The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE

However glib you are with words, your brain is inclined to falter if you try to describe the Piazza San Marco in Venice under a full daffodil-yellow summer moon. The buildings took as though they have been made out of crumbling over-sweet nougat in the most beautiful shades of browns and reds and subtle autumn pinks. You can sit and watch, fascinated, for the tiny tellers, Moorish figures, that come out and strike the big bell on St Mark’s cathedral at every quarter, so that it echoes and vibrates around the huge square.

On this particular evening, it was as ravishing as only Venice could be, spoiled only by the conglomeration of my belligerent family, clustered around two tables which were bestrewn with drinks and tiny plates of appetisers. Unfortunately, it had been my mother’s idea and, as had happened throughout her life, what she had produced as a treat had already, even at this early stage, started turning into a fiasco that was edging her slowly but relentlessly towards that pillory that all families keep for their parents.

“I wouldn’t mind if you had had the decency to tell me in advance. I could, at least have risked death travelling by air,” said my elder brother, Larry, looking despondently at one of the many glasses that an irritatingly happy waiter had put in front of him. “But what in heaven’s name possessed you to go and book us all on a Greek ship for three days? I mean, it’s as stupid as deliberately booking on the Titanic.”

“I thought it would be more cheerful, and the Greeks are such good sailors,” replied my mother, defensively. “Anyway, it’s her maiden voyage.”

“You always cry wolf before you’re hurt,” put in Margo. “I think it was a brilliant idea of Mother’s.”

“I must say, I agree with Larry,” said Leslie, with the obvious reluctance that we all shared in agreeing with our elder brother. “We all know what Greek ships are like.”

“Not all of them, dear,” said Mother. “Some of them must be all right.”

“Well, there’s damn all we can do about it now,” concluded Larry gloomily. “You’ve committed us to sail on this bloody craft, which I have no doubt would have been rejected by the Ancient Mariner in his cups.”

“Nonsense, Larry,” said Mother. “You always exaggerate. The man at Cook’s spoke very highly of it.”

“He said the bar was full of life,” cried Margo triumphantly.

“God almighty,” exclaimed Leslie.

“And to dampen our pagan spirits,” agreed Larry, “the most revolting selection of Greek wines, which all taste as though they have been forced from the reluctant jugular vein of some hermaphrodite camel.”

“Larry, don’t be so disgusting,” said Margo.

“Look,” protested Larry vehemently, “I have been dragged away from France on this ill-fated attempt to revisit the scenes of our youth, much against my better judgement. Already I am beginning to regret it, and we’ve only just got as far as Venice, for God’s sake. Already I’m curdling what remains of my liver with Lacrima Christi instead of good, honest Beaujolais . Already my senses have been assaulted in every restaurant by great mounds of spaghetti, like some sort of awful breeding ground for tapeworms, instead of Charolais steaks.”

“Larry, I do wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” said my mother. “There’s no need for vulgarity.”

In spite of the three bands, all playing different tunes at different corners of the great square, the vocalization of the Italians and tourists, and the sleepy crooning of the somnambulistic pigeons, it seemed that half of Venice was listening, entranced, to our private family row.

“It will be perfectly all right when we are on board,” said Margo. “After all, we will be among the Greeks.”

“I think that’s what Larry’s worried about,” commented Leslie gloomily.

“Well,” said Mother, trying to introduce an air of false confidence into the proceedings, “we should be going. Taking one of those vaporiser things down to the docks.”

We paid our bill, straggled down to the Canal and climbed on board one of the motor launches which my mother, with her masterly command of Italian, insisted on calling a vaporiser. The Italians, being less knowledgeable, called them vaporettos. Venice was a splendid sight as we chugged our way down the Canal, past the great houses, past the rippling reflections of the lights in the water. Even Larry had to admit that it was a slight improvement on the Blackpool illuminations. We were landed eventually at the docks which, like docks everywhere in the world, looked as though they had been designed (in an off moment) by Dante while planning his Inferno. We huddled in puddles of phosphorescent light that made us all look like something out of an early Hollywood horror film and completely destroyed the moonlight, which was by now silver as a spider’s web. Our gloom was not even lightened by the sight of Mother’s diminutive figure attempting to convince three rapacious Venetian porters that we did not need any help with our motley assortment of luggage. It was an argument conducted in basic English.

“We English. We no speak Italian,” she cried in tones of despair, adding a strange flood of words which consisted of Hindustani, Greek, French and German, none of which bore any relation to each other. This was my mother’s way of communication with any foreigner, be they Aborigine or Eskimo, but it failed to do more than momentarily lighten our gloom.

We stood and contemplated those bits of the Canal which led out into our section of the dock Suddenly there slid into view a ship which, even by the most land-lubberish standards, could never have been mistaken for seaworthy. At some time in her career, she had been used as a species of reasonably-sized inshore steamer but even in those days, when she had been virginal and freshly painted, she could not have been beautiful. Now, sadly lacking in any of the trappings that, in that ghastly phosphorescent light, might have made her turn into a proud ship, there was nothing. Fresh paint had not come her way for a number of years and there were large patches of rust, like unpleasant sores and scabs, all along her sides. Like a woman on excessively high-heeled shoes who had had the misfortune to lose one of the heels, she had a heavy list to starboard. Her totally unkempt air was bad enough, but the final indignity was exposed as she turned to come alongside the docks. It was an enormous tattered hole in her bows that would have admitted a pair of Rolls-Royces side by side. This terrible defloration was made worse by the fact that no first-aid of any description, even of the most primitive kind, had been attempted. The plates on her hull curved inwards where they had been crushed, like a gigantic chrysanthemum. Struck dumb, we watched her come alongside; there, above the huge hole in her bows, was her name: the Poseidon .

“Dear God!” breathed Larry.

“She’s appalling,” said Leslie, the more nautical member of our family. “Look at that list.”

“But it’s our boat,” squeaked Margo. “Mother, it’s our boat!”

“Nonsense, dear, it can’t be,” said my mother, readjusting her spectacles and peering hopefully up at the boat as it loomed above us.

“Three days on this,” said Larry. “It will be worse than the Ancient Mariner’s experience, mark my words.”

“I do hope they are going to do something about that hole,” said Mother worriedly, “before we put out to sea.”

“What do you expect them to do? Stuff a blanket into it?” asked Larry.

“But surely the Captain’s noticed it,” said Mother bewildered.

“I shouldn’t think that even a Greek captain could have been oblivious of the fact that they have, quite recently, given something a fairly sharp tap,” said Larry.

“The waves will get in,” moaned Margo. “I don’t want waves in my cabin. My dresses will all be ruined.”

“I should think all the cabins are under water by now,” observed Leslie.

“Our snorkels and flippers will come in handy,” said Larry. “What a novelty to have to swim down to dinner. How I shall enjoy it all.”

“Well, as soon as we get on board you must go up and have a word with the Captain,” decided Mother. “It’s just possible that he wasn’t on board when it happened, and no one’s told him.”

“Really, Mother, you do annoy me,” said Larry irritably. “What do you expect me to say to the man? ‘Pardon me, Kyrie Capitano, sir, but did you know you’ve got death-watch beetle in your bows?’ ”

“Larry, you always complicate things,” complained Mother. “You know I can’t speak Greek or I’d do it.”

“Tell him I don’t want waves in my cabin,” insisted Margo.

“As we are due to leave tonight, they couldn’t possibly mend it anyway,” observed Leslie.

“Exactly,” said Larry. “But Mother seems to think that I am some sort of reincarnation of Noah.”

“Well, I shall have something to say about it when I get on board,” said Mother belligerently, as we made our way up the gangway.

At the head of the gangway, we were met by a romantic-looking Greek steward (with eyes as soft and melting as black pansies) wearing a crumpled and off-grey white suit, with most of the buttons missing. From his tarnished epaulettes, he appeared to be the Purser, and his smiling demand for passports and tickets was so redolent of garlic that Mother reeled back against the rails, her query about the ship’s bows stifled.

“Do you speak English?” asked Margo, gamely rallying her olfactory nerves more rapidly than Mother.

“Small,” he replied, bowing.

“Well, I don’t want waves in my cabin,” said Margo firmly. “It will ruin my clothes.”

“Everything you want we give,” he answered. “if you want wife, I give you my wife. She . . .”

“No, no,” exclaimed Margo, “the waves . You know . . . water.”

“Every cabeen has having hot and cold running showers,” he said with dignity. “Also there is bath or nightcloob having dancing and wine and water.”

“I do wish you’d stop laughing and help us, Larry,” said Mother, covering her nose with her handkerchief to repel the odour of garlic, which was so strong that one got the impression it was like a shimmering cloud round the Purser’s head.

Larry pulled himself together and in fluent Greek (which delighted the Purser) elicited, in rapid succession, the information that the ship was not sinking, that there were no waves in the cabins, and that the Captain knew all about the accident as he had been responsible for it. Wisely, Larry did not pass on this piece of information to Mother. While Mother and Margo were taken in a friendly and aromatic manner down to the cabins by the Purser, the rest of us then followed his instructions as to how to get to the bar.

This, when we located it, made us all speechless. It looked like the mahogany-lined lounge of one of the drearier London clubs. Great chocolate-coloured leather chairs and couches cluttered the place, interspersed with formidable fumed-oak tables. Dotted about were huge Benares brass bowls in which sprouted tattered, dusty palm trees. There was, in the midst of this funereal splendour, a minute parquet floor for dancing, flanked on one side by the small bar containing a virulent assortment of drinks, and on the other by a small raised dais, surrounded by a veritable forest of potted palms. In the midst of this, enshrined like flies in amber, were three lugubrious musicians in frock coats, celluloid dickies, and cummerbunds that would have seemed dated in about 1890. One played on an ancient upright piano and tuba, one played a violin with much professional posturing, and the third doubled up on the drums and trombone. As we entered, this incredible trio was playing “The Roses of Picardy” to an entirely empty room.

“I can’t bear it,” said Larry. “This is not a ship, it’s a sort of floating Cadena Café from Bournemouth . It’ll drive us all mad.”

At Larry’s words, the band stopped playing and the leader’s face lit up in a gold-toothed smile of welcome. He gestured at his two colleagues with his bow and they also bowed and smiled. We three could do no less, and so we swept them a courtly bow before proceeding to the bar. The band launched itself with ever greater frenzy into “The Roses of Picardy” now that it had an audience.

“Please give me,” Larry asked the barman, a small wizened man in a dirty apron, “in one of the largest glasses you possess, an ouzo that will, I hope, paralyse me.”

The barman’s walnut face lit up at the sound of a foreigner who could not only speak Greek but was rich enough to drink so large an ouzo.

“Amessos, kyrie,” he said. “Will you have it with water or ice?”

“One lump of ice,” Larry stipulated. “Just enough to blanch its cheeks.”

“I’m sorry, kyrie, we have no ice,” said the barman, apologetically.

Larry sighed a deep and long-suffering sigh.

“It is only in Greece,” he said to us in English, “that one has this sort of conversation. It gives one the feeling that one is in such close touch with Lewis Carroll that the barman might be the Cheshire cat in disguise.”

“Water, kyrie?” asked the barman, sensing from Larry’s tone that he was not receiving approbation but rather censure.

“Water,” said Larry, in Greek, “a tiny amount.”

The barman went to the massive bottle of ouzo, as clear as gin, poured out a desperate measure, and then went to the little sink and squirted water in from the tap. Instantly, the ouzo turned the colour of watered milk and we could smell the aniseed from where we were standing.

“God, that’s a strong one,” said Leslie. “Let’s have the same.” I agreed. The glasses were set before us. We raised them in toast:

“Well, here’s to the Marie Celeste and all the fools who sail in her,” said Larry, and took a great mouthful of ouzo. The next minute he spat it out in a flurry that would have done credit to a dying whale, and reeled back against the bar, clasping his throat, his eyes watering.

“Ahhh!” he roared. “The bloody fool’s put bloody hot water in it!”

Nurtured as we had been among the Greeks, we were inured to the strange behaviour they indulged in, but for a Greek to put boiling water in his national drink, was, we felt, carrying eccentricity too far.

“Why did you put hot water in the ouzo?” asked Leslie belligerently.

“Because we have no cold,” said the barman, surprised that Leslie should not have worked out this simple problem in logic for himself. “That is why we have no ice. This is the maiden voyage, kyrie, and that is why we have nothing but hot water in the bar.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Larry brokenly. “I just don’t believe it. A maiden voyage and the ship’s got a bloody great hole in her bows, a Palm Court Orchestra of septuagenarians, and nothing but hot water in the bar.”

At that moment Mother appeared, looking distinctly flustered.

“Larry, I want to speak to you,” she panted.

Larry looked at her. “What have you found? An iceberg in the bunk?” he asked.

“Well, there’s a cockroach in the cabin. Margo threw a bottle of Eau de Cologne at it, and it broke, and now the whole place smells like a hairdresser’s. I don’t think it killed the cockroach either,” said Mother.

“Well,” rejoined Larry. “I’m delighted you have been having fun. Have a red-hot ouzo to round off the start of this riotous voyage.”

“No, I didn’t come here to drink.”

“You surely didn’t come to tell me about an Eau de Cologne-drenched cockroach?” asked Larry in surprise. “Your conversation is getting worse than the Greeks for eccentricity.”

“No, it’s Margo,” Mother hissed. “She went to the you-know-where and she’s got the slot jammed.”

“The ‘you-know-where’? Where’s that?”

“The lavatory, of course. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” said Larry. “I’m not a plumber.”

“Can’t she climb out?” enquired Leslie.

“No,” said Mother. “She’s tried, but the hole at the top is much too small, and so is the hole at the bottom.”

“But at least there are holes,” Larry pointed out. “You need air in a Greek lavatory in my experience and we can feed her through them during the voyage.”

“Don’t be so stupid, Larry,” said Mother. “You’ve got to do something.”

“Try putting another coin in the slot thing,” suggested Leslie. “That sometimes does it.”

“I did,” said Mother. “I put a lira in but it still wouldn’t work.”

“That’s because it’s a Greek lavatory and will only accept drachmas,” Larry pointed out. “Why didn’t you try a pound note? The rate of exchange is in its favour.”

“Well, I want you to get a stewardess to help her out,” said Mother. “She’s been in there ages. She can’t stay all night. Supposing she banged her elbow and fainted? You know she’s always doing that.” Mother tended to look on the black side of things.

“In my experience of Greek lavatories,” said Larry judiciously, “you generally faint immediately upon entering without the need to bang your elbow.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake do something!” cried Mother. “Don’t just stand there drinking.”

Led by her, we eventually found the lavatory in question. Leslie, striding in masterfully, rattled the door.

“Me stuck. Me English,” shouted Margo from behind the door. “You find stewardess.”

“I know that, you fool. It’s me, Leslie,” he growled.

“Go out at once. It’s a ladies’ lavatory,” said Margo.

“Do you want to get out or not? If you do, shut up!” retorted Leslie belligerently.

He fiddled ineffectually with the door, swearing under his breath.

“I do wish you wouldn’t use bad language, dear,” protested Mother. “Remember, you are in the ladies’.”

“There should be a little knob thing on the inside which you pull,” said Leslie. “A sort of bolt thing.”

“I’ve pulled everything,” rejoined Margo indignantly. “What do you think I’ve been doing in here for the last hour?”

“Well, pull it again,” suggested Leslie, “while I push.”

“All right, I’m pulling,” said Margo.

Leslie humped his powerful shoulders and threw himself at the door.

“It’s like a Pearl White serial,” said Larry, sipping the ouzo that he had thoughtfully brought with him and which had by now cooled down. “If you’re not careful we’ll have another hole in the hull.”

“It’s no good,” said Leslie panting. “It’s too tough. We’ll have to get a steward or something.”

He went off in search of someone with mechanical knowledge.

“I do wish you’d hurry,” said Margo, plaintively. “It’s terribly oppressive in here.”

“Don’t faint,” cried Mother in alarm. “Try to regulate your breathing.”

“And don’t bang your elbows,” Larry added.

“Oh, Larry, you do make me cross,” said Mother. “Why can’t you be sensible?”

“Well, shall I go and get her a hot ouzo? We can slide it in under the door,” he suggested helpfully.

He was saved from Mother’s ire by the arrival of Leslie, bringing in tow a small and irritated puppet-like man with a lugubrious face.

“Always the ladies is doing this,” he said to Mother, shrugging expressive shoulders. “Always they are getting catched. I show you. It is easy. Why woman not learn?”

He went to the door, fiddled with it for a moment, and it flew open.

“Thank God,” said Mother, as Margo appeared in the doorway. But before she could emerge into the bosom of her family, the little man held up a peremptory hand.

“Back!” he commanded, masterfully. “I teaches you.” Before we could do anything intelligent, he had pushed Margo back into the lavatory and slammed the door shut.

“What’s he doing?” squeaked Mother in alarm. “What’s he doing, that little man? Larry, do something.”

“It’s all right, Mother,” shouted Margo, “he’s showing me how to do it.”

“How to do what?” asked Mother, alarmed.

There was a long and ominous silence, eventually broken by a flood of Greek oaths.

“Margo, you come out of there at once,” ordered Mother, considerably alarmed.

“I can’t,” wailed Margo. “He’s locked us both in.”

“Disgusting man,” cried Mother, taking command. “Hit him dear, hit him. Larry, you go for the Captain.”

“I mean, he can’t open the door either,” said Margo.

“Please to find Purser,” wailed the little man. “Please finding Purser for opening door.”

“Well, where do we find him?” asked Leslie.

“It’s too ridiculous,” said Mother. “Are you all right? Stand well away from him, dear.”

“You find Purser in Purser’s office, first deck,” yelled the imprisoned man.

The ensuing scene, to anyone who does not know the Greek temperament and their strange ability to change a perfectly normal situation into something so complicated that it leaves the Anglo Saxon mind unhinged, may find what followed incredible. We, knowing the Greeks, did also. Leslie returned with the Purser, who not only added to the redolence of the Ladies’ with his garlic, but in quick succession complimented Larry on drinking ouzo and Leslie on his Greek accent, soothed Mother with a large carnation plucked from behind his ear, and then turned such a blast of invective on the poor little man locked up with my sister that one expected the solid steel door to melt. He rushed at it and pounded with his fists and kicked it several times. Then he turned to Mother and bowed.

“Madam,” he said, smiling, “no alarm. Your daughter is safe with a virgin.”

This remark confused Mother completely. She turned to me for explanation, as Larry, knowing this sort of fracas of old, had repaired to the bar to get drinks. I said I thought he meant she would be as safe as a virgin.

“He can’t mean that,” she said suspiciously. “She’s got two children.”

I began to lose my bearings slightly as one always seemed to do when confused by the Greeks. I had just taken an unwisely deep breath to embark on an elaboration for my Mother, when I was mercifully stopped by the arrival of three fellow passengers, all large, big-bosomed, thick-legged peasant ladies, with heavy moustaches and black bombazine dresses three times too small, smelling of garlic, some sickly scent, and perspiration in equal quantities. They elbowed their way between Mother and myself and entered the lavatory. Seeing the Purser still dancing with rage and pounding on the door, they paused like massive war-horses that have scented battle.

Any other nationality would have complained about the Purser’s presence in this shrine to womanhood, let alone mine as a foreigner’s, but this is where the Greeks so delightfully differ from other races. They knew it was a SITUATION with capital letters, and this above all is what Greeks love. The presence of three men (if you include the invisible one closeted with Margo) in their lavatory was as nothing compared to the SITUATION.

Their eyes glittered, their moustaches wiffled and, a solid wall of eager flesh, they enveloped the Purser and demanded to know what was afoot. As usual in a SITUATION, everyone spoke at once. The temperature in the Ladies’ went up to something like seventy degrees and the volume of sound made one’s head spin, like playing the noisier bits of the Ride of the Valkyries in an iron barrel.

Having grasped the elements of the SITUATION from the harassed Purser, the three powerful ladies, each built on the lines of a professional wrestler, swept him out of the way with scarlet-tipped spade-shaped hands and proceeded to lift up their skirts. With deafening cries of “Oopah, oopah” they charged the lavatory door. Their combined weights must have amounted to some sixty stone of flesh and bone, but the door was stalwart and the three ladies fell in a tangle of limbs on the floor. They got to their feet with some difficulty and then argued among themselves as to the best way to break down a lavatory door.

One of them, the least heavy of the three, demonstrated her idea — an ideal method — against one of the other lavatory doors. This, unfortunately, was not on the latch and so she crashed through at surprising speed and received a nasty contusion upon her thigh by crashing full tilt into the lavatory pan. Although it had not proved her point, she was very good-natured about it, especially as at that moment Larry arrived accompanied by the barman carrying a tray of drinks.

For a time we all sipped ouzo companionably, toasted each other, and asked if we were all married and how many children we had. Fresh interest in the SITUATION was aroused by the arrival of Leslie with what appeared to be the ship’s carpenter for whom he had gone in search. Everyone now forgot their drinks and expounded their theories to the carpenter, all of which he disagreed with, with the air of one who knows. He then, like a magician, rolled up his sleeves and approached the door. Silence fell. He produced a minute screwdriver from his pocket and inserted it into a minute hole. There was a click and a gasp of admiration, and the door flew open. He stood back and spread his hands like a conjuror.

The first little man and Margo emerged like survivors from the Black Hole of Calcutta. The poor little man was seized by the Purser and pounded and pummelled and shaken, while being roundly abused. The carpenter, at this stage, took over. After all, he had opened the door. We listened to him with respect as he expounded the cunning mechanism of locks in general and this one in particular. He drained an ouzo and waxed poetic on locks, which were his hobby it appeared. With his little screwdriver or a hairpin or a bent nail or, indeed, a piece of plastic, he could open any lock. He took the first little man and the Purser by the wrist and led them into the lavatory like lambs to the slaughter. Before we could stop them, he had slammed the door shut. My family and the three fat ladies waited with bated breath. There were strange scrapings and clickings, then a long pause. This was followed by a torrent of vituperation from the Purser and the Steward, mixed with confused excuses and explanations from the lock expert. As we furtively crept away, the three ladies were preparing to charge the door again.

So ended scene one of the maiden voyage.

I draw a veil over the increasing irritability of my family that evening because, for some strange Greek reason of protocol, dinner could not be served until the Purser had been released. This took a considerable time since the constant assaults to which the door had been subjected had irretrievably damaged the lock and they had to wait until the Bosun could be retrieved, from some carousal ashore, to saw through the hinges. We eventually gave up waiting, went ashore, had a quick snack, and then retired to our respective cabins in a morbid state of mind.

The following morning, we went down to the dining-room and tried to partake of breakfast. The years had mercifully obliterated our memories of the average Greek’s approach to cuisine. There are, of course, places in Greece where one can eat well, but they have to be searched for and are as rare as unicorns. Greece provides most of the ingredients for good cooking but the inhabitants are generally so busy arguing that they have no time left to pursue the effete paths of haute cuisine .

The four young waiters in the dining saloon were no exception and kept up an incessant and noisy warfare with each other like a troupe of angry magpies disputing a titbit. The decor, if that is not too strong a word, followed that of the bar, which we had now discovered was called the Night-Cloob. Fumed oak pervaded all. The brasswork had not been polished with more than a superficial interest in its brightness and the tables were covered with off-white table-cloths covered with the ghosts of stains that some remote laundry in Piraeus had not quite succeeded in exorcising. Mother surreptitiously but determinedly polished all her cutlery on her handkerchief and exhorted us to do the same. The waiters, since we were the only people there for breakfast, saw no reason to disturb their bickering until Larry, tried beyond endurance, bellowed, “Se parakalo !” in such vibrant tones that Mother dropped three pieces of Margo’s cutlery on the floor. The waiters ceased their cacophony immediately and surrounded our table with the most healthy obsequiousness. Mother, to her delight, found that one of the waiters, an ingratiating young man, had spent some time in Australia and had a rudimentary knowledge of English.

“Now,” she said, beaming at her protégé, “what I would like is a nice, large pot of hot tea. Make sure the pot is warmed and the water is boiling, and none of those tea-bag things that make one shudder when one refills the pot.”

“I’m always reminded of the Bramaputra after an epidemic,” said Larry.

“Larry, dear, please, not at breakfast,” remonstrated Mother, and continued to the waiter, “and then I shall have some grilled tomatoes on toast.”

We sat back expectantly. After years of experience, Mother had never given up a pathetic hope that she would one day find a Greek who would understand her requirements. As was to be expected, the waiter had let Mother’s instructions regarding the tea pass unnoticed. Tea grew in tea-bags, and any attempt to tamper with nature would, he felt, involve dire consequences for all concerned. However, Mother had now introduced into his life a complication, a species of food unknown to him.

“Gill-ed tomatoes?” he queried uncomfortably. “What is?”

“Gilled tomatoes,” echoed Mother, “I mean grilled tomatoes. You know, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

The waiter clung to the one sane thing in the world, toast.

“Madam want toast,” he said firmly, trying to keep Mother on the right track, “tea and toast.”

“And tomatoes,” said Mother, enunciating dearly, “grilled tomatoes.”

A faint bead of perspiration made itself apparent upon the waiter’s brow.

“What is ‘gill-ed tomatoes’, Madam?” he asked, thus bringing the thing full circle.

We had all relaxed around the table having ordered our breakfast, sotto voce, and now we watched Mother launch herself into battle.

“Well,” she explained. “You know, um, tomatoes . . . those, those red things, like apples. No, no, I mean plums.”

“Madam want plums?” asked the boy, puzzled.

“No, no, tomatoes,” said Mother. “Surely you know tomatoes?”

The gloom on the young Greek’s face lightened. She wanted tomatoes.

“Yes, Madam,” he answered, smiling.

“There,” said Mother, triumphantly, “well then, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

“Yes, Madam,” he said dutifully, and went away into the corner and communed with the Purser.

Greek gesticulations are remarkable for their force and expressiveness. Behind Mother’s back we watched the shadow-play between the waiter and the Purser. The Purser obviously told him in no uncertain manner that if he didn’t know what grilled tomatoes were he must go and ask. Disconsolately, the waiter approached to encounter Mother once again.

“Madam,” he said mournfully, “how you make gill-ed?”

Mother, until then, bad been under the impression that she had made a major breakthrough in the barriers that the Greeks kept putting up against her. She suddenly felt deflated.

“What is ‘gill-ed’?” she asked the waiter. “I don’t speak Greek.”

He looked flabbergasted. It had, after all, been Madam’s idea in the first place. He felt that she was being unfair in now trying to lay the blame at his door. She had asked for “gill-ed”; if she didn’t know what “gill-ed” was, who the hell did?

“Tomatoes Madam wants,” he said, starting all over again.

“On toast,” repeated Mother.

He wandered away moodily and had another altercation with the Purser, which ended in the Purser ordering him sternly to the kitchen.

“Really,” said Mother, “one knows one’s back in Greece because one can’t get anything done properly.”

We waited for the next round. Basically, the rule in Greece is to expect everything to go wrong and to try to enjoy it whether it does or doesn’t.

After a long interval, the waiter came bath with the things we had ordered and plonked a pot of tea in front of Mother and a plate upon which there was a piece of bread and two raw tomatoes cut in half.

“But this is not what I ordered,” she complained. “They’re raw, and it’s bread.”

“Tomatoes, Madam,” said the boy stubbornly. “Madam say tomatoes.”

“But grilled,” protested Mother. “You know, cooked.”

The boy just stared at her.

“Look,” said Mother, as one explaining to an idiot child, “you make toast first, you understand? You make the toast.”

“Yes,” replied the boy dismally.

“All right, then,” said Mother. “Then you put the tomatoes on the toast and you grill them. Understand?”

“Yes, Madam. You no want this?” he asked, gesturing at the plate of bread and tomatoes.

“No, not like that. Grilled,” said Mother.

The boy wandered off carrying the plate, and had another sharp altercation with the Purser, who was now harassed by the arrival of a lot of Greek passengers, including our fat ladies, all of whom were demanding attention.

We watched the waiter, fascinated, as he put the plate of tomatoes and bread on a table and then spread out a paper napkin with the air of a conjuror about to perform a very complicated trick. Our hypnotized gaze attracted the attention of Mother and Margo and they looked round in time to see the waiter place the bread and the tomatoes carefully in the middle of the napkin.

“What on earth is he doing?” asked Mother.

“Performing some ancient Greek rite,” explained Larry.

The waiter now folded up the napkin with the bread and tomatoes inside, and started across the saloon.

“He’s not bringing them to me like that, is he?” asked Mother in amazement.

We watched entranced as he solemnly made his way across the saloon and laid his burden upon the big oil stove in the centre of it. Although it was spring, the weather was chilly, and so the stove had been lit and was, indeed, almost red hot and giving out a comforting heat. I think we all divined what he was going to do but could not quite conceive such an action being possible. Before our fascinated eyes he placed napkin, bread and tomatoes carefully on the glowing lid of the stove and then stepped back to watch. There was a moment’s pause and the napkin burst into flames to be followed, almost immediately, by the bread. The waiter, alarmed that his novel form of cookery was not being effective, seized another napkin from a nearby table and tried to extinguish the blaze by throwing it over the top of the stove. The napkin, not unnaturally, caught fire too.

“I don’t know what Greek delicacy that is,” said Larry, “but it looks delicious, and cooked almost by the table, too.”

“The boy must be mad,” exclaimed Mother.

“I hope you’re not going to eat them after all that,” said Margo. “It doesn’t look very hygienic.”

“It’s the only really piquant way of doing tomatoes,” insisted Larry. “And think what fun you’ll have picking the bits of charred napkin out of your teeth afterwards.”

“Don’t be so disgusting, Larry,” protested Mother. “I’m certainly not eating that.”

Two other waiters had joined the first and all three were trying to beat out the flames with napkins. Bits of tomato and flaming toast flew in all directions, landing indiscriminately on tables and customers alike. One of our fat ladies of the night before was blotched with a succulent section of tomato, and an old gentleman, who had just sat down, had his tie pinned to him with a piece of flaming toast like a red hot Indian arrow. The Purser, emerging from the kitchen, took in the situation at a glance. He seized a large jug of water and running forward, threw it over the stove. It certainly had the effect of extinguishing the flames, but all the closer tables were immediately enveloped in steam, and clouds spread over the dining saloon containing the blended scents of tomato, burnt bread and charred napkin.

“It smells just like minestrone,” said Larry. “I do think after all the boy’s efforts you ought to try just a little, Mother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Larry,” cried Mother. “They’ve all gone mad.”

“No,” said Leslie, “they’ve all gone Greek.”

“The terms are synonymous,” observed Larry.

One waiter had now hit another for some inexplicable reason, the Purser was shaking the original waiter by his lapels and shouting in his face. The scene was further enlivened by vociferous cries of complaint and annoyance from the surrounding tables. The threatening gestures, the pushing, the rich invective, were fascinating to watch but, like all good things, they eventually ended with the Purser slapping the original waiter over the back of his head and the waiter ripping off his badge of office, his dingy white coat, and hurling it at the Purser, who threw it back at him and ordered him out of the saloon. He curtly told the other waiters to clean up the mess and made placating noises to all and sundry as he made his way over to our table. He stopped, drew himself up to his full height beside us, plucked a fresh carnation from his buttonhole and put it in Mother’s left hand, while seizing her right hand and kissing it gracefully.

“Madam,” he said, “I am apologetic. We cannot give you grillid tomatoes. Anything else you want, we do, but grillid 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 night club 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 fireflies 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 he 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 ourselves 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! Scata! ” 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 quarter-deck. Front 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 hint 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 rattled 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.

“Papadopoulos!” he roared at the poor Chief Officer, who was getting shakily to his feet and mopping blood from his nose, “you son of a poutana, you imbecile, you donkey! You illegitimate son of a ditch-delivered Turkish cretin! Why didn’t you lower the anchor?”

“But Captain,” began the Chief Officer, his voice muffled behind a blood-stained handkerchief, “you never told me to.”

“Am I expected to do everything around here,” bellowed the Captain. “Steer the ship, run the engines, produce the band which can play the Greek songs? Mother of God!” He clapped his face in his hands.

All around arose the cacophony of Greeks in a SITUATION. With this noise, and the Captain’s tragic figure, it seemed rather like a scene from the battle of Trafalgar.

“Well,” said Larry, mopping blood from his eyes, “this was a splendid idea, Mother. I do congratulate you. I think, however, I will fly back. That is, if we can get ashore alive.”

Eventually, the walking wounded were allowed ashore and we straggled down the gangway. We could now see that the Poseidon had another, almost identical, hole in her bows, on the opposite side to the previous one.

“Well, at least now she matches,” said Leslie gloomily.

“Oh, look!” said Margo, as we stood on the docks. “There’s that poor old band.”

She waved, and the three old gentlemen bowed. We saw that the violinist had a nasty cut on his forehead and the tuba player a piece of sticking-plaster across the bridge of his nose. They returned our bows and, obviously interpreting the appearance of the family as a sign of support that would do something to restore their sense of dignity which had been so sorely undermined by their ignominious dismissal of the night before, they turned in unison, glanced up at the bridge, with looks of great defiance raised tuba, trombone and violin, and started to play.

The strains of “Never on Sunday” floated down to us.