilted peaked cap.
The man got out of his car and walked towards us. Then he stopped and surveyed the group of now-silent cab drivers. ‘Thems been worrying yous?’ he asked Mother.
‘No, no,’ said Mother untruthfully; ‘it was just that we had difficulty in understanding them.’
‘Yous wants someones who can talks your own language,’ repeated the new arrival. ‘Thems bastards . . . if yous will excuses the words . . . would swindles their own mothers. Excuses me a minute and I’ll fix thems.’
He turned on the drivers a blast of Greek that almost swept them off their feet. He turned to us again. ‘Wheres yous wants to gos?’ he asked. ‘Can you take us to look for a villa?’ asked Larry.
‘Sure. I’ll takes yous anywheres.’
‘We are looking,’ said Mother firmly, ‘for a villa with a bathroom. Do you know of one?’
The man’s eyebrows twisted into a knot of thoughtfulness.’
‘Bathrooms?’ he said. ‘Yous wants a bathrooms?’
‘None of the ones we have seen so far had them,’ said Mother.
‘Oh, I knows a villa with a bathrooms,’ said the man. ‘Gets into the cars.’
Our driver engaged his gears with a terrifying sound. We shot through the twisted streets on the outskirts of the town, swerving in and out among the loaded donkeys, the locals and innumerable dogs, our horn honking a deafening warning.
During this our driver seized the opportunity to engage us in conversation.
‘Yous English?. . . English always wants bathrooms. . . I gets a bathroom in my house . . .Spiro’s my name, Spiro Hakiaopulos . . .they alls calls me Spiro Americano on accounts of I lives in America... Yes, spent eight years in Chicago . . .That’s where I learnt my goods English . . . Wents there to makes moneys . . .Then after eight years I says, “Spiros, yous mades enough...” sos I comes backs to Greece . . .brings this car . . . best