The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  Poor man, his task was a hard one, especially when that week the Russo-American Declaration burst upon an unexpected world and divided the opinion of every West European country with excited hopeful or apprehensive arguments. On the whole Leacock managed even this well. I thought at first he would try to ignore what all the world was talking of; had he done so he would have over-reached himself, for not only I, but the television engineers and programme planners with whom the office now seemed filled would no longer have found his enthusiasm infectious but embarrassingly dissociated and insane. In fact, at five to six that evening he appeared at the door of the huge Committee Room, to which we were now driven by our swelling numbers, and said,

  “What about knocking off for half an hour? The Prime Minister can be seen making his statement for those of us who wish to hear it on the set in my room.”

  I admired him particularly for the ‘of us’ by which he marked the norm of measured interest which outside events should command. I worked very hard for him in those weeks, for I could not imagine that I should ever myself know enthusiasm that would demand of me his degree of self-control. Yet those days of the Russo-American Declaration undoubtedly taxed him severely. To know that everyone whom his enthusiasm had pressed into his service had a part of their minds elsewhere, to hear on occasion the doubts of technicians or planners whether, in view of the crisis, his programme would even go on the air, were sometimes greater stresses than he could bear. His absurd round eyes looked hysterically unsure as he said to me each day, ‘These chaps from the B.B.C. have got real loyalty to this programme, Carter,’ or ‘It’s only cynics like you that can’t see when they’re up to their neck making history, as we are this week.’

  Though Leacock almost insulated himself from events, nobody else did. Even Matthew, who had evolved a wonderful power of hearing, reading and knowing nothing about a world he had long since decided was ‘not for him’, was forced to complain about the Declaration when he rang up to tell me the arrangements for young Filson’s funeral.

  His reference was characteristically cryptic, “It’s rather hell , those shits talking all that balls, isn’t it?” he said.

  I said, “Matthew, Martha’s half American.”

  “Well, I had a Welsh grandmother but I don’t boast about it.”

  “I’m afraid Martha does boast about her American mother.”

  “Oh, God! Well, of course the Americans are better than the Russians.”

  Matthew’s opinions if he was forced to voice any were always ‘correct’. Now he took, and indeed shared, the official Government Une.

  “I mean anyway—Americans or Russians—we can’t have them telling us what to do.”

  “They’re trying to stop a war, Matthew.”

  “Yes. Well we’re not children, are we? We’ve had wars before, and we’ll have them again I suppose, if it’s necessary. Anyhow it’s hardly for the Russians or Americans to tell us what we’re to have.”

  I saw no sense in arguing this.

  I said, “You’re like the Prime Minister. You don’t want any bullies showing you the big stick. I’m surprised. I must say that I should have thought that was just up your street.”

  Matthew crowed with delight.

  “It’s nothing to do with you what’s up my street. I could tell you a very peculiar story about the P.M. now you mention it. But I’d better not. At any rate not down the telephone. Well anyway I don’t really care what the Americans or Russians declare, do you? And they talk such balls. I mean it’s a matter for the Foreign Office people isn’t it? Anyhow I hope no one will mention it at Filson’s funeral luncheon.”

  “What luncheon?”

  “Well, the funeral baked meats, of course. Actually, Diana’s getting them sent round to Mrs F’s from Jackson’s so it’ll be all right.”

  I suppose my anger now was in proportion to my admiration for Matthew’s kindness on the day of young Filson’s death.

  I said, “You forced those wretched people into this, Matthew. It’s disgraceful. It’s bad enough that they should have to put up with us at the funeral but to obtrude extra embarrassments on to them.”

  Matthew’s voice was alarmed. He disliked people being annoyed with him. I was surprised that he didn’t run away from the telephone, but he said, “Well really. Filson wanted to do the right thing. And I told him.”

  “The right thing! At this moment! I suppose Falcon’ll be there.”

  “Well, naturally. He was the poor boy’s curator.”

  “And what those poor people must be feeling after that ghastly coroner!”

  “But surely all coroners are ghastly. I don’t know any. But aren’t they doctors or something?”

  “That fool never questioned for a minute the responsibility for the boy’s death.”

  “Well, thank God! We don’t want the Society’s dirty linen washed in public.”

  “Perhaps not, but I warn you I shall raise it at the next curators’ meeting.”

  “I don’t think you will, Simon.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you’re not an absolute shit.”

  Continuing calmly he said, “Well, they live at Wembley so that’ll be perfectly convenient for the R.C. cemetery at Kensal Green. Diana will drive us.”

  “I had no idea you knew the North West London suburbs so well, Matthew.”

  “Oh, well, I do you see. Our governess lived there for years.”

  He rang twice again that afternoon. Once to tell me that the Filsons’ parish priest would attend the baked meats.

  “So that’s all right,” he said in comment.

  The second time it was to tell me that Bobby Falcon was uncertain whether Jane could attend.

  “She has to go to a read-through whatever that may be,” he said. “Anyway the Filsons won’t understand what it is, so may be they won’t be offended.”

  I had to check through the camera arrangements with the Director so I told Mrs Jamieson that I could not speak to Mr Price again that afternoon. Twice Matthew appeared at the open door of my room where I was talking with Leacock. Each time on seeing Leacock he stared for a moment and then disappeared. On a third occasion, the Director said sharply, “Yes, what is it, Price?”

  “I just wanted a word with Carter, if that’s all right.”

  “Yes, yes, go ahead.”

  “I was just wondering, you see, Simon, since Jane Falcon isn’t going to be there whether perhaps you could persuade your wife. You see, it would be a compliment to the Filsons and then Diana wouldn’t be the only lady.”

  I suddenly felt deeply ashamed of this gross snobbery.

  I said sharply, “I really don’t know.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll get Diana to ring her and ask.”

  He scuttled away like the White Rabbit on an errand. Realizing a moment later that his snobbery which usually made me laugh had only caused me unease because of Leacock’s presence, I was annoyed with my lack of self-assurance.

  When I was leaving the Zoo late that evening about half past eight, I found a note that had been left in my secretary’s room: ‘Rely on you at tomorrow’s baked meats to keep the conversation off dreary Declaration and Falcon’s boring balls up of boy’s death—Matthew.’ He seemed to me like a spoilt child who was out to annoy and I felt glad that I had snapped at him in front of Leacock.

  I was exhausted when I reached home; I felt apprehensive about the next day’s gathering. Then despite all my admiration for Leacock’s scheme and even for the general outlines of the television programme by which he hoped to further it, I was increasingly kritated by the arrogant slipshodness which had left all the detailed, hard work to me and my staff. I was embarrassed too at being associated with such muddle in the eyes of the B.B.C. staff, many of whom I knew; and even more by what I felt sure they were thinking of the second-rate generalizations with which Leacock tried breezily to make light of his mistakes and omissions. Through everything else the thought that I must soon take action to avenge y
oung Filson or else leave the grievance to poison my relations with my Zoo colleagues for good, nagged away at me. I was in the mood in fact to be both a snappish, tired husband and a pernickety, exacting civil servant.

  I was not in a mood for the suffused, instinctive gaiety with which the Declaration had filled Martha’s American liberal heart. That this light heartedness made her younger, more attractive, more sweetly and gently asking to be loved than I had known her for some considerable time only made me feel the sourer. I thought of myself as a man who, always carrying last year’s diary and an erratic watch, would for ever arrive at his appointments too early or too late.

  Martha, indeed, was so happy, her fears so exorcised that her gaiety had no need to spill over me as I set foot in the house. She was ready for my exhaustion, quiet without any nerve-teasing ostentation of hushedness; she had seen that Jacqueline’s silly brightness was not there to disturb me, had arranged with Grazia my favourite meal—ossobuco, a light red chianti, zabaglione. I tried very hard but I could not purr. For more that half an hour Martha continued to keep silent, then suddenly she cried.

  “Oh, Simon, I know how tired you are, darling. And I know you were wise and level-headed all along, but please rejoice with me that there isn’t going to be any war. Oh, Simon, you don’t know how awful it’s been this week for people like me.” I had my own ideas of the motives for the Russo-American Declaration: Russia’s preoccupation with Asia; America’s distaste for British growing neutrality. But I did not harp on such cynical views.

  I said, “I’m very glad. I think it may go a long way to making us see reason. That is, if it doesn’t cause too much resentment here or in France and Germany for that matter.”

  She cried, “Oh, phooey to Western Europe in that case. They’ll just have to toe the Une if the big Powers say so.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Déclassé nations are very touchy you know.”

  I tried not to exaggerate the measured reasonableness of my tone, but I failed.

  Martha cried, “Oh, for God’s sake Simon, it is the most wonderful thing and I don’t care a damn for your European cleverness, seeing this side and that and spoiling every hopefulness with your doubts and despairs. It’ll be about the only good thing the British and French and all the lot of you have done with your backyard squabbles—to make us see sense once in a while and break through that damned Iron Curtain.”

  I said, “You’d have agreed with Sanderson at lunch in the canteen: ‘So it’s taken us little ones to bring the big chaps together’.”

  I caught the absolute fatuity of Sanderson’s voice to a tee. Martha’s hands trembled; she picked up a coffee cup. For a moment its olive green and gold shimmered in the light of the lamp behind her; I had already seen it shattered, even ducked my head to avoid the coloured splinters, when she put it down again in its saucer very determinedly.

  “I don’t mean what Sanderson means and you know it. Or maybe I do too. All I know is that the great shadows that have been hovering over us for so long—the great good shadow My country ‘tis of thee—and I mean that Simon, it is my country—and the great big bogey shadow that’s been glowing a lurid red over there ever since I was a kid and frightening the life out of me—have come together for a moment. If they never come together again, it doesn’t matter. They’ve done it. And they’ve done it for the right reasons. To stop all you little whiners from blowing up the civilization that you’re always boasting that you alone have made. That’s history, Simon, and no cavilling can stop it from being so.”

  I thought of Edwin Leacock’s remark; it seemed that everyone was determined to accuse me of failing to see history. I got up from my chair and put on a record of the Italian Symphony. I wanted something familiar, good and yet not profound, to purge me of all these enthusiasms and anxieties which people had been unloading on me for the last few weeks. I wanted more immediately to prevent further possibly disastrous talk with Martha.

  But she had to pursue me.

  She said, “The only comment you can find on a great moment in history is to repeat an idiotic remark of an old fool like Sanderson.”

  I said, “I’m not very good at historic moments, darling, you know that. I was taught history on a different principle. In any case it’s people that interest me, that concern me if you like. That’s why Sanderson’s reaction fascinated me.”

  ’Teople? People seem pretty dumb by the time you’ve finished with them.”

  I got up and stopped the record.

  Martha said, “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. But you know how I think you’re wasting your spirit away on a lot of people that aren’t worth your while. You weren’t meant to be involved with people. And even if you had the gift, so have millions of others. It’s a feminine gift. Most women have it. I have. But you’ve got quite another thing. You can observe creatures and things. That’s much rarer . . .”

  I cut her short. I simply could not hear again the story of her disappointment with me.

  I said, “I am not a trained zoologist, Martha. And it’s too late for me to be so. You must accept that finally.”

  “All right, Simon, you aren’t. But you were only the best naturalist on television when I married you. Only that. Was that nothing?”

  “I’m a respectable man, Martha. Not a popular entertainer.”

  She refused to let me off with a laugh. At times like this I hated her integrity and her innocence. I did not want to be saved from myself. She was seated on the arm of a sofa looking away from me, her head down, her whole body slumped in disappointment. I had taken away the beauty bred of her gaiety which had greeted my homecoming. I could with pleasure have hit her.

  I shouted at her, “I’m sorry that you feel you’ve wasted yourself. I’m sorry if your money could have been better spent. It so happens that I’ve been working very hard. But of course seeing that an organization is run properly isn’t among your duties as a hero. Nevertheless I have been working very hard, I’m very tired and I’m going to bed.”

  Much later that night I woke from a heavy sleep to feel her buttocks pressed taut against my thigh. I could tell by the tension that she was awake. I turned her towards me and began to kiss and caress her, hoping to relax her tension. Martha’s was not the only naïveté in the home. She held rigid against me, and, having failed to force her to surrender, I fell into sleep again.

  Martha was up next morning before I had woken. I did not see her until I came down to the breakfast table. All the radical fighting egghead manner of her American mother had gone from her. She spoke in that strange social English voice that she must have learned as a child from her father’s mother. It rang bells of long ago, recalling my great aunts or rather the grander of their county friends—voices that had been trained and nuanced before Victoria died. She seemed to be embattled behind the toast and tea and Seville Orange Marmalade.

  “Will you call for me for this funeral, darling? Or shall I make my way there with Jane?”

  “Good God! You’re not coming are you? There’s absolutely no need.”

  “But Matthew Price telephoned and asked me . . .”

  “What if he did? For once I’m quite sure he’s got the protocol wrong. There’s no call for wives to be present. In any case, it was only if Jane Falcon wasn’t going to be there. To keep Diana company. In Matthew’s phrase fso that she won’t be the only lady’.”

  “But, Simon, surely Matthew wouldn’t make a mistake of that kind. You’ve often told me how much you admire him for his social sense, and how all that snobbery of his is rather endearing.”

  I pushed my plate away in what I have no doubt was a very petulant manner.

  “To my taste,” I said, “scrambled eggs should be scrambled, not cooked like a face flannel. And people like you whose charm lies in being ingénue shouldn’t try to be bitchy. It doesn’t suit them,’;

  “I don’t think Grazia understands very well. But I’ll tell her.”

  I tried a desperate retrieval by whimsy.

 
I said, “I shouldn’t say the bit about bitchy to her. She might not understand.”

  Martha ignored this. “If your work at the Zoo is so important, then I think I ought to play my part as the Secretary’s wife.”

  I tried to give her the serious reasons.

  “Matthew is a fool to have arranged the party. And more than a fool. What are the wretched Filsons going to feel like entertaining Falcon and, for all I know, Strawson after what happened to their son?”

  “Oh, my dear, of course, they’ll take it as a compliment. Their emotions can’t be judged by ours, you know. I’m sure Matthew’s told you that.”

  I restrained myself from saying, ‘What do you know about the British?’

  I said, “In any case, if I’m to continue with my inquiries into what really happened it will be a great embarrassment to be forced to be there with the Filsons and the people who may have been to blame.”

  “If you’re going to continue?”

  “All right, since I’m going to . . .”

  “Well, having your wife there will help,” Martha said. Then she asked, “I’ve only got two black hats, darling, that large straw I bought for some unaccountable reason for the Garden Party and a silly little one with some nonsense on it that I could take off. Which would be correct for the Secretary’s wife?”

  I threw down my napkin and walked out of the dining room.

  Wanting formal etiquette, respect for the old Filsons alone could guide our behaviour. It was no help to me that, although my liking for the old man increased with the occasion, I took an instant dislike to Mrs Filson.

  She was not old, hardly perhaps sixty, but she was formidable and square and deeply unsure of herself. She sat a massive figure in their lounge, receiving court and yet not quite knowing what to do with it. She sat too in a tight short skirt with thick legs wide apart, showing her underwear. I dislike above everything old women who obtrude what I wish to associate only with the young and desirable. That she was shy I could tell from the momentary tremblings of her square untweezered jaw, but she disguised her shyness in an aggressive jollity peculiarly inappropriate to the occasion and more inappropriate still, I am sure, poor thing, to her real emotions.