The Corfu Trilogy (50 page)

‘Why not?’ Larry inquired.

‘Well, you might at least have thought of
Gerry
,’ said Mother, bristling.

‘Gerry?’ asked Larry in surprise. ‘Gerry? What’s he got to do with it?’

‘What’s he got to
do
with it? Really, Larry, you do make me cross. That man could have been a bad influence on the boy if he had had much to do with him.’

Larry sat back on the sofa and looked at Mother. He gave a small exasperated sigh and put his book down.

‘For the last three mornings,’ he said, ‘Gerry’s been giving Sven natural history lessons in the olive groves. It doesn’t appear to have done either of them irretrievable harm.’

‘What?’ squeaked Mother. ‘What?’

I felt it was time to intervene. After all, I liked Sven. I explained how, early in his stay, he had wandered into my room and had become immediately absorbed and fascinated by my collection of creatures. Feeling that one convert was worth half a dozen saints, I had offered to take him into the olive groves and show him all my favourite haunts. So every morning we would set off into the olives and Sven would spend hours lying on his stomach peering at the busy lines of ants carrying their grass seeds or watching the bulbous-bodied female mantis laying her frothy egg case on a stone, or peering down the burrows of trap-door
spiders, murmuring, ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ to himself, in such an ecstatic tone of voice that it warmed my heart.

‘Well, dear,’ said Mother, ‘I think, in future, if you want to take one of Larry’s friends for walks you should tell me first.’

Each morning when I awoke the bedroom would be tiger-striped by the sun peering through the shutters. As usual, I would find that the dogs had managed to crawl onto the bed without my realizing it and would now be occupying more than their fair share, sleeping deeply and peacefully. Ulysses would be sitting by the window staring at the bars of golden sunlight, his eyes slit into malevolent disapproval. Outside, one could hear the hoarse, jeering crow of a cockerel and the soft murmuring of the hens (a sound soothing as bubbling porridge) as they fed under the orange and lemon trees, the distant clonk of goat bells, sharp chittering of sparrows in the eaves, and the sudden outburst of wheezing, imploring cries that denoted one of the parent swallows had brought a mouthful of food to their brood in the nest beneath my window. I would throw back the sheet and turf the dogs out onto the floor, where they would shake and stretch and yawn, their pink tongues curled like exotic leaves, and then I would go over to the window and throw back the shutters. Leaning out over the sill, the morning sun warm on my naked body, I would scratch thoughtfully at the little pink seals the dogs’ fleas had left on my skin, while I got my eyes adjusted to the light. Then I would peer down over the silver olive tops to the beach and the blue sea which lay half a mile away. It was on this beach that, periodically, the fishermen would pull in their nets, and when they did so this was always a special occasion for me, since the net dragged to shore from the depths of the blue bay would contain a host of fascinating sea life which was otherwise beyond my reach.

If I saw the little fishing boats bobbing on the water I would
get dressed hurriedly, and taking my collecting gear I would run through the olive trees down to the road and along it until I reached the beach. I knew most of the fishermen by name, but there was one who was my special friend, a tall, powerful young man with a mop of auburn hair. Inevitably, he was called Spiro after Spiridion, so in order to distinguish him from all the other Spiros I knew, I called him Kokino, or red. Kokino took a great delight in obtaining specimens for me, and although he was not a bit interested in the creatures himself, he got considerable pleasure from my obvious happiness.

One day I went down to the beach and the net was half-way in. The fishermen, brown as walnuts, were hauling on the dripping lines, their toes spreading wide in the sand as they pulled the massive bag of the net nearer and nearer to the shore.

‘Your health,
kyrié
Gerry,’ Kokino cried to me, waving a large freckled hand in greeting, his mop of hair glinting in the sun like a bonfire. ‘Today we should get some fine animals for you, for we put the net down in a new place.’

I squatted on the sand and waited patiently while the fishermen, chattering and joking, hauled away steadily. Presently the top of the net was visible in the shallow waters, and as it broke surface you could see the glitter and wink of the trapped fish inside it. Hauled out onto the sand, it seemed as though the net were alive, pulsating with the fish inside it, and there was the steady, staccato purring noise of their tails, flapping futilely against each other. The baskets were fetched and the fish were picked out of the net and cast into them. Red fish, white fish, fish with wine-coloured stripes, scorpion fish like flamboyant tapestries. Sometimes there would be an octopus or a cuttlefish leering up from inside the net with a look of alarm in its human-looking eyes. Once all the edible contents of the net had been safely stowed away in the baskets, it was my turn.

In the bottom of the net would be a great heap of stones and seaweed and it was among these that I found my trophies: once
a round flat stone from which grew a perfect coralline tree, pure white. It looked like a young beech tree in winter, its branches bare of leaves and covered with a layer of snow. Sometimes there would be cushion starfish, almost as thick as a sponge-cake and almost as large, the edges not forming pointed arms as with normal starfish, but rounded scallops. These starfish would be of a pale fawn colour, with a bright pattern of scarlet blotches. Once I got two incredible crabs, whose pincers and legs when pulled in tight fitted with immaculate precision the sides of their oval shells. These crabs were white with a rusty-red pattern on the back that looked not unlike an Oriental face. It was hardly what I would call protective colouration, and I imagine they must have had few enemies to be able to move about the sea-bed wearing such a conspicuous livery.

On this particular morning I was picking over a great pile of weed, and Kokino, having stowed away the last of the fish in the baskets, came over to help me. There was the usual assortment of tiny squids, the size of a match-box, pipe-fish, spider-crabs, and a variety of tiny fish which, in spite of their small size, had been unable to escape through the mesh of the net. Suddenly Kokino gave a little grunt, half surprise and half amusement, and picked something out of a tangled skein of seaweed and held it out to me on the calloused palm of his hand. I could hardly believe my eyes, for it was a sea-horse. Browny-green, carefully jointed, looking like some weird chess-man, it lay on Kokino’s hand, its strange protruded mouth gasping and its tail coiling and uncoiling frantically. Hurriedly I snatched it from him and plunged it into a jar full of sea-water, uttering a mental prayer to St Spiridion that I was in time to save it. To my delight it righted itself, then hung suspended in the jar, the tiny fins on each side of its horse’s head fluttering themselves into a blur. Pausing only to make sure that it really was all right, I scrabbled through the rest of the weed with the fervour of a gold prospector panning a river-bed where he had found a nugget. My diligence was rewarded, for in
a few minutes I had six sea-horses of various sizes hanging suspended in the jar. Enraptured by my good luck, I bid Kokino and the other fishermen a hasty farewell and raced back to the villa.

Here I unceremoniously foreclosed on fourteen slowworms and usurped their aquarium to house my new catches. I knew that the oxygen in the jar in which the sea-horses were imprisoned would not last for long and if I wanted to keep them alive I would have to move quickly. Carrying the aquarium, I raced down to the sea again, washed it out carefully, filled the bottom with sand and dashed back to the villa with it; then I had to run down to the sea again three times with buckets to fill it up with the required amount of water. By the time I had poured the last bucket into it, I was so hot and sweaty I began to wonder whether the sea-horses were worth it. But as soon as I tipped them into the aquarium I knew that they were. I had placed a small, twiggy, dead olive branch in the aquarium, which I had anchored to the sand, and as the sea-horses plopped out of the jar they righted themselves and then, like ponies freshly released in a field, they sped round and round the aquarium, their fins moving so fast that you could not see them and each one gave the appearance of being driven by some small internal motor. Having, as it were, galloped round their new territory, they all made for the olive branch, entwined their tails round it lovingly, and stood there gravely at attention.

The sea-horses were an instant success. They were about the only animal that I had introduced to the villa that earned the family’s unanimous approval. Even Larry used to pay furtive visits to my study in order to watch them zooming and bobbing to and fro in their tank. They took up a considerable amount of my time, for I found that the sea-water soon grew rancid, and in order to keep it clear and fresh I had to go down to the sea with buckets four or five times a day. This was an exhausting process, but I was glad that I kept it up, for otherwise I would not have witnessed a very extraordinary sight.

One of the sea-horses, obviously an old specimen since he was nearly black, had a very well-developed paunch. This I merely attributed to age; then I noticed one morning there was a line along the paunch, almost as though it had been slit with a razor blade. I was watching this and wondering whether the sea-horses had been fighting and if so what they used as a weapon (for they seemed so defenceless), when to my complete and utter astonishment the slit opened a little wider and out swam a minute and fragile replica of the sea-horse. I could hardly believe my eyes, but as soon as the first baby was clear of the pouch and hanging in the clear water, another one joined it and then another and another until there were twenty microscopic sea-horses floating round their giant parent like a little cloud of smoke. Terrified lest the other adult sea-horses eat the babies, I hurriedly set up another aquarium and placed what I fondly imagined to be the mother and her offspring in it. Keeping two aquariums going with fresh water was an even more Herculean task and I began to feel like a pit-pony; but I was determined to continue until Thursday, when Theodore came to tea, so that I could show him my acquisitions.

‘Aha,’ he said, peering into the tanks with professional zeal, ‘these are really most interesting. Sea-horses are, of course, according to the books, supposed to be found here, but I myself have er… you know… never seen them previously.’

I showed Theodore the mother with her swarm of tiny babies.

‘No, no,’ said Theodore. ‘That’s not the mother, that’s the father.’

At first I thought that Theodore was pulling my leg, but he went on to explain that when the female laid the eggs and they had been fertilized by the male, they were taken into this special brood-pouch by the male and there they matured and hatched, so what I had thought was a proud mother was in reality a proud father.

Soon the strain of keeping my stable of sea-horses with a
supply of microscopic sea-food and fresh water became too great, and so with the utmost reluctance I had to take them down to the sea and release them.

It was Kokino who, as well as contributing specimens from his nets to my collection, showed me one of the most novel fishing methods I had ever come across.

I met him one day down by the shore putting a kerosene tin full of sea-water into his rickety little boat. Reposing in the bottom of the tin was a large and very soulful-looking cuttlefish. Kokino had tied a string round it where the head met the great egg-shaped body. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to fish for cuttlefish. I was puzzled because his boat did not contain any lines or nets or even a trident. How then did he propose to catch cuttlefish?

‘With love,’ said Kokino mysteriously.

I felt it was my duty, as a naturalist, to investigate every method of capturing animals, so I asked Kokino whether it was possible for me to accompany him in order to see this mysterious process. We rowed the boat out into the blue bay until it hung over a couple of fathoms of crystal clear water. Here Kokino took the end of the long string that was attached to the cuttlefish and tied it carefully round his big toe. Then he picked up the cuttlefish and dropped it over the side of the boat. It floated in the water for a brief moment, looking up at us with what seemed to be an incredulous expression, and then, squirting out jets of water, it shot off in a series of jerks, trailing the string behind it, and soon disappeared in the blue depths. The string trailed gradually over the side of the boat, then tautened against Kokino’s toe. He lit a cigarette and rumpled his flaming hair.

‘Now,’ he said, grinning at me, ‘we will see what love can do.’

He bent to his oars and rowed the boat slowly and gently along the surface of the bay, with frequent pauses during which he stared with intense concentration at the string fastened to his toe. Suddenly he gave a little grunt, let the oars fold to the side
of the boat like the wings of a moth, and grasping the line, he started to pull it in. I leaned over the side of the boat, staring down into the clear water, my eyes straining towards the end of the taut black line. Presently, in the depths, a dim blur appeared as Kokino hauled more quickly on the line and the cuttlefish came into sight. As it got closer, I saw, to my astonishment, it was not one cuttlefish but two, locked together in a passionate embrace. Swiftly Kokino hauled them alongside and with a quick flip of the line landed them in the bottom of the boat. So engrossed was the male cuttlefish with his lady-love that not even the sudden transition from his watery home to the open air seemed to worry him in the slightest. He was clasping the female so tightly that it took Kokino some time to prise him loose and then drop him into the tin of sea-water.

The novelty of this form of fishing greatly appealed to me, although I had the sneaking feeling that perhaps it was a little unsporting. It was rather like catching dogs by walking around with a bitch in season on the end of a long leash. Within an hour we had caught five male cuttlefish in a comparatively small area of the bay and it amazed me that there should be such a dense population of them in such a small area, for they were a creature that you very rarely saw unless you went fishing at night. The female cuttlefish, throughout this time, played her part with a sort of stoical indifference, but even so I felt that she should be rewarded, so I prevailed upon Kokino to let her go, which he did with obvious reluctance.