WORK, they say, is the best physic of grief. It is not, however, an opiate, merely a counter-irritant that keeps one alive. I got through my work, got through it competently, but it was only with the surface of my mind; my body and my spirit were smothered in a fog of unhappiness that seemed to seep into me from the unusually thick and yellow smog that had settled upon London in those early November days. I could find my way home or, on occasion, to the little Greek restaurant around the corner in Camden Town, through the thickest peasouper – how blessed not to have Bobby in Victorian cockney hailing ‘the London pertickler’! – without mischance, if other less sensitive persons did not blunder and bump into me; so I could get through my work and my depressed days were it not for the sudden incursion of the muddling, maddening, blundering of people around me. But such incursions into routine are the very essence of an administrator’s day. And many came to irritate and grate upon my tensed up nerves, to send me home each night ready for nothing but to feel and deplore the emptiness of the house.
Only a day after Martha and the children had flown, Godmanchester padded into my office to encourage me in my new authority.
‘I know you’re not ambitious,’ he said, ‘but you realize that you’ve got it all your own way here, don’t you? All the rest of them are over sixty.’
‘Harry Jackley’s only forty.’
‘Yes, but he’s away from the scene too much. No, no, you’re pretty certain to be the future Director. And a very good thing too.’
It was all well-meant Napoleonic stuff, yet I could not but say,
‘I’m much more interested in running the British Reserve at Stretton.’
He seemed a little non-plussed.
‘Oh, you’ll do that all right,’ he said, ‘but I want to see you make a success of this in the next few months. You’re rather a favourite of mine, you know. And I may not have a chance to encourage you too much, because if everything goes right I ought to be pretty busy. For the first time in my life I shall accept office if it comes with a certain reluctance. This business of Leacock’s could have been a real interest for me. But still it would have been an old man’s second best. In any case there are more important things than my comfort. I believe I can galvanize even this Cabinet into action enough to pull us out of this mess. No, I don’t mind saying that I feel a certain real chirpiness these days. I haven’t liked playing the role of Cassandra, especially as I’ve had to overact my part a bit all the time. But I’m beginning to think that we shall avoid war now. Mind you none of this is in the bag, so you’ll not say a word about it. But I know you won’t. You’re one of these efficient people whose feelings don’t run away with them. That’s why I can afford to let off steam with you.’
I said, ‘I’ve just sent my wife and my children to America. Your papers convinced us that we ought not to take any risks.’
He raised his eyebrows,’ ‘Don’t be sarcastic about my papers. That’s intellectual claptrap. They’re the best value in the market.’ He folded his hands across his great paunch. ‘Well, let’s hope you’ll be able to bring them back again in double quick time.’
He was evidently set on the role of being my benefactor; yet it was all I could do not to kick his huge shapeless rhino’s bottom as he ambled out of my room. As it was I was too livid with anger that my family should have been pawns in some political game of the old man’s, to think out clearly what that game meant for the future of the National Reserve.
*
The menace of Beard was less expected. He appeared nervously in my office two days after Falcon’s departure.
‘I’m leaving everything to you, you know, Carter. Apart from anything else I’m engaged on a very interesting histological problem at the moment – the optic nerves of the loris. Some of the people at the College of Surgeons believe I’m on the right lines. However I can’t quite stomach being a captain who’s never acquainted himself with his own bridge. These war service maxims stick, I suppose. The only experience I had, of course, of this sort of admin thing was as a young sublieutenant in the last war. I volunteered, you know. Wavy navy, of course.’ He seemed overflowing with confidences, then he looked away from me. ‘I was unhappy at home. However they hauled me out again after Dunkirk. Back to research work. And they were quite right. All the same I enjoyed that time at sea. I liked the neatness and order of the Navy, you know.’
It was a new Beard that I introduced to Mrs Purrett and the girls in the typists’ pool.
‘You won’t see much of me, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘anyhow you’ve got Mr Carter. But if there is anything that you want to talk about, I shall always be available between fifteen hours and sixteen-thirty.’
When he had gone the pretty little typist said, ‘Good heavens, are we going to be put into uniform? I thought Dr Langley-Beard was so shy. He looks to me to have a nuisance-value.’
Mrs Purrett didn’t agree. ‘I thought he was charming,’ she said, ‘so unassuming and helpful.’
Yet it was she who first began to complain. Two or three times in the next few days I found him in the Office Records Room.
‘I’d no idea all this stuff was here,’ he said.
‘Yes, we’ve often thought of junking it. All the important stuff’s been incorporated in published documents.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. Except what’s been left out.’
Then he seemed to feel the difference in his own manner, for he blushed, dropped a file and began feverishly to collect the spilt documents together again.
That did not deter him. Now whenever I went into the secretaries’ room, he seemed to be there asking Mrs Purrett some question about documentation or filing, dangling some paper in front of her.
‘Look, this is duplicated in the “Memo: Finance” files,’ or ‘This letter should never have got into “Correspondence: Curator”, surely. It’s a purely external letter from the Director of the Dresden Zoo. Whoever put it in there did make a howler.’ Then he took to bringing large files to her, saying, ‘Mrs Purrett, I’m not a bit happy about 1908. I think I’ll have to ask you to re-file the whole year.’
When this happened once or twice, Mrs Purrett said, ‘This was all done a very long time ago, Dr Beard. It’s hardly my fault.’
To which he only gave a nervous laugh and said, ‘The sins of the fathers, Mrs Purrett. Unto the third and fourth generation.’
At last he began to take files home, even quite recent ones, and the office work was thrown into disorder.
At first I tried making fun of Beard. Mrs Purrett, however, did not share my frivolous attitude to the Prosector. She asked for a special interview and presented an ultimatum.
‘I know Dr Beard makes you laugh, Mr Carter. And nothing gives me more pleasure than to hear you laughing. But I really don’t know how long I can go on working here if he’s going to fuss about like this.’
I represented Beard as a mere child in authority, as a dedicated scientist deserving of humouring, as a man of suffering whose life made him a law to himself. It was no good, Mrs Purrett’s maternal instinct was not awoken.
She said, ‘I don’t see that any of that exonerates him from showing a little consideration.’
I was fond of Mrs Purrett; in any case, as we all know, it is difficult to get good secretaries though not perhaps as difficult as to find good anatomists and animal physiologists.
I was a little alarmed at speaking to Beard; I had no idea how he would react. Luckily the Prosector broached the subject himself.
He said, ‘That Mrs Purrett isn’t a very quick worker, is she? I asked her to re-file the Statistical papers for 1898 and ’99, I showed her exactly the system I wanted, but that was two days ago.’
‘She’s a first-rate secretary. And she’s extremely busy, you know.’
He considered this carefully, then he said, ‘All the more reason for working a bit faster surely.’
I was annoyed. ‘The office staff here have a great deal of work to do. You can’t suddenly start asking them to rearrange the archives and you certainly can’t take away files that may be needed for current work. I’m not fussing or anything, but Mrs Purrett’s already complained, and she’s invaluable to us.’
He looked down at the ground,’ ‘Oh Lor’!’ he said and went out of the room. I thought how easily I had put him in his place. But he came back that afternoon.
‘Look here, Carter,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it and I’m afraid I can’t accept what you said earlier. These files are absolutely vital to the history of this place and at the present moment they just don’t make sense. Now, I don’t know how much you’re told but I dare say you pick up a good deal in your position so that it won’t altogether surprise you when I say that the move to Stretton is in some degree an evacuation. War is nearer round the corner than the man in the street knows. Now if it does come, one thing that must be preserved is some record of the work of the Society, even if we’re all blown off the face of the earth. But that record’s not going to be of any use unless it’s in proper order.’
‘As I’ve said, I don’t believe that anything essential in those records is not reproduced in published series of the Society.’
‘Essential? I’m afraid I’d have to verify even that before I could accept what you’ve said.’
His nervousness was such that he blushed violently and even stammered as he said it; but he did say it.
‘I shall have to go on as though that Mrs Purrett had made no complaint.’
This seemed to me ludicrous and I laughed aloud; then I saw his jaw was set in angry determination.
I said, ‘Well, will you take them to the typists’ pool instead?’
‘I was under the impression that this Mrs Purrett was the senior. That’s why I went to her, Carter. But, of course, if she’s simply a cypher, I’ll go to the other women.’
After that he never appeared to notice Mrs Purrett’s vast presence again. The girls grumbled a bit at the extra work, but they seemed to find a way to satisfy Beard’s fussing without allowing him grossly to overwork them. Or so I thought.
Beard’s fussing, however, continued to run in and out of all the pleasures of that time. Yet I could get no serious counsel from him, nor, for that matter, from Leacock so long as it concerned Regent’s Park. There was the matter of the Aquarium, for example; during Jackley’s absence, it was under Leacock’s supervision. He had neglected it shamefully and only its excellent keepers had insured its maintenance. But they could not be expected to make decisions of major policy. Yet since Jackley’s famous ‘no’ cable, Leacock could hardly allow the word ‘aquarium’ or ‘fish’ to be mentioned to him.
I did not care for the little I knew of Jackley, but it seemed to me that, however Leacock and I might discount the war aspect of the Stretton foundation, the Curator of the Aquarium ought at least to know that Godmanchester had given us this warning. I had not so far worried too much, for Jackley was supposed to be returning from abroad at the end of October. Then we heard that he had been injured in a collision between fishing boats in the Tyrrhenian Sea when collecting data about dolphins. He had serious head injuries and a crushed leg; he was likely to be in hospital at Palermo for some months. I immediately urged upon Leacock a provisional plan for the Aquarium in case of war; but to admit this eventuality, and to concern himself with a branch of the Zoo unlikely to form part of the National Reserve for some time to come, were together more than he could face. He simply ignored my repeated questions on the subject. In the end fairness to the absent and uninformed Jackley became a pressing point of honour for me. I read up in detail the management of the Aquarium in 1939; I had talks with the two keepers. Only the freshwater fish, it seemed, could be preserved; but prompt action in storing the ocean water had made reopening an early possibility after the last war. My task was more difficult, for I could not well denude the Aquarium of its present water supply and order the destruction of all marine fauna on the off chance of a war in which I hardly believed. Yet Jackley, had he known the facts, might have decided otherwise. I could not risk informing him of a security matter while he was in a hospital of one of our potential enemies. It wasn’t even my affair. In the end I took upon myself for the first time in my life an illicit decision. I arranged for transport to the Gardens of some 200,000 gallons of sea water from the Bay of Biscay which alone, I was informed, provided the environment necessary for all marine species. And I ordered the construction of underground tanks in which to conserve it.
To organize all this was vexatious enough on top of my very full programme of regular work, but what at once alarmed and yet somehow roused my depressed spirits was that I, the man dedicated to carrying out other’s decisions, had made one of my own, and that in a field in which I had no specialized knowledge. I needed all my irony to protect myself from the absurd pretension of the action. And sure enough it exposed me to the criticism I feared. Pattie Henderson rang me one afternoon.
‘I say,’ she said, ‘you’re making rather an ass of yourself, aren’t you, storing all this ocean water without having a word with Newton?’
‘Why should I have a word with Newton, and how did you know anyway?’
‘Oh, Nutting heard about it. These young chaps are more on the beam than you think. And as to Newton, conditions of water storage happen to be his hobby. The younger men are rather all round sort of men, you know.’
‘I don’t call knowing about water storage being all round. I think it’s a ridiculous sort of thing to have as a hobby.’
Pattie laughed loudly, but she said, ‘Unfortunately the last laugh’s on you, isn’t it?’
I ate humble pie and consulted Newton, only to find that he had not taken into account the action of blast. He withdrew his criticism but I doubt if he informed Nutting and his other friends that he had done so. As he said, ‘It never does the administration any harm to be criticized even when it’s done the right thing.’
Criticism seemed to be my lot at that time, for a few days later, I received a letter from Leacock.
‘I am worried to hear from Langley-Beard that he feels you don’t take the Society’s work quite seriously enough,’ the Director wrote. ‘I have come over the last two years to know your worth, and I shall not quickly forget the hard work and the loyal support that you have given me in the move to Stretton. But as you see, I write that “I’ve come to know your worth” because it took me some time to realize that your ironic approach to much that we do, and the ingrained tendency to abide by the formulas which you’ve acquired through your years in the Civil Service, were only an unfortunate surface. My own very liberal supply of faults has given me a degree of humour and an acceptance of others that a dedicated scientist like Beard cannot be expected to have. I’m afraid you don’t realize how easily your manner seems mere flippancy and how shocking that can be to a senior man for whom the Society’s work has perhaps become almost too sacred a duty. I hope you will forgive me for writing like this, but, as an older man and your Chief, and as one who believes that you could come to serve the Society in the highest capacity, I feel that I must draw your attention to those superficial qualities that so often do you injustice.’
I used the letter to wipe my arse. I then wrote a memorandum to Leacock setting out shortly my grounds for considering that the Prosector’s virtues and experience made him unsuitable to deputize for the Director. While I agreed, I wrote, that my very short period of service for the Society and my junior status made it impossible for me to have final control, there were, I thought, good reasons for increasing my authority in all administrative matters. The deputy, should, in fact, be all but titular. It was not easy to find any of the old men competent and reasonable enough to fill the role. I was forced in the end to suggest the unpopular Dr Englander.
Hardly had the memorandum gone to the post, before Mrs Purrett introduced a heavy, square-jawed, youngish man, unusually for her muddling his name. I believe it was the look in his clear blue eyes, at once friendly and absolutely without warmth, which made me immediately think that here was some sort of policeman. Or it may be, more simply, that it was his blue gabardine raincoat so tightly belted at the waist. At any rate I congratulated myself when he corrected Mrs Purrett’s deficiency by announcing himself firmly as ‘Detective-Inspector Martin’.
‘Dr Leacock?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m Simon Carter.’
‘I asked to see the Director of the Zoological Gardens.’
‘I’m the Secretary.’
‘I understood that the lady who has just left us was the secretary.’
‘No, no, she’s my secretary. I’m the Secretary of the Society.’
He looked very dubiously at me.
‘The questions I have to ask are highly confidential, Mr Carter. I think I should prefer to put them to the Director.’
‘I’m afraid you would have to go to Herefordshire to do that. Dr Leacock is at the new National Reserve at Stretton Park. May I ask the general nature of your inquiries?’
‘I think there could be no harm, Mr Carter, in my saying that they concern the activities of a member of the Zoo’s staff.’
My mind ran over all the possible misdemeanours of all the many people in the Zoo’s service – it surprised me how potentially criminal everyone suddenly seemed to be. I was not going to let Beard in on this if I could help it.
I said, ‘I think you may safely put the questions to me, Inspector. Staff matters are entirely in my hands.’
Inspector Martin considered for a moment, then he said, ‘Very well, Sir. In any case this is a purely routine inquiry, although, of course, you’ll regard it as confidential.’
He paused and I bowed my head slightly. I wondered if all interviews with the police partook of this ritual element.
‘I believe you have a Mr Emile Englander on your staff.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you inform me whether he has been abroad on Zoo business in the last two or three months?’
‘I can. And he has. He attended the International Zoological Congress at Rome. Not as the representative of the Zoological Society, but as a world famous herpetologist invited by the Committee of the Congress.’
For some reason I could feel a desire to discomfort the Inspector creeping over me; an irrational bond with Englander I had never previously known.
He asked, ‘He was not engaged on any work for the Zoo during his visit abroad?’
‘I don’t think so. He may have visited other reptile gardens or collectors or natural history museums in connexion with his work here. I can’t say.’
‘Would it surprise you to learn that in addition to Rome, he had made visits to Milan, Munich, Frankfurt, Zürich and Brussels?’
‘No, no. It wouldn’t. He’s very fond of being abroad. He thinks very highly of it.’
I remembered Leacock’s charge of frivolity and I felt determined to live up to it. But the Inspector, if he was nettled, didn’t show it.
‘You mean that his work here takes him abroad a good deal?’
‘Not more than anybody else’s. It’s entirely up to him. Dr Englander is an honorary Curator. That means to say, you know, that he receives no pay.’
Only then did the frank blue eyes look faintly less friendly; and for some reason I felt a little appeased.
‘Provided that he leaves the Reptile Collections in competent hands, which of course he does, Dr Englander is free to be absent from the Zoo as much as he feels necessary. He’s a very rich man and so he travels a good deal.’
This was substantially true, yet even here I found myself stressing the permissiveness of Zoo rule to this representative of law and order.
He said, ‘Thank you, Mr Carter. Just one or two more points if I may. Is the Zoological Society considering any loans or gifts from European sources at the present time?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Once again a certain chauvinism, as it seemed to me, in the man’s tone annoyed me. After all, the Prime Minister had only recently made a speech extolling the real sense of unity with Europe that had resulted from the Innsbruck conference.
I added, ‘Of course we should always be glad to get money from any source however foreign.’
‘But there is no such negotiation at present? For buildings or anything of that kind? Nothing that might demand consultations with government departments of foreign countries?’
‘No.’
I was puzzled by what Englander might have been up to, but once again I felt an impulse not to desert him too easily.
‘Any Zoo Curator, of course, is greatly interested in new types of Zoo buildings abroad. Foreign architects have contributed most valuable ideas to modern methods of housing animals in captivity. Indeed some of our best houses were built by foreign architects. The magnificent Lemur House, as you possibly know, was a gift from the French government.’
If I expected him to spring up in horror, I was disappointed.
He said, ‘Well, thank you, Sir. I suppose Mr Englander has been with you a long time.’
‘Dr Englander is seventy,’ I said. ‘He’s a very eminent man, Inspector, you’ll find a full account of his career in Who’s Who.’
As he rose to go, I got up and we shook hands.
I said, ‘Despite his sinister name, he’s not in fact a foreigner, you know.’
‘Oh, no, Sir. His grandfather was German Swiss and his wife’s family was Austrian. We have a record of all that.’
I wasn’t quite sure whether the Inspector smiled.
‘I see. And I’m not to be told what sinister things Dr Englander’s been up to.’
‘As far as I know, Sir, he’s not been up to anything. But there are certain people abroad who rather interest us at the moment and it may be that Mr Englander can tell us a little about them.’
‘Ah! Well the person to question is Englander himself.’
‘I dare say we shall, Mr Carter. But I shall ask you to say nothing of my visit at the moment.’
‘I see. Not to the Director whom you intended to see?’
‘Well in fairness to the gentleman concerned, I should say the less people who are informed the better.’
‘I see.’
I did see. I had no intention that Englander should be surrounded by a vaguely sinster light in the eyes of his colleagues. I decided to tell no one. On the other hand it was unfortunate that I had chosen this moment to urge his claims to be made Deputy.
I need not have worried. When Dr Leacock came up from Stretton for a week’s visiting of Society committee meetings, he was in a hearty, jollying-on mood that made little of my memorandum. At first he did not refer to it and I was forced to raise the question myself.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘I’ve got far more important things to do than run around refereeing fights between you and Beard. An experiment is experiencing its birth pangs. It’s annoying enough that I should have to come up here for all these committee meetings, but I don’t want to ride members too hard at this stage by making them come down to Stretton. Though that’s what we must aim for. Meanwhile you and Beard must behave or I shall knock your heads together.’
‘So you don’t accept any of what I suggested?’
Dr Leacock smiled. ‘Now don’t be touchy, Carter. Of course I do. I accept it all,’ he paused, ‘in principle.’ Here he burst into a loud laugh. ‘But seriously – when Falcon comes back, we’ll go into the question of the Secretary’s exact functions and establish a wide range of authority for you if your Civil Service mind insists on putting everything in black and white. But for the moment you must just get along as best you can. And very well you can do it, if you don’t start having all sorts of notions about reorganizing the place. Putting Englander in charge! Do you realize what the Committee’s attitude to that would be? But, of course, you don’t, you haven’t been here long enough. No good asking me why the old chap’s so disliked. It’s a case of Dr Fell. You know the rhyme? There’s something circuitous about him and then he’s never really been part of the place. Oh, he’s a good zoologist all right, but he’s never tried to get on with his colleagues or accept anything we’re doing here. Strictly between ourselves if there’d been another herpetologist in the country to touch him, he’d have been sent packing long ago. And having all that money doesn’t help. He’s been inclined to think he can buy his way in here and the Zoo’s too old an institution for that. He should have been in one of these commercial foreign Zoos he admires so much. Englander! I’d like to see the disasters that would follow that suggestion of yours,’ Dr Leacock ended in loud laughter.
Yet, if he was unwilling to take seriously any of the duties that lay outside Stretton, on that subject he seemed confident and convincing. To me, remembering the committee meetings of pre-Stretton days, it was amazing to hear him giving facts and figures instead of blustering his way through with pious hopes, moral generalizations, and evasions unsuccessfully disguised by the hearty, downright tones in which they were uttered. He was willing to discuss shortcomings, to defer hopes and express doubts. He admitted that, until the two years of provisional agreement with Godmanchester were at an end, much of his work must inevitably be limited in scope; in particular, he was concerned lest Godmanchester’s autocratic attitude to his tenants and neighbours should make for a hostile local atmosphere in which minor breaches of security would be met with disproportionate alarm. The building up of the Historical British Reserve, which in his opinion was the most important experiment, he admitted would inevitably be slow; the Exotic Park needed constantly renewed imaginative approach if it was ever to be more than a conventional Zoo without bars. Yet, given continued public support and the goodwill of Lord Godmanchester, he seemed absolutely sure that, in the ten years he intended to continue in office, he would realize the beginnings of a new and revolutionary relationship between wild life and the British public. I was particularly struck by his saying that for the next two or three years, while the project became reality, he would be glad to see as little publicity as possible.
Lord Oresby noticed this too, for he said to me, ‘Living in the country’s made Leacock a much more sensible, modest chap. But then town life these days is the ruination of everyone.’
We were all able to agree in Godmanchester’s absence, that the only addition he could make to his munificent gift was to avoid interfering with it.
Lord Oresby said, ‘Well, I suppose, Leacock, we can say that if the worst happens to the country and Godmanchester’s made Lord Privy Seal or whatever they’ll give him to keep him quiet, the Zoological Society at least will profit. I’m told the P.M. thinks it worth putting up with his presence at Cabinet meetings to make an end to this constant war scare newspaper campaign which is having such a shocking effect abroad. Foreigners still think of Godmanchester as the great English statesman, although, in my opinion, his reputation has always been overrated. He makes an excellent President for us, of course, because most of the time he just sits and looks wise and nods off to sleep. But you can’t run a modern government that way. At least I don’t think so. I’ve never been a politician so I can’t say.’
Lord Oresby was always modest. Dr Leacock had no wish to be involved in talk against Lord Godmanchester, so he hastily agreed.
‘If more people,’ he said, ‘would realize that politics is essentially a craft and a very specialized, professional craft at that … But there’s no doubt that Godmanchester has the stamp of statesman upon him. It’s really grievous to see him down there at Stretton eating his heart out because he can’t get his hand on the wheel, and trying to fill his mind with the little details of Zoo work to which he can’t give proper attention. It’s pathetic to watch. Like a giant trying to play with a doll’s house.’
I could not let the Director’s flight of fancy pass altogether unnoticed.
I said, ‘We surely shouldn’t compare the National Reserve to a doll’s house.’
He attempted a laugh. ‘I was carried away,’ he said, ‘but compared to world affairs, you know, it is. Again and again I’ve told Godmanchester, “Don’t bother yourself with all these details.” I said it only yesterday. I’ve left a first-rate man Filson in charge. But the tragedy is that a great man and a great benefactor should seem to be in the way; that I should still have to ask myself, what is Godmanchester up to?’
We were soon to know. Leacock, anxious to naturalize the wild cat at Stretton, had gone up to Perthshire and Argyllshire to interview local gamekeepers. I found to my surprise that I was jealous of this visit, so proprietary had my interest in the British Reserve grown. In Leacock’s absence Filson telephoned me to report that a young mountain lynx was missing from its cave in the Exotic Park. I was struck by the confidence that authority had given him; his voice, as he assured me that all was under control, carried conviction and even an independence of my opinion. He would always be a ‘respectful’ man, but, even at his age a little command seemed to have transformed him from an old retainer to a man of action.
‘You can tell the Director, Sir, that if it causes any trouble in the farms or so, I shall have it destroyed. As much to give confidence to the local people as for anything else.’
Leacock, on his return, was more than content with this.
‘This security problem’s absolutely vital,’ he said. ‘Whether Godmanchester agrees or no, I’m having the whole place reviewed from that angle. Meanwhile Filson’s quite right, confidence is what we must aim at.’
He was full of fascinating information about the home range, mating, and nesting of the British wild cat. Seeing my enthusiasm, he suggested that I should go down with him for a day or two to study Stretton’s terrain in relation to these data.
‘It’ll mean,’ I said, ‘that licensed naturalists will have to go armed. But the interest of getting the wild cat to breed outside Scotland would be tremendous.’
*
The night before we left London saw a very severe frost. The morning produced the unusual sight of a heavy December snowstorm. But I wanted to get out of London. Dr Leacock was unwilling to pilot his aeroplane in such weather and I was able to indulge my eccentric weakness for a luxury train. As I gazed from the window at a whitening world, I felt that now the testing time of all our hopes was to begin. How would the Exotic Park stand up to winter conditions? How would the keepers and wardens maintain their surveillance of the Reserves under snowbound conditions? How would the high spirits of Leacock and his cockney staff react to the isolation and monotony of a severe English winter in the country?
Filson at the station seemed more bent than ever. His eyes watered and his cheeks and nose were blue with cold. Leacock met the crisis at once.
‘Did you recapture the beast?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Good chap! Had he done a lot of damage?’
‘No, Sir. But I’m afraid it was known locally that he’d got loose before we recaptured him. I gave strict instructions but you know how talk spreads down here, Sir. He hadn’t gone beyond the Reserve limits I’m happy to say. He made his meal off a pair of Egyptian geese, the property of the Society. All the same local talk’s been bad.’
‘Damn,’ said Leacock. ‘Damn. Did you give the news of his recapture plenty of local publicity?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And that he had been destroyed?’
‘I sent the information to the local farms and to the Stretton District Council and to Colonel Shipley’s agent at Swart Hall. But he cancelled my instructions.’
‘Colonel Shipley’s agent cancelled your instructions! What do you mean?’
‘No, Sir, Lord Godmanchester.’
‘Good Lord! I see.’ Leacock led us towards his Landrover in the station car park. ‘Come on, Carter. Pile in, Filson. Now,’ he announced as he drove us through the thickening white flurry, ‘the sooner we’re back the better. Tell us exactly what happened, Filson.’
‘Well, Sir, as soon as “Marmie” – that’s what Strawson and his keepers called the lynx – was traced, I gave orders that he was to be shot. He was seen crouching high up in one of the chalk quarries. He’d found himself a cave and I reckoned it was just a question of keeping a couple of men there until hunger drove him out and they could pick him off. Strawson was all against it, he reckoned that they could lure him out with bait and net him. But if the beast was to be shot anyhow, that seemed to me an unnecessary risk. Ah, that was what brought him out so strong against me.’ Authority had given Filson decision but not command of language. He seemed to become as clogged with words as the windscreen wipers with thickening snow. Both obstructions were beginning to irritate the Director.
He said, ‘Who? Lord Godmanchester?’
‘No, no, Sir. He knew nothing of it then. No, it was Strawson. It was the first he’d realized of my determination. He came out strong against me, as I said. No knowledge of mammals, rare and costly beast, criticism of his management, slip that wouldn’t happen again – I had the lot of it. But I wasn’t going to budge. He begged me for that animal, Sir. He bred it himself, Sir, at Regent’s Park. And from what he’d always said they’re not easy to breed in captivity. But I simply said to him, “You’re not taking risks with human life again.” He understood all right. Well he disregarded my orders, Sir, and caught the thing in a net. I shouldn’t have known of it but one of the young keepers found out and told me. When I knew, I went straight for Strawson and gave orders for its immediate destruction. What I hadn’t reckoned with was his going to Lord Godmanchester. And before I could say another thing, Lord Godmanchester cancelled my orders. I was very angry, Sir, I must tell you. And I had words with him. I dare say that did more harm than good.’
The old man must have been reliving his anger, for I saw his body shaking as he sat back in the seat. Leacock said nothing.
It was I who asked, ‘But why was Lord Godmanchester against the animal being shot?’
Leacock cried, ‘What on earth does it matter?’
I realized that he was in an almost hysterical rage. I reflected that with these frozen roads covered by a light snow an angry man might kill us all before we had a chance to do justice to the errant lynx. But it seemed no time for frivolous observations.
Filson said, ‘Well he didn’t like it, Sir, because it was climbing down to local opinion and it seems he’s always refused to take notice of them. A lot of nobodies, he called them. There’s been rows in the past both with him and her. And from what Mrs Filson hears they’ve never been received by the county, for all his being so famous. Of course, he justified his view by distances. “No possible danger,” he said, “nearest farm nearly fifteen miles away, Colonel Shipley’s estate over thirty!” But that wasn’t it, Sir, I’m sure. Well to tell the truth I think he liked Strawson appealing to him.’
Leacock said, ‘You did quite right, Filson. And you can take it from me that the animal will be destroyed.’
He dropped me at the pub and, when I asked if he wanted me any more that day, he said,
‘No, Carter, but I shall ask you to be at the Great Cat pits at eleven sharp tomorrow morning.’
*
I was not the only person present at the appointed hour. It had stopped snowing, though the sky was grey and heavy with promise of more snow to come. The air was cold and damp with a white mist that crept into every fold of one’s clothing. I was in a depressed, irritable mood. I had tried the evening before to reconnoitre in the larch woods that covered the slope of the hilly land to the west of the British Reserve, but gusts of sleety rain blown into my face by the strong southwest wind had sent me back to the pub. The parlour had provided me with a fire that scorched my face and draughts that sent cold water running down my back. My bedclothes seemed to me suspiciously damp. There was no prospect of watching the badger setts during that visit, for the ground, it seemed, had been hard frozen for over a week. I longed for Martha and home; or, at least, for the office and the cup of coffee that I took with Mrs Purrett as ‘elevenses’. An array of mackintoshed men, a few furcoated women, and a huddle of shooting brakes and two motor cycles were no substitute. The scene was that of a point to point on a really bad winter’s day, and I had never been one for intrepid outdoor sport.
Dr Leacock was bustling about like a housemaster encouraging his fifteen on the touchline. And Mrs Leacock, clapping together her hands in their fur-backed gloves, was chatting briskly with the strangers like a good housemaster’s wife. The uniformed keepers were drawn up in a line – with Filson, a proud old prefect and Straws on, his doughy face white and blue, the fat boy in disgrace. But when one looked towards the field, as it were, to the pits in which the great cats were housed, there was nothing whatever to see: the lions and leopards and pumas had all sensibly withdrawn into the depths of their caves. The great Siberian tiger perhaps might have put on a show for us in the snow, but he was as yet in London.
I stood withdrawn at the side, sketching this school fantasy, because I had an uneasy sense that the Director was about to do something foolish and embarrassing. My instinct was right.
Getting up on to a little wooden platform that had been erected in front of the ditch that divided us from the lynx’s pit, he addressed the company.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have asked you to be here on this very unfriendly morning because I am anxious that we here of the National Reserve should demonstrate to you, our neighbours from Stretton and the surrounding country, the very great friendliness that we feel towards you, and the real concern we have that our presence here should never endanger your interests. I think you have all heard that a lynx escaped from captivity a few days ago. I have every hope that with the extra precautions now being taken no beasts are likely in future to go beyond the very extensive liberty they enjoy in this place. Even should they do so, as you will see in this case, the chance of their passing the Reserve boundaries before they are found is very small. But an animal that has found means to escape is properly an object of suspicion. For this reason I have given orders that all such animals shall, on recapture, be destroyed.’ Here he turned to the staff. ‘As in this case there was some misunderstanding, I want this order to be clearly understood.’ Then he addressed himself directly to Strawson. ‘Have you carried out the orders I gave you now, Strawson?’
I thought for a moment that Strawson was going to walk away; but he mumbled something in reply and then spoke to the younger keeper who was in charge of the Felidae. Both men disappeared to the back of the caves. As we stood there in the cold, I hardly knew where I dared to look – at Leacock erect on his platform like a leader of men, at Mrs Leacock still doing the lady bountiful, at the farmers and odd gentry frozen, impatient, and amazed, at the nervous whispering villagers, or at the younger keepers who were nudging each other with embarrassment and smothering their guffaws. But we had not long to wait. From the cave at the back of the pit emerged the lynx, its tapering ears and slanting eyes, its slender form and dappled colour beautiful even in that dead grey light. It seemed so little ferocious, more like a poor house cat dazed from a glancing blow of a bicycle wheel. It stretched a little in the cold air, then rose, wobbling on its legs. A moment later the young keeper appeared with a rifle on the rocks above. He fired and the beautiful animal coiled back for a second in the air, gave a faint mewing cry, and fell dead. A village woman screamed and a child began to howl.
Dr Leacock got off his platform and began shaking hands and talking to people in the crowd.
‘You’ll come back for a snifter, won’t you?’ he said, ‘I’m sorry it was so abominably cold, but I believe Mrs Leacock has some coffee ready for us all at the farm, haven’t you, Madge?’
And Madge Leacock said, ‘Yes, Daddy.’ She turned to me, ‘So jolly to see you down here, Mr Carter.’
Most of the crowd had packed into their brakes or had mounted their cycles and were gone before invitations could reach them; some refused in a numbed manner that could have been due to the cold; others again seemed too numbed to refuse. I felt completely sick. I could see Strawson coming back from the caves. I wanted to say something to comfort him, but I was frightened that he might reveal himself as aggrieved rather than sickened. Then from between two snow covered rhododendron bushes at the side of the roadway Harriet appeared followed by Rickie. She went straight up to Strawson.
‘I believe you’re the man who tried to save that wretched beast. Will you shake hands?’
Mrs Leacock began to talk loudly to cover her daughter’s voice. Dr Leacock’s eyes blazed with anger.
Harriet saw me. ‘Well, look who’s here,’ she said, ‘on this big day for limited liberty.’
Leacock tried to come to my rescue. ‘You hop into the rover, Carter. You’re frozen.’
But I turned my back on both father and daughter, and walked away.
With no daytime exploration of the Reserve tolerable and no evening watching likely to be productive, I did not see how to avoid entanglement with the personal feuds of Stretton. Yet I was determined to have no more to do with them all until their insane angers had died away. I decided to take the evening train back to London. Meanwhile, with no books provided, I sat in the parlour turning over bound copies of Punch. I was lost in the jokes about servants having cars that marked our triumphant victory of 1918, when a lot of clatter, banging of car doors and stamping of snowy shoes announced a new arrival.
‘Snowing pretty badly, Sir?’
‘Oh God, yes. But then I suppose it always is in the country.’
As companion for a short stay on a desert island I could have thought of no one preferable to Matthew. I got up and greeted him with real enthusiasm. He seemed faintly disconcerted to see me.
‘I had no idea you were coming down here, Matthew.’
‘Oh, well, the birds, you know. After all I am responsible for them. And then I was a bit worried about the old Filsons in all this weather.’
At the most Filson could have been two years older than Matthew; Mrs Filson certainly younger.
I said, ‘But Matthew! To choose weather like this for your first visit to Stretton.’
‘Well, I haven’t come to look at it. I hate the French Renaissance anyway.’
‘I mean the country!’
‘I’m hardly going to look at that, am I?’
‘No, I mean the discomfort in this cold.’
‘I don’t know how it was at Winchester, but at Eton we soon learned never to think about the weather.’
It was true. Even in this deep freeze he was wearing only the very lightest overcoat.
Obsessed by the macabre events of the morning, I found myself recounting the scene to Matthew.
His only comment was, ‘Yes, I can’t say I feel this poésie du lynxe as you do. But then, of course, I’m a bird man.’
‘I’m more concerned about Leacock. I know you hate psychology, Matthew.’
‘Oh, very much. Yes. All the balls our nurses told us long ago dressed up in German-English.’
‘All the same Leacock seemed worryingly round the bend this morning. After all his daughter …’
‘Oh, God! I’ve heard extraordinary things about her. I had a beer up at Stretton station with one or two of the younger keepers. And naturally we talked a good deal of smut.’
‘I don’t know why you say naturally. They never talk smut with me.’
‘My dear Simon, I dare say you’re not very good with the men. After all army life … Anyhow she seems to have been after most of them. But you know what they’re like. They don’t like a lady to use whore’s language. Anyhow she seems to go rather far if the stories are true. I must say I never thought Leacock would have a Messalina for a daughter. In fact she seems to start where the Empress left off. As I said she couldn’t be better placed than in a Zoo. But still we mustn’t gossip about our Director’s daughter, must we? Will you dine with me, Simon? I asked at my Club and there’s apparently an excellent roadhouse as they call them about five miles from Hereford.’
Depressed at the thought of a late return to empty London, I agreed.
‘Good. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have two cockatoos to describe before I walk up to see the Filsons.’
The car Matthew had hired was very comfortable and his roadhouse turned out to be a large country hotel with excellent food. Even he praised the burgundy, although he said, ‘I don’t know that I want that naval commander fussing round my table all the time.’ He revealed a vast knowledge of nineteenth-century explorers and talked of them in a mixture of genuine admiration and salacious Gibbonian mockery that was very entertaining for one evening. We drank a good deal, but at last Matthew said, ‘Well, I hate to break this up, but we have to go to the Mule’s Head.’ He studied a scrap of paper. ‘Yes. The Mule’s Head. I took the name down when Filson was talking. That’s where he and Mrs F. go.’
‘But surely not on an evening like this.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re cockneys. I imagine they’d go to the nearest town if they could. I know when we were stationed in the country, the men all traipsed miles to the nearest town in the evenings. What else could they do?’
‘It isn’t the same thing at all …’
‘Do allow me to know my own head keeper, Simon. After all I’m devoted to you but it was him I came down here to see.’
I was a little too high to care much what happened, even to mind about Matthew’s driving, which usually wildly haphazard, acquired an appearance of extreme caution when he was drunk that would have normally seemed to me most sinister. I must have dozed off once or twice, for there were many gaps in the anthology of quotations about parrots or popinjays from Ovid through Skelton to Masefield to which Matthew treated me on the journey. Once he was singing, ‘I don’t like food for parrots boiled beef and carrots,’ and I heard myself say aloud, ‘You may think that driving with you and Leacock like this I have a death wish but I haven’t.’
‘Oh! You must be very drunk, Simon, Leacock isn’t here, you see,’ he said.
By the time that we arrived in the deathly quiet streets of Hereford I was quite sober. It seemed to me that Matthew himself must be very drunk to have driven to this town where nothing stirred even on a Saturday night. Even more did I feel this when we entered the Mule’s Head, a pub in a little side street near the Cathedral, where through the dense smoke I could vaguely see a man in shirt sleeves playing an old honkytonk piano, and a huge blonde singing ‘The St Louis Blues’. The bar was packed with people. It was, I imagine, what my grandmother who lived in Salisbury would have called ‘the seamy side of the town’, and if by that she meant that it had remained petrified from some more remote age, she was right.
At first Matthew said, ‘Complete hell!’
Now I could see through the haze that apart from a sleazy sprinkling of tarts and Irish casual labourers on the booze, most of the clientele were family parties. Among them, Barley, the sporty keeper of the wolves, and his more sporty wife. He waved a glass at me.
‘Matthew,’ I said, ‘there’s Barley, the keeper of the wolves.’
‘Well, that’s nothing to do with me. Wolves aren’t birds.’
‘All the same we must speak to them now we’re here.’
‘I can’t see why.’
‘Well, I must, if you don’t.’
‘Oh, very well. It’s really Bobby Falcon’s job, isn’t it? But still since he’s not here.’
Mrs Barley, all good fun and gin-and-It, in slacks, said, ‘Looking for something to keep you warm in this snowy weather, Mr Price?’
And Matthew answered, ‘Judging by the local girls I’ve seen, I think I’d rather sleep alone. That’s unless Barley waives his claims.’
Mrs Barley said, ‘Now then.’
And Barley, ‘Hands off, Mr Price. I’ll tell you what, Larna, though, we’ll fix Mr Price up with old Harriet. She’s sure to be coming in.’
Mrs Barley looked towards me, but Barley was just tight enough not to care. I went to buy a fresh round of pints and whiskies and gin-and-Its.
When I returned Barley was saying, ‘The latest is Strawson. She come up to him this morning and shook him by the hand. All the boys have been on to him now, stringing him along, she wants to be in his bloody album. You know he takes these nature photos, or at least that’s what he calls them. Mostly he has to take Mrs Strawson, God help him! Mrs S. among the daffodils showing her tits.’
Mrs Barley said, ‘Now, Arthur! Don’t be disgusting. Anyway she’s a fine looking woman.’
‘Well fine or not, it’s all he’s got. Then he has Mrs S. all backside among the brussels sprouts. Part of some religion of his, he says. Dirty old man, that’s what. Anyway the boys have told him Harriet wants to be in it. And he’s all set to take her. I can just see old Harriet, if she thinks he’s going to have a bash and then he takes out his bloody camera instead. She’ll hang it round his neck and all.’
Matthew hooted with laughter. ‘Oh, God! Well he’d better not show the album to the faithful dog or he’ll tear it to pieces.’
Barley suddenly looked very prim.
‘Disgusting. They oughtn’t to let that sort live. Well, come on, Larna, we must be moving.’
It was a frosty ending.
Matthew said, ‘Oh, God! I said the wrong thing.’
He looked so sad that I went to the bar to get him another whisky. And then I saw Harriet come in. She was rather tight and on easy terms with everybody, and yet she seemed to me like a much younger girl who was shy but too tired to care. If it hadn’t been for Barley’s and Matthew’s talk, I should have avoided her; but, as it was, I felt impelled to show her some friendship.
I said, ‘Would you let me buy you a drink?’
‘I’ll let anybody buy me a drink and I’ll take a double brandy neat.’
When I returned from the bar, a stocky Irishman with bloodshot eyes was steadying himself by holding on to her arm.
‘What do you say, Harriet my darling? What do you say?’
‘I say, fuck off. I want to talk to my friend,’ she indicated me.
The man immediately let go of her arm, though he stood a short distance away, muttering to himself.
Harriet said, ‘I hope you’re not slumming or being broad-minded or something, because that won’t be necessary.’
I said, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, let up, woman. Either we’re going to talk or not.’
She said, ‘I’m not very good at talking, but let’s do that.’
She wasn’t very good.
She said, ‘If I could any longer taste brandy, I should say this was filthy.’
Then she remained silent for five minutes while I tried to be funny about people in the room. She didn’t appear to hear me, not because she was drunk, but simply because she was too abstracted.
Then she said, ‘Isn’t that Pansy Price you’re with?’
I said, ‘Well, I call him Matthew. And he’s not a pansy at all.’
She said, ‘Don’t tell me about him. He looks like one. And I can’t bear them. It’s such a waste.’
This seemed illiberal, but, in view of Matthew’s attitude to her, only just.
Then she said, ‘Do you know much about dogs?’
‘Not a lot. No.’
‘Well you’d have to know a lot to talk to me about them, so that rules out most of what I can talk about. I could tell you about my life. How I shouldn’t be like this if my parents weren’t so bloody. No, it’s a bore. The only thing is that when you see what bloody little twerps all my good little brothers and sisters are, it does lend me a slightly rosier glow. I shine by comparison. But as nobody has to make the comparison, there’s not much point in it.’
She stood silent for a moment, then she said, ‘Mummy isn’t wicked actually – she’s half-witted. But the old bastard is an absolute fake from start to finish.’
‘I don’t believe that’s true. Neither start nor finish. Only at some points along the line.’
‘That sounds clever, but I’m not going to work it out. I think he’s off his rocker. Look at this morning’s little ceremony. Anyway he’s so hideous. I’ll bet you didn’t know that he has an absolutely hairless body. Isn’t it ghastly? That’s a good enough reason for any girl being down the drain. And if you’re thinking of trying to haul me out, don’t bother, because I’m wedged as hell and mediumly happy there. But you could get me another brandy.’
When I came back with it, she said, ‘This talking idea of yours hasn’t been a very good one. It’s made me feel sick.’
I said, ‘Why not sit down?’
She put her arm round the Irishman’s neck, and, turning to me, said, ‘Oh, fuck off. I want to be with Paddy.’
When I returned to the other end of the bar, Matthew, red-faced and flustered, was involved with a circle of old women out on the spree who were doing ‘Knees up Mother Brown’. Matthew’s feeble lifting of his knees was exciting not derision but compassion.
‘Poor old dear,’ one of the women said, ‘he’s doing his best.’
I wished that Bobby Falcon could be in Matthew’s predicament, it would teach him a lesson about old-time crowds. With difficulty I rescued Matthew, and, as he seemed very drunk, I took charge of the car myself and had a most unpleasant drive back to our hotel on slippery roads through a white mist. Matthew sighed deeply as we went in.
I said, ‘Thank you very much for a lovely evening, Matthew.’
‘Delighted to have entertained you.’
‘I’m afraid the last part was a bit depressing.’
But Matthew was not prepared to receive sympathy.
He smiled vaguely and said, ‘Oh, well, in the country it’s all rather hell, isn’t it?’
On this occasion I was forced to conclude that he was right. I decided to return to London the next morning; but first I had to inform the Director. I expected to find Leacock at home on a Sunday but his wife told me that he now worked every weekend. I went to the little temporary administrative office – no more than a large wooden hut – that had been erected near the entrance to the Reserve. Godmanchester was there with the Director.
‘Did you see this grand guignol of Leacock’s yesterday morning?’ he asked.
I pretended not to understand him.
Leacock said, ‘Godmanchester thinks that the destruction of the lynx had a morbid effect on the spectators.’
Godmanchester’s tone when he was being deliberately offensive was not a nice sound.
‘Despite the fact that you don’t believe in bothering with the opinion of the neighbourhood.’
‘I’ve got the opinion of my own men. You forget, sometimes, Leacock, that we had a sizeable collection of animals and some first-rate keepers before you came down here. But it doesn’t matter where I heard it from. The fact is that you set out to kow tow to the locals, to invite every little grumble they like to make. And now on top of that you scare them out of their wits.’
‘I don’t accept that. But in any case the whole demonstration need never have taken place as I told you on Friday evening, if you hadn’t unwarrantably stepped in and overridden my delegated authority.’
‘I happen to be the President of the Society, you know.’
‘Yes. And I am the Director appointed by the Committee to run the Zoological Gardens. If you want to get me dismissed, you’re at perfect liberty to put the proposal before the Committee! Until then I’m in charge.’
Lord Godmanchester gave his famous chuckle, but, I thought, a little ostentatiously.
‘My dear Leacock, in your obsession with your very fine scheme, you’ve rather lost a sense of reality, you know. I’m a very busy man and my time is not, strangely enough, entirely free to hatch schemes for controlling the Zoo. Even if it were, I shouldn’t be interested in trying “to oust you from your authority” as you call it. Why should I? You’re a very good Director. You think I shouldn’t have countermanded the orders to shoot the lynx. I think I was right to do so. In your place even if I’d thought as you did, I’d have let it ride. But still, you felt a principle or something was at stake … However one thing nobody in their senses would have done was to stage this ridiculous spectacle simply in order to snub me publicly. Because that’s why you did it, Leacock. And it was childish, wasn’t it, Carter?’
‘I can’t measure how a child would have acted in a situation where only adults are concerned.’
Again he chuckled and rumbled, but I thought how little I should want him to hug me at that moment.
‘Good enough,’ he said, ‘but you take it from me, Leacock, you won’t hear the end of this business from the local people. You’ve got them jittery and you’ll have a hard time calming them down. Can I take you up to London, Carter?’
‘Thank you. I think I’ll go by train.’
‘Ah, well, I shan’t come with you. Very picturesque and all that. But I don’t like public transport, train or plane.’
He got up with his usual heavy, slow, and soft movements.
Leacock said almost casually, ‘I’m afraid it isn’t enough, you know. I’ve got to ask why your newspaper this morning has given wide publicity to the escape of a dangerous lynx at Stretton.’
Lord Godmanchester blinked and then said, ‘Sunday papers take a lot of filling. I don’t interfere with my editors. Two can play at being spiteful. Take your choice of reasons and welcome. In any case, wide publicity is not the right word for a ten-inch column. If you want to know what wide publicity is you ought to look at the space we’ve given to Falcon’s expedition.’
Leacock pursed his lips and the end of his long nose twitched.
‘Yes. And now it seems it will have to be called off.’
‘Well, you can hardly blame him for a nationalist coup d’état in Brazil. However he’s gone off to the States to collect support. It’s amazing the contacts that man’s got. And, of course, he’s an adventurous personality. I blame myself for overlooking him recently. We’re going to need a sense of adventure in this country in the coming years, once we’re out of this trough we’ve fallen into.’
He turned to go, then with difficulty he screwed his thick neck round, until his fat, surprised old face was staring at us.
‘By the way, Leacock,’ he said, ‘Katie’s coming down here for Christmas. So I’d be obliged if you’d keep Mrs Leacock away from the house. She gets on my wife’s nerves.’
Leacock’s Adam’s apple bobbed twice as he swallowed. Then as easily as he could, he said, ‘I’m sorry for that. I’m sure Mrs Leacock would never wish to go where she’s not wanted.’
‘No? Well, that’s all right then.’
When he had gone, Dr Leacock swivelled from side to side in his chair.
Then he said, ‘Firmness and tact, Carter, firmness and tact. I told you that’s what we should need. Well, you’ve seen me use both this morning. We’re in for a fight, I think; but this has been my great chance and I’m not going to give up easily.’
*
Ten days or so before Christmas, Martha wrote as though I were desperately urging her to come home. She must have read between the lines of my letters, for, although I longed to do so, I had carefully refrained from mentioning her return.
‘I do want to come back as soon as possible, darling. But Reggie won’t settle in. And Hester spoils him. Also I’m afraid she’s not taken to Violet. And then you know how when I’m in England, I’m always wanting the children to have a good American education. Well, now I’m here, of course, I don’t feel so sure any more. It’s no good pretending that we binationals are not schizoid because we are. And there’s no good starting them here unless we’re going to leave them for a while. Anyway I thought I’d stay here at least over Christmas for them. I suppose you couldn’t possibly come out; I know you’re so busy but just for the few days. Who in the hell cares about the money if we’re all going to be blown up? Not that anyone here thinks that we are, but then they don’t know how mad the British are. Oh! Simon, even though I did write that about American education, you don’t know how good it is to be in a country that’s big. May God and my liberal ancestors forgive me for writing it. Bobby still expects the end of the world. He was at San Francisco seeing some Exploration Fund and I went over and spent the day with him. Poor old Bobby! I really believe he had snapped out of those long years of manic-depression or whatever it was. And now this lousy Brazilian government won’t let him in. But he’s being pretty tough about it. Of course he’s quite a different kind of person away from Regent’s Park. I always reckoned he would be. Why don’t you try it some time? There’s an awful lot of mammals waiting to be watched over here. Then we could all be together without anyone feeling mean.’
I wanted very much to join her; yet I replied almost at once that I couldn’t. The British Reserve really did seem worth fighting for, to offer the useful happiness I’d never quite dared to believe in; and I surely could not desert Leacock at this moment. All the same I could have flown over for Christmas. Pique stopped me, I’m afraid. I’d written so much in my letters to Martha about Stretton, about our future happiness there and the genuine value of the work – and yet she could so easily ask me to give it all up. But pique wasn’t all. As I read what she wrote of Bobby Falcon, jealous waves rolled over me and knocked me silly. I couldn’t go out to her with this suspicious motive hidden in my visit. Without Martha and the children, however, approaching Christmas seemed a phoney time of commercialized goodwill. I had occupied myself a lot with choosing presents for them, but these had to be posted so early that the weeks before the holiday were an anti-climax. It was among Mrs Purrett’s stock of commonplaces to repeat over and over again that ‘Christmas is a time for children really’. This year, to my embarrassment, her words threatened to bring tears to my eyes.
I was not helped by Beard’s treatment of the typists in the pool. Mrs Purrett first drew my attention to the fact that four out of our seven girls had reported sick. She was certain, she said, that Beard’s lack of consideration, niggling, and constant demands upon their time had made the feebler girls ill and the stronger ones rebellious. I put this down to her animosity, and accounted for the spate of illness by the claims of Christmas shopping.
Then one evening I heard him at it bullying them.
‘Oh dear, Miss Dargie, I’m sure you’re missing things. Do please remember that every dead animal counts. The death of a liver fluke is every bit as important as that of the most advanced primate. And a great deal more important than either of ours.’
I could not tell if he was joking; I doubt if he was. Certainly to the girl he seemed like a monster.
Then to another, he said, ‘I do hope you haven’t raced through this box, Mrs Dunbar. We need toothcombs. I’d rather take them home at night myself than risk missing a recorded death.’
It was true, of course; he would undertake unlimited work. He never neglected an autopsy, never failed to treat a sick animal, supervised the research work of five or six students, worked away on the loris’s eyesight and, I believe, the histology of the gorilla’s testes as well. But all that was no comfort to the typists. Nor to Mrs Purrett or me in organizing the office work.
Two days before Christmas he drove one of the remaining girls too hard. He was quite oblivious of the unwritten law that the days before Christmas should be slack. I passed through the pool room to see him standing erect, a little red in the face, before the desk of a girl who was crying.
‘This really isn’t good at all, Miss Bates,’ he was saying, ‘you’ve typed moose for mouse. It would be ludicrous if it wasn’t so serious.’
The girl banged her fist on the table. ‘Oh, go to hell,’ she shouted.
Beard said, ‘Oh! Lor’!’ and fled.
But later he returned to me and announced that we couldn’t keep on a woman who was insubordinate.
I said, ‘She’s not. She’s ill. And I’m not surprised. We shall lose all our typists if you go on overworking them.’
We received a doctor’s certificate after Christmas giving her leave for nervous debility; and shortly after this she resigned.
These tedious office problems only added to my depression over the Christmas season. I tried work and a little dinner in Soho and the theatre; I tried work and a delicious partridge cooked by myself followed by an evening’s L.P., La Sonnambula and Manon; I tried work and dinner at the pub round the corner followed by the local cinema. All were evenings such as periodic fits of misanthropy extending even to my family had often painted in golden colours. Now they were drab and seemingly endless. Ridiculous jealousies of Bobby Falcon rushed around my head and kept me awake at night. Under their influence I rang up Jane, half possessed by some incoherent plan that by involving myself with her I would rouse Martha’s jealousy in turn, half hoping that in conversation she would betray similar fears to my own. To get her on the telephone proved a formidable task: she was always at rehearsal. But each time that I failed it seemed more vitally important to succeed, as though Martha’s innocence depended upon Jane’s answering the telephone. When I finally contacted her, she was off to Liverpool for over-Christmas rehearsals.
She said, ‘Poor old Bobby! I can’t say I shall be pleased to have him back a failed hero. I love Bobby discovering things up the Amazon, but I loathe him hanging around the house. Damn the Brazilians and their revolutions!’
‘Martha’s been holding his hand in California.’
‘Yes, I know. He wrote to me about it. I’d write and thank her, but with two authors’ new plays coming on, I haven’t a moment. Why did you ring me?’
‘Oh, I was at a loose end. I wondered if you’d care to come to the theatre with me.’
‘Darling Simon! How enchanting of you! Young men never asked me out as a rule unless they have some stinking plays to get rid of. I’d love a busman’s holiday too, but unfortunately Liverpool calls in all its ghastly Liverpudlian gloom. Poor darling! Being at a loose end. I always forget what turtle doves you two are. I tell you what, I’ll send you some tickets for that new musical from Angola. It’s rather heaven. And you can take what Bobby calls a cutie. I’m sure Martha wouldn’t mind for once.’
I didn’t take a cutie. I took Mrs Purrett. And on the whole it was my most enjoyable evening of the Christmas season. Martha and I had a lot of friends – mostly young married couples. Two or three of these asked me for Christmas dinner, but I realized how little I liked social life without the post-mortems Martha and I indulged in on our return home. I refused, and spent Christmas and Boxing Day going over some field notes I had made for a book I had planned on British mammals. If I had been in the country, I thought, I should have had no difficulty in passing my solitary time.
On the whole I was glad to be back at the office, though I awaited Bobby’s return with mixed feelings.
*
Despite the fact that the new Brazilian government was still proving intransigent, Bobby seemed extraordinarily buoyant.
‘California’s done wonders for Martha. You can imagine that the last thing I should want is for anyone to settle out of England, but she needs to live America out of her system, Simon. After all it was her mother’s country. I think you ought to give up here and go out to her. It’s a beautiful country tho’ I shouldn’t want to live there. And they’d welcome you at the San Diego Zoo or better still on one of the Reserves.’
I explained that the British Reserve at Stretton seemed likely to give me all I needed.
‘I see. Well you know your own mind. All these escapes down there look pretty bad, don’t they?’
‘All? One lynx!’
‘Oh, I think you’ll find there are more than that. Even The Advertiser got worried about them and, since it’s Godmanchester’s place …’
I asked Mrs Purrett about it and found that, immersed in my loneliness, I had missed a lot of news. I studied the accounts of escapes from Stretton in The Advertiser and in rival papers. They came, it seemed to me, to very little and that rather absurd: an escaped wombat found by a well-known sculptress in her garden shed, a llama belonging to a travelling circus that scared some race horses near Hereford, and a small girl’s very dubious report of a leopard glimpsed in a wood. I pointed out to Bobby how feeble the stories were.
‘All the same, I think Godmanchester’s rather worried from what he told me.’
‘I don’t believe a word he says.’
‘Oh, that’s rather steep about our President.’ He laughed. ‘Perhaps you’re right. He’s an old scoundrel. But we need a scoundrel to save us and I think he’ll do it.’
‘To give him his due, he’s done it already by giving us the National Reserve.’
Bobby scowled, ‘I meant a bit more than that. I think he may save the world. Oh, only like Justinian – for a breather. The smash is bound to come. But, if we’ve got to go, we may as well go with all lights blazing. And I don’t mind if it’s by courtesy of Godmanchester or of any other scoundrel.’
I found Bobby’s apocalyptic talk no less tedious now that he was buoyant.
I said, ‘Gas lighting, no doubt.’
He answered with great excitement, ‘Good man! You see the point. Yes, by God! Gas lighting!’
A few days later the world was saved. At any rate Godmanchester was appointed Lord Privy Seal, with what the Prime Minister called ‘a roving commission to put our house in order’. The Advertiser told us that all our troubles were over. And Edwin Leacock’s troubles really began to get serious.
A wisent escaped. In view of the extreme rarity of these beasts, I was neither surprised nor unsympathetic when I heard that Strawson had resigned because the Director had refused to spare its life. It was only a few days later that I saw in The Advertiser that Strawson had in fact refused to carry on at Stretton because he felt unhappy about the security there. He was described in the newspaper as ‘the jovial keeper of elephants, a “character” beloved by generations of children, not least of the grown up kind’. There was a photograph of him with open-necked shirt and sandals. He was quoted as saying, ‘I’ve come regretfully to the conclusion that what we are doing at Stretton is wrong. An animal that cannot trust in the surety of its own confinement is an unloved animal.’ He intended, he said, to devote himself to photographing the human form as it blends with the changing Mood of Nature. Apart from his joviality, his resignation took the colour of Krishnamurti casting off the rule of Mrs Besant, or a serious split in the ranks of the Goetheaneum. I warmed to Edwin Leacock when he told me on the telephone that, he was ‘heartily glad to be rid of the humbugging mountebank’.
Bobby Falcon, however, was not prepared to take Strawson’s departure lying down – ‘My own head keeper … an invaluable man.’ It was a sign of the times that, despite the Director’s disagreement, the Committee agreed with Bobby that Strawson should be asked to return to the Society’s service. With difficulty he was persuaded to leave his photography; indeed, the wooing of him, in which I refused to take part, was long and, for his hurt pride, no doubt, delicious. However in the end he returned to Regent’s Park. To this also The Advertiser gave full publicity but in a wholly sentimental vein: ‘Trunk Call’s keeper returns to the Zoo he loves’. Sir Robert was quoted as saying, ‘The place has not been the same without its landmark, Strawson. He was part of the old Zoo which is a happy rock in a world of bewildering shifting sands.’ Wisely Strawson was not asked to make any metaphysical pronouncement on that occasion.
But that was only the beginning of Leacock’s worries. Godmanchester, of course, was too busy to concern himself or even perhaps to care what happened to the Zoological Society. But just as he had been active in bullying galleries, libraries, museums, factory units, schools to leave London in his campaign of ‘no confidence’ in the Government, so, now that he had got office, his henchmen were equally busy urging these bodies – including us at Stretton – to return. The campaign to destroy confidence in government without Godmanchester had, after all, been a touch unethical and had been carried out covertly; but the restoration of confidence in government with Godmanchester was patriotic and needed shouting. The publicity could now be loud and open.
Only Dr Leacock withstood the pressure. Every Committee member of the Zoological Society, eminent Fellows, the senior staff, even the rank and file were approached in an attempt to bring pressure to bear upon him.
But Godmanchester’s aides were not Godmanchester and their effect was not so happy. Leacock, too, emerged well as a man with a purpose, reasonable about what had gone wrong – a lynx and a wisent did not make a ravening horde; Godmanchester began to appear inevitably as double-faced and unreliable.
‘After all,’ said Lord Oresby, ‘supposing war did come.’
These reactions were enough to decide Godmanchester. The campaign was called off. There was enough other evidence of returning confidence. It was not worth while forcing a showdown with Leacock, or, by seeking to annul the lease, risking a scandal. Stretton and Leacock’s work were quietly forgotten; where the Zoo was remembered at all in Godmanchester’s Press or on the television channels on which his companies advertised, it was as the famous London Zoo, the happy, cheery family binge Zoo of Falcon’s dreams. Sir Robert’s, indeed, was fast becoming one of the best revived faces of our day. In all this victory of Leacock’s, I hope and think that I played my part.
What we had not reckoned on was that the Press opposed to Godmanchester would not let him alone. Finding little else in the domestic field to attack, Godmanchester’s critics began to look round for signs that he was not so confident as he pretended. They found a reddish, angry-seeming spot to test in the affairs of the Zoo. Everyone, their articles told us, recognized the remarkable venture upon which the Zoological Society and, in particular, its Director had embarked in founding the Stretton National Reserve. The public, it predicted, would be amazed at the success of this enterprise when in April the Reserve was opened to visitors. Even the most obstinate critic of the Lord Privy Seal must concede his splendid generosity in making this imaginative project feasible; it could indeed be that when the noise of party politics had died away, future historians would find in Stretton Reserve the finest monument to Lord Godmanchester’s name. Nevertheless it was an open secret that, in some part, the decision of the Zoological Society to send so many of its valuable specimens to Stretton, in particular the exotic animals which could never be acclimatized, had been actuated by a strong suspicion that affairs in the hands of the Prime Minister and his government did not give promise of lasting peace. Fearing, at any rate, a limited and conventional war, the Society had decided on a limited and conventional evacuation from London. At that time Lord Godmanchester, as President, had no doubt only been acting on what Lord Godmanchester as politician and newspaper proprietor had been prophesying. Now, however, Lord Godmanchester’s newspapers one and all gave us to understand that with their proprietor in office the danger was over, the government, otherwise unchanged, had overnight become an assurance of peace. Yet, if actions spoke louder than words, it was curious that Lord Godmanchester as President of the Zoological Society did not this time follow up the words he uttered as statesman. None of the exotic animals had returned from the inclemency of the Welsh Border to the assured safety of Regent’s Park. Some liaison had broken down between the split personalities of the noble lord; he should not be surprised if the public drew its own conclusions.
Having touched this spot, and found from a rather injudiciously scornful comment in The Advertiser that it hurt, the opposition newspapers pressed on it continually. Yet even the report that Godmanchester was very angry, did not frighten Leacock into giving way. If Godmanchester cared publicly to break the lease with the Society, let him do so and give his reasons. Godmanchester did not so care.
In this atmosphere I went down to Stretton for a few days to encourage and abet Leacock, to get away from Falcon and Beard, and to devote my time to the pleasure of the British Reserve.
December’s snows had been unseasonable, and we now had an equally unusual February, mild though wet. Heavy rain had turned the crumbling bracken fronds from cinnamon brown rust to a blackened mush, the wet orange stalks and the bruised purple of the remaining bramble leaves alone gave colour to the undergrowth; yet the scent that came up from the sodden bracken where I trod on it was as acrid as that given out by the tender green fronds of spring. Too early yet even for precocious aconites, the woods were a black skeleton world of branches and trunks and twigs in the early dusk. Now and again the snuffy, catarrhal scent of crushed acorns came to me, nauseous and quickly gone. Since the importation of a pair of wild cats from Scotland, I was setting the example of carrying a revolver as well as my field-glasses and my torch. Yet the woods were filled enough with deer and hares and pheasants to satisfy the needs even of so fierce a pair.
I made straight for the badger setts; I was to be in place by the beech tree half an hour or so before the first came out to sniff the evening air. I was anxious to establish my suspicion that last year’s young had already begun the establishment of new setts. I heard once or twice the retching bark of foxes; and before me on a long witch-fingered branch of an oak tree sat a little owl who let me go by as happily as though I had been a passing motor car and he perched on a telegraph pole. There was no other noise. I was only a quarter of a mile from the setts when I heard at a long distance shrieks and howls that seemed to come from within the woods, yet might have been the strange calls of forty different creatures in the Exotic Park. I strained to identify them, but an airliner bound for Ireland and, no doubt, the U.S.A. blotted out the sounds with its throbbing hum, and switched my thoughts to Martha and the children. My mind had then only one thought – ‘They must come back, they must come back, they must come back’ – and to the rhythm of these words I tried to adapt everything around me, even my own breathing. To my superstitious distress the pace of my breathing would take only the words, ‘they must come’ – ‘back’ I could not fit in. Then into these obsessive thoughts there came the sound of heavy panting and of feet rapidly padding upon the soft surface of rotting leaves. That, at least, was no wild cat, perhaps a fox, but strangely noisy for such. The sound gained upon me. I thought with increasing nervousness of escaped wild beasts – a wolf, a lynx, a jackal, what? Was I to die for my own cause? Then through the tracery of bare boughed brushwood I saw the long muzzle and blazing eyes of what? a young wolf? a jackal? In two seconds I was up six feet above the ground among the branches of a huge oak tree, sending some wood pigeons crashing and flapping through the nearby branches. Danger soon renews agility. From above I saw clearly the creature that was padding through the undergrowth, on a blind path that would certainly pass beneath my oak tree – a large Alsatian dog, Rickie, his muzzle flecked with foam and, as I saw in the torch light, with spilling blood. I flashed my torch directly in his eyes, he paused for a second, but then came on. I think it was only fear that made me draw the revolver; and yet, six feet up, I had nothing to fear. But I aimed as he came within yards and shot him in the left foreleg. He came, howling and limping, towards me. Now kindness as well as fear made me fire again and this time the bullet passed into his narrow skull and, with a shiver running through his shapely body, he fell dead.
It was not, I thought, going to be easy with Harriet Leacock. She was lost, friendless and bitter enough. If gossip was correct … well, then, I still felt the terrible guilt of cruelly hurting a woman who in her disorder had almost destroyed herself. I got down from the tree. I dragged the carcass under the cover of some thick ground ivy. Then, confused, I decided to leave it there, and cope with Harriet in the morning. The best excuse that I could provide now was that, if the dog had killed sheep, she would, of necessity, have had to shoot it. I had saved Leacock from the public scandal. Neither of these reasons would either soothe or satisfy her. Perhaps during the night I could think of a more comforting story. I made my way to the setts.
I had only been there a quarter of an hour, when I was rewarded by the sight of a white snout sniffing at the air. A moment later the greyish mask of an old dog badger appeared and at last the heavy beast came out, sniffing around the well worn earth at the mouth of the setts. More suspiciously the bitch followed him two minutes later. For a short while the two creatures sat licking at their paws and then trotted off in the direction of a clearing where I had suspected bluebell bulbs. They would not probably return from feeding until dawn. I wondered at the female’s presence at that breeding season, but a certain heaviness in her gait suggested that she was perhaps pregnant. I still waited and then to my excitement the process was repeated, but this time the dog badger was, as I had hoped, a young male of the previous year and no bitch followed him. I wondered if she was within, suckling new-born cubs. I promised myself an interesting spring watching the cubs in their early days of freedom in the open air. I knew then what happiness the prospect offered me. By the time that I had made my way back to bed, I had almost banished Harriet from my thoughts.
But the morning brought anxiety and remorse. I set off for the farm with little creatures scrabbling in my stomach. Lord Godmanchester’s chauffeur sat in a Bentley drawn up before the porch; somehow the luxurious car seemed to spoil the simplicity of the house’s lines, turning the scene to gracious living. I had known that our President was down at Stretton for a weekend’s rest, but he showed so little interest now in the affairs of the Reserve that I had not expected to see him. Yet there he was in the hall in heavy overcoat more than ever like a menacing grizzly. Dr Leacock stood foursquare, his absurd face quite drained of even its ordinary grey-brown colour. In an armchair Mrs Leacock was weeping. There was a youngish man in country tweeds seated on a long high backed ‘old oaken’ seat.
‘Carter,’ Leacock announced, ‘something very terrible has happened. My daughter has been murdered.’
He said this with a sort of calculated defiance which I did not understand. All that I remembered of Harriet – revulsion, compassion and liking – assailed me at once. And yet the news did not really touch me. Mrs Leacock seemed to be trying to protest at what her husband had said, but her words were swallowed in sobbing.
The youngish man said remonstratingly, ‘Now, Dr Leacock …’
But Godmanchester interrupted him, ‘I don’t know what you’re at, Leacock,’ he said, ‘your wife’s broken enough as it is. Do you want to drive her out of her mind? Dr Wainwright,’ he turned to the youngish man, ‘take Mrs Leacock up to her bedroom and get her to lie down until that nurse comes.’
He had clearly taken charge. After the doctor had led Madge Leacock upstairs, Godmanchester turned on Leacock.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘nobody’s sorrier for you than I am. But you’ve heard what the Inspector said and the doctor. You’re only hurting your wife by making these ghastly suggestions.’
Leacock looked as though he might strike the fat old man, but he said only, ‘I don’t want to talk to you about it. But I shall make myself perfectly clear to the doctor when he comes down again.’
He walked away from us into his study. Godmanchester shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s pathetic, Carter. The wretched woman was killed horribly last evening in the British Reserve by some escaped animal – from the doctor’s description of the wounds it sounds to me like a wolf. But Leacock refuses to face it because of course it’s bound to put an end to his project here. It would be a fascinating study in egotism if it weren’t so horrible. His daughter’s good name, his wife’s peace of mind, everything sacrificed to –’
It had taken me a moment to grasp what he had said.
Then I burst out, ‘God! That must have been the screaming I heard in the distance last night. And of course that dog of hers must have been wounded by the wolf or whatever it was. It was bleeding heavily from the muzzle and I thought it had killed a sheep. That’s why I shot it. Instead of that, the poor beast had been fighting for its mistress.’
I stopped, horrified. Then, as I looked at Godmanchester, I saw that the same thought had come to him as to me.
He said grimly, ‘I’ve heard the same stories that you have, Carter. Talk here travels fast.’
‘I shall have to speak –’
‘You don’t have to do anything. You don’t know where this is going to lead, Carter, or who’s going to be hurt. Don’t say a word until you know the way things are moving.’
Doctor Wainwright came down the stairs as the nurse arrived. He said a few words to her and sent her up to Mrs Leacock.
‘I’ve given her a sedative,’ he announced. ‘There’s no point in my being here any longer. I’ve told them all I can and I shall repeat it at the inquest.’
Godmanchester nodded. But Leacock came out of his study.
‘Look, Dr Wainwright. My daughter was a whore. I believe medical science would say she was a nymphomaniac. I use a more old-fashioned word. I sent her to psychiatrists, analysts, I did everything I could. To no purpose. You’re a local man. I have no doubt the scandal has reached you. If it hasn’t it’s a miracle because she gave herself to every man in the area she could find willing to take her.’
Dr Wainwright interrupted, ‘Please, Dr Leacock, you shouldn’t be saying all this. In any case it’s nothing to do with what’s happened. As I’ve told you already many times the wounds in your daughter’s throat and in particular the gashes on her cheeks and thighs could only have been made by the teeth and claws of an animal.’
‘But you admit that she’d been with a man.’
‘Yes. There were evidences of sexual intercourse at some time during that evening. But that’s irrelevant.’
‘To anyone who knew my daughter’s life it’s far from irrelevant. She picked up with any casual man, the lower the better. Good God! Do you think I don’t feel the horror of it? Whatever I say of her, she was my own daughter. And for any human being to have suffered at the hands of a maniac. For that’s what it was. Find the man! Hang him! That’s what I demand.’
I tried to make myself heard above his shouting.
I said, ‘Leacock, please try to argue all this when you’ve rested a little.’
He answered brusquely with a return of his old manner.
‘Thank you, Carter. I can manage my own affairs. I am not going to let that man,’ he pointed at Godmanchester and began to shout again, ‘ruin this great scheme. My daughter was murdered.’
Godmanchester said, ‘Tell him I want a word with him, Carter. Tell him he’d be wise to talk with me.’
I hesitated.
‘Well, wouldn’t he?’
I said, ‘I think you should, Leacock.’
‘I have nothing private to say to Lord Godmanchester, Carter.’
Dr Wainwright put on his overcoat and scarf.
He said, ‘Well, I’ll be round again later to see Mrs Leacock. The coroner will inform you of the time of the inquest.’
Leacock said, ‘If you won’t listen now, Doctor, you’ll force me to speak publicly.’
The doctor turned to me, ‘Make him rest,’ he said and was gone.
Immediately Godmanchester told Leacock brutally what he believed had happened. I saw then how deeply her father’s sexual childishness must have aggravated Harriet’s erotomania, for, at first, he just did not understand and then he supposed that we were trying to make some horrible joke in bad taste. He looked at me in bewildered appeal, but it would have been no help to him to prolong Godmanchester’s determined attack. I said as kindly as I could that I believed it to be true. He laid his arms on the chimney piece, buried his head in them, as though he would blot out our existence.
Then he turned to us, ‘What can we have done to have given birth to a monster?’
I said, ‘How can anyone have become so desperately lost?’
Godmanchester dismissed these moral judgements brusquely.
‘It’s an appalling tragedy. The sooner we get this inquest and so on over the better for you and your wife, Leacock.’
But now Leacock’s eyes assumed a childishly cunning look.
‘Well, I’ve always thought these creatures were treacherous. I’m glad you killed it, Carter. It obviously had the rabies.’
Godmanchester’s comic eyebrows went up.
‘No, Leacock,’ he said very deliberately, ‘your daughter was killed by an escaped beast. A wolf I should think. If it wasn’t so, you know, I should have to insist on a further examination.’
I shouted, ‘What you’re doing is disgusting and wicked. You’re blackmailing Leacock. You’ve never intended to let this place succeed. You’ve cheated us all through.’
‘You’re a very romantic sort of chap, Carter, aren’t you? I’ve let Leacock have a run for his money and I’d gladly go on doing so, but I can’t afford it now. The confidence I need to save this country is more important than anything else at this moment. The opposition’s got on to the Reserve as a weak link in my armour.’
‘Well, if you aren’t strong enough to smash that …’
‘I am, thank you, Carter, but I don’t believe in running any risks that I don’t have to. I tell you what, Leacock, if we can put the blame on a jackal or such, you can keep your British Reserve with its wolves. All we need do is scrap the Exotic Park – that’s the crux of the opposition’s attack.’
There was a note of conscious magnanimity in his voice that maddened me as he made the offer.
‘Don’t bargain with him, Leacock.’
‘You’ll be a fool if you don’t,’ Godmanchester said. ‘Half a fine scheme is better than none at all. But I shan’t press it. I haven’t time to waste.’
‘You needn’t worry, Carter, I shan’t. You’re perfectly right, Lord Godmanchester. My daughter was killed by a wolf.’ He spoke with hysterical deliberateness that changed to an equally desperate irony. ‘We must suppose that despite all Barley’s competence, one has escaped.’
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that. I settle all that. You must bury that dog quickly, Carter.’
I turned in horror to Leacock, ‘You can’t capitulate to blackmail like this.’
‘I can’t do anything else, Carter. Harriet and I in our selfishness – God knows how alike we were, she was my favourite when she was a child – have hurt Mrs Leacock enough. She’s had to know too many humiliations. I will not have her told this disgusting thing.’
‘Do you think she wouldn’t prefer anything to your sacrificing all you’re doing here?’
‘I don’t know. Yes, or course, she would do anything for us, for the family. But I don’t want her to know this.’
‘I think it may be my duty to take the decision out of your hands.’
I hoped that I detected an alarmed tension in Godmanchester’s solid mass. Leacock came over and faced me. He looked more than ever ridiculous, his eyes in his tense emotion more squinting.
‘I don’t believe,’ he said, ‘that you would like to take into your own hands the decision of an old man’s honour. For that’s what it is, Carter. Whatever schemes and hopes and ideals I may have and that we may share, the security of Madge’s world, of her life, are my affair, and my affair alone. She is a simple woman and if I can’t protect her simplicity, if that’s taken out of my hands by anyone, even by you with the best motives, I’m reduced to nothing. You will have taken away my honour, made me nothing as surely as if I had a stroke and were reduced to being fed like a baby again. I don’t believe you would do it.’
At last I said, ‘I ought to. I’ve made too many concessions of this sort already. But you’re right, I can’t.’
So it was settled. ‘The Stretton Experiment’ as Godmanchester’s papers now called it – and ‘experiment’ in their columns was a very pejorative noun – came to an end. I went out that evening with a spade and buried Rickie. Only Mrs Leacock ever mentioned him again.
‘Poor old Rickie, he was a one-man dog. I don’t suppose we shall see him any more.’
Both Lord and Lady Godmanchester came down for the funeral; and Lady Godmanchester even found time to say a few words to Mrs Leacock. It was lucky that I was not carrying my revolver, for I should at that moment have liked to kill both the Lord Privy Seal and his decorative wife. Practically all the staff of the Reserve attended, but not those of Regent’s Park. As the ceremony ended everyone seemed to feel the embarrassment so acutely that they made almost en bloc for the cars and taxis at the churchyard gates. I know that I feared lest Madge Leacock in her naïveté should feel it her duty to arrange some grim meal for the mourners. I think others must have felt as I did. At any rate I became conscious as I reached the gates and looked back that the Leacocks had been left with only the Filsons for company. There they stood, two battered old couples, blown about by the high wind, their loneliness outlined against a luminous, pearly sky. Two drab old pairs they seemed – the gnarled wronged old men, and their charmless heavy wives for whom they lived. Everyone had drawn away from them as though they carried a dangerous infection. It was, I knew, the most dangerous of all infections for me – pathos.
Just as I was leaving, Mrs Filson, who now appeared to be an expert and devoted driver, called to me out of the window of her Austin.
‘Mr Carter, don’t blame Charlie for handing in his notice, will you? Mind you, it’s broken his heart the Reserve coming to an end. But it’s my decision. We’ve made a life down here and here we shall retire. It’s a sad business for Mrs Leacock, this. But I can’t help wondering if they all remember how their muddle cost my Derek his life.’
I was angry that the Committee didn’t press Dr Leacock to stay on, although he would not in any case have done so. He seemed to have acquired once more the hollow, rhetorical enthusiasm that had marked him in the old days before he went to Stretton.
‘I don’t feel finished yet, you know, Carter. So I’ve accepted a job at this new North Western University at Carlisle. My marine biology’s a bit rusty, of course, but it’s a small faculty as yet. It’s mainly a question of building it up, building it up. And there’s no doubt, I think, that the Lake District’s the place of the future.’
Mrs Leacock thanked me for all I had done for Edwin.
‘How little we know even our dearest,’ she told me, ‘I never realized how deeply Daddy loved Harriet. But this has nearly broken him, Mr Carter. In any case this place has not been lucky for us. Do you remember how I put my foot in it with Lady Godmanchester? Though I must say she was kind enough to say a word to me today. But I think it’s just as well we’re leaving. As I told Daddy, we’re starting all over again, just as we did when we were first married. And I have high hopes, Mr Carter, though the Lake District is rather damp.’
I wished so much then that I had ever been able to believe in Mr Micawber’s success in Australia.
As, so often, a leader in The Times spoke the knell of Leacock’s great hopes – ‘It has been the fate of the National Zoological Reserve at Stretton, with its sad loss both in human and animal life, to write finis to all dreams of large-scale preservation of foreign wild life species in natural surroundings. Our island, it would appear, is too small to allow even for the controlled return of the wolf, the bear and the boar.’ On the day that this leader appeared, The Advertiser published the first of a series of popular, nostalgic articles on the ‘London Zoo’ by Sir Robert Falcon.