The Old Men at the Zoo Read online

  “Pierced right through ‘is shoulder it done, and pinned ‘im there. ‘E starts screaming! That frightens Smokey more and ‘e panics. Gallops off across the yard. Ever seen them giraffes runnin’? Funniest sight you ever seen. Like nothin’ else. Back and front by one side then back and front the other. Pacin’, they call it. But then you probably know that, Sir.”

  “Yes, I do.” I tried to keep up my testy tone but it was no good. Whenever anyone persists successfully in a course that annoys me, instead of getting angry I simply find that I want to laugh. I had now to give all my energies to keeping a straight face before Rackham’s calculated impudence.

  “Well, they can move all right. First move Smokey made, ‘e brought ‘is great hoof down on young Filson’s chest. Broke a couple of ribs. And the second one—well, it’s lucky the ladies are gone—’e smashed ‘is balls to bits. You probably didn’t ‘ear the awful noise the poor bastard made—up in your room ‘ere. Ghastly it was. On account of the pressure on the lung one of these ambulance chaps tells me. More like a hissing of the breath. Only loud. ‘Course they soon gave him morphine.” He paused at the word and gave a look that implied long years of medical understanding of analgesics.

  I said, “I think we can all help best, Rackham, by not panicking and by getting on with our ordinary work.”

  He glanced at me contemptuously and said obsequiously, “That’s right, Sir. Not that there’ll be much work done ‘ere today, I can tell you that.” Then, as though reproving me for my morbidity, “Well, the dead’s dead, Sir. And that’s about the long and short of it. It’s the livin’ we’ve got to think of. Old Filson’s only son!”

  “Have you seen the old man?”

  “No, Sir. Mr Price took ‘im straight ‘ome in a taxi when the news come through. So as Mrs Filson shouldn’t ‘ear from anyone else.”

  “That’s exactly what I imagined. Mr Price has the whole thing under control.”

  “Ah,” said Rackham noncommittally, “I’d better get along, Sir. There may be some news about old Smokey. ‘E won’t make no noise if they shoot ‘im. Got no vocal chords—giraffes. That was the uncanny thing about it, Strawson tells me—the young chap screamin’ ‘is lungs out and the bloody great animal in a muck panic not makin’ a sound.”

  “Yes, Rackham. I can imagine it all too easily, thank you.”

  I had little hope that my reproof would get through so easily; and it did not.

  Rackham said with satisfaction, “I knew you’d want to hear it straightaway, Sir. I said to Strawson, ‘Mr Carter’ll want to hear this straightaway.’ That’s why I come along so quick.”

  I could think of nothing more repulsive at that moment than the loving old spaniel’s look that came into Rackham’s amber flecked brown eyes.

  “I shall be very busy now dealing with the Director about it all, Rackham. So I shan’t require any more instalments of the story.”

  The spaniel’s eyes changed from ‘loving’ to ‘hurt’. Immediately I found myself grinning boyishly, almost winking at Rackham—the young officer appealing to the old sweat’s capacity to take a joke against himself. Rackham responded with an equally boyish grin.

  “Well, I’ll make myself scarce before I really put myself in wrong with you, Sir.” He went out chuckling.

  Death, I suppose, always calls for action, however irrelevant. I rang Dr Leacock. But when I heard Miss Chambers’ voice announcing rather grandly, “The Director’s in conference with Sir Robert now about this horrible accident. I should prefer to ask him to ring you back,” I felt an immediate revulsion from the official pomposity which I could feel already forming in a heavy blanket of comfortable fog around the wretched dead youth.

  “As long as you keep me out of all conferences, you can do just what you like, Miss Chambers,” I said.

  As I heard her click of disapproval, I knew that I must either do nothing, or grin and bear the pomposity without the indulgence of levity. I could all too easily imagine the scene in the Director’s room. Young Filson’s death like everything else at Regent’s Park would have been made to serve in the endless struggle between Leacock and Bobbie Falcon for their opposing views on the Zoo’s future. That I was entirely on the side of the Director in this debate, despite all his phoniness and his slipshod work, didn’t seem really to matter in this case. I agreed with Leacock that the Society’s worst mistake had been the closing of Whipsnade in some cheeseparing retrenchment; I wanted, as he did, a much larger National Wild Life Park somewhere to replace what we had lost; I did not want Bobby’s romantic, childish revived Victorian Zoo. But at this moment I wanted above all to talk only of what could be done to prevent such a tragedy happening again, to bring home the charge to the culpable, yes, to avenge young Filson. Certainly not to hear his death used as a talking point in debate. And yet these old men—Leacock and Falcon—had succeeded all unconsciously in turning some of the most serious of the many war scares of the last year into debates on their pet schemes, Why should the death of an unimportant young keeper escape the same treatment? I went to the window but the long legged grace of the flamingos seemed grace no longer, only stilted absurdity; and the pelicans’ comicality, mere swollen folly. The whole walled, barred and caged Gardens seemed intolerable.

  What was my senseless pride in my administrative capacity that had made me come to this place? To put the Zoo’s administration in order! When I could have given myself up to long years of watching and studying English wild life far away from all the incompetence and humbug that seemed inseparable from dealing with human beings. And then to have tried to convey that pleasure to a million others on television. ‘Tried’—why had I to play the thing down, when I knew so well that my television programmes had been a smashing success? Why did I have to run away from them as an indulgence? Was a solo turn so impossible a luxury? In indulging myself I should after all have been doing what Martha wanted me to do. I felt choked with impatience at my own pigheaded addiction to self-denial. Only the sudden flickering yet sharp memory of a white and black muzzle showing for a moment against the yellowish clayey soil and the knotted elder roots, of a snout upturned to savour the freshness of the July evening air brought me relief from a total, all including claustrophobia. For a few seconds I was back among the lush willowherb and the scent of trodden wild garlic, peering through the oakleaves at entrance D to the sett. Not once in all my many badger watching expeditions, had I found the need for these anthropomorphic adjectives—noble, stately, stupid, comic—that seemed to crowd upon me whenever I considered the animals around me at the Zoo.

  I decided to ‘invade’ the Director’s conference before distaste for the diplomacy and, even worse, the high-toned plain speaking ahead of me made me retreat from the business altogether. But a knock on the door was followed almost immediately by the rosy cheeked, gold rimmed spectacled, bland features of Mr Sanderson.

  I said firmly, “I’m just going to see the Director, Sanderson. Can you make it later?”

  The little, hollow, oboe like notes that came from Sanderson’s large, potbellied body seemed an additional outrage.

  “The Director’s with Falcon. I was along there just now. They’re not letting us small chaps in for the moment.”

  I wondered why Sanderson supposed that a watery glint behind his spectacles and a twist of his lips made a condescending remark of that kind any more palatable. Summoning up all the matiness I could, I said,

  “Well, I suppose there’s no point in being Head if you can’t refuse to see the prefects. Since I can’t see Leacock, what can I do for you?”

  Sanderson looked down to where his toes must have been just visible to him beyond his little potbelly.

  He said solemnly, “What was that chap’s name, Carter, who declared that God was dead?”

  To check my desire to laugh and to ward off Sanderson’s intimacy, I could find only a vigorously facetious note.

  “Nietzsche,” I replied, “but you have to remember that he died off his nut.” It did not avai
l.

  “In a way that makes it all the more moving, doesn’t it? I wish I had more time for general culture. Things like today’s damnable accident make one feel that he was right.”

  “Not believing in God, I can’t pay much attention to rumours of his death.” This more brutal line of defence proved equally unavailing. Sanderson looked up with a sort of shy reverence.

  “I’ve always wanted to tell you, Carter, how much I admire the deeply felt quality of your agnosticism.”

  Then he looked down again as though I, not he, had been embarrassingly emotional. He was a very provoking man indeed.

  Now he said, “The names of young chaps who die in the Zoo’s services like this might be inscribed on the war memorial.”

  “It’s hardly in the country’s service. In any case, appalling though the whole thing is, we can’t even say for certain that it wasn’t the boy’s fault.”

  Sanderson looked at me with a sweet smile.

  “I think we’ve got to be careful not to run away from our feelings at a time like this, Carter. Of course, you’re still comparatively new here. You wouldn’t realize what the death of a Filson means. His great grandfather entered the Society’s service as a lad of 15 in 1880. He worked under Bartlett.”

  Sanderson was always at his most mawkish when speaking of the Zoo’s past and especially about the tough old Superintendent of the Victorian era, of whom he was said to be writing a life.

  “I must say even that young reporter seemed to be impressed when I told him that. Tradition has more importance for these young chaps than we’re inclined to think. He was very grateful for what I told him. They’re fine fellows these journalists really. People blacken them, but theirs is a great trust. And I like to think that they fulfil it.”

  I said, “Ah!” Then I did a quick double-take, and added, “What reporter?”

  “Quite a young chap by his voice. On one of the morning papers, The Daily Telegraph, I think. He’d tried to get the Director or Falcon; but, of course, as I told him, they’re the men of the hour. Then it seems he knew my name because he’d sent in a specimen of some dictynidae for identification some years ago. He didn’t give a very clear description. It sounded like ciniflo similis. Not very interesting; but still its splendid to think that these chaps keep up their hobbies at all in that rather cynical world.” I picked up the receiver.

  “Mr Carter speaking. I want to talk to the Supervisor. Mrs Jamieson? It seems that the newspapers are making enquiries about this accident. It is understood of course that all Press enquiries are to be put straight through to my office. I see. Well, they’ll be on the alert now won’t they?”

  To Sanderson I said, “I’m sorry they should have worried you. It seems that this reporter didn’t say who he was. All the same it was not very competent of them.”

  “I saw that Mrs Jamieson out the other day pushing an invalid chair. They tell me she looks after a paralysed uncle. That sort of thing’s rather fine.”

  I made no comment, but I asked, “It would be a help if you’d give me some outline of your conversation with the Press. Just for the record.”

  He said, “It’s a wonderful thing for the Zoo, you know, Carter, to have got in a professional administrator like you.”

  Again I made no comment, and, after looking down at the floor for a minute or so, he said, “They seem to have an idea that there was some negligence. I told the young chap, ‘that’s a damnable thing to suggest at a time like this.’ He apologized. I must say that after all one hears about the Press, I thought that was rather fine of him. Apparently it was only something they’d been told. About some low spiked railing that ought not to have been there.”

  I thought of Rackham, that loyal old servant of the Society, earning his extra ten bob as a newspaper’s nark.

  I said only, “They appear to have got on to the story very quickly.”

  Sanderson said, “Yes, this young chap is clearly as keen as mustard about his job. I told him, of course, that there couldn’t have been any negligence with Falcon in charge. I had to explain that Falcon was the discoverer of gorilla himalayensis. One forgets that the expedition was as far back as 1963. I don’t think this young chap had heard of the Abominable Snowman.”

  “It’s always as well to be polite but brief with the Press,” I said. A watery but hopeful gleam came into Sanderson’s eyes.

  “I don’t want to flatter you, Carter,” he said, “but you’ve no idea what a help it is having a man of affairs like you about here. I’m glad to say that I think I acted just as you suggest. I said there could be no question of negligence. The trouble probably was that poor young Filson hadn’t been here long enough to deal with an emergency. I don’t know exactly how long he’s been on the staff, but only a matter of a month or so. And as I told this young chap you really can’t leave full responsibility to anybody who’s had less than a year. At any rate where there is any possibility of danger.”

  I said, “Giraffes are notoriously very safe animals.”

  “Yes, yes. I said that. He had rather an amusing wit this young chap. I think he must have been a cockney. He said ‘Giraffes must be changing their nature then.’ It’s always a good sign when an interview of that sort ends on a little joke.”

  I ignored this and told him, “It’s still possible that we may be able to undo any harm. With the Director’s agreement I’ll get out a general statement for the Press.”

  I guessed that this reassurance was what he had come for, but he still had to waste my time with the pretext that he had previously decided upon.

  “What I wanted to see you about Carter,” he said, “was to ask the name of that clever girl who did the plates for the last guide. Bond who carried out all the illustrating work for my lycosidae book is getting rather old. He’s over eighty. A splendid old fellow. He lives at Ongar.”

  “Surely it would be rather a fine thing to let him illustrate your new book, wouldn’t it?” I said. “It would make him feel wanted. It must be a little lonely out at Ongar.”

  For the first time Sanderson showed some anger. His cheeks became rosier and his oboe voice trembled a little.

  He said, “This new book of mine’s a very important thing Carter. The whole field of wolf spiders has needed a survey for a long time. It would have interested your predecessor. But then he was an extraordinary chap. Very few professional administrators would have taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with the various expert fields here as he did.”

  In the end he forced me to waste a precious quarter of an hour discussing his pretext, when I might have been busy saving his bacon by getting out the report for the Press.

  When he left he said, “Don’t forget to recommend me to the Director for the post of Press Officer, will you?”

  I should have let him feel then the full seriousness of his interfering incompetence, but I had made him angry once already.

  I said, “Now look. You’re not to worry. You shouldn’t have been fussed with this in the first place. And you did your best.”

  “You’re a very nice chap you know, Carter,” he said.

  Miss Chamber’s voice came to save me from further praise.

  “Dr Leacock can see you now, Mr Carter.”

  On my way to the Director’s office, I looked in on Mrs Purrett.

  “Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you like that.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right. I know how deeply you feel things, Mr Carter.”

  “Don’t mark me too highly for sensitivity. It’s more that I feel there’s been some muddle or incompetence somewhere in this business. And it seems too appalling if it is so.”

  Mrs Purrett began to mouth silently at me, to point her fingers towards the little secretary’s back.

  “Little pitchers,” she said in a loud whisper.

  To be put in my place in however motherly a way annoyed me.

  “Oh, there’s nothing confidential about it,” I said loudly. And then felt even more annoyed, because, of co
urse, there was.

  I never looked forward to meetings with the Director and Bobby Falcon together. When Bobby Falcon, as an old friend of Martha’s family, had sponsored my appointment at the Zoo, Edwin Leacock, with the natural cynicism of the highminded, had taken it for granted that I had been brought in to swell the opposition to his policy. Bobby, on his side, had presumed that since he and I ‘spoke the same language’, I should naturally dislike the Director as much as he did. When I later showed Leacock that in their dispute over Zoo policy I agreed with him, he had immediately presumed that I was, as he told me, ‘one of those rare people, Carter, who can put their intellectual loyalties before their personal ones’. I was, so to speak, put on my honour to show my disinterest by always opposing Bobby simply because he was an old friend. Bobby, too, had accepted my ‘defection’ as part of the general collapse of the old order of things, and maintained towards me at meetings a sort of hurt friendliness that was intended to show how little he allowed public matters to affect his private feelings. Neither seemed to realize how tedious I found the whole of their public ‘carry-on’—it was exactly the sort of display of ‘personality’ that I had disliked among my more politically ambitious colleagues at the Treasury; and I had naively expected that I should not meet it among more dedicated scientific men.

  Strangely, I did not meet it that morning. The shock perhaps had brought them together. I cannot say that the thought that young Filson might have died in order to bang a little sense into the heads of Edwin Leacock and Robert Falcon made his death any more palatable to me; it only served to increase my dislike for their unusual touchy, prima donna-ish relationship.

  As he waved me to a seat, Leacock’s bonhomie and grin, had a nervous flavour, it is true; but then, in his apparently most confident moods—and these were all but permanent—he seemed forever to be looking over his shoulder at what might be creeping up behind him. He liked best to meet his fellow men full on, face to face even, for he had a habit of drawing very close to one, knees to knees. That morning emotion caused him to go further. He got up from his seat and closed my hand in the soft, padded but tough grip of his own.