The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  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.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” he said.

  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 refile 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 afternoo
n.

  “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 Stret-ton. 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 deputke 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 enquiry, 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 connection 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, Zurich 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 sinister 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.”