The Old Men at the Zoo

by Angus Wilson

  The next morning before I left for work, the doorbell rang and I opened to find Jane Falcon on the doorstep with a large suitcase. She had come, she said, to collect Martha’s clothes; Martha was staying with them until she could get a plane. I tried to explain that I had not understood the cause of Martha’s hysteria when I saw her, that I knew now why she was so upset.

  “Are you going to leave Englander to stew in his own juice then?”

  I had thought about this all night. I answered “I can’t. No, that I cannot do.”

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll find Martha very ready to listen. And I can’t say I blame her. This regime’s beginning to stink.”

  “Are the theatres closing?” I asked angrily.

  “Well, that’s a bit different. The show must go on, you know. But even there Joan Plowright’s refused to appear. And I shouldn’t be surprised if others followed suit. No, you’ve lost Martha, Simon, and I’m not surprised.”

  However, she never packed the bags, for I told her firmly that I had no intention of staying in Martha’s house; and that Martha could return without fear of molestation from me.

  Before Jane left, I think that she felt sorry for me because she said, “My dear, it’s a ghastly time, I know. And God knows how long it’s all going on. By the time all this is finished there’ll be a completely new sort of play in the market and dozens of younger agents who will understand things better than I shall. But, there you are, Bobby had his day of importance and I hated it; and then I had mine and he was miserable. So perhaps if we’re both out of the swim, we can happily take a bookshop or something equally hopeless and go bust running it together and be reasonably happy.”

  I tried after that to get in touch with Martha many times, but she refused to see me or to listen to me. I, on my side, became increasingly stubborn for, as she had predicted, while Englander had to compromise himself deeper with Blanchard-White, so my position became increasingly untenable.

  VIII

  DOWN AND UP AGAIN

  I CAME to the Duke of Windsor every night now to get drunk; and I drank steadily there every lunch time though I was seldom tight until the evening. But that morning I was very drunk already by one o’clock. The usual crowd was there, and I was telling them as usual why I found myself among them.

  I said, “You see when I saw what was wrong with my life, I had to do something about it.”

  Mrs Molyneux-West, whose dress was covered in food stains said, “Of course, you did, darling.”

  “I had to think what it was that was wrong. You see when a man’s wife won’t sleep with him and when he’s doing all sorts of things at his work of which he’s utterly ashamed. Because I was utterly ashamed, you know. Not, and I think I ought to make this point very clear, because surely the point of education is to avoid false generalizations and to make points very clear. Not that,” here I tried to illustrate to the Captain and to Mr Laurence Heath all that I meant by manual gestures alone, but I was forced to return to speech, “not that anything impermissible had occurred at the Zoo up to the time when I absented myself. I want to make that completely clear. Dr Emile Englander, the Director of the Zoo, is an eminent man and an eminent scientist and what’s important a man whose boss I’m proud to be. I hope you can understand that.” I pointed my finger at Mrs Molyneux-West but it seemed to point at old Sheila.

  She said, “Happy days.”

  I began to giggle. “Am I being as pompous as I sound?” I asked.

  Jasper Greenacre, the lugubrious journalist with the long dark hair, cotton trousers and a stiff white collar, said, “Not at all. You seek exactitude. Don’t apologize for it. The educated classes have almost apologized themselves out of existence as it is.”

  My anger at the length of his interruption made my head ache. I said, “It seemed to me that what was wrong with my life was bothering about standards. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’ve never been an anarchist ...”

  Mr Lawrence Heath patted his hair. He said, “Well that’s one mercy, say we all.”

  “But I realized that I’d got to go down to the depths.” I looked down and then shut my eyes because the depths seemed to be coming up at me. “To purify myself from the stink of high places by association and . . . and that sort of thing with the rejected and despised, to redeem myself by rolling myself in ordure. You’ll find it all in Dostoevsky . . .”

  Mrs Molyneux-West was fumbling in her bag so she didn’t hear my words, but she said, “You’re telling me, darling. I was the original one of that troupe.”

  “I could have gone among the razor groups, the Swiss Cottage crowd. I could have got some big, strapping woman to beat me. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know life. I’ve seen things.” I thought of Harriet and I began to cry.

  The Captain said, “My dear chap, you’re a victim of your own temperament. Nobody holds it against you for a minute. Physical courage is simply a matter of chance . . .”

  Old Mr Crowther, the retired chartered accountant, said, “You’ve never said a truer word than that, old man. Time and time again I’ve had people come to me, people with big accounts, people who’ve risked fortunes, and there they were trembling like leaves because of some bloody tax inspector.”

  I said, “I could have done vile things. But I knew where it lay—the boue, the real boue, the mud that sticks and shall redeem thee.”

  “Ah,” said Jasper Greenacre, “I shouldn’t be surprised if she claimed you yet, old boy, the Mother of Seven Hills.”

  I said, “So I took my room in Cromwell Road, near the flat of the man of God, and I came here among you.”

  They all laughed now, as they always did at this point; it made me tremble with anger because it was true: I had chosen them out carefully—the saloon bar washouts, too sunk even to become Uni-Europeans—if they couldn’t release me, who could? I felt large tears rolling down my cheeks.

  I said, “I wanted your help and you haven’t been able to help me. It’s all still there,” I said, and hit my chest, where indeed the drink had given me an indigestion pain like a lead weight.

  Mrs Horniman, the manageress, spoke now; she said, “Do you know what I’d advise you to do? I’d advise you to go right back to the Zoo and tell them what you think of them.”

  Old Sheila remarked, “I never liked the idea of it anyway. All those poor creatures shut up like that.”

  The Captain said, “Very good advice indeed, Mrs Horniman. You go back there. To the London Zoo. My godfather, Sir Alec Fitting, was a Fellow there and the old chap used to take me along as a kid. We used to go on Sunday mornings— Fellows only—and I used to be allowed to stroke the koala bear. If all that’s gone down the drain, then we may as well pack up. And so you ought to tell this fellow Engledine. It’s your duty.”

  “And as to your wife,” Jasper Greenacre said, “exercise the droit de seigneur. You’re her lord and master. Good God, that’s the foundation of the whole thing.”

  Mr Lawrence Heath said, “Well, I don’t expect you believe in the psychic, but I’m rather gifted where human nature’s concerned. As soon as you came into the bar for the first time, I said to myself, ‘Well, I know what that one’s got to do. Take a pull on himself’. And so you have. Hasn’t he, dear?”

  Mrs Molyneux-West said, “I really couldn’t care, darling, what he does. I’ve got to the point where I can’t think of anything but number one.”

  “What do you say, Sir?” the Captain asked a brown hatted man who was a stranger to the bar. “Do you agree with me in thinking that brains are more important than guts every time?”

  The man said, “Yes, I should think that’s so.”

  It seemed to me that they were all decided. I went outside. It was difficult to get a sanctioned taxi in those days. Two, coming down the Cromwell Road, refused to take me. However, in the end, my rather soiled Secretary’s identity card did the trick. I was deposited at the Staff Entrance to the Zoo.

  My legs seemed leaden and my head like an unc
ooked pudding, but I mustered up all the dignity I could find. I walked to the Administrative offices and up to my own room. I had not been there for seven weeks or more, but the staff, perhaps cowed by my sudden apparition, made no move to check me. I went to the Director’s room. As I stood outside the door I could hear Blanchard-White’s voice in full oratory.

  “You don’t seem to understand, Director, the degree to which these spectacles are needed to educate the public in European living. The Government demands them.”

  Englander’s voice came croaking a little, very troubled. “We want to do all we can for the Government, you know that. But you’ve heard the most eminent zoologists from France and Germany on the vital importance of the research we’re doing here. That must come first.”

  “I’m not sure, Englander, if you realize the degree to which England has outpaced our good friends abroad in the quality and intensity of its Europeanism . . .”

  I opened the door and stood as straight as I could manage. I opened my mouth but no words came.

  Then I heard myself say thickly and not as clearly as I wished, “Whatever people think, Englander, I know you’re not a shit. So don’t let yourself get caught up with shits.”

  I think I was trying to find Matthew’s moral voice. The surprise of my appearance had held them both still for a few moments; then Englander came over and took me by the arm.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Carter. You ought to be in bed. He’s been very ill, White. I don’t know what his doctor’s are doing letting him out.”

  Blanchard-White cast a suspicious glance at me, but all he said was, “Ah!”

  Englander pulled me out into the corridor. “You ought to be shot,” he said, “and you would have been if I hadn’t acted quickly. You don’t think what harm you do.” He called to Rackham. “Take Mr Carter and see that he goes out of the Gardens and give my orders that he’s not to be allowed back.”

  Rackham took my arm, but I struggled with him. Englander looked into another room and returned with Strawson.

  “I’ve come about a little staff matter, Sir. Pro botto publico, as one might put it.”

  “That can wait now, Strawson. You must help Rackham to throw Mr Carter out of the Gardens and don’t let him come back.”

  I struggled hard against the two men, but they used their force with long pent-up resentment and literally threw me on to the pavement outside the main entrance.

  I pulled myself up, aching and dizzy, and set off to walk round the Inner Circle to the North Entrance. I knew that I was being followed—and, in great degree, I found relief in the knowledge. But I had things to do yet, so I hurried my pace. The hot July wind blew a cloud of dust into my face. I giggled. Should I try to get back to Englander or demand my rights of Martha? When, at last, having dragged, as it seemed, my legs through seas of treacle, I got to the Regent’s Park Road, my hand, fumbling in my pocket, found my old latchkey. It seemed an omen. I crossed the road to our house, let myself in and discovered Martha bending over the kitchen sink. The curve of her back, the rounding of her hips, her long legs, all filled me with such lust and affection combined that I longed to take her in my arms and to soothe away her sadness —sadness that I knew must be great, for the Government would give her no pass to join the children, I guessed too that she was working for the underground movement. She turned her face towards me, it had crumbled with depression; and I loved her so that my body shook with care for her. Then her face hardened.

  She said, “You’re drunk, Simon. It’s bad enough that you should come here! But to come here drunk!”

  I tried to fight down my anger. I said, “I’ve broken with it. I’ve rebelled.”‘

  She turned wearily back to the sink, “Dutch courage, I suppose,” she said.

  I seized her by the hips and turned her round. “You bitch! You self-righteous bitch!”

  I smacked her face.

  She said, “All right, Simon. That’s easy. You needn’t do that. If you want me, you can have me. It’s your right.”

  She walked out of the kitchen. I followed up the stairs to the bedroom. She began to undress. I took off my shoes and my trousers. She turned to me, naked, and, as I came towards her, she said,

  “You disgust me, Simon, absolutely. And yet I’m letting you do this. I suppose I still have some little pity for you, but that’s all it is, remember. I’m doing this out of pity.”

  I was terrified that I should burst into tears in front of her. I seized up my shoes and my trousers and ran downstairs. I was still barefooted and my trousers were not zipped up when the man in the brown hat and another policeman picked me up and bundled me into a van. I was taken to Enfield Camp and I was there until after Liberation Day.

  The judge did not have the parchment white skin that I expected of judges. He was red faced, loose mouthed and had protruding eyes—all in all, he was as near a man could be to a jolly lobster. But it made little difference, for his voice in summing-up was of the thin, slow, dry kind that I associated with old parchment faces.

  He said, “Among other evidence you have heard was that of Mr Simon Carter at present acting as Director of the London Zoo. Mr Carter previously worked as Secretary and in the last month or so of his office he worked under the defendant. Now Mr Carter was at pains to make it clear that in his view the defendant never consented or intended to consent to the suggestions made by Blanchard-White for the pitting of political prisoners against wild beasts as a public spectacle. Mr Carter asserted and asserted roundly that it was the defendant’s intention merely to play for time, and, indeed that the defendant simply did not take these suggestions seriously. This, of course, supports the plea offered by the defendant himself that he had no intention of allowing these spectacles to take place, that he could not entirely believe that Blanchard-White intended them seriously, and that he would have resigned his post had there been any attempt to present such spectacles at the Zoo. But I draw your attention to the fact that Mr Carter evidently found something to make him so worried that he withdrew his services from the Zoological Society only a few weeks after the European Opening Day of which we have heard so much. What exactly caused him to do this remains obscure. He says that he resigned or rather absented himself because he was generally unhappy with the course of his life. ‘I felt I was on the wrong tack’ were his words. But the suspicion must remain that he left the Zoo because he was horrified by some particular suggestion made by Blanchard-White and perhaps accepted by Englander. At any rate his evidence cannot be wholly accepted as an exoneration of the defendant’s conduct even up to that time. Mr Carter may well wish not to incriminate the defendant more than his memory absolutely permits, and his memory after his term of imprisonment at the notorious Enfield Camp may well not be of the most efficient.”

  So much for my attempts to help, I thought, as the judge’s voice creaked on. I looked at Englander in the dock. He had closed his eyes. If only he could be told not to. It gave him the look of an obscene old parrot and must lead the jury to think that they were trying Tiberius. Sophie, sitting by Martha, seemed to have acquired a vacant, zombie look as she stared out of her messed up maquillage.

  “The defendant,” the judge went on, “has suggested that he regarded Blanchard-White’s letters as a joke. But what sort of a joke is this to be made in official letters?—’I shall select only the most splendid physical specimens of both sexes, the youngest and the strongest, those in fact most qualified to give the longest and most fharming spectacles when pitted against the lithe grace of the leopard or the clumsy tenderness of the bear. This will be something truly Roman, truly European in its majesty.’ I read only the least offensive extract from a correspondence that has already nauseated us too long. True, it is a one sided correspondence. But can the defendant really have thought it a joke? A joke in shocking taste! It has been suggested elsewhere that these letters of Blanchard-White’s were a sort of sexual fantasy put on to paper. Did the defendant receive them in that light and so disregard them? Well, I
suppose that may be. But we have to consider that the building of an arena for these abominable purposes was commenced in the Zoological Gardens. The building went on very slowly, it is true. Building purposely delayed, says the defendant. Well ...”

  Dr Englander got two years. To most people, who thought him guilty, it seemed a light sentence. To me, who knew him to be innocent, it seemed monstrous. In any case he was an old man. Martha took charge of poor Sophie at the end of the trial.

  I came away depressed and unhappy, or rather as depressed and unhappy as I could be at that time—and, to tell the truth, that was really less than it should have been for I was thoroughly enjoying acting as Director. There was a mass of work to do. Stability of a kind had come to us. The last three years had given me a wealth of ideas for the Zoo’s future and a corresponding wealth of caution and moderation in my belief in their possible application. At last it seemed that I might have a chance to try for myself and I believed that I should enjoy doing so. The children were home. Martha and I were living together for their sake. And although I was cautious in my hopes of repairing the relations between us, it was a pleasanter life than I had known for some time. After Enfield, life on this bright, cold January day, with its clear blue sky and puffy white clouds above the busy London streets, seemed a demi-paradise. Even the prospect of luncheon with our new rather self-important Vice-Président, Professor Hales of Brighton University, didn’t damp my spirits. After all, old Oresby was to be the host, and I delighted in the old boy. Together we could keep down any new man.

  Through the long windows of the dining room of Oresby’s club I could still see the clouds, floating across the painted ceiling sky above Hales’ head. It was a head, swollen enough heaven knew, for any rococo ceiling—like a hideous cherub’s, all swollen cheeked, small mouthed, vast eyed, and with a fluffy babylike near baldness. He spoke rapidly, as though imitating machine gun fire, and brushed away other people’s remarks with a similar staccato contemptuous laugh.