“No, no, dear, I don’t mean that,” said Mother, “but it’s just that this house so seldom seems normal. I do try, but we don’t seem able to live like other people somehow.”
“Well, if they come to stay here, they must put up with us,” said Larry. “And anyway, you can’t blame me; I didn’t invite him. Marco’s sending him.”
“But that’s what I mean,” said Mother. “Complete strangers sending complete strangers to us, as if we were a hotel or something.”
“Trouble with you is you’re antisocial,” said Larry.
“And so would you be if you had to do the cooking,” said Mother indignantly. “It’s enough to make one want to be a hermit.”
“Well, as soon as the count’s been, you can be a hermit if you want to,” said Larry. “No one’s stopping you.”
“A lot of chance I get to be a hermit, with you inviting streams of people to stay.”
“Of course you can, if you organize yourself,” said Larry. “Leslie will build you a cave down in the olive groves; you can get Margo to stitch a few of Gerry’s less smelly animal skins together to wear, a pot of blackberries, and there you are. I can bring people down to see you. ‘This is my mother,’ I shall say. ‘She has deserted us to become a hermit.’ ”
Mother glared at him.
“Really, Larry, you do make me cross sometimes,” she said.
“I’m going down to see Leonora’s baby,” said Margo. “Is there anything you want from the village?”
“Oh, yes,” said Larry, “that reminds me. Leonora’s asked me to be a godparent to the brat.”
Leonora was our maid Lugaretzia’s daughter, who used to come up to the house and help us when we had a party and who, because of her sparkling good looks, was a great favorite of Larry’s.
“You? A godfather?” said Margo in astonishment. “I thought godfathers were supposed to be pure and religious and things.”
“How nice of her,” said Mother doubtfully. “But it’s a bit odd, isn’t it?”
“Not half so odd as it would be if she asked him to be father,” said Leslie.
“Leslie, dear, don’t say things like that in front of Gerry, even in fun,” said Mother. “Are you going to accept, Larry?”
“Yes,” said Larry. “Why shouldn’t the poor little thing have the benefit of my guidance?”
“Ha!” said Margo derisively. “Well, I shall tell Leonora that if she thinks you’re going to be pure and religious, she’s trying to make a pig’s poke out of a sow’s ear.”
“If you can translate that into Greek, you’re welcome to tell her,” said Larry.
“My Greek’s just as good as yours,” said Margo belligerently.
“Now, now, dears, don’t quarrel,” said Mother. “I do wish you wouldn’t clean your guns with your handkerchief, Leslie; the oil is impossible to get out.”
“Well, I’ve got to clean them with something,” said Leslie aggrievedly.
At this point I told Mother I was going to spend the day exploring the coast and could I have a picnic?
“Yes, dear,” she said absently, “tell Lugaretzia to organize something for you. But do be careful, dear, and don’t go into very deep water. Don’t catch a chill and … watch out for sharks.”
To Mother, every sea, no matter how shallow or benign, was an evil and tumultuous body of water, full of tidal waves, waterspouts, typhoons, whirlpools, inhabited entirely by giant octopus and squids and savage, sabre-toothed sharks, all of whom had the killing and eating of one or other of her progeny as their main objective in life. Assuring her that I would take great care, I hurried off to the kitchen and collected the food for myself and my animals, assembled my collecting equipment, whistled the dogs, and set off down the hill to the jetty where my boat was moored.
The Bootle Bumtrinket, being Leslie’s first effort in boat building, was almost circular and flat-bottomed, so that, with her attractive color scheme of orange and white stripes, she looked not unlike an ornate celluloid duck. She was a friendly, stalwart craft, but owing to her shape and her lack of keel she became very flustered in anything like a heavy sea and would threaten to turn upside down and proceed that way, a thing she was very prone to do in moments of stress, so when I went on any long expeditions in her, I always took plenty of food and water in case we were blown off course and shipwrecked, and I hugged the coastline as much as possible so that I could make a dash for safety should the Bootle Bumtrinket be assaulted by a sudden sirocco. Owing to my boat’s shape, she could not wear a tall mast without turning over and so her pocket-handkerchief-sized sail could only garner and harvest the tiniest cupfuls of wind; thus, for the most part, she was propelled from point to point with oars, and when we had a full crew on board – three dogs, an owl, and sometimes a pigeon – and were carrying a full cargo – some two dozen containers full of seawater and specimens – she was a back-aching load to push through the water.
Roger was a fine dog to take to sea, and he thoroughly enjoyed it; he also took a deep and intelligent interest in marine life and would lie for hours, with ears pricked, watching the strange convolutions of the brittle starfish in a collecting bottle. Widdle and Puke, on the other hand, were not sea dogs and were really most at home tracking down some not too fierce quarry in the myrtle groves; when they came to sea they tried to be helpful but rarely succeeded and in a crisis would start howling or jumping overboard, or, if thirsty, drinking seawater and then vomiting over your feet just as you were doing a tricky bit of navigation. I could never really tell if Ulysses, my scops owl, liked sea trips; he would sit dutifully wherever I placed him, his eyes half closed, wings pulled in, looking like one of the more malevolent carvings of Oriental deities. My pigeon, Quilp – he was the son of my original pigeon, Quasimodo – adored boating; he would take over the Bootle Bumtrinket’s minute foredeck and carry on as though it were the promenade deck of the Queen Mary. He would pace up and down, pausing to do a quick waltz occasionally, and with pouting chest would give a quick contralto concert, looking strangely like a large opera singer on a sea voyage. Only if the weather became inclement would he get nervous and would then fly down and nestle in the captain’s lap for solace.
On this particular day I had decided to pay a visit to a small bay one side of which was formed by a tiny island surrounded by reefs in which there dwelt a host of fascinating creatures. My particular quarry was a peacock blenny, which I knew lived in profusion in that shallow water. Blennies are curious-looking fish with elongated bodies, some four inches long, shaped rather like an eel, and with their pop eyes and thick lips they are vaguely reminiscent of a hippopotamus. In the breeding season the males become most colorful, with a dark spot behind the eyes edged with sky blue, a dull orange humplike crest on the head and a darkish body covered with ultramarine or violet spots. The throat was pale sea green with darkish stripes on it. In contrast, the females were a light olive green with pale blue spots and leaf-green fins. I was anxious to capture some of these colorful little fish, since it was their breeding season and I was hoping to try and establish a colony of them in one of my aquariums so that I could watch their courtship. After half an hour’s stiff rowing we reached the bay, which was rimmed with silvery olive groves and
