The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I am apologetic. We cannot give you grilled tomatoes. Anything else you want, we do, but grilled tomatoes, no.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Larry, in a spirit of curiosity.

  ‘Because the grill in the kitchen it is broken. You see,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘it is the maiden voyage.’

  ‘It seems the most unmaidenly voyage to me,’ commented Leslie.

  ‘Tell me,’ enquired Larry, ‘why was the waiter trying to grill on that stove?’

  ‘The boy very stupid,’ said the Purser. ‘We have only experienced personnel on this ship. He will be dismantled in Piraeus!

  ‘How do you dismantle a waiter?’ asked Larry, fascinated.

  ‘Larry, dear, the Purser is a very busy man, so don’t let’s keep him,’ said Mother hastily. ‘I’ll just have a boiled egg.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied the Purser with dignity and he bowed and disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘I would have settled for raw tomatoes if I’d been you,’ said Larry. ‘You saw what they did with the grilled tomatoes. I dread to think what they are going to do with the boiled eggs.’

  ‘Nonsense, Larry,’ answered Mother. ‘There isn’t anything they can do to spoil a boiled egg.’

  She was wrong. When the eggs arrived (two of them, which were put before her ten minutes later), not only were they hard but they had been carefully deprived of their shells by loving but unwashed fingers.

  ‘There!’ exclaimed Larry. ‘What a treat! Cooked to a turn and covered with fingerprints that Sherlock Holmes would have found irresistible.’

  Mother had to conceal these strange avian relics in her bag and then throw them overboard after breakfast when she was sure no one was looking, for, as she observed, we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

  ‘There’s one thing to be said for it,’ said Larry, watching Mother casting the eggs upon the waters. ‘Three days on a diet of nothing but red-hot ouzo will render us slim as minnows and we’ll all be as convivial as Bacchus by the time we land.’

  But he was wrong too.

  The evening meal was, by Greek standards, almost epicurean. There were three courses, the first of which was cold by intention, being an hors d’oeuvre, and the other two cold because they were served on cold plates accompanied by the usual altercation between the waiters. However, everything was edible and the only imbroglio was caused by Margo discovering a baby cuttlefish’s eye in her hors d’oeuvre. We unwisely drank far too many bottles of Domestika and arose from the table unsteadily and benignly.

  ‘You go night-cloob?’ asked the Purser, as he bowed us out.

  ‘Why not,’ said Larry, struck by the idea. ‘Let’s go and have an orgy among the palms. Do you remember how to do the Lancers, Mother?’

  ‘I’m not going to make an exhibition of myself,’ replied Mother with dignity. ‘But I will have a coffee and perhaps a small brandy.’

  ‘To the evil depths of the palm enshrouded night-cloob, then,’ said Larry, steering Mother rather unsteadily along the deck, ‘where who knows what opium titillated oriental maidens await us. Did we bring a jewel for Margo’s navel?’

  As we had lingered over our meal, we found that the nightclub was in full swing. Our three fat ladies, and an assortment of other passengers, were, to the strains of a Viennese waltz, jostling for position on the minute square of parquet, like fish crowded in the tail end of a seine net. Although all the luxuriously uncomfortable chairs and sofas and tables appeared to be occupied, an eager steward materialized at our elbows and showed us to the most illuminated and conspicuous table and chairs in a place of honour. They were, we were told to our alarm and despondency, specially reserved for us by the Captain. We were just about to protest that we wanted a dim and obscure table when, unfortunately, the Captain himself appeared. He was one of those very dark, romantically melting Greeks, slightly on the fleshy side but giving the impression that this made him more nubile and attractive, in that curious way Levantines have.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, making it seem like a compliment, ‘I am enchanted to have you and your most beautiful sister on board our ship on her maiden voyage.’

  It was a remark that, had the Captain known it, was calculated to offend everyone. It made Mother think he was what she always used to call darkly ‘one of those sort of men’, while one could see that Margo, though fond of Mother, felt that there was some difference between her seventy-odd summers and Margo’s well-preserved thirties. For a moment the Captain’s fate hung in the balance; then Mother decided to forgive him as he was, after all, a foreigner, and Margo decided to forgive him because he was really rather handsome. Leslie judged him with suspicion, obviously feeling that the hole in the bows proved his nautical standards to be of a low order. Larry had reached that benign state of intoxication when everyone seemed tolerable. With the suavity of a professional head waiter, the Captain arranged us round the table, seating himself between Mother and Margo, and beamed at us, his gold fillings twinkling like fire-flies in his dark face. He ordered a round of drinks and then, to Mother’s horror, asked her for the first dance.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘I’m afraid my dancing days are quite over. I leave that sort of thing to my daughter.’

  ‘But, Madam,’ implored the Captain, ‘you’re my guest. You must dance.’ So masterful was he that, to our astonishment, Mother – like a rabbit hypnotized by a stoat – rose and allowed him to escort her out on to the dance floor.

  ‘But Mother hasn’t danced since Dad died in nineteen-twenty-six,’ gasped Margo.

  ‘She’s gone mad,’ said Leslie gloomily. ‘She’ll have a heart attack and we’ll have to bury her at sea.’

  Being buried at sea had been her last choice anyway. Mother spent much of her time choosing places in which to be buried.

  ‘She’s more likely to be trampled to death, with those three enormous women about,’ observed Larry. ‘Fatal to attempt to get on to that floor. It’s like entering an arena full of rogue elephants.’

  Indeed, the floor was so packed that the couples were gyrating at an almost glacial slowness. The Captain, using Mother as a battering ram and aided by his broad shoulders, had managed to fight his way into the solid wall of flesh and he and Mother were now embedded in its depth. Mother, owing to her diminutive size, was impossible to see but we caught an occasional glimpse of the Captain’s face and the twinkling of his teeth. Finally, the last liquid notes of ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’ crashed out and the gasping, panting, sweating dancers left the floor. Mother, crumpled and purple in the face, was half carried back to our table by the beaming Captain. She sank into her chair, too breathless to speak, and fanned herself with her handkerchief.

  ‘The waltz is a very good dance,’ said the Captain, gulping his ouzo. ‘And it is not only a good dance but it is good exercise also for all the muscles.’

  He seemed oblivious to the fact that Mother, gasping, and with congested face, looked like someone who has just returned from a near fatal encounter with King Kong.

  It was Margo’s turn next but being younger and lighter on her feet and more agile than Mother, she survived rather better.

  When she returned, Mother offered effusive thanks to the Captain for his hospitality but said she thought she ought to be getting to bed as she had had rather a busy day. She’d actually spent the day wrapped in blankets in a rickety deck chair complaining about the cold wind and the choppy sea. So she made a graceful retreat and was escorted to her cabin by Leslie. By the time he returned, Margo, using all her undoubted charms, had persuaded the Captain that, although Viennese waltzes were all right as a toning-up exercise, no Greek ship worthy of its name (and certainly not one on her maiden voyage) could ignore the cultural inheritance of Greece as embodied in her national dances. The Captain was much struck by both Margo and the scheme and, before we had orientated ou
rselves to the idea, had taken control of Greece’s national heritage. He strode over to the septuagenarian band and demanded of them in loud tones what fine old cultural Greek tunes they knew. Tunes of the peasantry, of the people. Tunes that brought out both the wonders of Greece and the valour of her people, the poignancy of her history and the beauty of her architecture, the subtlety of her mythology, the sparkling brilliance that had led the world, tunes that would conjure up Plato, Socrates, the glory of Greeks past, present and future.

  The violinist said they only knew one such tune and that was ‘Never on Sunday’.

  The Captain came as near to having an apoplectic fit as anyone I’ve ever seen. With veins throbbing in his temple he turned, threw out his arms, and addressed the assembled company. Had anyone, he asked, rhetorically, ever heard of a Greek band that did not know a Greek tune?

  ‘Ummm,’ said the crowd, as crowds do when presented with something they don’t quite understand.

  ‘Send for the Chief Officer!’ roared the Captain. ‘Where is Yanni Papadopoulos?’

  So threatening did he look, standing in the middle of the dance floor with clenched fist and bared golden teeth, that the waiters went scurrying in search of the Chief Officer, who presently appeared, looking faintly alarmed, presumably fearing that another hole in the bows had appeared.

  ‘Papadopoulos,’ snarled the Captain, ‘are not the songs of Greece one of the best things about our cultural heritage?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Papadopoulos, relaxing slightly, since it did not seem from the conversation that his job was in jeopardy. It was obvious, he thought, that he was on safe ground. Even an unreasonable Captain could not blame him for the brilliance or otherwise of the musical heritage of Greece.

  ‘Why you never tell me, then,’ said the Captain, glowering fiendishly, ‘that this band don’t know any Greek tunes, eh?’

  ‘They do,’ said the Chief Officer.

  ‘They don’t,’ said the Captain.

  ‘But I’ve heard them,’ protested the Chief Officer.

  ‘Play what?’ asked the Captain, ominously.

  ‘“Never on Sunday”,’ said the Chief Officer triumphantly.

  The word ‘excreta’ in Greek is a splendid one for spitting out to soothe overwrought nerves.

  ‘Scata! Scatal’ shouted the Captain. ‘My spittle on “Never on Sunday”! I ask you for the cultural heritage of Greece and you give me a song about a “poutana”. Is that culture? Is that necessary?’

  ‘Poutanas are necessary for the crew,’ the Chief Officer pointed out. ‘For me, I’m a happily married man . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to know about poutanas,’ snarled the Captain. ‘Is there no one on this ship who can play any real Greek songs?’

  ‘Well,’ said the Chief Officer, ‘there’s the electrician, Taki, he has a bouzouki – and I think one of the engineers has a guitar.’

  ‘Bring them!’ roared the Captain. ‘Bring everyone who can play Greek songs.’

  ‘Suppose they all play,’ said the Chief Officer, who was of a literal turn of mind. ‘Who’d run the ship?’

  ‘Get them, idiot,’ snarled the Captain, and with such vehemence that the Chief Officer blanched and faded away.

  Having shown his authority, the Captain’s good humour returned. Beaming twinklingly, he returned to the table and ordered more drinks. Presently, from the bowels of the ship, struggled a motley gang, most of them half dressed, carrying between them three bouzoukis, a flute and two guitars. There was even a man with a harmonica. The Captain was delighted, but dismissed the man with the harmonica, to the poor man’s obvious chagrin.

  ‘But, Captain,’ he protested, ‘I play well.’

  ‘It is not a Greek instrument,’ said the Captain austerely. ‘It is Italian. Do you think that when we built the Acropolis we went around playing Italian instruments?’

  ‘But I play well,’ the man persisted. ‘I can play “Never on Sunday”.’ Luckily the Purser hurried him out of the night-cloob before his Captain could get at him.

  The rest of the evening went splendidly, with only minor accidents to mar the general air of cultural jollification. Leslie ricked his back while trying to leap in the air and slap his heels in the approved style during a strenuous Hosapiko, and Larry sprained his ankle by slipping on some melon pips that somebody had thoughtfully deposited on the dance floor. The same, but more painful, fate overtook the barman who, endeavouring to dance with what he thought was a glass of water on his head, slipped and crashed backwards. The glass tipped over his face. Unfortunately it did not contain water but ouzo – a liquid similar in appearance but more virulent in effect when splashed in your eyes. His sight was saved by the presence of mind of the Purser who seized a siphon of soda and directed into each eye of the unfortunate barman, a jet of such strength that it almost undid its therapeutic work by blowing out his eyeballs. He was led off to his cabin, moaning, and the dance continued. The dance went on until dawn, when, like a candle, it dwindled and flickered and went out. We crept tiredly to our beds as the sky was turning from opal to blue and the sea was striped with scarves of mist.

  All was bustle and activity when we dragged ourselves out of bed and assembled, as we had been told, in the main saloon. Presently, the Purser materialized, and bowed to Mother and Margo. The Captain’s compliments, he said, and would we all like to go on to the bridge and see the ship dock? Mother consented to attend this great moment with such graciousness that you would have thought that they had asked her to launch the ship. After a hurried and typical Greek breakfast (cold toast, cold bacon and eggs, served on iced plates, accompanied by lukewarm tea which turned out to be coffee in a teapot for some mysterious reason), we trooped up on to the bridge.

  The Captain, looking slightly jowly but with no loss of charm after his hard night, greeted us with great joy, presented Mother and Margo with carnations, showed us round the wheelhouse with pride, and then took us out on what Larry insisted on calling the quarterdeck. From here, we had a perfect view over both the bows and the stern of the vessel. The Chief Officer stood by the winch round which the anchor chain was coiled like a strange rusty necklace, and near him stood at least three of the sailors who had made up last night’s band. They all waved and blew kisses to Margo.

  ‘Margo, dear, I do wish you wouldn’t be so familiar with those sailors,’ complained Mother.

  ‘Oh, Mother, don’t be so old-fashioned,’ said Margo, blowing lavish kisses back. ‘After all, I’ve got an ex-husband and two children.’

  ‘It’s by blowing kisses at strange sailors that you get ex-husbands and children.’ remarked Mother, grimly.

  ‘Now,’ said the Captain, his teeth glittering in the sun, ‘you come, Miss Margo, and I show you our radar. Radar so we can avoid rocks, collisions, catastrophes at sea. If Ulysses had had this, he would have travelled farther, eh? Beyond the portals of Hercules, eh? Then we Greeks would have discovered America . . . Come.’

  He led Margo into the wheelhouse and was busily showing her the radar. The ship was now pointing straight at the docks, travelling at the speed of an elderly man on a bicycle. The Chief Officer, his eyes fixed on the bridge like a retriever poised to fetch in the first grouse of the season, waited anxiously for instructions. Inside the bridge-house, the Captain was explaining to Margo how, with radar, the Greeks could have discovered Australia, as well as America. Leslie began to get worried, for we were now quite close to the docks.

  ‘I say, Captain,’ he called. ‘Shouldn’t we drop anchor?’

  The Captain turned from beaming into Margo’s face and fixed Leslie with a frigid stare.

  ‘Please not to worry, Mr Durrell’ he said. ‘Everything is under control.’

  Then he turned and saw the dock looming ahead like an implacable cement iceberg.

  ‘Mother of God help me!’ he roared in Greek, and
bounded out of the wheelhouse.

  ‘Papadopoulos!’ he screamed. ‘Let go the anchor!’

  This was the signal the Chief Officer had been waiting for. There was a burst of activity, and a roar and clatter as the chain was pulled by the heavy anchor, the splash as the anchor hit the sea, and the rattle as the chain continued running out. The ship went inexorably on its way. More and more chain raffled out, and still the ship slid on. It was obvious that the anchor had been released too late to act in its normal capacity as a brake. The Captain, ready for any emergency as a good Captain should be, leapt into the wheelhouse, signalled full astern, and brought the wheel hard over, pushing the helmsman out of the way with great violence. Alas, his brilliant summation of the situation, his rapid thinking, his magnificent manoeuvre, could not save us.

  With her bow still swinging round, the Poseidon hit the docks with a tremendous crash. At the speed we were travelling, I thought that we would only feel the merest shudder. I was wrong. It felt as though we had struck a mine. The entire family fell in a heap. The three fat ladies, who had been descending a companionway, were flung down it like an avalanche of bolsters. In fact, everyone, including the Captain, fell down. Larry received a nasty cut on the forehead, Mother bruised her ribs, Margo only laddered her stockings. The Captain, with great agility, regained his feet, did various technical things at the wheel, signalled the engine room, and then – his face black with rage – strode out on to the bridge.