The Old Men at the Zoo Page 15

  “Yes, I think we have. In any case I always do things the way I want to, Carter.”

  I laughed to ease the tension.

  “I suppose you might be going to invest in running a Zoo as an insurance against old age without political office.”

  Leacock swung round from the window, his toucan eyes rounder than ever with anger. But Godmanchester was rumbling away with laughter.

  “You’re perfectly right. Everybody has a purely selfish thought on such occasions and you’ve hit on mine. Of course I shall never be idle enough to do no more than potter around with Zoo affairs. So you people don’t have to be afraid. But I’d like to increase my interest—yes . . . That’s not quite all though.”

  He waited a moment, then, he sat back, his short, stubby arms resting on those of the armchair.

  “You’re right. Enough of this Viva’ stuff. I’m in a hurry with this business for the sake of the Zoo. In my opinion we shan’t have any too much time to evacuate the more valuable specimens before the country finds itself at war. Well, what about that?”

  So here it was at last—not in the usual newspaper scares, but from the fount of all newspapers himself. My first thought was—well, if he says so, then here it is. I was alarmed that I should show my fears, but strangely, confronted with such a sense of certainty, no physical symptoms -seized me. Too many thoughts occupied my mind at once—Martha, the children, the still beauty of the woods that could then have been my surrounding instead of Leacock’s strutting stance and Godmanchester’s flabby old face. Detestation of the old man for being perhaps my herald of annihilation made me unable to speak for a moment.

  Finally, I said, “Do you suggest that the next war can be evaded? Or are you anxious to Inspire confidence in phoney evacuation schemes? I’m not going to be party to using the Zoo for pretences of that sort.”

  To my annoyance, he smiled, but as though to himself.

  “Quite the contrary,” he said; then he looked serious. “You don’t really think, Carter, do you, that after the Russo-American Declaration even our Prime Minister would risk nuclear weapons. And luckily, however much he bungles, others won’t risk launching them at us. No, thank God, I feel pretty sure that we shall be spared that. But unless something happens to shake this present crowd up, we may have a terrible enough war on our hands anyway. I’m not giving anyone here my reasons for saying so. Some people would consider that I had gone too far in my position and with ‘my knowledge in saying what I have. And after all it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong; because we shall be laying the foundations of something very fine. Will you help us to get this thing through as quickly and as easily as possible? You’ve made a good impression here with the staff and with the members of the Committee, if you throw yourself in with us, we shall make a strong team.”

  I stared at Leacock. For all the solemnity he assumed at that moment, I felt he was really taking such things very lightly.

  He said, “Yes, Carter, there is this additional grave reason. Of course I couldn’t tell you without Lord Godmanchester’s agreement.”

  As I looked at them both, they seemed for a moment like two very old irresponsible boys pretending to be adults. I had a moment of panic as to where they might be leading me. I determined to remain silent, but Godmanchester heaved himself breathily out of his chair and straddled his great bulk in front of me. His thick eyebrows went up in imperious demand for an immediate reply.

  “I am thinking,” I said, “of some weeks ago when I spoke to you. You described what I told you then as a tall story. There’s too much in it of ‘it may be this or it may not’, you said. Now we seem to be on the brink of war or we may not be. And again, we may be at the great beginnings of a British National Zoological Park, or we may not.”

  Edwin Leacock said sharply, “Luckily the alternatives demand the same actions from us.”

  “Luckily!”

  Godmanchester answered my angry scorn with a patronage even more scornful.

  “Yes. As Leacock says. In any case we’re simply concerned to know whether you’ll co-operate or not.”

  I had to try once again.

  I said, “I take it that there’ll be little or no publicity in your papers for our move if we make it.”

  “You take it wrongly. Anything to do with me automatically gets some publicity. I also intend that Leacock’s great scheme shall not go without recognition from the public.”

  He looked at me very deliberately.

  “My whims, Leacock’s vision. Anything more would be a breach of my idea of security.”

  Leacock began to pick up sheafs of papers from his desk.

  “If we’re going to take on the running of Lord God-manchester’s papers as well as our duties here, we shall be very busy indeed.”

  Intuitive suspicion cannot stand up long against authority’s arguments. I agreed to assist them. After all either alternative— evacuation of an old Zoo or foundation of a new—was a large enterprise. How could I be sure that my doubt was not simply a product of my general mistrust of the declaredly important?

  We did, as Godmanchester predicted, make a very strong team. Our first committee meeting, of course, had been rigged so that I found it difficult to judge what might be coming from their enthusiasm. But when the full Executive Committee met, I was surprised how little my disquiet was echoed by anyone else. Members who were sceptical of Leacock or Godmanchester, or of both, were clearly impressed by my adherence. Nicolls, the Zoology Professor from Oxford, said afterwards to me,

  “Well, when I saw that you didn’t deflate the idea, I took it that it was administratively possible.”

  Old Miss Braithwaite, the great Amazon collector, said, ‘It’s on your head, you know, Mr Carter; you’re the sound man, so I hope you haven’t let us down.”

  The old men, it seemed, had been right to fuss so much about my agreement. I had anticipated expert opposition to the haste and the arbitrary legal foundations of the new settlement; but I had forgotten how much we are confounded by sheer scale today. Godmanchester was making an offer worthy of a Renaissance prince, even canny lawyers and demanding civil servants seemed to expect him to behave with an appropriate imperiousness. The arbitrary manner, it seemed, established the sincerity of the act.

  There was, as I had foretold, some opposition from those who suspected that the whole thing was the beginning of the end of Regent’s Park. Old Lord Oresby, in fact, in particular, whose father had been sacked along with Asquith when Godmanchester’s father had been raised to the peerage by Lloyd George, assumed an arrogant, contemptuous stance towards what he even openly called ‘some bit of caddish sharp practice’. Yet much as he hated Godmanchester, he altered his view after talking privately with him, although he refused to say why. He quarrelled with Bobby Falcon over his change of mind: “I’m not quite sure that Falcon’s sane,” he told me, “he seems to be preaching the millenium.” Bobby, on his side, told me, “Oresby and his crowd aren’t aware that we’re on the brink of Armageddon. Their mental attitude is about appropriate to Gladstone and the Ashanti wars.” I saw clearly then that Godmanchester’s ideas of security were flexible.

  By early August the Committee had authorized our move. Leacock and I had already laboriously gone through all the records of transportation, organization and staffing in the early Whipsnade days. But life had changed since then and the tough work of organization was still before us. It was going largely to be a two-man job, for although we had secured the formal support of the Curators, they could none of them be said to show enthusiasm.

  Leacock, on my advice, had discussed the motion before the Executive Committee with each Curator in turn. I truly believe that left to his own inclination he would have funked the interviews and tried to bluff his way through the opposition of his staff by presenting them with a directive. I was present by his request, at all the interviews. But let me say now that his request was prompted by my own suggestion. I had for once engaged myself; I was determined not to evade my responsibility
. I invented a special mock-pompous voice which I used when office life became unbearably high motived; no one else seemed to notice when I put it on, but it gave me some release from my distaste for the grandiose.

  For the first time I found myself fully on the side of action. I quite understood all the Curators’ mistrust of Leacock; after all I knew his weaknesses far better than they did. But I also knew his virtues. In any case I thought they should at least have seen a little beyond the man to the ideas he proposed. Their involved distrust and apathy irritated me. Yet, in the end, all of them for various reasons, accepted his proposition. I don’t believe that Leacock noticed these involutions; or, when he did, he called them ‘an awful tendency to fuss that men acquire who are protected from facts by specialization’. When however, in the end, he got a sort of agreement from them all, he told me confidentially,

  “Despite all Godmanchester’s grim forebodings, you know, Carter, I’m inclined to take a more hopeful view of world affairs. This experience has taught me a lot. I don’t mind saying that I anticipated some very rough passages with one or two of the Curators, but when it comes down to it, it’s amazing what a deal of horse sense there is in most human beings.”

  He was, of course, under the new scheme to preside over Stretton in the inaugural years, away from the horse-sense of his Curators who were all for the time being to continue in London.

  I, who was to divide my time between London and the Welsh Border, saw the interviews with the Curators with a less favourable eye, for I should now be the sole representative of central administrative authority with whom they would have to deal at Regent’s Park.

  I say the sole representative because the manner of Bobby Falcon’s agreement to deputize for the Director in London gave me little reason to think that he would take his job very seriously. The whole course of his response to the news was so erratic that I felt very disturbed for him. Leacock insisted on a different approach to Bobby from the simple interviews he gave to the other Curators.

  “We must be civilized with Falcon,” he said, “none of this modern office formality. I shall lunch him at the club and tell him there. After all he’s a very distinguished man.”

  I tried everything I could do dissuade him; I knew that Bobby would regard such behaviour as very bad form. But success with the Committee had increased Leacock’s belief in his knowledge of men. I proved to be right. As we slithered about on an American cloth sofa with our after-luncheon coffee, Leacock outlined his plans.

  Bobby said, “I take it I’m not meant to comment now.”

  Leacock was a little surprised, but he agreed.

  “My dear Falcon, you must say what you feel right when you feel right. Though I shall be anxious, you know. Between ourselves, yours is the only Curator’s opinion that counts.”

  He received it the next day in the form of a note.

  “Dear Director,

  The proposal you made yesterday seems to me as wild as it is undesirable. The haste with which you and Godmanchester are trying to force it through gives one some doubts of jour motives and greater doubts of jour capacity to realise such a grandiose scheme, even were it desirable. I do not know how far anything ‘matters’ much more today. But I have the wishes of those who have stood by me in my views — Oresbyy Peasegpod, and others — to consider as well as my own. I shall therefore use all the influence I can to frustrate the scheme.”

  Edwin Leacock was very angry.

  “I’ll tell you this, Carter, I’m not going to let that man’s arrogance and folly put the clock back.”

  But he was also clearly very apprehensive. I imagine that it was then, at his request, that Godmanchester revealed his full views in conversation both with Bobby and with the Oresby group, for, shortly afterwards, the split occurred that I have already reported. Bobby wanted to resign from the staff.

  “In view of everything,” he said, “I really don’t know why I shouldn’t do a last bit of exploration. It can hardly matter if it kills me.”

  He seemed extraordinarily ebullient and carefree. Leacock would, I think, gladly have accepted the decision, but Godmanchester was appalled.

  “Falcon’s a name,” he said, “and we don’t want names walking out on us at a time like this.”

  I saw the letter that he wrote to Bobby.

  “Whatever happens we need a man in charge of Regent’s Park who cares for the traditions of the place. And you’re that man.”

  I should have admired Bobby more if he had refused such cheap flattery; as it was, he accepted very perfunctorily.

  “Just as you like,” he said, “but I hope Simon’s ready to do a good deal of deputizing, because I may still go on my travels again.”

  I was glad at that moment that against Martha’s wishes I had insisted on receiving a salary; to have an honorary status as Bobby had, simply removed all sanctions and shape to ones actions.

  Dr Englander, the only other honorary Curator, clearly felt even more free of sanctions. Leacock tried twice to summon him back from Rome, but he paid no attention to the letters. Finally when he did return, he expressed interest only in the financial extent of Godmanchester’s offer.

  “I’m surprised he’s got as much as that,” he said. “I’ve always thought he was a fraud. Mind you he’s not in the class of Berard or Huebsch or even old Masiello—you’d be surprised how much that old chap’s got, by the way. But by English standards he’s obviously rich.”

  When Leacock said he had no intention of attempting a reptile display at Stretton as yet, he answered, “I suppose not.”

  We left the Director’s office together and the old man laughed.

  “He’s got pretty puffed up about the whole thing, hasn’t he? I’d better send a couple of bullfrogs down there to keep him company.”

  The next day, however, he came to my office and questioned me in detail about the terms of Godmanchester’s offer.

  Finally he said, “No, it obviously won’t do. Of course I’m not concerned with all this nonsense of Leacock’s, but it did occur to me that the place could be kept in mind in case this country’s silly enough to run into war. I can’t believe even our rulers will be that crazy, but you never know. If it comes, mind you, it will be a pretty quick walk-over for our friends abroad; but though short, it may not be altogether sweet. It might be as well to have some plans, for a temporary hide-out. I don’t want all my research work upset by some idiotic English politician who’s trigger happy. But this place of Godmanchester’s won’t do. The man himself will be hanging around interfering. And then look at the terms of the tenure—no security at all. Leacock must be mad! But then he is mad. No, I’ll talk to some of my friends in industry and see what they can stump up.”

  I heard no more from him until the first dispatch of mammals had begun. I think that an accident which had occurred to one of the mountain goats from the Mappin Terrace when it was being rounded up must have disturbed him. Twice during our interview he swallowed a digestive tablet from the small silver box he kept in his waistcoat pocket.

  “Look here,” he said, “I suppose Leacock isn’t going to start any of this nonsense with my collections, is he?” And he refused to be reassured. ‘Til tell you what. I’ll make a list of some surplus specimens and offer it to him. It’s always as well to get in first with these maniacs. Flatter him a bit. What’s that phrase of his, ‘learning to live with wild life’?” He went out chuckling to himself.

  I don’t know how far Charles Langley-Beard fully took in the change. Leacock was so determined to protect him from its impact.

  “I should never forgive myself if that man’s work was disturbed for a moment, Carter. And by his work I mean the very delicately balanced genius that controls it.”

  One of Beard’s assistants was to carry out the veterinary work at Stretton.

  “I’m expecting the other Curators to visit us from time to time to familiarize themselves with our progress, Beard. But I know how your work keeps you at it, and for the moment I shan’t
expect you to be there at all. We can always send you any corpses you want up here. Not, of course, that we shouldn’t welcome a visit from you, if you felt like getting a little country air.”

  Dr Beard considered this from afar.

  “I’ve had very little to do with the country,” he said, “my life hasn’t taken me there much.”

  Dr Leacock signalled to me the pathos of this.

  “I’ve often hoped that it isn’t blasphemous,” Dr Beard went on, “but I find the natural scene part of God’s creation I can do without.”

  Matthew, of course, was as unattracted by the countryside as Beard. It belonged, I imagine, to the time of his childhood and his public schooldays before his egoistic will had hardened. At any rate he had banished it from his carefully protected world. When, however, it became apparent that he was not expected to reside there’ and that his classifying work would not be interrupted, he became almost enthusiastic about the move.

  “I believe Godmanchester has some very passable landscape gardening and a very pretty formal garden too. They would make an excellent setting for aviaries.”

  This was not quite Leacock’s conception of the National Park.

  He said, “Nothing can be too elaborate at this stage, Price.”

  “Oh, I don’t think anything can ever be too elaborate at any stage, do you? We shall have space for the most intricate and curious aviaries. And then the construction of artificial islands in the lake. I see a sort of miniature Japan with beautiful wading birds instead of all those tiresome little people. Completely charming.”

  Dr Leacock was always uneasy with Matthew; he thought he was ‘pulling his leg’.

  He laughed and said, “Well, I’m only too pleased to find a loyal supporter in you, Price.”

  Matthew drew his willowy form to its considerable height, and said stiffly, “I hope I’ve always been loyal to the work of the Society.”

  Leacock was taken aback. He even mused for a moment after Matthew had gone, and said, “Funny chap, Price.”