The Old Men at the Zoo Page 4

  He said, “I’ve drafted something for the Press. The whole thing shows, of course, how unwise it was of my predecessor to abolish the post of Public Relations Officer. I know there had to be economies, but the last tiling to economize on is anything that shows. As it is I can’t do anything about restoring the post, because everything’s got to be subordinated now to getting a red National Park going.” He sucked irritably at his pipe. Then, perhaps charmed for a moment, as I was, by the sun playing on the beds of tulips, he said cheerfully,

  “On the whole though, apart from its tragic human aspect, I think today’s events may do a great deal of good. I didn’t want to harp on it too much in front of Falcon, but an accident of this kind in that cramped old paddock is exactly the thing we need in order to win over a lot of the Fellows who are still doubtful about a change of policy. The more we can carry the dissidents with us the better. There’s no harm in pleasing people, ever.” As though to illustrate this, he said, ‘‘Your support has been one of the most encouraging things for me, you know, Carter. The younger generation for one thing. And then Godmanchester thinks highly of you. And you’ve got two important strings to your bow. You alone can challenge this nonsense about the administrative difficulties of the thing. But almost more important is your field work on British mammals. It could be a very useful reputation to me at this time. You’ve been off those ‘Wild Life’ programmes for far too long. You’re the television chap, not me, you know. For you it’s a form of expression. For me it’s only a means to an end.”

  I said, “We can’t say that until after Friday week, can we? Television stars are born overnight.”

  To my delight, he took this in his stride.

  “We shall see. You and Mrs Carter will be at Mrs Leacock’s buffet supper that evening, won’t you? I shall rely on you for a sincere opinion of my performance purely from the point of view of the medium. This chap Maskell who’s producing me seems a good man.”

  He left so strong an interrogative note floating in the air, that I was forced to reply.

  “Yes, he’s very competent, I believe.”

  If I was to be made as important as this, I felt that now was the moment to insist upon my anxiety. I found it difficult to speak convincingly to Leacock; his concept of sincerity was to my ear so patently theatrical that with him I found my own natural tendency to understatement doubled. However I tried. My voice sounded to me like a bad movie version of someone speaking in the confessional.

  I said, “Leacock, I must confess that I’m not happy about the very possible negligence that may have led to this morning’s accident. If there has been any carelessness, it surely must be brought home to the offender.”

  “My dear Carter, Falcon’s taken on the blame, although, as I pointed out, it’s really not his. I don’t think we can ask more of him than that.”

  “I don’t think we should ask anyone to take blame that isn’t theirs.”

  “I hope you don’t feel that I’ve been hard on Falcon. That’s the last impression I want to give.”

  “No, of course not. You misunderstand me. If Beard’s to blame, then he should get the rocket. Whoever’s responsible . . .”

  “I think Langley-Beard’s been naughty, if you like. But he’s worked off his feet. And he’s the best Prosector the Society’s had for thirty years or more. Ask any of the older keepers.”

  The reiteration of the cliché I had already heard from Bobby Falcon irritated me.

  I said, “I’d prefer the opinion of a first rate anatomist.”

  Leacock stopped and stared into the distance through the antics with which the giant panda on its swing was entertaining the crowd.

  “You’ll make a great mistake, Carter,” he said, “if you treat sheer experience lightly in our work here.”

  “I’ve no doubt at all that Beard’s excellent. But if he has made so serious a mistake surely something must be said. For the sake of the staff in the future.”

  “Langley-Beard hasn’t lived in a glass case, I can assure you. He’s had a very hard life. He’s a brilliant and highly strung man. I should be very sorry if a sound of this rumour got to him before I’ve had a chance to talk to him myself. People think of him as a specialist, a dedicated man. And so he is. But he’s more than that. He’s surprised me lately. If anyone might suffer in the early days of a National Park, it’s him. Only in the early stages, of course. Eventually, as I’ve told him, the laboratory work will be on a scale that will make this place look like a school stinks room. But quite frankly I had expected to have some opposition from him. Not at all, he’s been most loyal. And I value loyalty very much, Carter, when I need it. Very few people here know him. He’s an extraordinarily shy chap. Your wit would probably frighten him.”

  As a matter of fact failure to break down Beard’s reserve was a very sore point with me. I like to think I make contact with people easily. After all, if a non-specialist can’t do that, what can he do? However I’d failed with Beard. But I knew that Leacock had pretty certainly made even less contact with him, so I decided not to admit my failure.

  I said, “As a matter of fact I am one of the few people he talks easily to.”

  “Oh! Well, I’d very much appreciate it, if you’d say nothing about this to him. I’d like to get it over to him in my own way.” He stopped and, facing me, announced the end of the conversation.

  “I value these chats of ours, you know, more than you realize. And probably take a good deal more notice of what you say than you think.”

  It wasn’t good enough.

  I said, “In that case I should like to say a little more.”

  He did not respond to the laugh with which I had hoped to soften the edge of my demand. He looked at his watch.

  “You mustn’t keep Mrs Leacock waiting,” I said, “I’ll walk with you to your car park.”

  Any reminder that he alone on the staff had the privilege of a private licence to drive in London always gratified him.

  He said, “It’s a great pleasure to see you so deeply concerned with things that affect the Society. When you first came people said you were aloof. But I always said, ‘Give him time’.”

  “I am deeply concerned about the question of Strawson. I can’t help thinking that it may well be his incompetence and laziness that were the cause of this accident. At the very least, a serious failure in supervision. As you know, I have no use for the man. Bobby Falcon talks of him as an ‘institution’; but I think that simply means that he’s dug himself into a position where he claims all sorts of rights that the other head keepers —old Filson, for example—never would. He may be ‘Elephant Joe’ to the popular Press, but to me he’s a conceited windbag, who if he ever was useful to the place, has long eaten up his fat. I don’t think this officer-N.C.O. attitude of Bobby’s is good enough. All right, he is responsible for Strawson; but in that case he should keep him in order.”

  “Look,” said Edwin Leacock, “aren’t we a bit in danger of letting a lot of small issues crowd out the essential point?”

  “I can’t regard the loss of life as a small issue.”

  “No. Of course you can’t. But I’ll shock you to the extent of saying that there are bigger issues. I honestly believe, Carter, that for the first time we have a real chance of creating a National Zoological Park in Great Britain. But the majority of the Fellows are still not convinced. If we could win over Godmanchester for example . . . but there’s a pretty heavy battery of expert artillery on the other side . . . and Falcon’s one of their biggest guns. It isn’t only that he’s a celebrity and a one time national hero, it must also be said straightaway that he really knows wild life conditions. What is never understood, of course, that he speaks from a great knowledge of animals at liberty. I’m concerned with limited liberty. But never mind that. He’s got great charm and he’s very popular. I cannot afford the slightest appearance of vindictiveness against a man like that. I’m considered insensitive enough as it is. And I cannot appear to interfere with the day to d
ay management of the mammal houses. But, in my belief it just wants some incident, some effective showdown, to clinch our argument with the doubters. I don’t say this morning’s affair is it. Probably not. But properly handled it could strengthen my case enormously. But we must stick to the point that antiquated enclosures mean danger to life.”

  He waved his hand towards the Decimus Burton raven cage. Its beauty was always to my feeling the one vindication of Bobby’s passion for the Victorian Zoo.

  “This sort of thing,” he said, “is a serious danger to both staff and public. We’ve got to use this giraffe incident so that it brings that home without making it a personal issue.”

  The ravens croaked, as well they might at such a naïve lack of scruple.

  I said, “I had always thought of ravens as a Gothic horror rather than as a serious menace to human life.”

  I’m afraid my disgust came all too clearly to Leacock through my sarcasm. When he spoke I knew that I had angered him too much to get any satisfaction from him over the issue of Filson’s death.

  “The trouble with your generation is that you’re simply not capable of real seriousness. No, I won’t say your generation, I’ll say the younger intellectuals. The ordinary man is less prejudiced and has more common sense. If a system or a building or a cage is antiquated and dangerous he will see it. And no amount of talk will blind him to the fact.”

  I felt angry now.

  “You say that ordinary people are unprejudiced. I think you mean they are more suggestible. Perhaps they are. But I’m pretty sure that once their emotions are touched, their commonsense as you call it will not distinguish between fine shades. An accident like Filson’s won’t make them say, ‘Let’s have an open Zoo where the animals are free.’ Far from it. They’ll simply say, ‘Do away with Zoos altogether’.”

  Edwin Leacock stood quite still in front of a small flowering cherry. Set before an object of such fragile prettiness, his ugliness was quite grotesque. With his long nose and round eyes he was like a proboscis monkey that had wandered—as bears and monkeys seem frequently to do—into the setting of a Japanese print.

  “I wonder if you realize how utterly irresponsible that sort of talk is, Carter?” he said, “I’m trying to do something big. The least I could expect from my colleagues surely is encouragement, not a lot of carping criticism.”

  I told myself that the most important thing was to get him to pursue some inquiry about Filson’s death. I put on what I always hope is a boyish rueful grin.

  I said, “I’m sorry. It’s the way I’m made. The more I’m impressed by anything, the more I feel I must criticize it. It must be infuriating, I know.”

  The Director said, “That’s quite all right, Carter. I understand perfectly well. Criticizing their elders is the proper activity of the young. Now, look. Don’t bother to come to my car with me. Cut along to lunch. I know what an appetite I used to have at your age after a hard morning’s work.”

  I looked to see if he was being sarcastic; but it was not so. My boyish grin had been all too successful. From a difficult colleague of thirty-five I had reduced myself to a nice, typical argumentative lad of eighteen.

  I faced staff luncheon without any comforting conviction of achievement.

  At the staff luncheon table there was seated the Zoo’s Prosector, Charles Langley-Beard, and he was eating a vast plate of ravioli that reeked of Parmesan cheese. Shyness and stink! I imagined my arrival home and Martha crying, “Well, for heaven’s sake, what storm’s driven you into harbour so early?”; my replying, “Shyness and stink” and our bursting into laughter, which the bewildered nurse would try to share, making us only giggle the more. The picture made me laugh aloud as I sat down opposite to Langley-Beard.

  A pink flush ran through his waxen cheeks and up to the roots of his very sparse hair. He obviously felt himself forced to smile in concord—a glistening somewhere behind his thick-lensed glasses, a faint stretching of his thin lips—then, fearing that he’d done the wrong thing, he gave a dry, little cough.

  “I haven’t seen Tallis lately,” he said.

  Tallis had been at school with me some twenty years before; later he had studied anatomy under the Prosector. We had discovered this link in a long series of halting, excavatory conversations. I had not seen the man for fifteen years; the Prosector, I believe, not for ten. It was unlikely that either of us would ever see him again. I should have had the courage to snap the absurd link, instead I said,

  “I believe that when I last heard of him, he’d got an appointment at the University of Sydney.”

  “Yes, that’s what I heard.”

  I then remembered that it was Beard who had told me.

  I determined to make an effort to clear away the undergrowth of small talk in which as usual we had become entangled. The Prosector’s other colleagues, no doubt, through timidity, had respected his shyness; I had not; it was up to me then to relieve it. But with what? Our Zoological interests were set such poles apart: mine, in so far as they deserved the name, ecological, derived from a life-long hobby of observing British mammals; his so brilliantly yet narrowly physiological and anatomical. More daunting was the extreme yet mysterious misery of his private life that somehow barred every approach to intimacy with a signpost of “Private. Trespassers will be prosecuted.” Most of his colleagues, knowing the private load of sorrow he carried and not wishing to know too exactly its contents, had placed him apart, conveniently haloed for his self-sacrifice to his family and his devotion to his work. To Sanderson, of course, this unhappiness nobly borne was a source of peculiar satisfaction. Early on in my service at the Zoo he had, so to speak, warned me off holy ground. That was very fine of you, Carter,’ he had said, ‘bringing out our Langley-Beard at tea today. But you’ll forgive me if I say that perhaps it would be better not to intrude on his shyness. You couldn’t know that, of course, and what you did was very fine. But he’s rather set apart, you know, in a life of dedication. To his work, and to his family. Tragedy had set its mark on him before he came here. I don’t think it would be blasphemous to call him ‘a man acquainted with grief’. His wife’s in Broadmoor. She killed two of the children. He lives for his son, a brilliant young chap but early crippled by polio. And then there are other family sorrows, I believe. It’s all taken him out of the ken of ordinary chaps like you and me. I suppose its only his passion for his anatomical work here that’s kept him sane. That and the heroism that grief brings out. Great tragedy of that kind, Carter, is a very beautiful thing, you know.’

  After the failure of Tallis, I thought a little savagely that if tragedy was so much in his line, what could be a better topic of conversation than Filson’s death.

  I said, “The details of this morning’s accident hardly bear consideration.”

  He remained silent, making little pyramids of the bread he had crumbled in his nervousness. Then to my surprise, he said, “Let’s not consider them then.”

  I thought that my overture had worked miraculously: the Prosector had made, however inopportunely, a kind of joke which was certainly none the worse for being a little waspish.

  Laughing, I said, “You have a sharp ear for ghoulishness. I hadn’t even realized that my interest was so morbid. But you’re right of course. Nobody ever says that details are too horrible or too ghastly without wanting to go into them!”

  He said, “Oh, I suppose the details are much the same as in any violent accident. You forget that I served my time in an emergency ward. No, I only mean that the whole thing is Falcon’s affair, not ours.” He blushed, “I’m so sorry. Of course, it may be yours. I can’t tell that. But it’s no business of mine.”

  I should dearly have loved to retort, but it was difficult to disregard Leacock’s emphatic request.

  I said simply, “I think the responsibilities of the various departments here are very clear. It’s one of the best aspects of the place from my point of view as an administrator.”

  I left it to sink in.

  �
�I suppose you think I’m to blame for not having that animal shot,” he said.

  I felt that silence would be a sufficient reply. It was.

  “I know perfectly well that my say is the decisive one. I also know that it’s not my business to interfere beyond a certain point in the running of another man’s department. I told Falcon that the giraffe had an inoperable tumour on the liver and I said it would have to be killed. He asked me if it was in pain or merely discomfort. It sometimes seems to me that people like Falcon don’t think. As if a thing like pain can be measured with a slide rule. However since there was no external evidence that the beast was suffering particularly, I had to agree that it might be no more than discomfort. He seized on that opinion to say that it was particularly important that no action should be taken for a fortnight, until Leacock’s television show was over. Of course, as you’re thinking, I had the power to insist, but it hardly seemed to me sufficient grounds for a major row with one of my colleagues.”

  “Unfortunately a young keeper was left to look after the animal and lost his life as a result.”

  He looked surprised. “That really isn’t anything to do with me, you know. That was Falcon’s affair. Of course, you may well feel that you have to criticize him, since it’s a matter of use of staff, but. . .”

  I asked, “Isn’t it a question of humanity?”

  “Humanity would be all right if things were run properly. This young keeper’s death is a very good example of that.”

  I said, “All the same you tell me that on this occasion things were not run properly and as a result somebody died in a very horrible way.”

  He did not answer immediately. He was trying to balance an over-large piece of Cheddar on a small biscuit. He could sense I was watching him and he blushed; but he did not leave off until he had got the whole top-heavy structure into his mouth.

  “Lots of people will die messily. That’s in the order of things I should have thought. Competence can prevent some of the disasters. The others aren’t meant to be prevented; they’re meant to be accepted. But, of course, if you don’t believe that . . .”