Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

  Margaret Durrell

  * * *

  WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARGO?

  With a Preface by Gerald Durrell

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FOLLOW PENGUIN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARGO?

  Margaret ‘Margo’ Durrell (1920–2007) was the younger sister of novelist Lawrence Durrell, and elder sister of naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, whose Corfu Trilogy – My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods – features her as a character. Born in British India, she was brought up in India, England and Corfu. Margo had two children, Gerry and Nicholas, with her husband Jack Breeze, a British Royal Air Force pilot whom she met when he was stationed in Corfu during the Second World War. After they divorced, she moved back to Bournemouth, and started the boarding house she wrote about in her inimitable memoir, Whatever Happened to Margo?

  To my family, who have supported

  me in all my adventures

  Preface

  People are always asking me what happened to my sister. I am pleased to report that Margo is still full of beans and that our lives continue to be as entangled as they were during those halcyon days on Corfu. She helped raise my animals; I helped raise her children. She descends upon me frequently at my zoo in Jersey and my house in Provence; I often invade her territory in Bournemouth. We have taken many holidays together – driving through the back lanes of France and arguing about a picnic site or when it is biologically necessary to stop the car; feeding the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco in Venice and watching them (the pink kind) in the tropical paradise of Mauritius. And, yes, sharing again the charms of Corfu, looking for and finding the deserted olive groves and sea caves where we were all so happy.

  From the beginning and every bit as keenly as the Durrell brothers, Margo displayed an appreciation of the comic side of life and an ability to observe the foibles of people and places. Like us, she is sometimes prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy, but I think this is no bad thing when it comes to telling one’s stories in an entertaining way. I am delighted that she has written down the experiences at ‘51’ and I know you will enjoy them, too.

  Gerald Durrell

  Jersey, 27 November 1994

  Introduction

  The year was 1947, the place was suburban Bournemouth and the idea had started with a telephone call from my Aunt Patience, a formidable spinster who had rung the family home in Bournemouth to announce her impending visit.

  ‘How is your dear mother, poor soul – such a handful to bring up all you children alone.’ (Mother was a widow.) ‘And that clever boy, Lawrence, is still about, well and writing?’ (Lawrence was aspiring to be a literary genius.) ‘And how is Leslie? Has he got another job yet? For it’s high time he had!’ (Leslie, with the hint of an entrepreneur and another venture abandoned, had been out of work for some months with no particular career prospects in mind.) ‘And dear brother Gerald, is he still away, exposing himself to tropical diseases?’ (Brother Gerald, showing a distinctive leaning towards nature from the age of two, was at that moment surrounded by animals in some zoo, observing heaven knew what.) ‘And you dear – I trust you are not letting the grass grow under your feet?’ I had returned home for a spell, after an adventure both into marriage and exciting travels to faraway countries and now, undecided what to do next, I was, in fact, in limbo.

  Satisfied that we were all at least living, Aunt Patience then probed me on the second most important subject – money.

  ‘And how are the finances?’ No doubt she had been hoping for a miraculous answer.

  ‘Well I have my inheritance father left me … maybe,’ I edged uncertainly, not wanting to create too black a picture in case I incurred her imminent disfavour, or too prosperous a one which would possibly kill any generous urges she might have. I imagined the fond smile accompanying her questions turning sour with disapproval at the mention of any impending financial muddle.

  ‘I have been giving you, Margo dear, a considerable amount of thought lately, and I have an idea.’ She announced the word grandly then paused ominously, waiting for my gasp of anticipatory pleasure.

  ‘Margo, are you still there?’ the voice demanded, sensing the drifting threads of concentration.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied quickly and sat down with a silent sigh of resignation, knowing Aunt Patience’s ideas required making oneself as comfortable as possible, in order to enjoy a lengthy conversation.

  ‘You really must pull yourself together dear, and work hard for your future prosperity, as I have done.’

  It was a lecture all about working hard – something I knew nothing about. Dismayed, I let my mind hastily return to its wandering. I was brought back to the present by a sudden squeak in a tone of urgency. ‘It’s the only thing to do – don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes!’ I gasped, alarmed at my aunt’s implications.

  ‘You, dear, will start a guest house. Not a common affair, but something rather superior, something secure – and safe!’ The voice rose firm and enthusiastic. ‘Marriage is neither secure or safe.’ (Aunt was a spinster by design.) ‘It will be a sort of anchor for you: at the moment you are like an old boat being tossed about without a rudder.’

  Not caring for my Aunt Patience’s descriptive values, I reassured myself in the mirror opposite. There was no resemblance to her simile yet but the thought of financial security suddenly lifted my spirits to unquestionable heights. I analysed the situation briefly. Aunt Patience was right; a property, a boarding house. What a good idea! Not that I had any experience in these matters.

  ‘A boarding house? I have never thought of that,’ I replied with a growing interest.

  ‘Not a boarding house dear, a guest house – boarding is so common. I was only saying to Mummy yesterday,’ Aunt Patience continued, ‘what Margo needs now is something solid behind her, not another marriage but a business property, for there’s no stability in marriage with her temperament.’

  I found myself grinning fondly across the distance into the ‘Kensington’ room of aquarium greenness straight to my Aunt Patience. The idea was suddenly a challenge. With security so elusive, who was I to treat lightly any suggestion to better myself financially? The rosy life of a landlady floated before me, the proverbial grey cloud with its silver lining was actually within my grasp. Consequently, I blessed my Aunt Patience on this fateful day as I made for the kitchen, a little diffidently perhaps, for there was still the inevitable family comment.

  I broke the news of my intended venture to Mother and anyone else who was around at the time, with glowing descriptions of financial gain and life-long security in an atmosphere of quiet refinement. The place wasn’t going to be an ordinary lodging house, I explained, chatting on enthusiastically to a row of granite-like expressions, but something on a higher plane: a guest house.

  They treated my colourful conclusions with prolonged silence then retired hurriedly behind locked doors to discuss what they called ‘this new madness’.

  Why must a new venture be treated by my family as if it were only once removed from lunacy, I asked myself bitterly. What could be wrong with becoming a se
date landlady in a respectable town, when backed morally by Aunt Patience – and, possibly, financially if she should have one of her generous urges – and who were they to judge such an important business issue when there wasn’t a single commercially-minded one amongst them? I analysed my family’s virtues with the jaundiced mind of retaliatory criticism.

  Take my mother, for instance: tiny and courageous – yes; indomitable in mother love – yes; but no connoisseur of landladies and certainly no businesswoman. How could she be, with her limited experience, completely engrossed as she was in family affairs: the animals; the garden; concentrating on the delicate art of Indian cooking and the fascinating pages of Prediction. How could she possibly interpret the respectable role of a landlady into a Crippen-like drama of unpredictable dangers? Her worries so far had been an impending overdraft and a terror of the white slave trade. She still warned me, her only daughter, against hypodermic syringes administered swiftly in cinemas by dark-skinned strangers and, of course, the perils of not lifting public lavatory seats. Lawrence had not helped the situation either, fostering her fears with his diabolical genius for invention and urging her loudly to put her foot down. Neither had Leslie, that squat, Rabelaisian figure lavishing oils on canvas or sunk deep in the intricacies of guns, boats, beer and women; penniless too, having put all his inheritance into a fishing boat that had sunk even before the maiden voyage in Poole Harbour. He had agreed with every word Lawrence had uttered, illustrating the already imagined horrors with still more graphic accounts of lewd male lodgers, landladies throttled at their posts, questionable births and remarkable deaths. His final pronouncement that ‘landladies are born, not made’, in a voice suggesting that they had just laid a very dear corpse to rest, upset Mother still further.

  Fortunately, brother Gerald’s absence had temporarily spared me his comments, which would, no doubt, have equalled anything his brothers had to offer. I shuddered at the recollection of his activities (which did not include the apt handling of a vast business fortune or running a sedate boarding house, I thought with some scepticism), as I re-lived tins filled with beetles, boxes of lizards, evil-smelling bird droppings, stinking snakes preserved in alcohol, corpses splayed grotesquely ready for dissection, the air thick with ether as a maimed animal was skilfully treated and brought back to life, while those with weaker stomachs than his tottered away to readjust themselves. His return would mean confusion and disorganization, and we would all be enthusiastically forced out, regardless of weather conditions, to scan the countryside for possible properties, where he could, without restraint, create the first nucleus of a dream zoo. Already a lively candidate, a marmoset, a small furry apparition with the face of an old sage, ruled the house in his absence. Perching in strategic spots to relieve the pangs of nature, deeply offended if disturbed, Pavlo would sulk for hours in some inaccessible place while an over-fed Tibetan sheepdog tussled against him for first place in the family’s affections. A badly stuffed crocodile, from which a musty odour exuded in strong waves, glared with beady eyes from the top of the bathroom cupboard, and beneath, scrawled across the mirror in red soap (a strong reminder that his absence was only temporary), a warning read, ‘Please don’t touch’, along with a reminder to himself of a dental appointment.

  So, who wouldn’t want to escape to a landlady’s Utopia?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Consequently I left the warm familiarities of well-known surroundings and started weeks of intense house-searching. A new world opened before me; a fascinating world of bricks and mortar, that carried me away on the heady wings of exploration – and I saw everything but the right house! Shuttered windows opened to reveal silent ballrooms; marble pillars spiralled up to ornate ceilings, where lusty rotund cherubs unashamedly chased each other in play; secret stairways laced in cobwebs; attics, breathless in their wealth of waiting shadows; shoe-box bungalows, prim and lifeless; monstrosities in corrugated iron and dull brown paint, alive yet dead; whilst a host of echoes whispered of Aunt Patience’s unseen scolding presence (‘A most unsuitable property, dear’) and brother Gerald’s gleeful murmurings (‘Look, marvellous as a hippo pond’) as another corner revealed a neglected sunken garden. And the margin of suitable houses narrowed alarmingly, forcing me to consider practicalities.

  I didn’t know what I wanted – then suddenly I did, in one wild unpredictable moment, completely without reason and unbelievably near home. Of course, I’d seen the house before, but never ‘felt’ its presence, or even noticed who lived behind the yards of dismal maroon curtaining. Now a FOR SALE notice had changed everything, I thought in amazement, as I stood starry-eyed and contemplated my choice in this sedate wide road of large Edwardian houses (our own road, in fact).

  The object of my affection, a big comfortable, square house, stood solid on three floors. Wide bay windows broke the solidity of thick walls in the front and between these, small domed windows in bright stained glass added the odd bizarre touch to the somewhat dull colour scheme outside of murky green. High between the chimney stacks, I noted with satisfaction the enticing windows of an attic. A large porch sheltered the front door and lying back from the porch, a stone garage narrowed the entrance to the back garden, a square of unpruned trees and rough lawn surrounded by a high wall, stout fence and a deep privet hedge. A wilderness – but to me, at this moment, it was paradise.

  The front door opened to my eager enquiry almost before I reached it and, piercing me with a shrewd look from eyes permanently screwed up in putty-coloured folds, as if they had spent a lifetime in hot sunlight, was a woman of ample proportions and declining years. A voluminous white blouse, sadly yellowed, sloppily topped a threadbare skirt held together on straining seams. The blouse buttons, a solitary two of glass and chipped like crystal rock, hung by a lonely thread, gallantly but vaguely restraining the pendulous breasts which threatened to burst forth; through the grinning gaps a grimy wool vest and cambric framework of ingenious invention fought for first place to freedom. In contrast to the rest of her, a halo of hair shone forth like a message. Plaited in a thick, white rope and circling her head neatly several times, it was skewered to firm immobility. It was as if she wore a silver crown.

  I stood, astonished, startled by the ill-assorted appearance. Not wholly confident, I felt the sharp edge behind the soft, gargantuan bulk, whilst my inquisitive eyes glanced past her and examined the hall which, despite the dismal decor of faded mottle beige, was large, with many possibilities; long stained glass windows opening on to the porch reflected shades of bright colour. The centre light was a gloomy contraption, covered by a brown paper shade, an amateurish homemade hotchpotch, and carelessly gummed.

  Possibly, at some other time, my first impressions of a grubby interior and peevish inglorious old woman would indisputably have put me off, but now, feeling supremely confident in my choice, nothing would turn me from my task as I was swept along in the wake of something that was not unlike a Cook’s tour. For now Mrs O’Grady had become humanly garrulous, interspersing her sales talk with other incongruous subjects, with the dogged playfulness of an elderly bitch long past her prime. She stressed the beauties of the house, repeating the phrase ‘newly decorated’ constantly, which was a downright lie because it was very apparent that only the woodwork in the most prominent parts had been licked with a brush. She hurried me cunningly from one small patch of fresh paint to the next, hoping to deceive, expanding her stories of life in China – years spent saving souls in a Mission, along with the demands of an ailing husband – while my curious eyes, missing nothing, noted that there was not a single personal object in memory of a country to which she had given her best years.

  The wide staircase, turning gently at two points, led up to an airy landing which overlooked the well of the hall; bright, with a long window in opaque emerald glass, I saw it as a musicians’ gallery. Rooms spread out widely around the square. Nothing could depress that airy landing, I thought, not even the evil smell of burning stew bubbling on the gas stove. At the top of
the stairs I turned to find with surprise yet another spacious landing and more large and well-planned rooms, including a huge bathroom with a cast-iron monster of a bath standing on curved feet, full of dirty crockery. A narrow stairway led up to a long white attic of sloping ceilings and dormer windows. The garden spread out beneath us, melting into a tangle of green shrubs and tall trees, the view stretching out again to rooftops and misty greens rising in a distant line of hills, blurred now in the softening light of the end of yet another day.

  It was dusk when I left. Long shadows lay silent across the avenue and the odd light twinkled. Mother’s dog Simon scampered down the road in hot pursuit of a ragged cat to the muffled cheers of her ancient Irish neighbour, Miss Brady, who loathed cats even more than dogs.

  Battle, I sensed, would now commence, in the legal wrangling for a house – my house – a guest house – tomorrow, and possibly the day after …

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mrs O’Grady proved to be a hard old nut, just as I had suspected from her shrewd face. Her years in a Chinese Mission supplementing the Lord had not given her a warm or generous nature. She was as crafty as an old jackdaw, lying boldly, haggling like an Eastern vendor in a bazaar, squatting in the midst of her worm-eaten belongings. She prolonged the final purchase as long as possible, endeavouring to muddle the course of red tape and relish a few extra pennies. A born Shylock, she hotly demanded a fair price for what she termed ‘scarcely worn fittings’ – some curtain rails, green and bent with age, which hung aloft by the grace of a few rusty screws.

  I was lost in a sea of incomprehensible depth, not understanding the necessity for so much red tape in buying a house or this greedy, grasping woman. How anyone could argue and haggle over mouldy curtain rails only fit for scrap or how they could bother to creep out after dark and remove quantities of plants, leaving a tell-tale trace of newly turned earth was beyond me.