The Old Men at the Zoo Read online

  “Research is a primary object of the Society.”

  “Yes, and thanks to good higher education there are hundreds of young Newtons and Nuttings ready to come along and carry it out.”

  Suddenly I was bored with the whole affair, with all these arguments I had heard so many times. Bobby’s self-pity, his despair seemed to be coiling round me, suffocating me, pulping my lungs. The air of the room was stale, fetid like the breath of the great cats in the Lion House. I felt myself not a guardian but a prisoner of the caged beasts. My delight had been in their free movements, their untamed terrors and cruelties, the slow discovery of a pattern of life as I watched it unfold for hours at a time had freed me from all consciousness of self. There in the Suffolk beech copse or the Norfolk pine-wood, I had myself known life only through my senses— through the pungent scent of pine needles, crushed underfoot, in the sudden stirring of the green bowl above me and by the flash of a ragged russet tail curved umbrella-like over a fat, white-fronted squirrel. There were red squirrels in a cage near the Rodent House, pretty pets from a Victorian keepsake to gladden Bobby’s heart; but I found no freedom in their charming, scurrying, captive antics. I was in the wrong place and for the moment I could bear to hear no more about it.

  Attempting to turn Bobby’s tide with a joke, I said, “May be hundreds of Newtons and Nuttings, but never, I think, another Pattie Henderson.”

  Bobby looked at me with surprise. I realized that during my reverie his familiar discourse had moved far on into the charms of the Victorian Zoo.

  “What can have been more delightful,” he asked, “than Obaysch when he first arrived here? Have you seen the wonderful Punch cartoons of him? H.R.H.—His Royal Hulk. Punch of 1850 was no respecter of the Crown. And the crowds that gathered round him—their first chance really to take a look at a hippo in captivity? No wonder the delicate crinolined young ladies risked the stench that came from the coster donahs with their ostrich plumes and fresh young gents from counting houses risked their watches among the light-fingered gentry of Seven Dials? Think of it, Simon. We’ve never seen colour or movement like it in our time, and I can remember the vast crowds that lined up in queues to see the polar bear cub Brumas. Queues! No, the crowd that surged round Obaysch wasn’t orderly—it was the good old stinking Victorian mob full of wonder and awe still. And the stink that must have come back to them from His Royal Highness’s Pool! And then the delicate Unes of Burton’s Houses, the refinement of the shrinking ladies and the eau-de-cologne and the cigar whiff of the gentleman at their sides. It’s something of that mixture of grace and wonder and common orange peel holiday fun that I’m fighting to maintain. We could be one of the last colourful places left in London, Simon.”

  Carried away by his own word picture with which he had escaped from the embarrassment of our scene, he sang a Une from some Victorian music hall song. “Roll up and see the hippo. Where better than the Zoo?”

  I said, “In its native rivers of Africa.”

  Then I remembered Bobby’s rows with the RepubUc of Tanganyika and the Peoples’ State of Uganda over preservation of wild life. These as much as his age had put an end to his famous career of exploration and collecting.

  He said, “You’re not exactly tactful, are you?” But he was too elated to be much concerned. “That’s why I wanted Smokey to appear in this show of Leacock’s. I could have got the crowd together and, if it lacked the colour of Obaysch’s mob, Smokey at least drew children from everywhere. Set against the Burton House, even without the smells, I believe the movement and colour of that scene might have brought back memories to some older viewers. And Leacock believed it would make them cry out ‘Away with such cramped quarters! Down with Regent’s Park!’ Oh, he’s probably right. We shall see. He’s showing the old Eagle House and the ravens, but that’s Price’s stuff. It was Smokey I counted on.”

  He paused; and I was about to make the protest that I now felt opportune, but his wound up elation had to uncoil itself back to his usual depressive mood.

  “I suppose,” he said, “you wonder why I don’t get out of a place where I’m so little at home. But where the hell could I go? The Chinese put an end to my old hunting grounds. I tried to swallow that little change. After all what was Asia? There was still Africa left. I did my best to save the game reserves there but these damned nationalist governments wouldn’t listen. Economic development before preservation of species! Claptrap slogans! And those that are more enlightened have their own collectors and wardens—Mr Tlumpumba and Mr Nkekwe. Well, good luck to them! In any case, I’m too old. I’ve got most damnable weak hams, Simon. Though I suppose I could move in on your territory. Watching native species! A nice summer studying the digging methods of the Thameside mole. I’d almost do it if I could find a pretty girl to go with me. A summer at Henley, I shouldn’t mind that. Do you know any girls who’d make a nice lay on a molehill?”

  He came to a stop on a familiar sensual, grumbling note.

  I said, “I ought to tell you now, Bobby, that this question of your agreement with Leacock not to have Smokey destroyed will be raised by me at the next curators’ meeting.”

  To my surprise, there was no storm in answer. He got up from his chair and, as he left my room, he said,

  “I still think you’re a ghastly prig in many ways, Simon. But you’re probably very good for us.”

  I wondered as I reflected on it, whether he had only responded so mildly because he had not fully registered my declaration. I doubted whether, in fact, he had properly heard anything except his own voice during the whole interview.

  If I had been disposed to muse on my dissatisfaction the morning’s chain of self-centred interrupters shamed me into closer application to work.

  I opened the door that communicated with my secretaries’ room. Rackham was once again holding forth to them.

  “Ah, they can have as many meetings as they like,” he was saying, “but when things have got this far, there’s no going back. No. It’s war this time.”

  The relish of his tone obviously played on Mrs Purrett’s nerves. She said assertively as though Rackham were a political expert who needed serious refutation,

  “If you read the papers properly, Rackham, you’d see that every effort at agreement is being made on both sides.”

  Rackham said cryptically, “Ah, it’s got beyond them now,” and was gone.

  I said, “Rackham seems to be getting in your way a lot these days. Tell me if he’s a nuisance.”

  “Oh, no, we can manage him, can’t we, Marian? It’s whenever there’s a war scare, Mr Carter. I suppose it’s in the blood of these old soldiers. Poor old thing! But isn’t the news good, Mr Carter?”

  When I showed uncertainty of its nature, she said, “Oh, you haven’t heard. The Prime Minister’s to meet the European heads at Innsbruck. We’ve insisted on Scandinavian representation to balance Italy. And the French and Germans have agreed quite readily. I think that’s so promising.”

  Meetings formed so regular a part of these periodic crises that I could neither share her elation nor refute it.

  I said, “Oh, good. I was thinking that as you have the Nuffield reports to do, Mrs Purrett, I should dictate the preamble for the Finance Committee.”

  “Of course,” she said, “I’m always glad when the Finance Committee’s done with each quarter. I think figures are so dreary after staff matters. Human beings for me every time, they’re much more real.”

  Luckily Mrs Purrett’s capacity for vague generalities in no way impaired her capacity as a secretary.

  The Director shoved his ugly mug in at the door.

  “What’s the office programme of work this week?” he asked.

  I gave an outline of the main tasks. He did not listen.

  When I had finished, he said, “Scrap the lot. I’ve just told Miss Chambers to cancel all my meetings. We’ve got exactly nine days to zero hour. The programme’s scheduled for 9.15 p.m. on Friday week. They tell me that’s the peak viewing time. Bu
t that’s by the way. The point is that these television people are now asking for a whole mass of detail which anyone would have reasonably supposed was the business of their research department. However, I don’t want to quarrel with them at this juncture. So I’ve told them that the Secretary and his staff will fill out any details they require in the outline I have already given them. In fact I’ve properly sold you up the river.”

  He grinned at me, and then took Mrs Purrett in as an additional precaution. I had suspected for some time that, essential though he believed his television programme to be as propaganda for the central scheme of his life, he had not, as he would have put it, ‘done his homework’.

  I said, “We can’t scrap everything, I’m afraid. The Finance Committee and the Numeld Reports must go in on time. I must also give preliminary seeding out interviews for Beard’s four new lab assistants. On Monday next the Cromwell Road people are bringing the secretaries of the Latin American Natural History museums round to us. They’re here for the Museums Conference. I promised to give them an outline talk on our functions.”

  “I’ll see them. I think they should see the man at the head in any case. One simply can’t over-emphasize the importance of these American republics in relation to the future.”

  “Then,” I went on, “I shall have to be away on Saturday morning to represent you at young Filson’s funeral.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “Yes. I think it is.”

  Leacock glanced at me, “Well, as long as you know your ‘musts’,” he said. “Then I’ll leave this with you.”

  He handed me a folder of papers and was about to leave.

  I said, “I think I ought to grasp the general shape of this before you move out of questioning range.”

  He responded to my humorous manner with some impatience.

  “Mr Carter has all the traditional tricks of the Civil Service up his sleeve,” he announced to Mrs Purrett.

  He spoke as though I had proposed a Commission of Inquiry. I flicked through the pages of his sketch for the visual track of his programme until I came on a careless, incorrect statement.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, “whether it’s quite accurate to say that the Mappin Terrace does not provide satisfactory conditions for the breeding and rearing of mountain goats. The ibexes, at any rate . . .”

  He could no longer hide his impatience.

  “If there’s one thing we must avoid, Carter, it’s letting this really important occasion get bogged down in inessential detail. You getting along all right, Mrs Purrett?” he asked, but was gone before she could answer.

  “I’m glad I’m more essential than the breeding habits of mountain goats,” Mrs Purrett said.

  As I allowed myself to return her smile, I felt rather guilty. The carelessness and inaccuracy involved in the statements about the rearing of mountain goats were in fact very small, almost, as Leacock had said, inessential. But, of course, Mrs Purrett didn’t know that.

  At lunch time I made a complete tour of the Gardens. Nowhere could I find any further evidence of dangerous negligence. The houses under Strawson’s charge were a model of order now. There would be no need further to exceed my powers.

  That night, Martha and I drowsed our way to sleep in our usual desultory chatter about the day’s events, an exchange that was no more than the last dying extension of our physical embraces. Announcement of the Innsbruck meeting had exorcised her fears. She dwelt dreamily on Maximilian’s vast bronze figure, on the funicular railway and on the Goldenes Dachl as though vividly to recall these objects remembered from our holiday visits might in some way guarantee success to the ministers when they came to talk there. I let my fingers run backwards and forwards down the smooth firmness of her thigh, dissipating the last tingling searches of my lust, wondering whether similar superstitions lay deeply embedded in my own intelligence. And now, freed from paralysing visions of imminent nuclear annihilation of the children, her conscience, active even then when a hundred other consciences would have lulled into sleep, turned to Filson’s death. I told her of the action I had taken. She kissed me.

  “Thank God, they’ve got you there, darling,” she said. “But you can’t stop at that, Simon. Whoever’s responsible, must be shown up. I don’t care who it is,”—I wondered which of my colleagues she baulked at as a scapegoat—”if someone has blundered, if anyone’s inefficiency or pomposity was responsible, then he deserves to be exposed. You must go ahead, darling. It’s only another example of British make do and muddle. It has to be fought.”

  My fingers came to a stop in their caressing rhythm. It was not that I minded her sudden moral alliance with her American mother; Martha’s powers of national bifurcation on ethical issues often enchanted me. It was rather that something in her demand recalled Pattie Henderson to me. I would act; but for no example, only on behalf of the young happy and living Filson whom I had known so slightly and who was now dead.

  I said very sleepily, “One’s as bad as six hundred.”

  Martha did not get the allusion, and we faded away together and from each other into sleep.

  The Times at breakfast next morning carried a leader in which demands for strengthening the Government were sharply rebuked. But it suggested that ‘responsible opinion’ was moving against Godmanchester’s inclusion in the Cabinet. I remembered that no telephone call had come for him yesterday.

  I had no time however to dwell on Godmanchester’s disappointment during that week. Leacock’s neurotic anxiety about his programme spilt over and flowed around the whole office; we worked obsessively and continuously as though we were seeking opiates from alarms of our own and not simply being driven on by his. War talk, it is true, drifted in now and again like plumes of fog from the world outside; but the impression we formed in our anthill was of an ever clearing sky outside. Martha’s tender soothing of my exhausted spirits each night only seemed to confirm this. In any case, Leacock was adamant against all breaths of air, foggy or fresh, that might ruffle the papers and photographs that now seemed to pile up around him in increasing quantities.

  Once Mrs Purrett, seeking, I think, to laugh away any remaining war fears that might still disquiet us, said, “Poor old Rackham’s looking quite down in the mouth now that we aren’t all going to be atomized into eternity.”

  Leacock turned on her, “I wonder if some of you people realize how impossible constructive work is in an atmosphere of uninformed gossip and rumour,” he said.

  He looked as her as though some familiar chair or table in the room had revealed itself to be a hidden foe. For some days after his outburst he was quite unable to accord her the automatic smile he gave to the lower staff who, as he often said, ‘it was our duty never for a moment to forget were human beings’. He looked at her during those days as though searching beneath her pneumatic form for the disguised contours of some familiar, leaner enemy.

  So strong indeed was his will to avoid all outside alarms, so deep his more immediate anxieties for his programme’s success that I was not altogether surprised when one day he said,

  “I hadn’t thought it necessary, Carter, to rope Godmanchester in on this. A public figure of that sort might tend to blur the picture I want to convey. But I’m not so sure now. He is President and his absence may look a little peculiar. It occurs to me that in the section devoted to Man restored to Nature, it might be very telling to show Godmanchester with his llamas or his wallabies down at Stretton Park. I have no doubt at all,” by a searching look he tried to reassure any that I might have, “that a great deal of that man’s extraordinary vigour and—to permit myself what I know you think to be a bit of jargon—psychic health, comes from his hobby of studying animal behaviour. We couldn’t find a better example of a sophisticated mari, a man deeply committed to the modern world who has seen the need of losing his own complicated pattern in more simple rhythms. And ... and then he’s a figure who impresses the public. I think we ought to have him.”

  I tried to find the easi
est way of reminding him of Godmanchester’s own preoccupation.

  “He was in here a few days ago finding calm in the small Mammal House with the binturong and the kinkajou. I think he was a good deal exercised about a possible invitation to join the Cabinet.”

  Leacock mistook the emphasis of my remark. He said goodhumouredly, “Now don’t try to sabotage my programme. I’ve no intention of showing him here at Regent’s Park. I doubt if his visits here are more than—”

  “That wasn’t my intention. I was only suggesting that in the present political crisis he may not be prepared to give his mind to Zoo matters.”

  “I think you make him out a smaller man that he is. In any case what is all this crisis stuff? We’re not in the position to judge. I hate all this amateur politics. See if you can get hold of him, will you?”

  I pursued Godmanchester by telephone and eventually tracked him down to the Tate Gallery, of which, by virtue of his wife’s collection, he was a trustee.

  The secretary at the other end said, “Lord Godmanchester wants to know who is calling?”

  I said, “The Secretary of the Zoological Society.”

  There was a pause, then she said, “I’m afraid Lord Godmanchester can’t take any calls.”

  I imagined him pacing up and down before Turner’s seas and sunsets or stopping to return the ox-like gaze of Madox Brown’s immigrants; hoping that Turner or Rossetti would ensure him better luck than the binturong or the kinkajou. Leacock, however, despite all my attempts to dissuade him, insisted on getting through himself to the great man. Since he never again referred to his conversation I imagine that it was as discouraging as I had expected.

  The Director’s power of evading the impact of public events at this time was deeply impressive. My own detachment, I knew, was simply an inertia bred of a surfeit of crises. Yet Leacock, I am sure, was as deeply anxious lest annihilation or even lesser disaster should destroy his still unborn child as Martha and a million other mothers were about the fates of their living, breathing progeny.