I WOKE the next morning and was almost surprised to find that my resolve was still with me – a resolve strong enough at any rate to determine me to do all I could to strengthen it further. I hated admitting that my most powerful incentive was emotional, but I forced myself to the admission. I decided therefore that in my walk to work I would cross the canal not as usual by the old bridge but by the new Casson bridge. The old bridge led me by the coatis’ cage; their charm and their grace gave me the same sort of pleasure as those of the lemurs. I did not need that pleasure that morning. Going by the Casson bridge I should be brought slap up against the paddock where Filson died. I hoped the sight would reinforce my anger.
But before I reached the Giraffe House I came upon the enclosure where the Brazilian tapirs wallowed in their pool like so many primitive horses. It was a recent spacious construction, but even here Bobby Falcon’s love of the old Zoo had somehow cluttered it up with planks and chutes and general circus absurdities. A great ladder was perched precariously upon one end of the feeding trough, and across it was stretched an old-fashioned carpet-bag tool container from which protruded hammers and some sharp-looking object. After yesterday’s event, it needed no more than this muddle to set me on the warpath. As I turned the corner the grunting of the wild pigs came to me, each species contributing in a different key. There where the peccaries seemed endlessly and pointlessly to jostle one another for the same narrow corner of their ample run, I saw an upturned feeding trough. I doubt if its Victorian cast iron clawed feet could have harmed a mouse, but my anger exploded. And exploded upon Strawson, whose fat, self-satisfied Billy Bunter form waddled towards me at that moment.
‘Get these enclosures cleared of this junk instantly, do you understand, Strawson?’
The semi-literate jargon he had built up for himself in his character of Elephant Joe did not appease me at that moment.
‘We shall be kept pretty busy, Mr Carter, if we are to give ourselves the job of reforming the porcine nature. You know the old phrase, Sir, “live like pigs”.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more talk, Strawson. These houses are a disgrace. Get on with your job.’
‘I was under the impression that Sir Robert was responsible for maintenance …’
‘After yesterday’s accident, Strawson, we’re all of us responsible in common decency to see that negligence doesn’t become a habit. You might take a look at the tapir’s enclosure …’ He was about to speak but I went straight on. ‘Attend to it at once, please. I shall be making a thorough inspection later. And if it assists your touchy pride, I mean an inspection of the whole Gardens, not just of the ungulates under your charge.’
I walked on and left him puffing away like an astonished toad.
When I got to my office I realized that my words with Strawson would mean an almost certain row with Bobby. Nevertheless I was glad that anger had driven me on. At least I had taken measures to prevent further unnecessary accidents. I resolved to make a complete inspection of the Gardens during the luncheon hour. Meanwhile I sketched out a memorandum to send to all curators drawing their attention to the importance of ensuring that all enclosures were free of encumbrances. It was going beyond my office, but at least by generalizing my intrusion I should not seem especially to have selected Bobby’s corns to tread on.
I had hardly begun to sort through the morning post with Mrs Purrett when our President Lord Godmanchester came ambling into my office. I knew him well enough now to be aware that on these days when he appeared to pad aimlessly about the Zoo like some fat, lost old bear, he was in fact easing the nervous tension that periodically possessed him since he had been out of office. Leacock, who claimed to understand Godmanchester fully – ‘I saw that it was a must to know the man completely as soon as I was Director. And I’ve made it my job to do so’ – said that the President’s mooching was never without purpose, always preceded some decisive action. Once or twice, it is true, there were repercussions at Society meetings the following afternoons. But more often than not if any action followed it must have done so outside the Zoo, for we knew nothing of it. However it was part of Edwin Leacock’s regard for his own office as Director to invest the President’s every move with significance.
This was not an attitude that Godmanchester found any reason to reciprocate. This morning, he said,
‘Leacock’s got some meeting or other in his room, Carter.’
‘I think it’s his quarterly meeting with the Fishery Research Bureau.’
‘Yes indeed. So he says. I’m surprised he’s kept on all that sort of thing now he’s left the Aquarium. I’ll give you a tip, Carter. Never hold on to what you’ve left behind. I learned that very early when they moved me from Agriculture to Education. I fancied that I’d really made my mark … But you don’t want to hear all that. Anyway you know it all. You were at the Treasury. Winchester, New College, and the Treasury are the three places where they know everything,’ he said to Mrs Purrett, who smiled delightedly at what was evidently a jocular offering from on high.
‘I’m just padding around here this morning,’ he said, ‘making the most of this lovely weather. But there may be an important call for me and as Leacock’s made himself incommunicado, I wondered if I could have it put through here when it comes. I shall go and talk to my friend the binturong and perhaps have a word with the kinkajou. But I’d like to know of any call as soon as it comes through. If one of your messengers could spare the time from whatever game of chance he’s engaged in and come over to the Small Mammal House, I’d be very obliged to him.’
As he was going out of the room, he asked, ‘By the way, what’s this business I saw in the paper about a keeper being killed? Got it wrong, haven’t they? Giraffes never did any harm that I heard of before.’
I said, ‘No, it’s true.’ And then with a sudden decision I added, ‘I’d like very much to talk to you about it, if you have a moment.’
He raised his thick George Robey eyebrows even higher for a second at this suggestion of my by-passing the Director; but, in fact, as I knew from his attentions to me, and indeed to those in more subordinate grades – keepers and so on – he liked nothing better than a Napoleonic going over the heads of his marshals to the common soldier.
He said, ‘I have a moment and it may be the last that I’ll have for some time. I’ll confess that my mind’s on affairs of rather greater seriousness than those of Regent’s Park, but you’ve heard me say often, too often I’m sure to carry conviction, that I’m never too busy for anything. Let me hear about this if only to show you that the saying isn’t just an old man’s drivelling.’
That he had so accurately gauged my thoughts gave me more confidence in him.
I said, ‘We’ll take the rest of the letters later then, Mrs Purrett.’
Godmanchester had difficulty in fitting his vast buttocks into the deep but narrow armchair that I kept for visitors. By the time that his huge, fat, shapeless body had sunk into the cushions, I could see nothing of him except his round, surprised-looking face. Instead of talking to a wise old bear, I found myself addressing a surfacing seal. It was slightly disconcerting.
He said, ‘Before you start on what you want to tell me, I’d better say that I may not be able to give a lot of time to Zoo affairs in the next month or two. In fact I hope for everybody’s sake that I shan’t be able to. It’s no secret that the Government’s got into a ghastly mess. What is perhaps less appreciated is that they realize it. Pressure of public opinion, or the very little sense that’s left to him, may force the P.M. to widen his government. If he does, little though we like each other’s guts, he’ll be compelled to offer me office. And as you’ll see in my papers, that may very well save us from a disastrous war. What it says in my papers is not necessarily true. But in this case it is. Therefore although I have said a very large number of times that I would not accept office from him at the end of a bargepole, I shall.’ He paused and blinked at me two or three times. ‘I’m telling you this because I don’t know what you’re going to ask me now. It may entail a request for my assistance which I may promise to give. You will see very readily, however, that in certain events I shall not be able to keep that promise. All right. Go ahead.’
All this ‘carry-on’ in his slow, emphatic voice which so impressed our Director with Godmanchester’s ‘greatness’, only inspired me with serious doubts. I almost wished that I had not decided to ask his advice; committed to the counsel of the man at the very top, one has no further to go. However, committed I was, and so I told him the full story as I knew it.
Only twice did he interrupt me. Once when I was talking of Sanderson’s part, he said, ‘Look, is this a funny story you’re telling me, Carter, or a serious one? Serious. All right – cut out the imitations, although you do them very well. Anything can be made funny you know, but it isn’t the moment for it.’
Again, when I repeated Rackham’s remarks, he said, ‘You talk a lot with your subordinates.’
‘Yes. I find it difficult to accept hierarchies. It was my chief failure at the Treasury.’
He looked doubtful. ‘Ah, I talk a lot to my subordinates. But then I’m old and very eminent. I can afford to indulge myself.’
At the end of my story, he said, ‘Yes, I see. And what you want to know is what am I going to do about it?’
‘No. Whether I should push on with inquiries, try to find out what happened and so prevent it happening again.’
‘There are a number of propositions there, aren’t there? And they aren’t all necessarily in accord with one another. However, I’m glad you don’t want to know what I’m going to do, because the answer to that would be exactly nothing. As to whether you should push on with your inquiries, as you call it – that means in fact pushing Beard or Falcon or even Leacock if you’re smart enough, into admitting that they made very bad mistakes. Whether that’ll prevent it happening again is a very different question. For myself, following my usual practice, I shall say something that I shouldn’t. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest degree if Leacock or Beard or Falcon or all three of them have made serious mistakes. They’re probably doing so all the time, only usually there are not dangerous spikes and sick giraffes and inexperienced young keepers about at the same time in the same place. I don’t have to tell you that there lies the difference between what is and what is not history. Here we have history. And the senior men aren’t perhaps quite up to history. As you say, they’re cut off from the world and they’re getting a bit set. Old as I am I can say that because one can’t get set in politics, events don’t allow it. What’s less certain is what value it would be to bring that home to them. Or, if you did so, whether any young keeper in the future would be the whit safer than he is now. You can’t eliminate carelessness or bad luck simply at the wave of a reforming wand. You’d learn that soon enough if you had real responsibility. As to the old boys, they’ve had a shock and if that doesn’t cure them, I don’t know that your denunciations will.’
‘It isn’t only a question of the future …’
‘But of justice, is that it? Oh, there’s no need to explain what you feel about that. I’ve felt it myself in my time, although you probably think that I haven’t. But justice that brings no practical advantages to anyone and a good deal of disturbance to some people, I can’t really recommend. It would be an expensive indulgence. No, I should say you couldn’t do better than forget the whole matter.’
‘And supposing, that, taking your advice, I still stumble on unfortunate facts in the course of my work.’
Lord Godmanchester wobbled with laughter.
‘I’ve come across a good few disastrous ways in which altruists can act, but stumbling! What you want to know in fact is what I should do if you bring any skeleton you’re so careless as to stumble over before my notice at a Society meeting, that’s it, isn’t it? Shall I still pretend that I don’t see it? The answer to that is – only if nobody else sees it. And that rather depends on the light in which it’s displayed, doesn’t it?’
I wondered if he was really enjoying his act as much as it seemed. The possibility alone made me impatient with him.
I said, ‘I suppose that such tiresome behaviour on my part would definitely be a black mark against me.’
The deep creases in his fat old face seemed all at once to turn downwards. He appeared sad and hurt rather than sly and jovial.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘that you should think me so poor a judge of character. It has never occurred to me for a moment since I saw you at work here that you were in the slightest degree concerned with career making. I don’t say that as praise or blame, of course. Only as an observation. Is that all?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Thank you for listening.’
‘Oh, it’s not so unselfish as you think. These little natters are very instructive. I hope we may have them again from time to time.’
He got up, but he seemed reluctant to go from the room. He glanced at the telephone.
‘The small mammals, remember, if there’s a message for me.’ At the door, he said, ‘You see the trouble with that story is that it’s all too peculiar. A man kicked in the balls by a giraffe, or perhaps not. A giraffe that thought he heard a lion or perhaps not. There’s an awful lot of “perhaps not” about it. Do you know what I’d call that story? I’d call it a tall story.’ He opened the door, then he added, ‘You think that’s a cheap little joke. I meant it to be so. We may all have to get used to being callous in the months ahead. It won’t do us any harm to start now.’ He glanced anxiously again at the telephone and ambled off.
I was glad that I had already made this joke in bad taste that Godmanchester thought so vital to my moral health. My reaction to his advice, of course, was resentment of its patronizing air. I determined to disregard it. But so obvious a reaction to so crude a manner seemed childish. To avoid appearing absurdly touchy I was almost obliged to consider the advice more seriously than I should have done had his manner been more tactful. Had he perhaps foreseen this, offered it in that way on purpose? I did not believe him to be so subtle. In fact I ended by suspecting that he had only consented to listen because it gave him an excuse to be by the telephone whose summons he so clearly hoped for.
When the telephone rang, however, it was no dramatic call for Coriolanus. It was instead Pattie Henderson.
She said, ‘I say, I was pretty bloody rude on the phone yesterday. But I hope you realize that it was only because Newton and Nutting had got my goat by saying they knew you’d play safe. You can imagine how I’ve been chortling over them this morning when the news got round that you’d been dressing down that awful fat henchman of Falcon’s. Remember we’re all behind you if you want to have a showdown with the old boys.’
I said, ‘Thank you,’ but in a voice that I hoped mocked the pretensions of the revolutionary opposition as much as it did my suitability to lead them. Pattie in her simplicity was puzzled. She found nothing to say; I made no effort to help her out. Then made nervous by this silent communication, she shouted:
‘I suppose old Leacock’s bogging you down with a lot of fuss about his music hall turn on the television. Anything to stop chaps getting on with their proper jobs.’
I said, ‘I imagine rather a lot of people are being distracted from their proper jobs today by the thought of what a war might entail.’
Pattie’s answer came as immediately as I had expected.
‘Oh, I suppose people like Leacock and Falcon who’ve lost all contact with the real work are bound to have the jitters. Down here in Research Block we haven’t given a thought to it.’
History had little call to Pattie. She said, ‘Well it’s all a lot of newspaper bilge, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, surely. So long as Newton is busy with marsupial placenta and Nutting has not satisfied himself about the fertility cycles of the common shrew, war is an unthinkable interruption.’
Now Pattie was really angry.
‘If you haven’t any appreciation at all for serious research work, then the sooner you get out of this place the better. We’re carrying enough passengers already.’
She rang off. To a great extent she was justified.
The only apology appeared to lie in getting on with my work. The quarterly estimates for expenditure presented by the various curators lay before me ready for assembling into a single report to be submitted to the Finance Committee. The report would be made in the Director’s name, but, unless there were items that seemed to him to relate to his National Reserve scheme, I knew that it would be useless to ask for his full consideration of them. The preparation of the reports would devolve entirely on me. Such a task gave me some conviction that my job was worthwhile. I knew the Committee well enough to make sure that tactful presentation would give to each request the highest chance of acceptance. However much my knowledge of the curators made me sceptical I genuinely tried to retain the urgency of each demand while remembering the limited resources available. When the curators got what they wanted, they took my work for granted. When their requests were refused, they either accused me of insufficient enthusiasm for the Zoo’s welfare or complained that, forgetting the automatic rubber stamp nature of my post, I must unconstitutionally have favoured some other department’s demand. This is the bureaucrat’s lot. Those who like to feel conscious of hiding such light as they possess under a bushel get satisfaction from it. On the whole I did so; although on occasion I wished for the immediate applause given to the acrobat, the pop singer, or the tennis star. But perhaps the paid administrator has a more continuously pleasant sense of not being truly appreciated than any of these. At any rate I enjoyed such work. So long as one does not become a confirmed addict to virtue, I don’t know why one shouldn’t have the odd kick out of it now and again. Certainly few things made me feel so good as the occasional conviction that I have of doing some good.
No doubt it was some reflection of all this in my face that caused Bobby Falcon so completely to lose his temper in my office when he came in a quarter of an hour or so later.
He began with that sort of facetious severity often supposed to make unpleasant remarks more palatable.
‘Look here, Simon, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. You were appointed here as secretary not as private investigator. I don’t know how the other chaps regard it, but as far as I’m concerned you must keep your inquiries – morphine needle, violin, and deerstalker – out of the Mammal Houses.’
‘I know I owe you an apology, Bobby. I should have come to you first but by an unfortunate chance I came face to face with Strawson this morning and simply let fly.’
Bobby began to relax the tense face he had prepared in order to carry through a ‘difficult’ interview.
I smiled and said, ‘All the same, I have to tell you that I wasn’t very happy about his attitude.’
Immediately the dark pouched skin beneath Bobby’s left eye began to twitch, drawing up his flushed cheek and the corner of his mouth. He was a quick-tempered man. Since I know my own occasional rages to be no more than a failure to control childish frustration, I can never treat other people’s loss of temper as seriously as they want.
I said, ‘Oh, Lord, Bobby, I’ve said the wrong thing. Please don’t take it so seriously.’
Such friendly levity had always proved effective before in assuaging his anger. Now my self-satisfaction must still have lingered in my smile or else my contempt for loss of temper must have lent a sneer to my voice; his left: eye above the twitching cheek stared out at me like a frightened savage horse’s. Beyond our knowledge of mental pathology, I suppose, we each have our folklore, nursery picture of madness. For me, people who look as though no word or gesture of mine could prevent them from doing me a physical injury are ‘mad’; of such people I am very frightened. I thought at that moment that Bobby Falcon was going to hit me with a chair or with his fists. Instead he swept all my papers off my desk on to the floor. Immediately he appeared ludicrous to me. My main concern was to prevent him seeing this.
‘Who the hell cares whether you’re happy or not? That’s the trouble with you, Carter. You’ve been state nursed from the cradle, without even learning to do your own flybuttons up. Not content with that, you had to find Martha’s money to provide your bony rump with extra cushions. I suppose she believed that somewhere you had the makings of a real man. At any rate as soon as you tried to prove it, you fell ill. They didn’t have any panel doctors or trick cyclists in the African jungle, so Master Carter had a nasty amoebal tummy and got sent home!’
I was surprised and a bit shocked to realize how pleased I was that in uncontrolled temper his language should so quickly acquire a vulgar slangy tone.
But the impetus of his anger had soon passed; the mood was now synthetic. I could almost feel the effort with which he was sustaining a rage from which he could see no escape without loss of face. I had no means of assisting him. The best I could do was by sharpness to cut his dilemma short.
I said, ‘This is intolerable, Bobby. You must get out of my room.’
He slumped into a chair, and his invective began to grind down to a halt.
‘Why the hell should I get out of your room? I brought you to the bloody place. God knows why! But then God knows why Martha married you. Good administrator? All right, so what? You’ve cut yourself off from real life for years with your reports and your files. And now something unpleasant with all the muddle that goes with real life happens outside your window; and you’re not happy about it. You’ve got to put everybody’s actions under your own twopenny halfpenny little home-made moral microscope.’ He sat back almost at ease. ‘My God, Simon, you are the most bloody awful prig. And if nobody else will tell you so, I must.’
It would have done no good to say that, on the contrary, hundreds of people had told me so, from my schooldays on. It would have been more priggish still to say that I had tried …
Bobby it was who did the right thing. ‘I’m sorry for that exhibition, Simon, I ought not really to be here. I don’t like the way things are going in this place and I keep hoping that I can save something of the old Zoo. But it’s self-deception. Leacock’s got it all his own way.’
‘That’s not true, Bobby, as you know. I’m on his side in my view of the Zoo’s future, although in some ways he’s both an ass and a bit of a fraud. But I’m very much in a minority. Some of the most important Fellows …’
‘Oresby, old Dr Peasegood! No, Simon, I’m not such a fool as to think that they’ll move mountains, let alone hold back the tide.’
‘All right then. Look how much the younger people here – Newton, Nutting, all that crowd, dislike Leacock …’
‘Don’t remind me, Simon, that they wouldn’t bother to dislike me. In any case I’m not going to pretend I’m in sympathy with them. Oh, I dare say they’d be happy enough to let anyone run the place as he liked, so long as he didn’t interfere with their research work. It isn’t good enough, Simon, they’ve no real care for the Society or the Gardens.’
‘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 pinewood, 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 lines of Burton’s Houses, the refinement of the shrinking ladies and the eau-de-cologne and the cigar whiff of the gentlemen 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 line 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 Republic of Tanganyika and the People’s 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. But 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 Nuffield 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 exorcized 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 at 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 we’re 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 man, 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 easiest 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 good-humouredly, ‘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 than 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.
Poor man, his task was a hard one, especially when that week the Russo-American Declaration burst upon an unexpected world and divided the opinion of every West European country with excited, hopeful, or apprehensive arguments. On the whole Leacock managed even this well. I thought at first he would try to ignore what all the world was talking of; had he done so he would have over-reached himself, for not only I, but the television engineers and programme planners with whom the office now seemed filled would no longer have found his enthusiasm infectious but embarrassingly dissociated and insane. In fact, at five to six that evening he appeared at the door of the huge Committee Room, to which we were now driven by our swelling numbers, and said,
‘What about knocking off for half an hour? The Prime Minister can be seen making his statement for those of us who wish to hear it on the set in my room.’
I admired him particularly for the ‘of us’ by which he marked the norm of measured interest which outside events should command. I worked very hard for him in those weeks, for I could not imagine that I should ever myself know enthusiasm that would demand of me his degree of self-control. Yet those days of the Russo-American Declaration undoubtedly taxed him severely. To know that everyone whom his enthusiasm had pressed into his service had a part of their minds elsewhere, to hear on occasion the doubts of technicians or planners whether, in view of the crisis, his programme would even go on the air, were sometimes greater stresses than he could bear. His absurd round eyes looked hysterically unsure as he said to me each day, ‘These chaps from the B.B.C. have got real loyalty to this programme, Carter,’ or ‘It’s only cynics like you that can’t see when they’re up to their neck making history, as we are this week.’
*
Though Leacock almost insulated himself from events, nobody else did. Even Matthew, who had evolved a wonderful power of hearing, reading and knowing nothing about a world he had long since decided was ‘not for him’, was forced to complain about the Declaration when he rang up to tell me the arrangements for young Filson’s funeral.
His reference was characteristically cryptic, ‘It’s rather hell those shits talking all that balls, isn’t it?’ he said.
I said, ‘Matthew, Martha’s half American.’
‘Well, I had a Welsh grandmother but I don’t boast about it.’
‘I’m afraid Martha does boast about her American mother.’
‘Oh, God! Well, of course the Americans are better than the Russians.’
Matthew’s opinions if he was forced to voice any were always ‘correct’. Now he took and indeed shared, the official Government line.
‘I mean anyway – Americans or Russians – we can’t have them telling us what to do.’
‘They’re trying to stop a war, Matthew.’
‘Yes. Well we’re not children, are we? We’ve had wars before, and we’ll have them again I suppose, if it’s necessary. Anyhow it’s hardly for the Russians or Americans to tell us what we’re to have.’
I saw no sense in arguing this.
I said, ‘You’re like the Prime Minister. You don’t want any bullies showing you the big stick. I’m surprised. I must say that I should have thought that was just up your street.’
Matthew crowed with delight.
‘It’s nothing to do with you what’s up my street. I could tell you a very peculiar story about the P.M. now you mention it. But I’d better not. At any rate not down the telephone. Well anyway I don’t really care what the Americans or Russians declare, do you? And they talk such balls. I mean it’s a matter for the Foreign Office people isn’t it? Anyhow I hope no one will mention it at Filson’s funeral luncheon.’
‘What luncheon?’
‘Well, the funeral baked meats, of course. Actually, Diana’s getting them sent round to Mrs F.’s from Jackson’s so it’ll be all right.’
I suppose my anger now was in proportion to my admiration for Matthew’s kindness on the day of young Filson’s death.
I said, ‘You forced those wretched people into this, Matthew. It’s disgraceful. It’s bad enough that they should have to put up with us at the funeral but to obtrude extra embarrassments on to them.’
Matthew’s voice was alarmed. He disliked people being annoyed with him. I was surprised that he didn’t run away from the telephone, but he said, ‘Well really. Filson wanted to do the right thing. And I told him.’
‘The right thing! At this moment! I suppose Falcon’ll be there.’
‘Well, naturally. He was the poor boy’s Curator.’
‘And what those poor people must be feeling after that ghastly coroner!’
‘But surely all coroners are ghastly. I don’t know any. But aren’t they doctors or something?’
‘That fool never questioned for a minute the responsibility for the boy’s death.’
‘Well, thank God! We don’t want the Society’s dirty linen washed in public.’
‘Perhaps not, but I warn you I shall raise it at the next Curators’ meeting.’
‘I don’t think you will, Simon.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because you’re not an absolute shit.’
Continuing calmly he said, ‘Well, they live at Wembley so that’ll be perfectly convenient for the R.C. cemetery at Kensal Green. Diana will drive us.’
‘I had no idea you knew the North West London suburbs so well, Matthew.’
‘Oh, well, I do you see. Our governess lived there for years.’
He rang twice again that afternoon. Once to tell me that the Filsons’ parish priest would attend the baked meats.
‘So that’s all right,’ he said in comment.
The second time it was to tell me that Bobby Falcon was uncertain whether Jane could attend.
‘She has to go to a read-through whatever that may be,’ he said. ‘Anyway the Filsons won’t understand what it is, so maybe they won’t be offended.’
I had to check through the camera arrangements with the Director so I told Mrs Jamieson that I could not speak to Mr Price again that afternoon. Twice Matthew appeared at the open door of my room where I was talking with Leacock. Each time on seeing Leacock he stared for a moment and then disappeared. On a third occasion, the Director said sharply, ‘Yes, what is it, Price?’
‘I just wanted a word with Carter, if that’s all right.’
‘Yes, yes, go ahead.’
‘I was just wondering, you see, Simon, since Jane Falcon isn’t going to be there whether perhaps you could persuade your wife. You see, it would be a compliment to the Filsons and then Diana wouldn’t be the only lady.’
I suddenly felt deeply ashamed of this gross snobbery.
I said sharply, ‘I really don’t know.’
‘Oh, well, I’ll get Diana to ring her and ask.’
He scuttled away like the White Rabbit on an errand. Realizing a moment later that his snobbery which usually made me laugh had only caused me unease because of Leacock’s presense, I was annoyed with my lack of self-assurance.
When I was leaving the Zoo late that evening about half past eight, I found a note that had been left in my secretary’s room: ‘Rely on you at tomorrow’s baked meats to keep the conversation off dreary Declaration and Falcon’s boring balls-up of boy’s death – Matthew.’ He seemed to me like a spoilt child who was out to annoy and I felt glad that I had snapped at him in front of Leacock.
*
I was exhausted when I reached home; I felt apprehensive about the next day’s gathering. Then despite all my admiration for Leacock’s scheme and even for the general outlines of the television programme by which he hoped to further it, I was increasingly irritated by the arrogant slipshodness which had left all the detailed, hard work to me and my staff. I was embarrassed too at being associated with such muddle in the eyes of the B.B.C. staff, many of whom I knew; and even more by what I felt sure they were thinking of the second-rate generalizations with which Leacock tried breezily to make light of his mistakes and omissions. Through everything else the thought that I must soon take action to avenge young Filson or else leave the grievance to poison my relations with my Zoo colleagues for good, nagged away at me. I was in the mood in fact to be both a snappish, tired husband and a pernickety, exacting civil servant.
I was not in a mood for the suffused, instinctive gaiety with which the Declaration had filled Martha’s American liberal heart. That this light-heartedness made her younger, more attractive, more sweetly and gently asking to be loved than I had known her for some considerable time only made me feel the sourer. I thought of myself as a man who, always carrying last year’s diary and an erratic watch, would for ever arrive at his appointments too early or too late.
Martha, indeed, was so happy, her fears so exorcized that her gaiety had no need to spill over me as I set foot in the house. She was ready for my exhaustion, quiet without any nerve-teasing ostentation of hushedness; she had seen that Jacqueline’s silly brightness was not there to disturb me, had arranged with Grazia my favourite meal – osso buco, a light red chianti, zabaglione. I tried very hard but I could not purr. For more than half an hour Martha continued to keep silent, then suddenly she cried.
‘Oh, Simon, I know how tired you are, darling. And I know you were wise and level-headed all along, but please rejoice with me that there isn’t going to be any war. Oh, Simon, you don’t know how awful it’s been this week for people like me.’ I had my own ideas of the motives for the Russo-American Declaration: Russia’s preoccupation with Asia; America’s distaste for growing British neutrality. But I did not harp on such cynical views.
I said, ‘I’m very glad. I think it may go a long way to making us see reason. That is, if it doesn’t cause too much resentment here or in France and Germany for that matter.’
She cried, ‘Oh, phooey to Western Europe in that case. They’ll just have to toe the line if the big Powers say so.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Déclassé nations are very touchy you know.’
I tried not to exaggerate the measured reasonableness of my tone, but I failed.
Martha cried, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Simon, it is the most wonderful thing and I don’t care a damn for your European cleverness, seeing this side and that and spoiling every hopefulness with your doubts and despairs. It’ll be about the only good thing the British and French and all the lot of you have done with your backyard squabbles – to make us see sense once in a while and break through that damned Iron Curtain.’
I said, ‘You’d have agreed with Sanderson at lunch in the canteen: “So it’s taken us little ones to bring the big chaps together.”’
I caught the absolute fatuity of Sanderson’s voice to a tee. Martha’s hands trembled; she picked up a coffee cup. For a moment its olive green and gold shimmered in the light of the lamp behind her; I had already seen it shattered, even ducked my head to avoid the coloured splinters, when she put it down again in its saucer very determinedly.
‘I don’t mean what Sanderson means and you know it. Or maybe I do too. All I know is that the great shadows that have been hovering over us for so long – the great good shadow My country ’tis of thee – and I mean that, Simon, it is my country – and the great big bogey shadow that’s been glowing a lurid red over there ever since I was a kid and frightening the life out of me – have come together for a moment. If they never come together again, it doesn’t matter. They’ve done it. And they’ve done it for the right reasons. To stop all you little winners from blowing up the civilization that you’re always boasting that you alone have made. That’s history, Simon, and no cavilling can stop it from being so.’
I thought of Edwin Leacock’s remark; it seemed that everyone was determined to accuse me of failing to see history. I got up from my chair and put on a record of the Italian Symphony. I wanted something familiar, good and yet not profound, to purge me of all these enthusiasms and anxieties which people had been unloading on me for the last few weeks. I wanted more immediately to prevent further possibly disastrous talk with Martha.
But she had to pursue me.
She said, ‘The only comment you can find on a great moment in history is to repeat an idiotic remark of an old fool like Sanderson.’
I said, ‘I’m not very good at historic moments, darling, you know that. I was taught history on a different principle. In any case it’s people that interest me, that concern me if you like. That’s why Sanderson’s reaction fascinated me.’
‘People? People seem pretty dumb by the time you’ve finished with them.’
I got up and stopped the record.
Martha said, ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. But you know how I think you’re wasting your spirit away on a lot of people that aren’t worth your while. You weren’t meant to be involved with people. And even if you had the gift, so have millions of others. It’s a feminine gift. Most women have it. I have. But you’ve got quite another thing. You can observe creatures and things. That’s much rarer …’
I cut her short. I simply could not hear again the story of her disappointment with me.
I said, ‘I am not a trained zoologist, Martha. And it’s too late for me to be so. You must accept that finally.’
‘All right, Simon, you aren’t. But you were only the best naturalist on television when I married you. Only that. Was that nothing?’
‘I’m a respectable man, Martha. Not a popular entertainer.’
She refused to let me off with a laugh. At times like this I hated her integrity and her innocence. I did not want to be saved from myself. She was seated on the arm of a sofa looking away from me, her head down, her whole body slumped in disappointment. I had taken away the beauty bred of her gaiety which had greeted my homecoming. I could with pleasure have hit her.
I shouted at her, ‘I’m sorry that you feel you’ve wasted yourself. I’m sorry if your money could have been better spent. It so happens that I’ve been working very hard. But of course seeing that an organization is run properly isn’t among your duties as a hero. Nevertheless I have been working very hard, I’m very tired and I’m going to bed.’
Much later that night I woke from a heavy sleep to feel her buttocks pressed taut against my thigh. I could tell by the tension that she was awake. I turned her towards me and began to kiss and caress her, hoping to relax her tension. Martha’s was not the only naïveté in the home. She held rigid against me, and, having failed to force her to surrender, I fell into sleep again.
Martha was up next morning before I had woken. I did not see her until I came down to the breakfast table. All the radical fighting egghead manner of her American mother had gone from her. She spoke in that strange social English voice that she must have learned as a child from her father’s mother. It rang bells of long ago, recalling my great-aunts or rather the grander of their county friends – voices that had been trained and nuanced before Victoria died. She seemed to be embattled behind the toast and tea and Seville Orange Marmalade.
‘Will you call for me for this funeral, darling? Or shall I make my way there with Jane?’
‘Good God! You’re not coming are you? There’s absolutely no need.’
‘But Matthew Price telephoned and asked me …’
‘What if he did? For once I’m quite sure he’s got the protocol wrong. There’s no call for wives to be present. In any case, it was only if Jane Falcon wasn’t going to be there. To keep Diana company. In Matthew’s phrase “so that she won’t be the only lady”.’
‘But, Simon, surely Matthew wouldn’t make a mistake of that kind. You’ve often told me how much you admire him for his social sense, and how all that snobbery of his is rather endearing.’
I pushed my plate away in what I have no doubt was a very petulant manner.
‘To my taste,’ I said, ‘scrambled eggs should be scrambled, not cooked like a face flannel. And people like you whose charm lies in being ingénue shouldn’t try to be bitchy. It doesn’t suit them.’
‘I don’t think Grazia understands very well. But I’ll tell her.’
I tried a desperate retrieval by whimsy.
I said, ‘I shouldn’t say the bit about bitchy to her. She might not understand.’
Martha ignored this. ‘If your work at the Zoo is so important, then I think I ought to play my part as the Secretary’s wife.’
I tried to give her the serious reasons.
‘Matthew is a fool to have arranged the party. And more than a fool. What are the wretched Filsons going to feel like entertaining Falcon and, for all I know, Strawson after what happened to their son?’
‘Oh, my dear, of course, they’ll take it as a compliment. Their emotions can’t be judged by ours, you know. I’m sure Matthew’s told you that.’
I restrained myself from saying, ‘What do you know about the British?’
I said, ‘In any case, if I’m to continue with my inquiries into what really happened it will be a great embarrassment to be forced to be there with the Filsons and the people who may have been to blame.’
‘If you’re going to continue?’
‘All right, since I’m going to …’
‘Well, having your wife there will help,’ Martha said. Then she asked, ‘I’ve only got two black hats, darling, that large straw I bought for some unaccountable reason for the Garden Party and a silly little one with some nonsense on it that I could take off. Which would be correct for the Secretary’s wife?’
I threw down my napkin and walked out of the dining-room.
Wanting formal etiquette, respect for the old Filsons alone could guide our behaviour. It was no help to me that, although my liking for the old man increased with the occasion, I took an instant dislike to Mrs Filson.
She was not old, hardly perhaps sixty, but she was formidable and square and deeply unsure of herself. She sat a massive figure in their lounge, receiving court and yet not quite knowing what to do with it. She sat too in a tight short skirt with thick legs wide apart, showing her underwear. I dislike above everything old women who obtrude what I wish to associate only with the young and desirable. That she was shy I could tell from the momentary tremblings of her square untweezered jaw; but she disguised her shyness in an aggressive jollity peculiarly inappropriate to the occasion and more inappropriate still, I am sure, poor thing, to her real emotions.
Matthew decided on the ‘correct’ means of dealing with the gathering. In ordinary circumstances it would have been a good one. He pursued memories of Zoo ‘characters’ both human and avine, or rather he encouraged Filson, who had a fund of stories, to tell them, confining his own part to comments that seemed like the responses in some litany – ‘Oh God! The woman with the eagle owl. Yes, do go on about her’, ‘the Amherst’s pheasant that killed the tragopan. Have I forgotten? My dear Filson, the sheer beauty of that fight. Yes, do tell.’ ‘Oh, Lord! Hastings, you see, the worst keeper we ever had. I’m sure he killed that condor.’
Matthew’s idea of a common topic indeed might well have succeeded. Strangers – the Filson relatives, the parish priest, Father Hansford – were like most of the public fascinated by Zoo talk; this public interest is something that those of us who work there find hard to remember. All Zoo womenfolk – Martha, Jane, Matthew’s sister Diana – have been conditioned over years to make the right faces at the birth of the tigon, the death of the okapi or the kiwi, and the unsatisfactory reactions of walruses or sea elephants to captivity.
All, it seemed, save Mrs Filson. Like many a Zoo wife – like Martha, God help me – she held the purse strings. The large nineteen-fifties house with its lounge and model kitchen in which we were met was hers, a legacy from her well-to-do builder father. From her unsure domination Filson, it became obvious, took refuge in the Zoo, a world that he kept apart. And so apart that she was clearly not just bored, but angrily ignorant. Would I, would Martha fight such battles in thirty years? The thought did not lessen my dislike of Mrs Filson.
‘Is it true,’ asked Father Hansford, ‘that the snakes are still fed on live rabbits?’
‘Now, Father,’ Mrs Filson protested, ‘I’m surprised at you. Encouraging him to talk about the nasty things that happen at that place.’
She looked around the room with a certain triumph – to demonstrate, I think, that devout Catholic though she was, or rather perhaps since she was, she was no particular respecter of Father Hansford apart from his office.
Father Hansford was also the jolly sort, but altogether more agreeable.
He said, ‘Oh come, it ill behoves us to criticize the brute creation, Mrs Filson.’ In mock horror, he turned to the old man. ‘Come on now, Mr Filson, come straight as they say, do you feed poor live creatures to those horrible beasts?’
It was obvious that old Filson was a favourite of the priest’s, and that in turn he loved to be teased in this way.
‘I’m sorry I can’t oblige you, Father. That was all put an end to in my own father’s time. That was the work of Sir Peter Chalmers-Mitchell, I believe, wasn’t it, Mr Price?’
‘Oh,’ said Matthew, ‘Chalmers-Mitchell!’ His voice had a note of deep veneration. ‘I don’t know anything about him, do you?’ he added.
‘I can’t see Dr Englander allowing anything of that kind. Not him,’ old Filson chuckled.
I wondered at his image of Englander, who I could easily imagine reviving ‘live’ feeding if he felt it was in accord with up-to-date continental methods.
‘We’ll have to put on an exhibition for you with live rattlesnakes and Percy, Father.’ Percy was a secretary bird and clearly a great favourite of Filson’s. ‘Now that would be something to see.’
‘Charlie, you’ve talked enough. Make yourself useful with the wine.’ Mrs Filson’s tone was not playful.
Old Filson’s little head on its scraggy wrinkled neck seemed to slip back into his slumped old body like a tortoise.
Matthew, ignoring his hostess, plunged on with Zoo reminiscence, while Diana Price tried to distract Mrs Filson with admiration for the lounge. Mrs Filson was momentarily pleased, but her misery combined with her unease would not allow her to leave her husband unbridled.
‘I’ll never forgive that man. “Neither grapes nor carrots,” he said to me. “Neither grapes nor carrots, Mr Filson. There’s a war on.”’ The old man was in full spate.
‘Oh, God!’ Matthew cried. ‘Men from ministries. Like Mr Carter.’
‘I’m sure Mr Carter would never have been so awkward. There was you away at the war, Mr Price. And what could I do? “Neither grapes nor carrots,” the man said. And twelve of the toucans died. I’ll never forgive him.’
‘Toucans!’ his wife cried, ‘It’s shameful of you, Charlie. Twelve toucans dead! Is that all you can find to mourn at the present time?’
He must have thought, as I did, that she was about to burst out in grief for their son, for he murmured, ‘I was only talking, Dot, to help.’
But she had turned to Matthew now, as though he were responsible for the whole affair – as indeed in some ways he was.
‘You may not see, Mr Price, what it means, but it’s all too clear to many of us. Those devils have got what they want. A Declaration to stop war. The cunning of it! Well the Yanks’ll soon see what they’ve done. It’s not so clever to sit down to a table with the Devil. He has a long spoon. The Church has always told them what would happen.’
Father Hansford moved uneasily, and perhaps one felt that she had been carried away to speak out of turn, for she asked, ‘Has the Holy Father made any pronouncement yet?’
It was clear to me that she was addressing her priest, but Matthew chose to take the question to himself.
He said, ‘Oh, Lord! I’m afraid I don’t know. My allegiance is to Canterbury, you see.’
I think it unlikely that he had attended any religious service since his schooldays, but there were echoing overtones of historic and social rebuke in his answer. He went straight on. ‘Did you ever hear how I nearly procured a moa for the Gardens? Well, that’s what the dealer claimed it was.’
We all laughed. But we had reckoned without Martha. She came across from the other side of the lounge and sat down beside Mrs Filson.
Very quietly but with intense urgency, she said, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t speak to you like this on today of all days, but how can you talk like that?’
Some deadness in the old woman’s face seemed suddenly to anger her, for she cried, ‘All right you and your generation don’t care. But I do. I’ve got children.’ Then, as suddenly, she seized the old woman’s hands and held them tight in her own. ‘Oh, please forgive me. I had no right. No right at all.’
Whatever Mrs Filson’s reaction may have been, my attention was entirely distracted by Diana Price. She got up from her seat and spoke in that loud, clear voice which people ‘in the body of the hall’ are always urged to use.
‘I sometimes wonder,’ she said, ‘what these extraordinary people think we are. Or what they think Europe is, for that matter. If we do this or that, they will annihilate us with their combined strength. Like a lot of self-appointed nannies! As though countries that have had centuries of diplomatic experience couldn’t settle their differences without outside interference.’
Matthew said, ‘Oh God! Diana darling, please.’
I felt I could not leave Martha to answer so ridiculous a challenge.
I said, ‘You say “if we do this or that”, but the Declaration is quite clear, Diana. It says that if, in European quarrels, we, the French or the Germans resort to nuclear weapons of any kind, then the Great Powers will retaliate upon the culprits. If they can’t stop us from the madness of fighting, they are determined to limit our mischief. For myself, I must say that I agree with Martha – that West and East should together make this clear may force us to think twice. And, if so, it may have saved the world.’
To my surprise I did silence Diana; but to my even greater surprise I found that my words had loosed the tongues of everyone else. Filson relatives – and there seemed suddenly to be a host of them – were clucking and quacking, gobbling and hissing like some great poultry market or Goose Fair. It was only then that I realized how, in my absorption with Leacock’s programme, I had been cut off from the general noise. This was not Matthew Price’s echo of the official voice, or Martha’s human cry of hope, but a noise of panic. I have written poultry, but it was the terror of ostriches whose heads have been rudely pulled out of the sand.
‘I think it’s shameful to talk like that. They’ll drop a nuclear bomb on us if we don’t –’
‘I didn’t know what to do when little Gwenda came home and said the teacher had told them the Americans and Russians were going to drop the bomb on us. She was shivering all over.’
‘Poor little mite. Some of them teachers forget what it was like to be a child.’
‘A child! I think it’s bad enough for us. I was under the drier when this girl started on about it. And I said don’t tell me …’
‘Mind you, there’s no agreement between these scientists that it would do the harm they say it would. They’re all at sixes and sevens.’
‘Don’t talk to me about sixes and sevens! That’s been half the trouble.’
‘A chap I know was saying that the trouble is that as soon as these technical blokes try to put things into the plain man’s language, they’re up against it. As a result we get a very distorted picture.’
‘Of course, mind you, half the trouble has come from calling it “the bomb” like that …’
‘Well, of course, the sensationalism’s appalling. But then some people just get a kick out of making other people’s flesh creep.’
‘I must say that I think this is a very unsuitable occasion to raise the subject.’
‘It’s not as if it’s not in all our minds, but what can we do?’
‘That’s one of the troubles, people have become bomb-conditioned.’
The buzz around me grew until it seemed to come from everybody in the room. Everybody except a rather pretty blonde girl who was sitting on the edge of a chair in the corner of the room. She stood out from the rest of the company, for her deep black mourning had a sort of chic, but she looked so haggard and tired and washed-out that her smartness seemed somehow disreputable. Perhaps it was the black suit she wore, against which her white face, pale lips and green eye shade stared out so macabrely. She, at any rate, was free from the general chattering, commonplace panic, but she gave me little comfort – shut off so far away in her little universe, she might, I thought, be mad. Bobby Falcon was staring down at a dumpy, middle-aged woman who was saying to him, ‘I may be unimaginative, but the road deaths seem far more real to me.’ He looked down at her with undisguised contempt, but he was not, I felt sure, free from the general distress. Only Jane, sitting so unusually silent and unsociable, was really aloof and calm, yet her expression suddenly irritated me – she seemed complacent.
I went across to her and said, ‘I suppose the state of the nation hasn’t percolated to the green rooms of England yet. After all, the show must go on.’
‘Not up to your best form, Simon,’ she said smiling, ‘You’re rattled. Anyhow everyone knows that theatre people will respond down to the last and oldest trouper if the country calls.’
She followed my still questing gaze round the room. Near to us a stout man said, ‘Of course, a lot of the experts says the nuclear threat is very exaggerated. I’m perfectly convinced myself that if the newspapers talked less about it …’
This so relieved the woman to whom he spoke that she cut him short.
‘Oh, I do so agree with that,’ she said and sighed with relief.
Jane smiled, ‘Dear Simon, always so good with people. This afternoon is a triumph.’ Then almost angrily, she added, ‘Go on. Do something about it. I challenge you.’
I felt obscurely that to ignore the challenge would somehow endanger my future, ‘spoil my luck’; the superstition annoyed me, yet it was too strong to resist. I had no other opiate to offer the company but the one that had drugged me all the week. Seeing Filson and Diana silent for a moment, I went over to them and spoke loudly to gather if possible the attention of the whole party.
‘The cameramen were delighted with your waders, Filson. The Director was as pleased as Punch. After all a large scale waders’ sanctuary will be one of the foundations of his Reserve when he gets it. I must say I was a bit reluctant to involve myself in this T.V. thing of his, but the more I work on it …’
I sounded to myself a little like an encouraging hearty parson.
‘Do you think you could get me another glass of wine, Mr Filson?’ Diana said. ‘The rosé, as I’m driving.’
Then when he had moved away, she turned to me and spoke in a markedly quiet voice to emphasize that there was no return of her hysteria.
‘I don’t want to criticize Dr Leacock in front of Filson, but I’ll tell you now that in my opinion he ought to be put on trial. I think it’s appalling, at this moment in our history, that he should be devoting all his efforts to a self-advertisement campaign of this kind. Talk of fiddling while Rome burns. We deserve to be annihilated!’
Her determination had broken down and her voice had risen. Bobby Falcon smiled at her across the room and drawled loudly, ‘Annihilated, Miss Price? Of course we do. Any society that tolerates houses as ugly as this, for example …’
Even Jane’s composure was broken.
She said, ‘Bobby darling, you’re drunk.’
But it was Martha who went over to him and took his arm. She seemed to be smiling.
She said, ‘Dear Bobby, just because your travelling days are over, or you like to think they are, you’re quite happy to have everybody blown up to comfort you, aren’t you? Or rather it makes you feel a devil to think that you are. You are a dreadful old poseur.’ She squeezed his arm and he smiled down at her.
‘And you’re almost as ghastly a prig as your husband, my beautiful Martha,’ he said.
Martha’s behaviour astonished me: she was usually either respectful or impatient of her distinguished godfather, now she seemed lovingly patient and entirely disrespectful. And he, in his turn, showed a happy acceptance of her manner. What perhaps was more mysterious to me was that all the tension of the gathering seemed to vanish with the spectacle. The dirty word ‘nuclear’ might never have been spoken – family gossip, eating, drinking, commonplace discussion soon made the scene all that Matthew might have expected, all that I dared not hope for. I embarked upon one of my best Zoo stories, that of the French lady who erupted into my office one afternoon: ‘I ’ate the ’ippo that ’as eaten my ’at.’ A small group were enjoying my imitation. Mrs Filson was having a last confidential word with Father Hansford who announced that he must leave. Soon the whole thing would be over. The explosions had been disconcerting but not devastating. We should have performed Matthew’s idea of our duty without too disastrous a result.
Then into the gentle, decorous chattering there crept another sound, also gentle at first, but frightening – a little stifled moaning that grew higher and higher until it broke into a hysterical, hiccoughing sobbing. There, more isolated than before as people seemed to draw away from her uncontrolled grief, sat the blonde girl, screwing her handkerchief desperately in her fingers, tears pouring down her cheeks. She was not I saw now, a girl, but a ravaged-looking thirty-year-old woman. Filson walked over and, putting an arm round her shoulders, helped her from her seat.
‘Come along with Dad, Kay. There’s been too much of it all, hasn’t there?’
The eyelids came down over his little tortoise eyes as though to shut us all out; and yet, I think, he was quite unconscious of the emotional scene he was involved in.
The girl began, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Filson. I tried. I did really.’ Then she started to sob again. ‘I thought you’d all forgotten Derek. And I want him. I want Derek. I want him.’
Mrs Filson got up from the sofa with surprising speed. Her eyes were quite wild. I thought she was going to hit the girl.
She cried, ‘You want him! What do you think I felt when you’d taken him away from me? A woman old enough to be his mother! And where did he find you? You were never our sort of person!’ Father Hansford came up and touched her arm. She seemed at once to soften. She cried, ‘Father, I can’t like her. It’s no good.’
The girl said, ‘You were jealous. You couldn’t let him go. But you’ve never thought of him today.’
‘We have some sense of how to behave.’
‘Silly snobs! What do I care for this lot?’ She looked round at us disgustedly, ‘I want Derek. That’s all.’
Old Filson led her away out of the room; Father Hansford took Mrs Filson back to the sofa, where she sat, red-faced, trying not to burst into tears.
Matthew came over to me. ‘Oh, God! The fiancée you see,’ he said.
But I think most people were as overcome as I was with misery and guilt, for they began almost silently to make their departures.
Just as I was leaving, old Filson reappeared and, speaking in an embarrassed whisper, asked me if he could have a word with me. He took me into the large back garden and we paced the lawn between the vegetable plots and the flowerbeds. Moments of moral decision play a ludicrously large role in my life. Each has left its associated images superimposed upon one another like a Victorian scrapwork screen. Now for some time there have loomed over all other objects, fleshy leaves of onion, minute lettuces, like specks of marzipan upon a rich chocolate earth, and a peculiarly hideous khaki and purple early lupin.
‘Mr Price tells me you’re not happy about the coroner’s inquest, Sir,’ he said. We were clearly back on an official level.
‘I thought it was perfunctory.’
‘Ah! Mrs Filson and I were very satisfied. We wanted to thank you for the way in which publicity has been avoided.’
‘You have the Director to thank for that.’
‘Derek hadn’t been there long, Sir, but he’d already got a great feeling for the old place. Of course, it was in his blood. But you’ve no idea how proud he was to be working at the London Zoo. It brought him near to quarrels with his mother, I’m afraid. He wouldn’t hear a word said against it.’
I tried to speak gently but firmly, ‘Look, Filson, if you’re wanting to tell me that your son would not have wished to look further into the causes of his death, I can’t accept that as a reason. It may seem presumptuous of me to say it to you, but the truth is that no one however close can tell what the dead would have wished.’
‘I should like you not to do so, Sir. The Zoo means a lot to me.’
‘The Zoo should be run properly and competently. It’s surely our duty to see that it is.’
‘Yes. I’ve thought of that, Mr Carter.’
The change of his address seemed to suggest that he was both easier and less patient with me.
‘To be honest, it’s the point of view I first put to Mr Price. But he pointed out that no good can come to the place from a lot of unpleasant things being said.’
‘I believe you know how fond I am of Mr Price. But you also know as well as I do that he doesn’t like anything unpleasant brought to his notice. That isn’t a good enough reason for leaving this business alone, is it? In any case, I want to hear about your feelings, not Mr Price’s.’
The intolerable thought came to me that I should have to hear myself speak in these housemasterly tones many times before I had done with the business. Yet that sad blonde’s accusation sounded in my ears set against the cackling panic of the ostriches. Before Filson could answer me I went on.
‘No, nothing’s going to alter my resolution, Filson. I’m sorry, but we’re all too busy these days forgetting what we don’t want to remember.’
The old man stopped for a moment. More than ever he brought back the good old gardener of my boyhood, as he bent to pick a fat green caterpillar from one of the young lettuces. Squashing it between thumb and forefinger, he wiped the remains off on a blade of grass.
‘I shan’t forget, Mr Carter. I told the man he wouldn’t be welcome here today. I shan’t forget that he failed in his duty to my son.’
For a moment I was puzzled, then I said, ‘We can’t be sure that Strawson was to blame.’
‘The young keepers that work under me are in my charge. I see to it that their conditions are as good as I can make them. I see to it that they get all the training they need before they’re left on their own. Yes, even when it’s against their temperament, I check them. Young Larkin’ll tell you that. I’m not boasting. It’s the duty of any good head keeper. Barrett in the Big Cats would do the same, or Kennedy with the reptiles, any of the lot of them. I shan’t forget Strawson’s neglect of Derek, Sir, you need not worry about that.’
‘But you have to consider the orders the man may have been given. I don’t want to make accusations, but …’
‘You’d best say no more. In any case a good head keeper sees that he does get the right orders. It’s not my affair to look higher than Strawson.’
This mystic N.C.O. stuff was beyond my powers of refutation.
I said, ‘Well, I’m afraid that I think it is my affair.’
As though continuing with a story already familiar to me, he said, ‘You don’t know how hard it’s been for her. She always thought Kay was too old for him and not serious enough. She called it an infatuation. To tell the truth it was a strange thing. She’s a dance hostess, and, though she’s a good girl and it’s no criticism, she won’t see thirty-five again. And Derek had such different interests, singing with the choral society, singing good stuff. She refused to recognize the engagement. And then she hated him being at the Zoo, she thought it was a waste. They were always rowing in the last months. You don’t know what she’s going through now. Her only child. It’s no good my telling her not to blame herself. Do you think it’ll help her to know that he needn’t have died?’
I said, ‘There’s no reason why anything that happens in the Society’s meetings should reach your wife’s ears.’
‘Strawson’ll see to that. He’s said so. If there’s any blame put on him, he’ll give it all the publicity he can. It’s natural enough he should.’ When I did not answer, he went on another tack. ‘You haven’t seen Dot at her best. She seems hard with Kay, but she doesn’t find it easy to show soft feelings where she hasn’t got them. She’s a shy woman, Dot is.’ He was talking fast now, as I am sure he never did normally, but he was pleading his wife’s case desperately. ‘She doesn’t find it easy to get on with people. But she’s been wonderful to us – Derek and me – Mother has.’
As we turned back to the house, he asked, ‘You’ll think about it, at least, won’t you, Sir?’
I answered, ‘I shall not be able to think of anything else.’
I had taken an instant dislike to Mrs Filson for her charmless lack of assurance. It was clear that this had been her normal lot in life. How could I further hurt such a person? In any case I should at least let my conscience ponder over the problem until the television programme was out of the way.