The Old Men at the Zoo Read online

  Angus Wilson’s books

  THE WRONG SET

  SUCH DARLING DODOS

  HEMLOCK AND AFTER

  EMILE ZOLA: AN INTRODUCTORY

  STUDY OF HIS NOVELS

  THE MULBERRY BUSH: A PLAY

  ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES

  A BIT OFF THE MAP

  THE MIDDLE AGE OF MRS ELIOT

  THE OLD MEN AT

  THE ZOO

  Angus Wilson

  NEW YORK

  THE VIKING PRESS

  1961

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 61-13729

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT © 1961 BY ANGUS WILSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  PUBLISHED IN 1961 BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC.

  625 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK 22, N. Y.

  CONTENTS

  PAGE

  I A TALL STORY 9

  II AN END AND SEVERAL BEGINNINGS 71

  III LIMITED LIBERTY 115

  IV WARS, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN 186

  V A GOOD OLD, RARE OLD, ARMAGEDDON 236

  VI MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS 279

  VII THE HOOPOE LIES DOWN WITH THE GROUSE 309

  VIII DOWN AND UP AGAIN 341

  FOR CLIVE AND LUCIE.

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  PRESIDENTS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL

  SOCIETY .... Lord Godmanchester;

  his wife, Lady Godmanchester.

  Later, Lord Oresby.

  Later, Mr Harmer.

  Then again, Lord Oresby.

  A VICE-PRESIDENT . . . Professor Hales.

  DIRECTOR OF THE ZOOLOGICAL

  GARDENS . . . .Dr Leacock; his wife, Madge

  Leacock, their daughter,

  Harriet Leacock.

  SECRETARY OF THE ZOOLOGICAL

  GARDENS .... Simon Carter, the Narrator;

  his wife, Martha; their small

  children, Reggie, Violet.

  STAFF OF THE SECRETARY’S

  OFFICE .... Mrs Purrett;

  Rackham, a messenger.

  CURATOR OF MAMMALS . . Sir Robert Falcon; his wife

  Jane.

  KEEPERS OF MAMMALS . . Strawson; (head keeper)

  Barley;

  Young Filson.

  CURATOR OF BIRDS . . Matthew Price; his sister,

  Diana Price.

  HEAD KEEPER OF BIRDS . Old Filson; his wife.

  CURATOR OF THE INSECT HOUSE Mr Sanderson; his retired

  housekeepers, Mrs Blessing-

  ton, Miss Delaney.

  CURATOR OF REPTILES . . Dr Emile Englander; his wife,

  Sophie.

  PROSECTOR AND VETERINARY

  SURGEON .... Dr Charles Langley-Beard; his

  family.

  CURATOR OF THE AQUARIUM . Dr Harry Jackley.

  RESEARCH WORKERS . . Dr Pattie Henderson;

  Dr Newton;

  Dr Nutting.

  MR BLANCHARD-WHITE . . A Uni-European, interested in

  Zoo policy.

  The events described here as taking place in 1970-73 are utterly improbable. Our future is possibly brighter, probably much more gloomy. All references to the administration of the London Zoo and to its staff are entirely imaginary.

  I

  A TALL STORY

  I OPENED the large central window of my office room to its full on that fine early May morning. Then I stood for a few moments, breathing in the soft, warm air that was charged with the scent of white lilacs below. The graceful flamingos, shaded from flushed white to a robust tinned salmon, humped and coiled on their long stilts; a Florida pelican picked and nuzzled comically with its orange pouched bill among its drab brownish wing feathers; the herring gulls surprised me, as they did every day, by their size and their viciously hooked beaks. To command ones chosen view of the brute creation was one of the unexpected advantages I had secured by taking on the newly instituted post of Administrative Secretary at the London Zoo three years before. A word with the Director and with Matthew Price, the Curator of Birds, had resulted in a new waders’ enclosure opposite my window, replacing a pen for capybaras, creatures interesting perhaps as the largest of the rodents, but, with their ungainly coarse-haired bodies, hardly ornamental for everyday view. Young men with administrative experience and high recommendations from the Treasury were not to be had everyday at a nominal salary. The Zoo authorities had been very indulgent to a number of ‘milord’ whims that were perhaps more in keeping with an aesthetic undergraduate than with an administrator of thirty five.

  English springtime that year had been at its loveliest. Gentle, sweet enough, to banish all bogeys, to bridge all chasms. The lilac scent came heavy with a sudden gust of wind, sensual, almost ruttish. A blackbird sang nearby. Blackbirds, gentle, sweet, ruttish. I punctured the rhapsody with a little bathos. Most delicious, springtime suburbia, lush laburnum time enough to satisfy a cockney Keats. But the morning’s grace was too complete to be banished by self-mockery. I remained dreamily happy, staring out, registering only vaguely the prettiness of the early Victorian Giraffe House that lay distantly before me, beyond the intervening road.

  Nevertheless the conscious checking of my thoughts set my mind free from the enchantment of my senses. I wondered how it came about that I could hear one blackbird’s notes when I had become quite deaf to the customary loud orchestra of a whole Zoo after three years. I registered the feeding times only subliminally; even the occasional chorus of panic induced by some low flying jet, a chorus starting perhaps with one high shriek and swelling into a discordant symphony, no longer disturbed me. I hardly noticed such noises more than did the animals the helicopters or hooting water buses that brought staff or visitors from the motor parks of outer London to the Zoological Gardens. But then, the blackbird’s was the voice of freedom, not perhaps the great cosmic liberty of Beethoven’s thunderous chords, but enough to sound a clarion call to an Administrative Secretary who so often longed to be with his wife rather than at his office desk.

  The direction of my thoughts decided me to return to my work. The galley proofs of the forthcoming issue of The Proceedings of the Society lay draped over the desk. Despite the long column of print that ran down the middle of the sheets, they appeared as virginal white as a bride’s veil. I thought with satisfaction of getting to work on them with a corrector’s pen. The rape would be long and detailed, for zoologists, I had found, seemed to have powers of linguistic expression in inverse ratio to their scientific knowledge. Correcting other people’s texts, indeed all ordering of words, always gave me intense pleasure. It was a delightful task for a nice spring day. Not all my work at the Zoo, alas, was so congenial. The Treasury job, however glad I had been when Martha’s money released me from it, had called for a good measure of toughness; after it, Regent’s Park affairs smelt a little of the parish pump. I had difficulty sometimes in carrying back a sufficiently enthusiastic day’s report to satisfy Martha’s hopes. Grateful for the absorbing pleasures of proof reading, I turned to Pattie Henderson’s informed but childishly constructed article on “Nematoda in the digestive tracts of certain Pinnipedia.”

  Suddenly the screaming began. I knew that they were human cries, yet the noise was further from what is usually meant by a human scream than many animal or bird calls. As the first deep groans, there must have been eight or nine of them, rose each in turn to a high sound somewhere between a monkey’s shriek and a sudden release of air from vast balloons, Pattie Henderson’s diagram of a seal’s bowels swam on the paper in front of me and my own bowels heaved within in fright and horror. I rushed to the door. By the time I had left my room the noise was drowned in the panic orchestra of roaring lions and baying sea lions, of hyaenas’ idiot schoolgirl giggles, of wolves, of bears, of howling g
ibbons and chattering monkeys, of trumpeting stags and the crowing lunatic shrieks of the peacocks near the window. It sounded as though every creature was rushing, as I had done, to leave its cage. In the corridor I collided with both my secretaries. The big one, who liked to mother me, was announcing her views.

  “Oh, I knew at once what had happened. It was just the same that time I was walking along Holborn. It took the ambulance a quarter of an hour to get there and this chap went on screaming all the time. You wouldn’t believe they’d have the strength.”

  At that moment the bell of the Society’s private ambulance could be heard clanging above the bestial pandemonium.

  “There, what did I tell you?” Mrs Purrett said proudly.

  “Well, I never heard anything so horrible in all my life and I hope I never shall again.” The new little pretty secretary seemed as proud of her innocence as the big one of her un-pleasant experience.

  “I don’t think we can help,” I said. “With the ambulance people there, we should only swell an unnecessary crowd. But find out at once from Exchange, Mrs Purrett, what has happened.”

  I followed them into their room. The little dainty touches Mrs Purrett had added of artcraft and home from home seemed more revolting than usual to me as I waited for her explanation of her horrified exclamations into the telephone. At last she laid down the receiver.

  “Don’t worry, Marian dear,” she said to the little typist, “its no one we know very well. But we do know him, Mr Carter. And the news is rather bad.”

  Clearly she had long practice in breaking bad news; it was as though she was delicately washing our corpses before burying us.

  “It’s young Mr Filson. Perhaps you don’t, remember him, Mr Carter. In the Giraffe and Zebra house. The son of old Mr Filson in Parrots. He was in the office a week ago about special leave for some concert he was singing in.”

  “Yes, of course I do. Don’t be so dramatic, Mrs Purrett.” I hate to see people that I like ‘putting on an act’. But it was too late to tease Mrs Purrett out of it.

  She moved a bowl of yellow tulips on her desk so that she could look straight into the little typist’s eyes. I wondered if she imagined that she could ‘hold someone’s nerve’ by staring at them.

  She said gravely, “He may never come into the office again, Mr Carter. There’s been a terrible accident...” She was a kind woman, as I knew, but she had already begun to enjoy her story. Before she had really got going, however, Rackham, the ex-serviceman messenger, rushed in banging the door noisily against the wall.

  “Got ‘im away to ‘ospital,” he shouted, then, noticing me, he stopped and drew himself to attention. “Oh, beg pardon, Sir, I didn’t know you was in ‘ere.”

  “That’s all right, Rackham,” I could not avoid irritation, for I guessed that the old man always knew how uncomfortable this N.C.O. to officer stuff made me. “What’s happened to the boy?”

  “Oh, they reckon ‘e’s copped it, Sir. ‘E was alive when they moved ‘im from the ground. But Walters, that’s the First Aid man, ‘e’s a pal of mine, ‘e tells me ‘e was dead before they moved off. Mind you, they’ll say ‘e was dead before they picked ‘im up. They ‘ave to clear theirselves in law. Multiple injuries to the shoulder, chest and . . .” he took rather conscious notice of the typists’ presence, “and general injuries. Some old chap in the crowd started bellyaching about they shouldn’t ‘ave moved ‘im so soon, but as Walters says to me, it wouldn’t ‘ave made no difference what they done.” He paused as though expecting applause for having established this point. I turned to Mrs Purrett.

  “Ring the hospital. And check exactly what has happened, will you?”

  Rackham’s sharp little foxy face took on an old soldier’s sentimental expression.

  “They’re waiting for Sir Robert’s word now whether old Smokey’s got to go. If it’d been any of the ‘ippos or rhinos, Strawson would ‘ave taken action ‘isself straightway. There’s only one thing to be done when they turn nasty. But a giraffe! Its unheard of. Strawson says ‘e’s never known a case in all ‘is years and ‘e’s been looking after giraffes from before any of you was born. ‘E reckons young Filson come on ‘im sudden with crepe rubber soles or somethin’ of that sort. Then Smokey took fright and Filson ‘ad ‘ad it. Strawson wants to save old Smokey but ‘e reckons ‘e’ll ‘ave to go. Pretty near in tears ‘e was. ‘There’s never been a gentler beast than that giraffe, Rackham, that I’ll swear.’ And you could tell ‘e meant it. I told ‘im shooting Smokey won’t bring young Filson back. If I was Sir Robert I’d take it right up to the Director before I gave the word for the high jump.”

  To avoid losing my temper I said coldly, “Sir Robert as Curator of Mammals is Deputy Director of the Gardens, Rackham. So I don’t think that ‘right up’ is quite the correct phrase.”

  I heard the words come out like those of a bad tempered schoolmaster talking to a boy of ten. Their results were in keeping with their tone; as I walked out of the room I could sense that Rackham was winking at the typists.

  Neither the scent of lilacs coming in at the window nor Pattie Henderson’s clumsily formed sentences that lay on my desk begging to be put straight, could bridge the chasm when I returned to my room. I stood by my desk feeling furious with the shapeless, purposeless emotions that so meaningless an accident could bring. As so often at conventionally grave moments I was overcome by a general randiness that finally settled to a persistent delicious image of the supple inward curve of Martha’s thighs. Living bodies to banish the dead; such comfortable reflexes could no doubt be made respectable by talk about the life force. But even so I could not entirely banish a feeling of shame at being even so remotely associated with such a stupid, cruel death.

  Mrs Purrett came in a placed and file of papers before me.

  “The draft reports from Dr Beard’s people for the Nuffield Foundation,” she said. Then she added very softly, “The hospital news is bad, I’m afraid, Mr Carter. He was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.”

  I said, “I see. Thank you.”

  She obviously expected more thanks for her careful breaking of bad news, for she lingered by me, enveloping me in a sense of unwanted bosoms, of starved affection ready to be hurt.

  “Old Rackham upset you with his crude talk, didn’t he, Mr Carter? I saw it. I know exactly what you felt. We’d not seen much of the boy in the office here. But he was young and ordinary and nice. And so happy. Engaged to be married to a nice, pretty ordinary girl. A Butlin’s hostess, I remember he told me. It doesn’t seem fair of death does it to pick on someone so ordinary? It’s the difficulty of making any sense of it. You’re not a religious man, are you, Mr Carter?”

  To answer, I felt as though I had physically to heave myself up in my seat. Even then I could only muster up enough human warmth to say, “No.”

  “Well, I’m not a clever woman at all, as you know. But I have had a lot of sorrow. Not tragedy, nothing important, everyday sorrow. But that sort of thing gives one conviction. For me and lots of ordinary people there’s a measure of certainty. Nothing to do with church going. Well I don’t have to tell you that. But the certainty that there is a sense to it all somewhere. After all one and one make two, don’t they? Does that help you at all?”

  I knew that human charity demanded more than merely foregoing the satisfaction of repeating my negative, yet I could not keep a certain note of sarcasm out of my voice as I said, “Thank you, Mrs Purrett.”

  I realized the full meaning of ‘touchiness’ as she edged her heavy breasts away from me.

  “For goodness sake! Don’t worry about me,” I said, “we can’t do anything about it and that’s that. Mr Price’ll be taking care of old Filson. And that’s the most that can be done.”

  She smiled, but I could see that she was still offended. I turned over the leaves of the reports in the folders.

  “These things are in a muddle, Mrs Purrett,” I said sharply.

  “That’s how they came through to us, Mr
Carter.”

  “Well, I’m sorry they’re still in a muddle.” I added savagely, “Like most things in this place.” I handed her the file. “Let me have them back after lunch, will you?”

  She had not been gone more than a minute or two, before Rackham brought in the morning cup of coffee, slopping it as usual in the saucer.

  “I couldn’t tell you all of it, Sir, in front of the ladies. But it was a nasty business all right. As I said before, what it seems like young Filson comes up behind Smokey. Strawson reckons the pad of them crepe rubbers was enough to bring back memories of lions to ‘im. That’s what them giraffes fear most— lions! He wheels his fucking great neck round . . .”

  I could tell from the old man’s sidelong glances that to his pleasure in telling the story was added the enjoyment of discomforting his listener. Yet to cut him short by an order however jovially given would be interpreted as surrender. Old sadist, I thought, and there’s not even a loud bassoon to excuse me.

  “Of course,” Rackham was saying, with an added tone of moral righteousness, “them railings ought never to have been there. Little low spiked railings like that. Strawson says ‘e’s spoken to Sir Robert about them time and time again. But nothing done. ‘E reckons the Director’ll ‘ear about them this time. Sir Robert or no Sir Robert.”

  “Strawson should keep his criticism to himself.”

  “Ah! That’s right,” Rackham said vaguely.

  I could have kicked myself. My strictures would no doubt be reported to Strawson in some general foxm, when in all likelihood the man had never made the remark. These ‘old characters’ like Rackham with their ‘racy’ reported speech were an archaic menace in any decent modern organization.