The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  “I’m just padding around here this morning,” he said, “making the most of this lovely weather. But there may be an important call for me and as Leacock’s made himself incomunicado, I wondered if I could have it put through here when it comes. I shall go and talk to my friend the binturong and perhaps have a word with the kinkajou. But I’d like to know of any call as soon as it comes through. If one of your messengers could spare the time from whatever game of chance he’s engaged in and come over to the Small Mammal House, I’d be very obliged to him.”

  As he was going out of the room, he asked, “By the way, what’s this business I saw in the paper about a keeper being killed? Got it wrong, haven’t they? Giraffes never did any harm that I heard of before.”

  I said, “No, it’s true.” And then with a sudden decision I added, “I’d like very much to talk to you about it, if you have a moment.”

  He raised his thick George Robey eyebrows even higher for a second at this suggestion of my by-passing the Director; but, in fact, as I knew from his attentions to me, and indeed to those in more subordinate grades—keepers and so on—he liked nothing better than a Napoleonic going over the heads of his marshals to the common soldier.

  He said, “I have a moment and it may be the last that I’ll have for some time. I’ll confess that my mind’s on affairs of rather greater seriousness than those of Regent’s Park, but you’ve heard me say often, too often I’m sure to carry conviction, that I’m never too busy for anything. Let me hear about this if only to show you that the saying isn’t just an old man’s drivelling.”

  That he had so accurately gauged my thoughts gave me more confidence in him.

  I said, “We’ll take the rest of the letters later then, Mrs Purrett.”

  Godmanchester had difficulty in fitting his vast buttocks into the deep but narrow armchair that I kept for visitors. By the time that his huge, fat, shapeless body had sunk into the cushions, I could see nothing of him except his round, surprised-looking face. Instead of talking to a wise old bear, I found myself addressing a surfacing seal. It was slightly disconcerting.

  He said, “Before you start on what you want to tell me, I’d better say that I may not be able to give a lot of time to Zoo affairs in the next month or two. In fact I hope for everybody’s sake that I shan’t be able to. It’s no secret that the Government’s got into a ghastly mess. What is perhaps less appreciated is that they realize it. Pressure of public opinion, or the very little sense that’s left to him, may force the P.M. to widen his government. If he does, little though we like each other’s guts, he’ll be compelled to offer me office. And as you’ll see in my papers, that may very well save us from a disastrous war. What it says in my papers is not necessarily true. But in this case it is. Therefore although I have said a very large number of times that I would not accept office from him at the end of a bargepole, I shall.” He paused and blinked at me two or three times. “I’m telling you this because I don’t know what you’re going to ask me now. It may entail a request for my assistance which I may promise to give. You will see very readily, however, that in certain events I shall not be able to keep that promise. All right. Go ahead.”

  All this ‘carry-on’ in his slow, emphatic voice which so impressed our Director with Godmanchester’s ‘greatness’, only inspired me with serious doubts. I almost wished that I had not decided to ask his advice; committed to the counsel of the man at the very top, one has no further to go. However, committed I was, and so I told him the full story as I knew it.

  Only twice did he interrupt me. Once when I was talking of Sanderson’s part, he said, “Look, is this a funny story you’re telling me, Carter, or a serious one? Serious. All right—cut out the imitations, although you do them very well. Anything can be made funny you know, but it isn’t the moment for it.”

  Again, when I repeated Rackham’s remarks, he said, “You talk a lot with your subordinates.”

  “Yes. I find it difficult to accept hierarchies. It was my chief failure at the Treasury.”

  He looked doubtful. “Ah I talk a lot to my subordinates. But then I’m old and very eminent. I can afford to indulge myself.”

  At the end of my story, he said, “Yes, I see. And what you want to know is what am I going to do about it?”

  “No. Whether I should push on with inquiries, try to find out what happened and so prevent it happening again.”

  “There are a number of propositions there, aren’t there? And they aren’t all necessarily in accord with one another. However, I’m glad you don’t want to know what I’m going to do, because the answer to that would be exactly nothing. As to whether you should push on with your inquiries, as you call it—that means in fact pushing Beard or Falcon or even Leacock, if you’re smart enough, into admitting that they made very bad mistakes. Whether that’ll prevent it happening again is a very different question. For myself, following my usual practice, I shall say something that I shouldn’t. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest degree if Leacock or Beard or Falcon or all three of them have made serious mistakes. They’re probably doing so all the time, only usually there are not dangerous spikes and sick giraffes and inexperienced young keepers about at the same time in the same place. I don’t have to tell you that there lies the difference between what is and what is not history. Here we have history. And the senior men aren’t perhaps quite up to history. As you say, they’re cut off from the world and they’re getting a bit set. Old as I am I can say that because one can’t get set in politics, events don’t allow it. What’s less certain is what value it would be to bring that home to them. Or, if you did so, whether any young keeper in the future would be the whit safer than he is now. You can’t eliminate carelessness or bad luck simply at the wave of a reforming wand. You’d learn that soon enough if you had real responsibility. As to the old boys, they’ve had a shock and if that doesn’t cure them, I don’t know that your denunciations will.”

  “It isn’t only a question of the future ...”

  “But of justice, is that it? Oh, there’s no need to explain what you feel about that. I’ve felt it myself in my time, although you probably think that I haven’t. But justice that brings no practical advantages to anyone and a good deal of disturbance to some people, I can’t really recommend. It would be an expensive indulgence. No, I should say you couldn’t do better than forget the whole matter.”

  “And supposing, that, taking your advice, I still stumble on unfortunate facts in the course of my work.”

  Lord Godmanchester wobbled with laughter.

  “I’ve come across a good few disastrous ways in which altruists can act, but stumbling! What you want to know in fact is what I should do if you bring any skeleton you’re so careless as to stumble over before my notice at a Society meeting, that’s it, isn’t it? Shall I still pretend that I don’t see it? The answer to that is—only if nobody else sees it. And that rather depends on the light in which it’s displayed, doesn’t it?”

  I wondered if he was really enjoying his act as much as it seemed. The possibility alone made me impatient with him.

  I said, “I suppose that such tiresome behaviour on my part would definitely be a black mark against me.”

  The deep creases in his fat old face seemed all at once to turn downwards. He appeared sad and hurt rather than sly and jovial.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “that you should think me so poor a judge of character. It has never occurred to me for a moment since I saw you at work here that you were in the slightest degree concerned with career making. I don’t say that as praise or blame, of course. Only as an observation. Is that all?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you for listening.”

  “Oh, it’s not so unselfish as you think. These little natters are very instructive. I hope we may have them again from time to time.”

  He got up, but he seemed reluctant to go from the room. He glanced at the telephone.

  “The small mammals, remember, if there’s a message for me.” At
the door, he said, “You see the trouble with that story is that it’s all too peculiar. A man kicked in the balls by a giraffe, or perhaps not. A giraffe that thought he heard a lion or perhaps not. There’s an awful lot of ‘perhaps not’ about it. Do you know what I’d call that story? I’d call it a tall story.” He opened the door, then he added, “You think that’s a cheap little joke. I meant it to be so. We may all have to get used to being callous in the months ahead. It won’t do us any harm to start now.” He glanced anxiously again at the telephone and ambled off.

  I was glad that I had already made this joke in bad taste that Godmanchester thought so vital to my moral health. My reaction to his advice, of course, was resentment of its patronizing air. I determined to disregard it. But so obvious a reaction to so crude a manner seemed childish. To avoid appearing absurdly touchy I was almost obliged to consider the advice more seriously than I should have done had his manner been more tactful. Had he perhaps foreseen this, offered it in that way on purpose? I did not believe him to be so subtle. In fact I ended by suspecting that he had only consented to listen because it gave him an excuse to be by the telephone whose summons he so clearly hoped for.

  When the telephone rang, however, it was no dramatic call for Coriolanus. It was instead Pattie Henderson.

  She said, “I say, I was pretty bloody rude on the phone yesterday. But I hope you realize that it was only because Newton and Nutting had got my goat by saying they knew you’d play safe. You can imagine how I’ve been chortling over them this morning when the news got round that you’d been dressing down that awful fat henchman of Falcon’s. Remember we’re all behind you if you want to have a showdown with the old boys.”

  I said, ‘‘Thank you,” but in a voice that I hoped mocked the pretensions of the revolutionary opposition as much as it did my suitability to lead them. Pattie in her simplicity was puzzled. She found nothing to say; I made no effort to help her out. Then made nervous by this silent communication, she shouted:

  “I suppose old Leacock’s bogging you down with a lot of fuss about his music hall turn on the television. Anything to stop chaps getting on with their proper jobs.”

  I said, “I imagine rather a lot of people are being distracted from their proper jobs today by the thought of what a war might entail.”

  Pattie’s answer came as immediately as I had expected.

  “Oh, I suppose people like Leacock and Falcon who’ve lost all contact with the real work are bound to have the jitters. Down here in Research Block we haven’t given a thought to it.”

  “Like Queen Victoria.”

  History had little call to Pattie. She said, “Well it’s all a lot of newspaper bilge, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, surely. So long as Newton is busy with marsupial placenta and Nutting has not satisfied himself about the fertility cycles of the common shrew, war is an unthinkable interruption.”

  Now Pattie was really angry.

  “If you haven’t any appreciation at all for serious research work, then the sooner you get out of this place the better. We’re carrying enough passengers already.”

  She rang off. To a great extent she was justified.

  The only apology appeared to lie in getting on with my work. The quarterly estimates for expenditure presented by the various curators lay before me ready for assembling into a single report to be submitted to the Finance Committee. The report would be made in the Director’s name, but, unless there were items that seemed to him to relate to his National Reserve scheme, I knew that it would be useless to ask for his full consideration of them. The preparation of the reports would devolve entirely on me. Such a task gave me some conviction that my job was worthwhile. I knew the Committee well enough to make sure that tactful presentation would give to each request the highest chance of acceptance. However much my knowledge of the curators made me sceptical I genuinely tried to retain the urgency of each demand while remembering the limited resources available. When the curators got what they wanted, they took my work for granted. When their requests were refused, they either accused me of insufficient enthusiasm for the Zoo’s welfare or complained that, forgetting the automatic rubber stamp nature of my post, I must unconstitutionally have favoured some other department’s demand. This is the bureaucrat’s lot. Those who like to feel conscious of hiding such light as they possess under a bushel get satisfaction from it. On the whole I did so; although on occasion I wished for the immediate applause given to the acrobat, the pop singer or the tennis star. But perhaps the paid administrator has a more continuously pleasant sense of not being truly appreciated than any of these. At any rate I enjoyed such work. So long as one does not become a confirmed addict to virtue. I don’t know why one shouldn’t have the odd kick out of it now and again. Certainly few things make me feel so good as the occasional conviction that I have of doing some good.

  No doubt it was some reflection of all this in my face that caused Bobby Falcon so completely to lose his temper in my office when he came in a quarter of an hour or so later.

  He began with that sort of facetious severity often supposed to make unpleasant remarks more palatable.

  “Look here, Simon, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. You were appointed here as secretary not as private investigator. I don’t know how the other chaps regard it, but as far as I’m concerned you must keep your inquiries—morphine needle, violin and deerstalker—out of the Mammal Houses.”

  “I know I owe you an apology, Bobby. I should have come to you first but by an unfortunate chance I came face to face with Strawson this morning and simply let fly.”

  Bobby began to relax the tense face he had prepared in order to carry through a ‘difficult’ interview.

  I smiled and said, “All the same, I have to tell you that I wasn’t very happy about his attitude.”

  Immediately the dark pouched skin beneath Bobby’s left eye began to twitch, drawing up his flushed cheek and the corner of his mouth. He was a quick tempered man. Since I know my own occasional rages to be no more than a failure to control childish frustration, I can never treat other people’s loss of temper as seriously as they want..

  I said, “Oh, Lord, Bobby, I’ve said the wrong thing. Please don’t take it so seriously.”

  Such friendly levity had always proved effective before in assuaging his anger. Now my self-satisfaction must still have lingered in my smile or else my contempt for loss of temper must have lent a sneer to my voice; his left eye above the twitching cheek stared out at me like a frightened savage horse’s. Beyond our knowledge of mental pathology, I suppose, we each have our folklore, nursery picture of madness. For me, people who look as though no word or gesture of mine could prevent them from doing me a physical injury are ‘mad’; of such people I am very frightened. I thought at that moment that Bobby Falcon was going to hit me with a chair or with his fists. Instead he swept all my papers off my desk on to the floor. Immediately he appeared ludicrous to me. My main concern was to prevent him seeing this.

  “Who the hell cares whether you’re happy or not? That’s the trouble with you, Carter. You’ve been state nursed from the cradle, without even learning to do your own flybuttons up. Not content with that, you had to find Martha’s money to provide your bony rump with extra cushions. I suppose she believed that somewhere you had the makings of a real man. At any rate as soon as you tried to prove it, you fell ill. They didn’t have any panel doctors or trick cyclists in the African jungle, so Master Carter had a nasty amoebal tummy and got sent home!”

  I was surprised and a bit shocked to realize how pleased I was that in uncontrolled temper his language should so quickly acquire a vulgar slangy tone.

  But the impetus of his anger had soon passed; the mood was now synthetic. I could almost feel the effort with which he was sustaining a rage from which he could see no escape without loss of face. I had no means of assisting him. The best I could do was by sharpness to cut his dilemma short.

  I said, “This is intolerable, Bobby. You must get out of
my room.”

  He slumped into a chair, and his invective began to grind down to a halt.

  “Why the hell should I get out of your room? I brought you to the bloody place. God knows why! But then God knows why Martha married you. Good administrator? All right, so what? You’ve cut yourself off from real life for years with your reports and your files. And now something unpleasant with all the muddle that goes with real life happens outside your window; and you’re not happy about it. You’ve got to put everybody’s actions under your own twopenny halfpenny little home-made moral microscope.” He sat back, almost at ease. “My God, Simon, you are the most bloody awful prig. And if nobody else will tell you so, I must.”

  It would have done no good to say that, on the contrary, hundreds of people had told me so, from my schooldays on. It would have been more priggish still to say that I had tried...

  Bobby it was who did the right thing. “I’m sorry for that exhibition, Simon, I ought not really to be here. I don’t like the way things are going in this place and I keep hoping that I can save something of the old Zoo. But it’s self-deception. Leacock’s got it all his own way.”

  “That’s not true, Bobby, as you know. I’m on his side in my view of the Zoo’s future, although in some ways he’s both an ass and a bit of a fraud. But I’m very much in a minority. Some of the most important Fellows . . .”

  “Oresby, old Dr Peasegood! No, Simon, I’m not such a fool as to think that they’ll move mountains, let alone hold back the tide.”

  “All right then. Look how much the younger people here— Newton, Nutting, all that crowd, dislike Leacock . . .”

  “Don’t remind me, Simon, that they wouldn’t bother to dislike me. In any case I’m not going to pretend I’m in sympathy with them. Oh, I dare say they’d be happy enough to let anyone run the place as he liked, so long as he didn’t interfere with their research work. It isn’t good enough, Simon, they’ve no real care for the Society or the Gardens.”