The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  And now around the whole long table there rose a familiar buzz of conversation—talk of renewed confidence, ancient European culture, international science, sound economy and civilized living that played in and out of the massed chrysanthemums and antique silver to assure us that a new era of solid, adult, wide horizoned, big men had begun. Indeed there they were, as Martha and I had seen them at five or six dinner parties now in the Director’s ornate, heavily Empire dining room—Harmer, who stood for half a dozen or so other businessmen with international interests; Tillotson, who stood for forward-minded, international-minded, middle of the road Trade Union leadership; a prominent zoologist or two from Italy or France or Spain; a Second Secretary from one of the European Embassies; occasionally, as this evening, a representative of the world of art, a literary critic of that older, more European-minded school who had now suddenly come once more to the fore: the cultivated, rich, cautious, go-ahead old men who had put an end to a wasteful war, substituted sense for sentiment, and were about to substitute prosperity for patriotism. All except the literary gentleman had matching wives; and he had been paired, following a stream of arch apology from Sophie, with another gentleman, unknown to us all—a Mr Hilary Blanchard-White. He was a man with an old-fashioned musician’s mane of white hair, staring, liquid eyes, and over-regular, over-white false teeth with which he smiled at everything that was said. He spoke in an old-fashioned actor’s dramatic tremolo and constantly rubbed his hands across his face as he talked.

  “A funny sort of chap,” Englander told me before dinner, as we drank our sherry. “I don’t know whether you’ll like him. He seems agreeable enough, smiles all the time. He’s one of these Uni-European men. Not a man of substance at all. He’s taught languages in Hamburg, Utrecht, Geneva, Toulouse, all over the place. But he organized a lot of the underground work and Harmer tells me the Government have got to give those chaps some sort of recognition. He’s interested in zoos and museums. Though what he’s got to say about them, I can’t imagine, since he’s not a scientist or a scholar. Of course, if this country had come to its senses sooner, and made peace sooner, events would never have brought such men to the fore. They’re a product, of violence. We’d never have heard of Uni-Europeans. But then if this country had had a little more sense, we shouldn’t have to build up a Zoo from a collection of reptiles that an old man like me had the sense to evacuate in time.”

  This was a favourite topic of Englander’s. He was holding forth upon it even now to his dinner guests. It was his war story. In actual fact, he had spent the war itself very quietly at St. Gallen; and his constant reiteration of the tale of the secret building of the reptile park was the one sign he gave of the garrulity of old age.

  “If it hadn’t been for me,” he was saying, “there’d have been no Zoo. But I got in touch with our friend Harmer here and we built a full scale reptile park up in the Hebrides, while you were fussing about losing animals down in Wales, Carter. Of course, Scotland Yard was pretty near on to us at one point, thought it was some sort of submarine base for the European fleet—and so it was, wasn’t it Harmer? But that had nothing to do with me. Then that chap Falcon tipped me off that the Yard were inquiring about me. I don’t know why he told me, but there you are, he did. I’d have been home otherwise to take Sophie out before the big bang started.”

  “And so you left me. And they put me in prison, Herr Kästner. And gave me a carbolic bath. Imagine an old woman like me scrubbed with carbolic soap!” She laughed until the tears ran down, “And Mr Carter saved my life by sending me food. Yes, you did. Everybody else had forgotten the old woman. And this handsome young man who had never seen me, sent me food and books. You didn’t know I was such an ugly old thing did you, Mr Carter? You thought Emile had a beautiful young wife. That’s it I know.”

  “We shan’t forget what you did, Carter,” Dr Englander said, “And as far as the Zoo could be kept going, Carter kept it going. They put a poor chap in charge who’d gone off his rocker—a chap called Beard. That’s how Carter got stuck out in the back of beyond with this dysentery. This chap Beard panicked and rushed a lot of lemurs out into the country, Lord knows why! Just as the war collapsed. Nothing’s ever been heard of him again, has there, Carter?”

  I said, “It’s almost certain he was killed in the fighting that followed in that area. The farm where I left him and the family living there were blown up. I shouldn’t have survived myself if it hadn’t been that a country woman took me in, and fed me and nursed me.”

  “And no doubt charged you for it afterwards. I know the ways of peasants. My grandfather came from peasant stock in the Engadine.”

  Martha was indignant. “They wouldn’t take a penny, Dr Englander,” she cried. “Not a penny! Neither she nor the boy. And they were so poor . . . and it was so awful.” Martha had been appalled at the conditions of English rural slums.

  “They saved his life and she calls them awful. Oh, you’re a naughty girl,” Mrs Englander cried.

  The Director said, “Beard had a lot of crippled relatives and other family encumbrances, didn’t he? The Zoo will have to do something for them, Carter. After all it wasn’t his fault they put him in charge. Anyway they never paid the chap a living wage. I tell you what, you go down and see what’s happened to his family and, if they’re in real need, I can fork out until we get the Committee working on salaries and pensions.”

  I could hardly refrain from doing ‘thumbs up’ to Martha. I had scored heavily in my fight to establish the Englanders as decent people.

  I said, “I’ve been to see them. The spastic son’s clever. He does some maths coaching, but, of course, it isn’t easy to keep a sister and a grandmother on that. I don’t know that he’ll accept a pension—his relations with his father were very bad. Beard was very hard with them, or, rather, he became so. The boy seems to understand, but he can’t forgive.”

  As I spoke I could see the wretched fat neurotic daughter twisting her handkerchief round her fingers, and saying, “You see, Dad never took any account of what happened to us, so we can’t care what’s happened to him.” The boy had squared his huge over-developed shoulders, “That’s not fair, Catherine. He did the essentials for us. But with such loathing. You couldn’t help wanting him out of the way.” His handsome face turned to me. “We had years to form that view. It seems that you were quick to do so weren’t you?” But he had spoken without bitterness.

  Now Englander helped himself to a large piece of omelette surprise with raspberry ice and meringue from the dish the butler offered. He shovelled it down as he talked.

  “Ah, well. All that sort of thing’s not a subject to entertain guests with. Failure and illness! But we’ll do something for them. The essence of getting a good collection together again is to have a competent well paid staff and you won’t get them if you neglect their widows and orphans.” He turned to Harmer. “You say the scientists and technicians will come back as soon as things have settled down. But you industrialists have got to spend your money freely. We’ll do your work for you at the Zoo, for example, but if you want that work well done you must pay better rates than we gave our staff before the war. I’m right, aren’t I, Carter? You see why I want you back, to help me put the Zoo’s case to these fellows.” He indicated Harmer and Tillotson. “We’re already losing some good men. Jackley, that’s our ichthyologist, was interned by the Spanish at Funchal. Now he’s elected to go to the States, not to come back here. He gives some clap-trap, political reason, but that’s not it, of course. It’s because of the poor wage he used to be paid.”

  Sophie Englander now claimed my attention. She said, “And so you say that many of these poor people are really in want. And you think we are selfish pigs with our saddles and our ice puddings, is that it, my dear?”

  Martha replied, “That’s kind of what I meant to convey, yes, dear Mrs Englander.”

  The old woman cried, “Of course! And so we are! But we have to entertain, my dear. Emile’s a big man now. But I’ll tell you
what, I’ll come down to your relief centre and do some work. Maybe there are things that can be got for these people by bullying in the right quarters. And I’m very good at bullying, you know. I’ve always been spoilt and that makes you good at bullying. And in any case what’s the use of Emile knowing all the large pots unless we can get something out of them?”

  This time I really did make the thumbs up sign to Martha; and, catching a certain glance from her, we both began to giggle. Mrs Englander looked at us doubtfully for a second, then she too began to laugh.

  “Well that is nice,” she said, “to see people laugh at nothing like that. Do you know sometimes when I’m spraying in the orchid house or playing patience I begin to laugh until I can’t stop, just thinking about the time Emile fell off a sleigh at Saint Moritz. But with your husband you’re laughing all the time. Look at the way he mimics everybody. I’m sure he mimics old girl Englander behind her back.” She roared with laughter at the idea.

  But now suddenly Mr Blanchard-White’s elocutionary tones broke through our laughter. He leaned forward and compelled full silence by his gleaming smile.

  “You ask me what we shall have to do. Well I haven’t really formed an opinion yet. Not really you know. But if I may say so, this talk of recompensing or pensioning or what have you the dependants of traitors and the suggestion that we should out-bid the Americans for the services of other traitors sounds a little too like the old England, the illogical, sentimental England that has been moving for so many centuries further and further away from the main stream of civilization. If I may venture on a moment’s autobiography, that’s why I made my life on the continent—to escape from the lack of logic and the false sentiment here that left so little room for men of talent. You ask me,” he gleamed in turn at all of us around the table, like an expectant alligator, “what I think people in England want. I take it that you mean the people who fought to save her from herself. Well—in so far as I can speak for the Uni-European Movement, I think I should say that we are hungry to see justice done. And what else?” He rubbed his hands over his face, stretching downwards the loose flesh of his cheeks and of his long chin. “What else? Well, I suppose, to be rid of a little of the grey mist of puritanism. To have a little fun.” He smiled specially at the ladies. “Yes. To see justice done and to have a little fun. I don’t think they’re such incompatible aims really. In fact quite the contrary, quite the contrary, particularly if, in throwing off the puritan legacy, we get closer to the rich vein of Mediterranean brutality on which our European legacy so much depends.”

  No one spoke for a minute after he had done. Then Dr Englander addressed Piétaud, the curator of reptiles from Paris. “What did you think of the paper on Loxocemus that that Mexican chap contributed to last quarter’s ‘Herpetology’? The ecological data were new to me.”

  “Yes. They were remarkably interesting. But these field workers should not go beyond their province. To question the classification at this stage is absurd, but absolutely absurd.”

  “Yes,” said Dr Englander expansively, “small nations!” and he caught his wife’s eye.

  In her turn, she caught the eye of Frau Kästner and with the rustling of silk and the glittering of jewels—mainly Sophie’s— the ladies rose and were gone.

  We finally settled the question of my returning to the Zoo when we got home that night.

  I said, “Well, at any rate, you can’t help liking old Sophie. She’s such an innocent old booby!”

  Martha said, “Yes. And I’m glad to see that you like her enough to treat her as grown up.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, only that you don’t think she has to be spared the unpleasant side of life. Unlike those other poor old innocents Mrs Leacock and that boy’s mother, I hated that, Simon, it was so insulting of you.”

  I swallowed this and asked, “But you accept the Englanders?”

  Martha said, “She is a darling and he’s not half as awful as I thought at first, but I don’t want to go there to dinner any more, Simon. It makes me feel wretched after dealing with near starvation all day.”

  I thought it wise to concede this point. I said, “Of course. We’ll make my digestion the excuse.”

  I think she had expected more opposition from me, for, after the squalors and dreariness of the last month, the absurd splendour of the Englander’s huge Highgate house fitted with my longing for relaxed frivolity. This set-up had been so unexpected to me and that alone made it a continual slightly ridiculous pleasure.

  She said, “Thank you, Simon.”

  “Well?” I asked after a pause.

  “Well?” She quoted it back at me. “That might refer to two things—to the children or to you.”

  “Let’s take the children first.”

  “Simon, while things are like they are here, I don’t want to bring them back.”

  “Then let us go to see them.”

  “You do that this time. Oh, of course, I want to go more than anything, but you don’t work on that relief committee, you don’t see what I see. People—awful people, Simon, like that Stanley and his mother who saved your life! And they’re lost and bewildered. Just keeping one’s head and helping them to fill in forms seems worth while. Until I’ve done my bit of that, I can’t leave England.”

  “In that case, since the children are happy with Hester,” I said, “I shall stay here with you. But do you still not want me to go back to the Zoo?”

  “The doctors say . . .”

  “The doctors say I can return in the New Year. Englander wants me. He’s building up something useful there from scratch. The European zoos are being most generous. And what I like about it all is that Englander is approaching the thing modestly, by degrees. I want to go back, Martha. I’ve seen it through so far, I ought not to desert now.”

  “And the British Reserve?”

  “It won’t get going again for some time. And then I think my health . . .” The vile taste of roasted badger fat filled my mouth. I had to fight back memories. I said quickly, “Well, I couldn’t do field work again for the time being. I want to go back to the Zoo. Do you still object?”

  “No, Simon, I suppose not, if you don’t. Oh, it’s so difficult for me—I’m not entirely British as you are and if you don’t feel it... But, well, if I were wholly British I think I shouldn’t like the present set-up . . .”

  “My dear, the British people as a whole never objected to Federation with Europe. If they had, neither blockade nor threat of bacteriological warfare would have made them give in. No, the war came to an end because most people had never wanted it to begin. Why should we fight to keep the old crowd in power instead of Harmer and Tillotson? It’s no good being highminded and opting out like Jackley and all the top men who’ve decided to emigrate. Englander may be a low-minded, materialistic old bugger, but he’s putting sense before self-indulgent sentiment.”

  “No, I know. In some way these people seem better to me. And yet... Well, look at that awful man tonight with the teeth. There is a lot of scum about.”

  “There always has been. The war’s churned it to the top for a while, that’s all. As a matter of fact Englander referred to that Blanchard-White, when he spoke to me before dinner tonight. He asked me to help them keep those sort of people at bay. So you see.”

  “I suppose so. Very well, darling, you do as you want. But watch out that we don’t lose our way. Watch out that we don’t lose touch with the sort of people we care about.”

  Of course we did a little; we were bound to. Lord Oresby, for example, couldn’t see his way to continuing as our President. This was undoubtedly the time, he said, for men to retire to their country seats, and he went down to Wiltshire; but then he was what one of my aunts would have called ‘ultra correct’. Mr Harmer was elected in his place.

  ’Ultra correct’, I suppose, was also Diana Price’s position. She wrote just before Christmas to ask me to visit her at her little Regency house in Lloyd Square—”There are some things Matthew
wanted you to have.” I went there on a very cold afternoon. She sat in a fur coat in their pretty drawing room.

  She said, “I’m afraid it’s freezingly cold, but it seems to me that any sort of firing is collaboration and that’s that. How does Martha feel about it?”

  I brought the conversation on to Matthew as soon as possible. “He was so immensely original. He made me laugh so much,” I said.

  “Did he? I don’t think one can judge that if one’s been brought up with somebody. He liked you very much. I should be very grateful if you would tell me exactly what happened that night.” When I hesitated, she said, “I have a strong stomach.”

  I told her as fully as I could. “I still can’t understand,” I said, “what made him take that hopeless risk. I’d warned him, you know. And I thought he’d accepted my warning. I said it’s not a time for suicide pilots and he agreed. You know how he joked about things, he said, ‘I’m not Japanese’.”

  “I don’t think Matthew was joking. After all he wasn’t Japanese, was he? But he was a man who always did his duty. If that person Beard muddled things up so that Matthew’s parrots had not been evacuated, he would have felt it was his duty to protect them.”

  “But it was risking certain death.”

  She laughed, “Matthew risked certain death many times in the war against Hitler.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m afraid that I never knew much about that hero side of Matthew.”

  “No? Of course, you were saying that he made you laugh so much.” She got up. “However,” the word cut me sharply, “however, he left you this parcel.” When I opened it later at home, it contained a first edition of “Fanny Hill”, a first edition of “Under the Hill”, and “The Cyprian’s Guide to the London Bagnios for 1847”, also, rather incongruously, a large illustrated folio, “The Aviaries of Our Great Houses” published in 1871.