Gerald was never much aware of his three older siblings during his infant years in India. His elder brother Lawrence had already been packed off to school in England by the time he was born, and Leslie (now back in India) and Margaret (five years his senior), had advanced far beyond baby talk and infant toys. He was even less aware of the outer fringes of the Durrell family network — the army of aunts and his daunting paternal grandmother, Dora, the overweight, doom-preaching, oppressive and rather terrifying matriarch known as `Big Granny', who circulated around the family and was destined not to expire until 1943. For much of his time Gerald was left in the company of his Indian surrogate mother, or ayah. `In those days children only saw their parents when they were presented to them at four o'clock for the family tea,' Margaret was to recall. `So our lives revolved around the nursery and our Hindu ayah and Catholic governess. Gerry would have had more to do with the ayah than we older children did, so the biggest influence in his Indian years would have been the Indian rather than the European part of the household.'