Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell

Author:Gerald Durrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504041669
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

7

Owls and Aristocracy

Now winter was upon us. Everything was redolent with the smoke of olive-wood fires. The shutters creaked and slapped the sides of the house as the wind caught them, and the birds and leaves were tumbled across a dark lowering sky. The brown mountains of the mainland wore tattered caps of snow and the rain filled the eroded, rocky valleys, turning them into foaming torrents that fled eagerly to the sea carrying mud and debris with them. Once they reached the sea they spread like yellow veins through the blue water, and the surface was dotted with squill bulbs, logs and twisted branches, dead beetles and butterflies, clumps of brown grass and splintered canes. Storms would be brewed in among the whitened spikes of the Albanian mountains and then tumble across to us, great black piles of cumulus, spitting a stinging rain, with sheet lightning blooming and dying like yellow ferns across the sky.

It was at the beginning of the winter that I received a letter.

Dear Gerald Durrell,

I understand from our mutual friend, Dr Stephanides, that you are a keen naturalist and possess a number of pets. I was wondering, therefore, if you would care to have a white owl which my workmen found in an old shed they were demolishing? He has, unfortunately, a broken wing, but is otherwise in good health and feeding well.

If you would like him, I suggest you come to lunch on Friday and take him with you when you return home. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know. A quarter to one or one o’clock would be suitable.

Yours sincerely,

Countess Mavrodaki

This letter excited me for two reasons. Firstly, because I had always wanted a barn owl, for that was what it obviously was, and secondly, because the whole of Corfu society had been trying unavailingly for years to get to know the Countess. She was the recluse par excellence. Immensely wealthy, she lived in a gigantic, rambling, Venetian villa deep in the country and never entertained or saw anybody except the workmen on her vast estate. Her acquaintance with Theodore was due only to the fact that he was her medical adviser. The Countess was reputed to possess a large and valuable library and for this reason Larry had been most anxious to try to get himself invited to her villa, but without success.

‘Dear God,’ he said bitterly when I showed him my invitation. ‘Here I’ve been trying for months to get that old harpy to let me see her books and she invites you to lunch – there’s no justice in the world.’

I said that after I had lunched with the Countess, maybe I could ask her if he could see her books.

‘After she’s had lunch with you I shouldn’t think she would be willing to show me a copy of The Times, let alone her library,’ said Larry witheringly.

However, in spite of my brother’s low opinion of my social graces, I was determined to put in a good word for him if I saw a suitable opportunity.

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