But it was hard going. By now the zoo had 650 animals and a staff of forty to look after them. The work was hard and dirty, and the hours could be unsociable. The pay was poor – nevertheless it was an expense that had to be met, week in, week out. The feeding statistics were even more daunting: 180,000 apples a year, eighty thousand pears, fifty thousand oranges, countless tons of onions, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, tens of thousands of eggs, an untold quantity of milk, all that meat. ‘Money … this obsession … money,’ Gerald complained to a visiting journalist, sighing deeply. ‘There’s never enough in a zoo.’
Gerald had always seen the development of his zoo as taking place in two phases. The first was the establishment of the basic structure, with a stock of animals sufficient to attract a paying public in numbers large enough to guarantee the continuance of the embryonic institution. The second phase would be the zoo’s evolution into a public body and serious scientific establishment whose primary function was the captive breeding of species threatened with extinction. At the request of Julian Huxley he had delayed pushing this through in order to give priority to the foundation of the World Wildlife Fund, which came into being in 1961. But now, with Jersey Zoo on a stable, albeit still impoverished footing, Gerald decided the time had come to move to the second phase of the organisation’s development and transform his small local zoo into a world-class charitable scientific Trust.
With the help of a friend, James Platt, a director of Shell International and the main architect of the zoo’s recovery, the metamorphosis began. ‘Without Jimmy Platt,’ Jacquie was to recall, ‘we could never have done it. The first thing he did was to take me on one side and ask me point blank: “Do you want the zoo to carry on?” He liked Gerry very much, he said, but Gerry was a dreamer and I was a practical person. So before things went any further he needed to know if my heart was still in it or if what I really wanted was to call it a day. And the temptation was very great, from a personal point of view, for the sake of my marriage, even at this early stage, to say, no, close the place down. But I didn’t, because obviously it would have been a dreadful thing to have done. I mean, we had the animals, we had the huge debts, we had the young staff living on a pittance of £3 a week and pledging their support to bring the place round, we had all those years of struggle to get to this point. So I said, yes, I wanted to carry on.’
Gerald’s long-cherished dream of a Wildlife Preservation Trust was a bold and ambitious proposal, but it was readily accepted by the influential people Jimmy Platt persuaded to take an interest in the zoo’s affairs. ‘He convinced them that Gerry was not getting a penny out of it,’ Jacquie was to relate, ‘and gave the whole thing an aura of respectability. Because of this, our creditors were willing to let us carry on.’
Matters now took a decisive turn. In January 1963, in a sad parting of the ways, Ken Smith left the island, along with his wife Trudy and a number of animals of his own which had been kept at the zoo. They had contracted to work at Jersey Zoo for three years, and had stayed for four. It was time to move on. Gerald’s sister Margaret greeted Ken and Trudy on their return to England. ‘I felt a traitor about him,’ she recalled. ‘Suddenly Jacquie and Gerry would go off people. Like Ken. It was me that picked up all his animals in a van and brought them to St Alban’s Avenue. It was me that kept all the heaters going to keep the little things alive and then drove them down to Paignton Zoo for safe-keeping.’ Smith, she felt, had not been given sufficient credit for his part in the establishment of the Jersey Zoo. But within a short while he had bounced back and established his own small zoo in Exmouth.
Steps were now taken to wipe out the zoo’s outstanding debts. An appeal was launched, and the Jersey Evening Post published a letter signed by twelve prominent people concerned with the zoo, asking islanders to contribute to a public subscription in support of the zoo, which was not only a jewel in the island’s crown but potentially a leading light in the cause of animal conservation around the world. Gerald had kept all his fan letters, and with the help of Catha Weller and the new zoo secretary, Betty Boizard, he wrote to every fan at home and abroad asking for help.
The money poured in. Donations ranged from £1000 from the island’s well-heeled to a small boy’s pocket money. The zoo staff, despite their meagre incomes, clubbed together to contribute a donation which touched Gerald and Jacquie deeply. A hundred and fifty residents of Jersey banded together with others interested in wildlife and raised a total of £13,500. Jersey was well-known as a haven for the wealthy, although the source of their wealth was sometimes obscure. One day, following a tip-off from his bank manager, Gerald approached a certain ‘Mr X’ for a donation. The man – tall, charming, urbane – received Gerald in his palatial home, listened politely to his embarrassed, half-choked request, then calmly wrote out a cheque for £2000. Gerald gratefully resolved to name one of his orang-utan babies after this kind and munificent fellow, but three months later, Mr X suddenly hit the headlines. ‘It seemed that he had, allegedly, swindled a large number of sober Jersey citizens out of their wealth and was, in consequence, forced to spend a short period of time in one of Her Majesty’s less salubrious prisons. I wished I had known him a lot sooner. He could have taught me a lot.’
Gerald’s own financial contribution was by far the biggest. Against the advice of many who were close to him, he agreed to shoulder the whole burden of the £20,000 bank loan, waiving any right he might have had to reclaim the money – thus, in effect, donating it to the zoo. Since his only income was from writing and television – unreliable livelihoods both – he had condemned himself to unremitting toil for years to come. But he was adamant.
In May 1963 Gerald made another critical decision, and appointed Jeremy Mallinson, then only twenty-seven, as his deputy. The two had first met in June 1959, shortly after Gerald had arrived in Jersey from Argentina, when Jeremy had a summer job as a casual hand in the bird section. Fervently interested in animals and the natural world, he had left his first job as a trainee in his father’s wine and spirit business in Jersey to join the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Staff Corps as a regular soldier, his main motive being to explore as much of Africa and see as much of the continent’s wildlife as he could. When he returned to Britain he turned down the prospects of a career in the Hong Kong Police or tea-planting in Assam in favour of working with animals, first on a dairy farm in Devon and then in dog kennels in Surrey. When he returned to Jersey his plans to establish kennels of his own were thwarted by financial and planning restrictions, and in desperation he applied for a summer job at the newly opened Jersey Zoo, not because he was interested in zoos but because he had just read and been captivated by My Family and Other Animals.
The temporary job stretched into the winter, and as he moved from the tropical birds section to the mammals Jeremy became increasingly intrigued by the work: not simply the problems of daily care, but the bigger picture, the threats to the survival of animals in the wild, and Gerald’s plans to rescue endangered species from extinction. ‘With his Duke of Wellington nose, his buttercup-coloured hair and his bright blue eyes,’ Gerald was to record, ‘Jeremy was as devoted to our animals as if he had given birth to each of them personally. His habit of referring to human male and female acquaintances as “fine specimens” was an indication that his job tended to creep into his everyday life.’ As Jeremy’s knowledge of the maintenance and breeding of exotic species began to grow, he began to feel he should extend his education to include a collecting expedition of his own, and in October 1961 he set off for southern Africa in search of wild creatures.
When he returned to Jersey Ken Smith had gone, and Gerald and Jacquie needed someone to take over the day-to-day reins. ‘Gerry asked me up into his office,’ Jeremy recalled, ‘right at the top of the manor house. “Jeremy,” he said to me, “would you be very honoured to become my deputy – the Deputy Director of Jersey Zoo?” He gave me two days to think about it. Well, I had been his disciple right from the start. He was the master. He couldn’t have been m
ore supportive to me. I was a total sort of backwoodsman, really, but he always encouraged me and gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. He was a very charismatic man, and like all great men he couldn’t care less who you were or what your background or qualifications were. If he saw some quality in you which he liked he would support you. He could never work with someone he didn’t like in some way, no matter what their qualifications were. He had this tremendous insight into people, you see, though he never bothered to quantify or qualify it. So after two days I went back to him and said: “I’d be proud.’”
But Jeremy Mallinson was soon aware that he had not one superior but two, for Jacquie was even more active than Gerald in practical matters to do with the running of the zoo. (When Tony Lort-Philips found himself on the receiving end of Jacquie’s orders, he answered back: ‘If this was a ship, I would expect to take my orders from the ship’s captain, not his wife.’) ‘Jacquie was very direct,’ Mallinson says. ‘She shot from the hip. She was an intelligent woman and if she saw something she didn’t like she’d say so. Right at the start I had an altercation with Jacquie over something, and I said to her: “Look, either you do it or I do it, but I can’t do part of something.” When Gerry got to hear of this he was very annoyed. “I don’t employ a dog and have to bark myself,” he said [to Jacquie]. “I expect him or her to have the authority and I don’t expect that to be undermined by you, even if you are my wife, or anyone else.” To give Jacquie her full due, I never had any problems after that. She would say what she thought but would never sulk about something or harbour grudges. And I can understand the enormous pressures she was under, as Gerry was too.’
But Jacquie was not amused. She had always tried to maintain a rapport with both the animals and the staff, as part of the ‘open-door’ policy she and Gerald pursued at the zoo. ‘The staff felt they could speak freely to me about anything,’ she was to say, ‘so that I was a sort of conduit to Gerry. This he happily accepted until one day – for no discernible reason – he objected strongly to all this “hob-nobbing” and proceeded to give me a pompous lecture about how to comport myself both in the Zoo and in the island generally. Being even more Irish than Gerry I exploded and told him what he could do with his precious Zoo and committees.’
By now Gerald’s eleventh book in nine years, The Whispering Land – an account of the expedition to Argentina back in 1959 – had been published. Gerald was among the best-selling authors in English. His adventurous spirit, his spontaneous gift for narrative and anecdote, his talent for divining the characters of the rare creatures of the wild with the same clear, humorous and unsentimental eyes with which he regarded the people he met in remote places – all served to make him a master of animal and travel writing. To have maintained such unfailing standards of entertainment for more than fifteen years could only be described as a triumph.
Gerald started work on a new book, Menagerie Manor, a description of the first four years of the Jersey Zoo. At the same time he was heavily engaged in writing the scripts for Chris Parsons’ seven-part documentary series Two in the Bush, an account of the journey through New Zealand, Australia and Malaya. But the manifold problems besetting the new book’s subject itself were causing him angst-full days and sleepless nights. He made a number of attempts to write the book, and but for Jacquie’s intervention would have torn up the lot. ‘Never have I wished so fervently that I could write the book for him,’ she said.
Gerald’s distaste – revulsion, even – for putting pen to paper had become almost pathological. In part, the problem was an acute case of literary burn-out. But also, the whole process of scribbling simply seemed trivial to Gerald compared to the real work in hand: the survival of the zoo and the formation of the Trust. Yet there were times when Gerald did dimly perceive that it was actually his writing that empowered him. It was his writing that provided him with fame, money, popular status and the attention of the media. Without his books he could never have set up his zoo in the first place.
The distractions caused by the establishment of the Trust were formidable, but at long last they were overcome. It was announced that the first Trustees were to be Lady Coutanche, wife of the ex-Bailiff of Jersey, the Earl of Jersey and Jimmy Platt. There was also to be a council consisting of a number of interested local people, ranging from the editor of the Jersey Evening Post to the local bank manager, who was Honorary Treasurer.
The bank manager was soon to be replaced by a much more heavyweight figure – a corporate chief and ardent conservationist by the name of Sir Giles Guthrie, Bt, OBE, DSC, a senior merchant banker who was shortly to move into the airline business. Peter Scott came to Jersey to help launch the Trust, and in due course became one of its first scientific advisors.
On 6 July 1963, the second act in the drama was finally concluded. ‘It was a great day,’ Gerald recorded, ‘when we assembled in the dark depths of the impressive Royal Court in St Helier to hear ourselves incorporated and thus made legal. Lawyers, like black crows in their gowns, flitted through the gloom; they all chatted together in hushed voices. So finally we emerged blinking into the sunlight and went to the nearest hostelry to celebrate the fact that the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust was no longer a dream but a reality.’
Gerald had handed the ownership and management of his zoo to the Trust, with himself as its Director (honorary, unpaid), Lord Jersey as its Chairman, the dodo as its logo, ‘the stationary ark’ as its concept and the bleak cautionary message ‘Extinction Is For Ever’ as its shibboleth. Soon the Trustees and Council were meeting monthly, two Council members had been co-opted on to the zoo management side, and the scientific advisory committee was up and running. ‘The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust has been formed to protect all animals in danger of extinction,’ Gerald announced, ‘but with a particular emphasis on the smaller, more neglected and perhaps less publicly glamorous ones. Our aim is to track down animals in danger and breed them here in captivity. We can then build up a colony of them and restock the areas where they were in danger.’
With the Trust now in proper working order, Gerald, Jacquie and Chris Parsons set off to Nîmes in July for a fortnight to recce locations for a proposed Camargue film, to be called A Bull Called Marius. Afterwards Gerald and Jacquie joined Lawrence and Claude at the Mazet in Languedoc, where Mother was enjoying a short holiday, for a crash convalescence that involved large doses of sun, food and wine. ‘Not looking forward to our return at all,’ Jacquie wrote to Alan and Ella Thomas on 24 July.
The problem was not just the workload but the lifestyle, in so far as the two were distinguishable. Gerald’s legendary Jersey way of life was established at the outset of his occupancy at the manor as an adaptation of the open-house family life of Corfu and Bournemouth. He and Jacquie lived over the shop. Beneath them lay the council room and offices, and all around them stretched the zoo. Gerald wrote his books and scripts on the kitchen table (he never liked to be out of sight, even in the throes of composition), handled any impromptu zoo business discussions in the living-room, and conversed and caroused with his intimates into the early hours around the dining table. The front door was open to all comers at all times, and the tramp of feet up the stairs to the flat on some zoo mission or other became the leitmotif of the Durrells’ days. There was rarely much privacy and precious little peace. Such access and transparency in the conduct of Gerald’s affairs was both a matter of personal instinct and professional policy. It did not suit everybody, least of all Jacquie and Mother: ‘Visitors daily in and out till one feels like screaming,’ Mother complained in a letter to Larry and Claude on 12 October 1963.
For Jacquie, life in the flat – life on the island, for that matter – became increasingly claustrophobic and oppressive with each day that passed. ‘Gerry ate, lived and slept zoo,’ she recorded. ‘He never had any time for any private life. He disliked going out to social events, especially cocktail parties, which he thought were inane, and eventually he hardly even went out into his own zoo. It began to get
to the point when really I saw the zoo as a sort of Frankenstein monster.’
In a sense, Gerald had become a captive in his own zoo. John Hartley recalled:
He never spent a lot of time out in the zoo when he was here. This was an aspect of the man I never quite understood. It was said he couldn’t stand the pressure from the public, being mobbed by his fans. But it couldn’t have been just that, because there were slack times of the year when there was hardly any public here, and when later he took to getting up at five in the morning the zoo was closed anyway. And yet when I went off to Africa with him on one of his trips, he was really into his animals, looking at them all the time, playing with them, talking about them morning, noon and night. But when he was here he never did that. I don’t remember him ever once coming for a walk with me round the zoo. I tried to talk to him about it. It wasn’t exactly a no-go area, but I never got a proper explanation … The driving ambition of his life was to have his own zoo, but once he’d got it he couldn’t even bring himself to play with it. When we got to see a lot more of him, after Ken Smith left, he would talk to us as individuals for hours about what was going on and what we were doing and what we thought and so on, and he’d get tremendous pride and pleasure from that, but it was sort of second-hand.
Gerald Durrell Page 42
