That he knew everyone on the island, and that they all knew him, we soon discovered was no idle boast. It was Spiro who paid our hotel bill, who organized a cart to carry our luggage to the villa, and who drove us out there himself, his car piled high with groceries that he had purchased for us.
That it was not the poor manager’s fault did not deter him in the least. It was Spiro who, on discovering that our money had not yet arrived from England, subsidized us, and took it upon himself to go and speak severely to the bank manager about his lack of organization. The fact that he was Greek and adored bargaining was, of course, another reason. This was approximately a penny it was not the cash, but the principle of the thing, he explained. So he would take us shopping, and after an hour’s sweating and roaring he would get the price of an article reduced by perhaps two drachmas. ‘Don’ts you worrys yourselfs about anythings, Mrs Durrells,’ he had scowled, ‘leaves everythings to me.’ It was better, he explained, for him to do things, as everyone knew him, and he would make sure we were not swindled. Having lumbered so unexpectedly into our lives, Spiro now took over complete control of our affairs.
As soon as we saw it, we wanted to live there – it was as though the villa had been standing there waiting for our arrival. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects. In the darkness of the fuchsia hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly.
The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny front balcony was hung as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heartshaped leaves. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame red, moon-white, glossy and unwrinkled marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent’s progress through the sky. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake’s head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles and circles, all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild.
The garden, surrounded by tall fuchsia hedges, had the flowerbeds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination.
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