Marrying Off Mother (10 page)

‘Yes, Spiro, just keep an eye out, will you? Don't do anything drastic but keep us informed,' said Larry, ‘and above all, not a word to Mother. She's rather sensitive about this subject.'

‘My lips are seals,' said Spiro.

For several days we forgot our mother's mateless existence, for there were many things to do. Several local villages had wonderful fiestas which we always attended. Fleets of donkeys were tethered to trees (for the relatives of the villagers had come from far away, some as far as six miles). The smoke drifting through the olive trees was like a heavy perfume of burning charcoal, roasting lamb and the piquancy of garlic. The wine, red as the blood from a dragon's slaughtering, whispered into the glasses in a purring, conspiratorial way that was so warm and friendly that it nudged you to have some more. The dances were gay, with much leaping in the air and leg-slapping. At the first fiesta, Leslie tried to jump over a bonfire that looked like the internal organs of Vesuvius. He failed to make it and before eager hands pulled him out, his nether regions were burnt quite nastily. He had to sit on an inflatable rubber cushion for a day or two.

It was during one of these fiestas that Larry steered through the merrymaking throng a small man in an immaculate white suit, wearing a cravat of crimson and gold silk and an exquisite panama hat. The shoes on his tiny feet were as burnished as a beetle.

‘Mother,' said Larry. ‘I have brought over somebody most interesting who is dying to meet you. This is Professor Euripides Androtheomatacottopolous.'

‘It is so nice to meet you,' said Mother nervously.

‘I am enchanted, Madame Durrell,' said the professor, pressing the back of her hand into the well-clipped beard and moustache that concealed the bottom part of his face like a snowfall.

‘The professor is not only a gourmet of renown, but a ruthless exponent of the culinary arts.'

‘Ah, my boy, you exaggerate,' said the professor. ‘I am sure my humble efforts in the kitchen would pale into insignificance when compared to the positively Roman banquets that your mother presides over, so I am told.'

Mother always had difficulty in distinguishing between a Roman banquet and a Roman orgy. She had it firmly fixed in her mind that the two were synonymous, implying a great deal of food with half-naked men and women doing things to each other between the soup and the sweet course which were better kept for the privacy of the bedroom.

‘Now,' said the professor, sitting down beside her. ‘I want you to tell me all you know about the local herbs. Is it true they do not use lavender here?'

This was of course, as Larry well knew, one of Mother's favourite subjects and, seeing that the professor was keenly interested and knowledgeable, she launched herself into a gastronomic diatribe.

Later, when the last mouthful of crisp sheep skin and pink flesh had been eaten, when the last bottle had been emptied and the pulsating heart of each bonfire stamped out, we filed into the faithful Dodge and went home.

‘I had
such
an interesting talk with Professor Andro—, An-dro—, Andro—, oh, I can't think why the Greeks have such unpronounceable names,' she said crossly, and then leant forward and touched Spiro's shoulder. ‘Of course, I don't mean
you,
Spiro, you can't help being called Hak—, Haki—'

‘Hakiopolous,' said Spiro.

‘Yes. But this professor's name goes on and on for ever, like a caterpillar. Still, I suppose it's better than being called Smith or Jones,' Mother sighed.

‘Was he interesting about cooking, in spite of his name?' asked Larry.

‘Oh, he was fascinating,' said Mother. ‘I've invited him to dinner tomorrow night.'

‘Good,' said Larry. ‘I hope you've got a chaperone.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' asked Mother.

‘Well, it's your first date, you've got to do it properly.'

‘Larry, don't be so foolish,' said Mother with great dignity, and silence reigned in the car until we reached home.

‘Do you think he's the right sort of person to introduce Mother to?' asked Margo worriedly the next day, while Mother was in the kitchen preparing delicacies for the professor's visit.

‘Why not?' asked Larry.

‘Well, he's so old for one thing. He must be at least fifty,' Margo pointed out.

‘Prime of life,' said Larry, airily. ‘Men have been known to sire children in their mid-eighties.'

‘I don't know why you always have to drag sex in,' Margo complained. ‘And anyway, he's a Greek. She can't marry a Greek.'

‘Why not?' asked Larry. ‘Greeks marry Greeks all the time.'

‘But that's different,' said Margo, ‘that's their affair. But Mother's British.'

‘I agree with Larry,' said Leslie, unexpectedly. ‘He's apparently very well off, with two houses in Athens and one in Crete. I don't see that it matters if he's a Greek. He can't help it and anyway, we know some jolly nice Greeks — look at Spiro.'

‘She can't marry Spiro, he's married,' said Margo in flustered tones.

‘I don't mean
marry
Spiro, I just mean he's a nice Greek.'

‘Well, anyway, I don't agree with mixed marriages,' said Margo, ‘that's the way you get doubloons.'

‘Quadroons,' said Larry.

‘Well, whatever they're called,' said Margo, ‘I don't want Mother to have one, and I don't want a step-father whose name nobody can pronounce.'

‘We'll be on Christian name terms by then,' Larry pointed out.

‘What's his Christian name?' asked Margo suspiciously.

‘Euripides,' Larry replied. ‘You can call him Rip for short.'

To say that the professor made a bad impression that evening would be understating the case. As the horse-drawn carachino that brought him clopped and jingled its way up our long twisting drive through the olive groves we could hear him before we could see him. He was singing a very beautiful Greek love song. Unfortunately, no one had ever told him that he was completely tone deaf, or if they had he did not believe them. He sang lustily and so made up for what he lacked in quality by quantity. We all went out on to the veranda to greet him and, as the carachino came to a halt at our front steps, it became immediately apparent that the professor had partaken of the grape in unwise measure. He fell out of the carachino on to the steps, with the unfortunate result that he broke the three bottles of wine and the jar of home-made chutney he had brought for Mother. The front of his elegant pale grey suit was drenched in wine, so that he looked rather like the miraculous survivor of a very nasty car accident.

‘He is drunk,' said the carachino driver, in case this had escaped our notice.

‘He's as pooped as an owl,' said Leslie.

‘Two owls,' said Larry.

‘It's disgusting,' said Margo. ‘Mother can't marry a Greek drunkard. Dad would never have approved.'

‘Marry him? What are you talking about?' asked Mother.

‘Just thought he'd bring a bit of romance into your life,' Larry explained. ‘I told you we needed a step-father.'

‘Marry him,' exclaimed Mother, horrified. ‘I wouldn't be seen dead with him. What on earth are you children thinking about?'

‘There you are,' said Margo triumphantly, ‘I told you she wouldn't want a Greek.'

The professor had taken off his wine-stained Homburg, bowed to Mother and then fallen asleep on the front steps.

‘Larry, Leslie, you're making me seriously annoyed,' said Mother. ‘Pick up that drunken fool, put him back in the carachino and tell the driver to take him back where he found him, and I never want to see him again.'

‘I think you're being thoroughly unromantic,' said Larry. ‘How can we get you married again if you adopt this anti-social attitude? The chap's only had a few drinks.'

‘And let's have less of this stupid talk about my being married again,' said Mother firmly.
‘I'll
tell you when I want to get married and to whom, if ever.'

‘We were only trying to help,' said Leslie, aggrieved.

‘Well you can help me by getting that drunken idiot out of here,' said Mother, and she strutted back into the villa.

Dinner that night was — conversationally speaking — chilly, but delicious. The professor did not know what he had missed.

The next day, we all went for a swim, leaving a now more placid Mother pottering about the garden with her seed catalogue. The sea was bath temperature and you had to swim out and then dive down some five or six feet to find water cool enough to be refreshing. Afterwards we lay in the shade of the olives, letting the salt water dry to a silken crustiness on our bodies.

‘You know,' said Margo, ‘I've been thinking.'

Larry looked at her with disbelief.

‘What have you been thinking?' he enquired.

‘Well, I think you made a mistake with the professor. I don't think he was Mother's type.'

‘Well, I was only fooling,' said Larry, languidly. ‘I was always against this idea of her remarrying, but she seemed so convinced that she should.'

‘You mean it was
Mothers
idea?' asked Leslie, baffled.

‘Of course,' said Larry. ‘When you get to her age and start planting passion flowers all over the place, it's obvious, isn't it?'

‘But think of the consequences if she'd married the professor,' Margo exclaimed.

‘What consequences?' Leslie asked, suspiciously.

‘Well, she would have gone to live with him in Athens,' said Margo.

‘So, what about it?'

‘Well, who would cook for us? Lugaretzia?'

‘God forbid!' Larry said, with vehemence.

‘Do you remember her cuttlefish soup?' asked Leslie.

‘Please don't remind me,' said Margo. ‘All those accusing eyes floating there, looking up at you — ugh!'

‘I suppose we could have gone to Athens and lived with her and Erisipolous, or whatever he's called,' said Leslie.

‘I don't think he would have taken kindly to having four children foisted on to him in his declining years,' observed Larry.

‘Well, I think we've got to turn Mother's mind to other things,' said Margo, ‘not marriage.'

‘She seems hell bent on it,' said Larry.

‘Well, we must unbend her,' said Margo. ‘Try and keep her on the rails, watch out she doesn't meet too many men. Keep an eye on her.'

‘She
seems
all right,' Leslie said, doubtfully.

‘Planting passion flowers,' Larry pointed out.

‘Exactly,'
said Margo. ‘We must watch her. I tell you, where there's no smoke, there's no fire.'

So bearing this in mind we all dispersed and went about our various tasks, Larry to write, Margo to work out what to do with seventeen yards of red velvet she had bought at a knock-down price, Leslie to oil his guns and make cartridges and me to try and catch a mate for one of my toads, for the marital affairs of my animals were infinitely more important to me than those of my mother.

Three days later, hot, sweaty and hungry, after an unsatisfactory hunt for Leopards snakes in the hills, I arrived back at the villa just when Antoine de Vere was decanted by Spiro from the Dodge. He was wearing an enormous sombrero, a black cloak with a scarlet lining and a suit of pale blue corduroy. He stepped out of the car, closed his eyes, raised his arms to the heavens and intoned in a deep, rich voice, ‘Ah! The majesty that is Greece,' and inhaled deeply. Then he swept off his sombrero and looked at me, dishevelled and surrounded by dogs, all of whom were growling ominously. He smiled, a flash of teeth in his brown face, so perfect they might have been newly constructed. His hair was curly and glistening. His eyes were large and shiny, the colour of a newly emerged horse chestnut, and under them the skin was dark like a plum. He was undeniably handsome, one had to admit, but in what Leslie would have described as a dago-ish sort of way.

‘Ah!' he said, pointing a long finger at me. ‘You must be Lawrence's baby brother.'

From not particularly liking him at first sight, I had been willing to give him a chance, but now my opinion dropped to zero. I had become used to being described in a variety of derogatory ways by both my family and our friends, and I had adopted a stoical attitude to these unkind, untrue and probably slanderous assaults on my character. But no one had ever had the temerity to call me ‘baby' before. I was wondering which room he was occupying and whether the insertion of a dead water-snake (which I happened to possess) into his bed would be advantageous, when Larry emerged and whisked Antoine away to the kitchen to meet Mother.

The next few days were, to say the least of it, interesting. Within twenty-four hours Antoine had succeeded in alienating the whole family with the exception — to our astonishment — of Mother. Larry was obviously bored with him and made only the most desultory attempt at being polite. Leslie's opinion was that he was a bloody dago and should be shot and Margo thought he was fat, old and greasy. But Mother for some inexplicable reason apparently found him charming. She was constantly asking him to tour the garden with her and suggest where she should plant things, or inviting him to the kitchen to taste the casserole she was making and to suggest what ingredients to add. She even went so far as to have Lugaretzia, moaning like a Roman galley slave, hobble up three flights of stairs carrying an enormous tray loaded down with enough eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade and coffee to feed a regiment. This was a luxury never afforded us unless we were ill and so, not unnaturally, our dislike of Antoine grew. He appeared to be totally oblivious of our ill-concealed feelings and dominated every conversation and made meal-times intolerable. The personal pronoun had obviously been invented for him, and nearly every sentence began with ‘I think' or ‘I believe', ‘I know' or ‘I am of the opinion'. We were counting the days to his departure.