Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
Belloc, ‘The Tiger’
On arriving in the morning the sunshine would be barely warm but it would give a brittle gold burnish to the leaves and grass, and in its clear light you could see and hear the park coming awake. Among the lurching shapes of the elders, with trails of mist still entangled in their branches, droves of wallabies would squat in this quiet morning sun, plump bodies flaccid, their fur furrowed with dew. Clearly, echoing across the paddocks, would come the strident ‘help . . . help!’ of a peacock, dragging its coloured tail through the pine woods. The zebras, as you passed, would throw up their heads and snort great fountains of steam at you and take nervous, prancing steps in the wet grass. Turn on to the gravel path that led to the section, and the polar bears would point quivering black noses at you from between the bars of their cage, sniffing in anguished anticipation at the rich smell of the loaves under your arm. Jesse and Joe would walk on to the hut while I went down into the tiger pit. The iron gate would clatter, shaking a thousand vibrating echoes from the walls of the cement dungeons, and I would go inside to do the first jobs of the day.
The tigers would wake and greet me with pink-mouthed, misty yawns, lying there luxuriously in their beds of yellow, rustling straw. Then they would stretch elegantly – long, curved-back, stiff-tailed, nose-quivering stretches – before padding across their dens to peer at me through the barred doors. In this pit lived two of our four tigers, Paul and Ranee, who were mother and son. But Paul cherished no affection for his parent, so they had to sleep in separate dens and they were let out into the pit in turn. My first job in the morning was to let Ranee out of her den into the pit; I would pull back the heavy sliding door and close it again when she had slouched out into the sunlight. Then I would spend an illegal five minutes feeding her son on strips of meat.
Paul was the largest and the finest of the tigers. He had such a languid perfection of movement and such a placid temperament that it was hard to believe that Ranee was really his mother. He moved silently and unhurriedly on his great pincushion paws; his mother moved just as silently but in a quick, nervous, jerky way that was unpleasantly suggestive of her ability to catch you unawares. I am quite sure that she spent most of her spare time trying to evolve a successful method of killing us. She had a savage streak in her which showed in her unblinking green eyes. Paul would take meat from my hand with an air of quiet dignity and great gentleness; his mother would gulp at it ferociously and, if given the chance, take your hand as well. With Paul you got the impression that your hand, even if offered, would be considered an inferior object and, as such, ignored. It was a comforting thought, even if incorrect.
During these morning talks I had with him, Paul was so avuncular that it was only with difficulty that I remembered he could be dangerous if he wanted to be; he would curve his huge head against the bars and let me scratch his ears, purring loudly, so that he seemed more like a giant domestic cat than the popular conception of a bloodthirsty tiger. He would accept my gifts of meat with a regal condescension and, having eaten them, would lie down and lick his paws while I would squat enraptured and gaze at him. At such close quarters he was fascinating to watch. Every inch of his richly coloured body was beautifully proportioned and its movements were liquid and graceful. His head was massive, very broad between the ears, and the ruff round his chin was evenly curved and of the palest saffron colour, across his bright hide the stripes sprawled like black flames. Perhaps the most beautiful part of him was his eyes: large and almond-shaped, set slanting in his face, like sea-polished pebbles of leaf green.
Usually my morning talk with Paul was cut short by Jesse, who would want to know where the so-and-so I had got to with his spade.
Fetching this spade was the excuse I used every morning to spend a little time with the tigers. This implement was an essential part of Jesse’s routine; with it he would disappear among the trees for his early morning catharsis, without which a day’s work would be unthinkable.
When Jesse had returned from his communication with nature we would set to work and clean the tiger pit. First, Ranee would be locked up in her den again while we went into the pit with brushes and buckets, scrubbed down the concrete and collected the bones from yesterday’s dinner. Then Ranee and Paul would be let out, in turn, so that we could clean their dens and give them fresh beds. When we let them back into their dens they would both perform a most curious action. They would walk straight to their straw beds, sniffing about them, and then they would stand in the centre of the bed and proceed to knead and pad the straw with their paws. Their ears would be laid back and their eyes, half-closed, would be dreamy and thoughtful. Then, rising suddenly, they would urinate copiously and accurately into the middle of their clean beds. This done, they would relax and spend the rest of the morning dozing, sometimes licking their paws and then yawning ponderously. I think that when they entered their dens and found fresh straw beds, clean sawdust on the floor, and their own strong odour temporarily downed by the smell of the disinfectant we splashed on the walls and floor, they wished to prove to themselves (and any chance visitors) that the dens were part of their territory. To do this they injected the straw with their own pungent smell again. Then, having, as it were, hoisted the flag, they could settle down and await feeding time.
When we had cleaned the pit, the three of us would retire to ‘The Haven’ for a light snack. In the gloomy interior we would perch on our creaking chairs and examine each other’s food packets with interest. Jesse, his sandwich held in a large red hand, would eat slowly and methodically but with complete lack of interest. Joe would gallop through his food, talking jovially to me with his mouth full, punctuating his remarks with bursts of his curious husky laughter.
He is the only person I have ever met whose laugh could be accurately written as ‘He . . . he . . . he’. Jesse would remain gloomily silent; when he had finished his food he would gaze vacantly out of the window, sucking his teeth. Then, with reptilian slowness, he would light his pipe and suck and squeak and bubble over it while Joe and I discussed the weather, fishing, the best way to skin a rabbit, or the comparative merits of the three blondes whose portraits adorned the wall above Joe’s chair. Presently we would rise and make our way out of the hut to finish the next job on the list, the cleaning of the polar bear cage. Outside ‘The Haven’, in the tangled web of elder branches, magpies would chuck suspiciously as we appeared and Joe would give a tremendous, boisterous shout that would burst them from among the leaves like chattering piebald arrows.
The meat would be delivered early in the day – great bloodstained haunches covered with green splotches of dye to denote that they were unfit for human consumption. From two-thirty to three we would be busy hacking these joints down to size, stacking them in buckets and deciding which particular animals should have any titbits like heart or liver. Then at three o’clock the feeding would commence.
We always started with the tiger dell (known to us as the bottom tigers) which was the farthermost point of the section. Here, in a great cage like the lions’, filled with tangled undergrowth, lived Jum and Maurena, who were in no way related to Paul and Ranee in the pit. Two of us would set out bearing buckets containing the meat. Invariably we would be followed by a crowd of small urchins and a sprinkling of adults who had appeared, apparently, from nowhere. The children would scutter round us uttering shrill exclamations, asking questions, pushing and jumping in their eagerness to view the gory joints from the best positions.
‘Cor! Look at the meat . . . Alf . . . Alf . . . look at the meat!’
‘Wot’s the fork for, mister – ?’
‘Coo! Bet they won’t half eat that.’
‘Wot kind of meat is it, mister?’
‘Mind, John dear, don’t get in the keeper’s way . . . John, do you hear?’
And so on, until we reached the tiger cage, where Jum and Maurena would be slithering up and down the bars in frantic eagerness.
Feeding these two tigers was always more interesting, from my point of view, than feeding Paul and his mother, for in the pit the meat was simply flung over the side to them, but with the bottom tigers the proceedings were more intimate. We would stab a joint of meat on the fork, and the thin end, usually the knuckle bone, would be inserted through the bars. Jum, with a perfect display of gentlemanly instincts, would snarl and cuff at his mate should she try and bite on this. Grasping the end of the joint in his mouth he would brace his feet against the stonework, and with arched back and swelling muscles he would start to pull. It was incredible and rather frightening, this display of strength, for the joint was dragged through the bars inch by inch, the bars bending to allow it entrance. It would come free suddenly, throwing him back on his haunches and then with the joint in his mouth and his head held high, he would swagger off through the bushes to eat it down by the pond.
Jum and Maurena fed, we would retrace our steps to the pit in order to replenish our buckets. Again we would be followed by a knot of onlookers and have to face the barrage of silly questions that tiger feeding always seemed to bring on.
‘Why is the meat raw?’
‘Would they eat it if you cooked it?’
‘Why has a tiger got stripes?’
‘Would they bite you if you went in with them?’
This sort of question was generally asked by adults; the children asked much more sensible questions as a rule.
Although Paul was my favourite among the tigers, Jum and Maurena were, I had to admit, the best show. Moving against a green background of bushes and trees, their colour seemed more vivid than ever. They were a bad-tempered pair, however, and I never ceased to marvel at the speed of mind and body that could change them from indolent, swaying animals to hissing, snarling personifications of anger.
Another thing that endeared Jum and his mate to me was the curious little chats they would have with each other, employing a most unusual method of conversation. This was so far removed from the range of sounds they produced when growling or snarling that it could be classified as a separate language. It consisted entirely of sniffs, and prodigious, bubbling, nose-quivering sniffs they were, too. It was quite incredible the variation they could achieve and the different meanings they could impart (or that I imagined they could impart) by means of this simple noise. The only time they conversed in this way was when we were trapping them up or when they had just been released from the traps.
They had two distinct ways of producing this sniffing, and each was capable of variation according to circumstances. With the first method, the noise was prolonged and sonorous, like a quietly muttered conversation; with the second, the sniffs were startlingly loud and interrogative. Both the tigers took part in these chats, and when one delivered itself of a questioning sniff the other would always give some sort of an answer. At first I could only distinguish the two main themes, as it were: the mutter and the question. By listening carefully, however, I could hear that each of these themes seemed to vary slightly as it was delivered, so that each sniff seemed to have its own meaning and each seemed different from the other. At first, when I heard one of these conversations, I merely thought that the tigers were sniffing, then it seemed to me that they were really talking to each other in a very primitive form of language. I was so intrigued by this idea that I spent a lot of time mastering a few of the more simple sniff sounds, and then went back to the pit and practised on Paul. When he came to his door to talk to me I filled my lungs with air and gave forth a rich, prolonged questioning sniff that I was sure could not have been done better by Jum himself. I was hoping that Paul would answer me. He stopped, obviously startled, and retreated a few steps. I gave another sniff, almost as good as the first, and with less waste of spittle; I felt I was getting into my stride. I looked at Paul hopefully. He directed on me a look so full of scorn that I almost blushed; then turned his back on me and slouched off back to his bed. I felt that I should have practised a bit more before trying it on him.
It was during the time that I was trying to master this tiger language that I first met Billy. I had been down to look at the lions and on the way back I was practising my tiger sniffs. I rounded a corner, giving vent to a really full-blooded sniff and almost ran into a tall, lanky youth with a mop of red hair, circular blue eyes, a snub nose, his upper lip and chin covered with a fine egg-yolk-yellow down.
‘Hallo,’ he said, grinning at me ingratiatingly, ‘you’re the new bloke.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
He waved his arms about like windmills and giggled.
‘I’m Billy,’ he said; ‘just call me Billy. Everybody calls me Billy.’
‘What section do you work on?’ I inquired, as I had not seen him before.
‘Oh, all over,’ said Billy, glancing at me sideways, slyly, ‘all over.’
We stood in silence for a moment while Billy stared at me with the avid interest of a naturalist who has come across a new species. ‘That’s a very bad cold you’ve got,’ he said suddenly.
‘I haven’t got a cold,’ I said, surprised.
‘You have,’ said Billy accusingly. ‘I could hear you sneezing all down the path.’
‘I wasn’t sneezing. I was sniffing.’
‘Well, it sounded like sneezing,’ said Billy aggrievedly.
‘Well, it wasn’t. It was sniffing. I was practising my tiger sniffs.’
Billy stared at me, round-eyed.
‘Practising your what?’
‘Tiger sniffs. The tigers talk to each other in sniffs and I’m trying to learn how to do it.’
‘You must be balmy,’ said Billy with conviction. ‘How can you talk in sniffs?’
‘Well, the tigers do. You should listen to them sometime.’
Billy giggled. ‘Do you like working here?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, very much. Don’t you?’
He glanced at me slyly again.
‘Yes, but it’s different for me; I have to be here,’ he said.
I decided at this point that as every village was reputed to have an idiot, I had stumbled across the one belonging to Whipsnade.
‘Well, I must be getting along.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ said Billy.
‘Yes, I expect so.’
As he loped off through the elder bushes he suddenly burst into song in a shrill, ear-splitting voice.
‘A wandering minstrel I
A thing of shreds and patches . . .’
I made my way back to ‘The Haven’, where I found Joe manufacturing a trout fly for himself.
‘I’ve just met the village idiot,’ I said.
‘Village idiot? Who’s that, then?’
‘I don’t know. A tall, red-headed boy called Billy.’
‘Idiot?’ said Joe. ‘He’s no idiot. Don’t you know who he is?’
‘No,’ I said curiously, ‘who is he?’
‘He’s Captain Beale’s son,’ said Joe.
‘Good lord! I wish you’d warned me.’
I hastily ran over in my mind my conversation with Billy, trying to remember whether I had said anything particularly insulting. ‘Well, where does he work?’ I asked. ‘Which section?’
‘He doesn’t,’ said Joe; ‘he just drifts around . . . gives a hand here and there. More trouble than he’s worth sometimes but he’s a nice boy.’
My meeting with Billy soon faded from my mind, for I had other, more important things to occupy me. Maurena, the tigress, had come into season and now I had the pleasure of watching the tigers’ courtship. Luckily, it happened on my official day off so I spent the whole day down at the bottom tigers concealed in a strategic spot, making copious notes.
From early morning Jum had been following his mate around like a tawny shadow, belly-crawling, abject, heavy with passion. From where I stood among the trees I could see them in the chequered shadows of the bushes, the sun glinting on their flanks as they moved. Jum walked behind and a little to one side of his mate. He kept his distance, for early in the day he had approached too close and she had resented it. His muzzle bore three deep red grooves as proof of her reticence. She seemed to have changed overnight from the timid, servile creature she was normally, to a slinking, dangerous animal that dealt with his premature advances speedily and ferociously. Jum seemed to be puzzled by this metamorphosis; to have their positions reversed so suddenly and completely must have been a considerable surprise to him.
They paced up and down among the elder trunks, and presently Jum’s love overwhelmed him again and he moved closer to Maurena, giving a purring moan in his throat, his eyes frosty with desire. Maurena did not cease her leisured pacing at his approach but merely lifted her lip over pink gums and chalk-white teeth. The moan died quickly in Jum’s throat and he returned to his former position. They continued to pace back and forth, their tawny coats glowing in the shadowy twilight of the bushes. It seemed to me, waiting uncomfortably among the nettles, that she would never yield, and I marvelled at Jum’s patience. Maurena seemed to relish this mastery over her mate, for another half-hour’s pacing was indulged in and Jum’s movements were getting more and more jerkily impatient with every minute.
Then, as I watched, Maurena’s walk became slower and more flaccid, her back curved until her pale honey-coloured belly almost brushed the ground. She swayed from side to side, and the expression in her eyes changed from one of weary preoccupation to the dreamy, mysterious expression that tigers assume when they drowse and muse after their food. Languidly, seeming more to drift, she came down from the tangle of trees, down to where the grass was long and thick by the pond. Here she paused and pondered with drooping head. Jum watched her eagerly from the edge of the trees, his eyes like frozen green leaves in the fierceness of his face. Maurena started to purr gently, the tip of her tail twitching among the grasses like a great black bumblebee. She yawned delicately, showing the pink inside of her mouth and the scalloped black edge to her lips. Slowly her body relaxed, and she toppled over and lay on her side in the grass. Jum moved swiftly towards her, rumbling interrogatively, and she answered with a blurred vibration in her throat. Quickly he was astride her, back arched, paws paddling along her ribs; as she raised her head, he bit with savage tenderness along the line of her arched neck. She seemed to melt under him, to become softer, until she was almost hidden in the grass. Presently they lay close together, asleep in the sun.
A thing that Jum used to do which I never saw the other tigers imitate, was to lick his meat. The rasp-like qualities of a tiger’s tongue have to be seen to be believed. Once we fed Jum when he was confined in the trap, and so I could watch him eating within a foot or so of me. First, he nibbled off all the tatters and shreds on the joint. Then he held it between his paws and started to lick the smooth red surface of the meat. As his long tongue curved over the flesh it made a sound like sandpaper drawn slowly over wood. The meat was literally shredded off by the abrasive qualities of his tongue, and where the flesh had been smooth it became rough and stood up in little points and tufts, like the pile on a carpet. He continued this for about ten minutes, and at the end of this time he had licked off about half an inch of meat. With such a formidable tongue, tigers need hardly use their teeth when feeding.
The only drawback to trying to observe the actions and habits of Jum and Maurena was that they had a large and thickly overgrown area in which to live, and this made any consistent watching difficult. However, they were perhaps the best of tigers to watch for they lived a very natural life. With Paul and Ranee you could never be sure if some habit was natural or something that they had invented because it fitted in with their unnatural life in the great concrete pit. Bathing was one of these things. I never saw Jum or Maurena enter their pool, nor, for that matter, did Paul ever do so. But Ranee, during the spells of hot weather, would take herself down to the pool and submerge her striped body in the cool water, leaving only her head and the tip of her tail out. She would sprawl there sometimes for half an hour, looking very coy and daring and occasionally twitching the tip of her tail to send the water splashing over her head. This most un-tiger-like action would provoke much comment and speculation, among the members of the public who observed it.
‘Agnes, come and look at this tiger in the water.’
‘Oh! Isn’t it sweet?’
‘Wonder why she does it.’
‘Dunno. Maybe she’s thirsty.’
‘Well, what she want to lie in it for?’
‘Dunno. Maybe she’s ill.’
‘Don’t be silly, Bert.’
‘Maybe she’s a water tiger. Kind of special type, ay?’
‘Yes I suppose that’s it. Isn’t she sweet?’
‘Throw her a bit of bread, Bert.’
A large crust of bread would hit Ranee on the head and she would look up with a growl.
‘No, she won’t eat it’
‘Try a peanut.’
Now, it may be difficult to believe, but the above conversation is not a figment of my imagination. I wrote it down as it was spoken and I have someone who was witness to it. The sight of Ranee lolling in the water produced the weirdest theories on the part of the great British public. They would cluster round the rail and stare down at her with intense concentration. They could not have displayed more interest if it had been a street accident.
Before going to work at Whipsnade I never realised how ignorant people are about even the commonest facts of animal life. The keepers, however, were supposed to know the answers to everything. Were tigers born with stripes? Would the lions bite you if you went in with them? Why had a tiger stripes and a lion none? Why had a lion a mane and a tiger none? Would the tigers bite you if you went in with them? Why were polar bears white? Where did they come from? Would they bite if you went in with them? These questions, and hundreds of others, were asked every day of the week, sometimes twenty or thirty times a day. On a crowded day the wear and tear on one’s temper was quite considerable.
Many visitors I chatted to were surprised and rather disappointed to find that we did not spend our days cheating death by inches at the claws of a lion or a bear. I had no livid scars to show for my work and this seemed to make me, in their eyes, something of a charlatan. You got the impression that it was an insult to ask them to believe that life among such animals was, on the whole, a very peaceful affair. According to them, my clothes should have been in tatters, my head bloody but unbowed, and my day one long series of hair-raising experiences. On looking back, it seems to me that I lost an excellent opportunity of making money. If I had slashed my coat to ribbons, rubbed myself all over with a few gory joints, and then staggered out of the pit every half-hour or so remarking nonchalantly, ‘That tiger’s the devil to groom!’ I might have been rich by now.
Visitors, on the whole, caused us a lot of trouble and, sometimes, a lot of amusement. Two things I shall always remember. The first was a small boy who, after watching me feeding the tigers, approached me, wide-eyed, and asked in a hushed voice, ‘Mister ’ave you ever been ate by one of them buggers?’ The other incident was when a small boy, his face red with excitement, came dashing down the path towards the pit. He looked over the side hastily, saw Paul pacing up and down, and turned to shout to his family. ‘Mum!’ he yelled. ‘Mum, come here quick and look at this zebra.’
It was some days after I had met Billy for the first time that I saw him again. He came down the path that led to the lions, bouncing and clanking his way on an ancient and rusty bicycle. I had just finished cutting a thick bed of nettles that were overgrowing the path and was pausing for a much-needed cigarette.
‘Hallo,’ said Billy shrilly, clamping the brakes on his bicycle so hard that he almost shot over the handlebars. He straddled the bicycle with his long, gangly legs and grinned at me inanely.
‘Hallo,’ I said cautiously.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Cutting nettles.’
‘I hate that job,’ said Billy. ‘I always get stung, sometimes in the most peculiar places.’
‘So do I,’ I said with feeling.
Billy glanced about him nervously.
‘I say,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘you haven’t got a cigarette on you, have you?’
‘Sure,’ I said, and gave him one.
He lit it inexpertly and puffed at it vigorously.
‘You won’t tell anybody, will you? I’m not supposed to smoke.’
‘Where are you off to?’ I inquired.
Billy swallowed some smoke the wrong way and coughed violently for some time, his eyes streaming.
‘Nothing like a good smoke,’ he said hoarsely.
‘It doesn’t seem to be doing you much good.’
‘Oh, but I enjoy it very much.’
‘Well, where are you off to?’ I asked again.
‘I’ve come to see you,’ he said, waving his cigarette at me, the end of which was now dangling, limp with spittle.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what do you want to see me about?’
‘Daddy wants you to come to drinks this evening.’
I stared at him with astonishment.
‘Your father wants me to come to drinks?’ I said in amazement. ‘Are you serious?’
Billy, having imbibed another lungful of smoke, was seized with another paroxysm of coughing and could only nod his head wildly, his red hair flapping up and down.
‘Well, what does he want me to come to drinks for?’ I asked, greatly puzzled.
‘Thinks . . . gasped Billy, ‘thinks you might be a good influence on me.’
‘Dear God,’ I said. ‘I’ve no intention of being a good influence on anybody and, anyway, I could hardly be called a good influence when I’ve just given you a cigarette and you’re not supposed to smoke.’
‘Don’t tell anybody . . .’ croaked Billy. ‘Secret. See you at six-thirty.’ Still gasping and choking, he clanked off into the undergrowth on his bicycle.
So at six that evening I put on my only pair of respectable trousers, a coat and tie, and presented myself at the Beale establishment, which occupied one end of the administration block in the park. Although I had learnt from other members of the staff that Captain Beale’s gruff exterior hid a heart of gold, I was still slightly apprehensive for, after all, he was the superintendent of the place and I was the lowest of the low.
The door was opened to me by Mrs Beale, who was a charming, handsome woman with an air of unruffled calm.
‘Do come in,’ she said, smiling at me sweetly. ‘May I call you Gerry? Billy keeps calling you Gerry. Come into the drawing room . . . the captain’s there.’
She ushered me into the large, pleasant living room, where in one corner, lying supine in an enormous chair, was the vast bulk of Captain Beale, almost completely obliterated by the Evening News. Faint rumblings as from an incipient Krakatoa emanated from beneath the newspaper and it crackled and rustled as it rose and fell with the captain’s breathing.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Beale, ‘I’m so sorry, he’s dropped off. William! William! Gerry Durrell’s here.’
There was a noise like several freight trains colliding, and the captain singed up from under the newspaper like a leviathan surfacing.
‘Hmmph,’ he croaked, straightening his spectacles and glaring at me owlishly. ‘Durrell, eh? Durrell? Glad to meet you. I mean, glad to have you.’
He got to his feet, shedding pages of newspaper like autumn leaves falling off an enormous oak.
‘Gladys,’ he barked, ‘give the boy a drink. Don’t keep him standing there!’
Mrs Beale treated this curt order as though it had never been uttered.
‘Do sit down,’ she said, smiling. ‘What would you like to drink?’
At that time, just after the war, spirits were still as precious as gold and although I longed for something like a whisky and soda to give me courage to talk with the captain, I knew it would be impolite to say so.
‘I’ll just have a beer, if I may,’ I said.
While Mrs Beale was fetching my drink the captain rumbled over to the fire and was prodding it vigorously, obviously in the hopes of coaxing it into some sort of action. Several large glowing pieces of log fell out into the hearth and what little flame there had been, withered and died. The captain flung down the poker aggrievedly.
‘Gladys!’ he roared. ‘The fire’s out!’
‘Well, stop poking it, dear,’ said Mrs Beale. ‘You know you always put it out.’
The captain hurled himself into the chair and the springs screeched protestingly.
‘Bloody awful stuff, this wartime beer, don’t you think, Durrell?’ he observed, eyeing the glass Mrs Beale was handing to me.
‘Don’t swear, dear,’ said Mrs Beale.
‘Bloody awful stuff,’ said the captain defiantly, glaring at me, ‘don’t you agree, Durrell?’
‘Well, I didn’t drink beer before the war so I don’t really know,’ I said.
‘Not a hop in it,’ said the captain. ‘Mark my words, not a hop in it.’ Just at that moment Billy loped into the room as disjointedly as a giraffe.
‘Hallo,’ he said, grinning at me inanely. ‘You’ve arrived, have you?’
‘Where have you been?’ barked the captain.
‘Out with Molly,’ said Billy, waving his arms about. ‘Tra la la, tra la la, she’s my girlfriend now.’
‘Ha!’ said the captain with satisfaction; ‘out with girls, eh? That’s the spirit! You a ladies’ man, Durrell?’
‘Well, I think so,’ I said cautiously not being sure what Captain Beale’s definition of a ladies’ man was.
Glancing round to make sure that Mrs Beale had left the room, the captain leant forward in his chair.
‘Used to be a bit of a gay dog with the ladies myself,’ he rumbled in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘before I met Gladys, of course. Gad! Once you’d done a tour on the West Coast you needed the company of a good woman!’
‘Were you very long in Africa?’ I asked.
‘Twenty-five years . . . twenty-five years. The blacks loved me,’ he said, with a sort of innocent boastfulness. ‘’Course, I always treated them fairly; they appreciate that. Uncle Billy, they used to call me.’
Billy, for some reason best known to himself, went off into peals of hysterical giggles at this.
‘Uncle Billy!’ he sputtered. ‘Fancy calling you Uncle Billy!’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ snarled the captain. ‘Sign of affection. They had respect for me, I can tell you.’
‘Can I have a beer?’ asked Billy.
‘Only one,’ snapped the captain. ‘You’re too young to drink. Tell him he’s too young to drink, Durrell. Too young for drinking, smoking and lechery.’
Billy screwed up his face and winked at me and then disappeared from the room in search of his beer.
‘How are you getting on with the zebras?’ asked Captain Beale suddenly.
He barked it out with such vehemence that I almost dropped my beer.
‘Um . . . well, I have seen them,’ I said; ‘as a matter of fact, I’m on the lions.’
‘Ah,’ said the captain, ‘that’s where you got to, is it? Well, how are you getting on with the lions?’
‘Very well, I think,’ I said cautiously.
‘Good,’ said the captain, dismissing this as a topic of conversation. ‘Do you like curry?’
‘Um . . . yes, I do.’
‘Hot curry?’ inquired Captain Beale, glaring at me suspiciously. ‘Yes. My mother makes very hot curries.’
‘Good,’ said the captain with satisfaction. ‘Come to dinner . . . Thursday. I’ll make a curry. Never let Gladys do it . . . she never makes it hot enough . . . wishy-washy stuff. There’s nothing like a good sweat.’
‘It’s very kind of you, sir.’
‘Gladys!’ roared Captain Beale with a stentorian bellow that made the walls shake. ‘Durrell’s coming to dinner Thursday. I’ll make a curry.’
‘Very well, dear,’ said Mrs Beale, coming back into the room. ‘Come about seven, Gerry.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ I said again.
‘Excellent,’ said the captain, getting to his feet, ‘Thursday, then, ay?’
It was obvious that I was bidden to go.
‘Well, thank you very much for the drink, sir.’
‘Pleasure,’ rumbled the captain, ‘pleasure. Watch out for those zebras, mind; they can be nasty devils, you know. Good night.’