The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  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 carcase 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 rue 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 judgments 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 magnaminity 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, of 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 Lea-cock’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 Sk Robert Falco
n.

  V

  A GOOD OLD, RARE OLD, ARMAGEDDON