At that moment, Bali made a loud and unladylike noise from her nether regions.
‘Not only looks like,’ David admitted, ‘but smells like her too.’
After a long and excellent lunch, well irrigated by champagne, David started to show signs of restiveness.
‘I say, dear boy,’ he said, ‘is there anywhere I can change?’
I gazed at the immaculate outfit he was wearing, the height of sartorial elegance.
‘What on earth d’you want to change for?’ I asked, puzzled.
David frowned at me severely. ‘D’you think I’m going to attend this event wearing this?’ he asked, making a derogatory gesture at his impeccable clothing.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked.
‘Not good enough,’ said David. ‘I have brought with me a suit I had made especially for my son’s wedding and I intend to wear that. After all, what’s good enough for my son should be good enough for the gorillas, wouldn’t you say?’
I agreed, and led him into my bedroom, thoughtfully providing him with another bottle of champagne to help the dressing process. Ten minutes later I looked in to see how he was getting on and found him wandering about the bedroom in nothing but his underpants, sipping champagne and looking extremely distraught.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘I’m worried,’ he said.
‘What are you worried about?’
‘I’m afraid I’ll forget my lines,’ said one of Hollywood’s most famous actors.
‘Forget your lines? What lines? All you have to do is to declare the place open and hope that the gorillas will be very happy,’ I said soothingly, pouring him more champagne.
‘But you don’t understand,’ he said, plaintively, ‘I’ve made up a speech. But I’m terribly afraid I’ll forget it.’
‘How many films have you made?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know . . . about fifty I suppose. What’s that got to do with it?’
‘If you’re experienced enough to do fifty films,’ I pointed out, ‘surely you’re not going to fluff your lines over the opening of mere gorilla quarters?’
‘But that’s quite different,’ he protested, ‘in a film if you do it wrong, you can do it again. But you can’t open the gorilla house twice, can you? It would look so unprofessional.’
With the aid of more champagne, I got him into his suit, an extremely elegant dove-grey tailcoat and trousers of the kind worn by aristocratic gamblers on Mississippi paddle steamers in the eighteen hundreds. Telling him that he looked wonderful (which he did) and assuring him he would remember his speech, I hustled the great David Niven out to the new Gorilla Complex where of course he made a speech of immense charm and humour without fluffing a line. However, when it was over and I got him back into the manor and poured him a drink I saw that his hands were shaking. And this, I reflected, was a man who had won a well-deserved Oscar for one of his performances and who had become famous for displaying the utmost charm and sang-froid in any situation.
By now, the early seventies, our breeding successes with rare animals were excellent, and the list of species in our care had grown considerably. This was mostly the result of my own collecting expeditions, but also of purchasing animals from other zoos or even dealers. At that time the commercial trade in rare animals was not illegal, as it is today, and purchase was often the only way to obtain specimens to set up a breeding group. I felt that a good home at the Jersey Zoo, where the animals would prosper and reproduce, was infinitely preferable to their languishing in dealers’ shops or potty little menageries. (Today, of course, we and most other reputable zoos exchange or lend rare animals, with no money changing hands.) We still suffered from that chronic disease, lack of funds, but we were moving forward and our reputation was gradually increasing so that people outside the zoo world were beginning to understand what our motives were and not only to applaud our successes but to be generous in their contributions to our work.
It was at this time, just as I was taking off for my little house in the south of France to earn my living by writing a book, that I learnt that the island was going to be honoured by a visit from Princess Anne. At every one’s insistence, I phoned up the powers-that-be who organize such events and asked innocently if they intended bringing the princess to the manor house to meet the animals. I was only enquiring, I said, because I had intended to take off for France but would, of course, delay my departure if Her Royal Highness intended to grace us with her presence. The powers were shocked. Show the Princess the zoo? Never! Her schedule was far too tight. Besides, they had other much more stimulating treats for her to enjoy, like the new sewage works (I think it was) for example. Slightly miffed that we were considered of secondary interest to a sewage works, I reported back and our Council said that this was ridiculous. I must phone up again. So I did and said I hoped they were quite sure, as I was going to France and there I intended to remain until I had finished my book. No, came the reply. The princess’ interests lay in sewage rather than the salvation of obscure forms of animal life. So I went to France.
I was just getting into my stride in Chapter Two when I got a frantic phone call from Jersey. The Princess had asked to see the zoo. Would I please be present? No, I said, I would not. I had been told she would not visit the zoo. I had come to France and there I intended to remain, writing for my bread and butter. I had, of course, every intention of returning, but I felt piqued at their inefficiency and intended to let them stew in their own juice for a bit. There were more phone calls. Bribery, blackmail, flattery and cajolery had no effect. Finally, when it seemed that everyone was going to commit suicide en masse, I said I would condescend to return. Down in the south of France, I could hear the sigh of relief emanating from Jersey.
I had never been involved in such a visit before. My only contact with royalty had been peripheral, waving a small paper Union Jack on the outskirts of a crowd of some hundred thousand on an occasion in London in my youth. I had no idea of the complexity of it, the intensive searches by detectives of every nook and cranny (I asked if they wanted to search the gorillas, but they refused), everyone with stopwatches timing each step of the way. They had allotted twenty-five minutes for me to show the princess 700 animals spread out over twenty-odd acres and explain the functions of the Trust. I felt it would not do my peace of mind any good to enquire how much time they had allotted to the new sewage works.
It was obvious that the visit would have to be taken at a canter rather than a slow, civilized trot, and so it was essential to try to choose the animals in which the princess would be most interested and, moreover, to have them bunched together. The imminent approach of royalty has an odd effect on one, I discovered. What was I going to say to her? All of a sudden our achievements and our aspirations seemed as interesting as a vicar’s sermon. The whole thing seemed a great mistake. I wished I was back in France, but I was stuck with it. Waiting for the car to arrive, I felt like someone going on stage for the first time, hands like windmill sails, feet like Thames barges filled with glue, and a vacancy of mind achieved only by having a thorough lobotomy. The moment she left the car and I bowed over her hand, all my whimsies were washed away. I was taking around a beautiful, elegant, highly intelligent woman who asked unexpected questions, who was interested. I wished the retinue of powers-that-be would go away as they shuffled and twittered nervously behind us and, more fervently, I wished the press would go away as they crouched, clicking like a field of mentally defective crickets in front of us. I think this was the combination that was my undoing, that made me commit the gaffe of all gaffes.
We were approaching a line of cages and in one of them, at that time, we had a magnificent male mandrill, whose name was Frisky. He was – and it is a term you can use only for a mandrill – in full bloom. The bridge of his nose, the nose itself and the lips were scarlet as any anointment by lipstick. On either side of h
is nose were bright, cornflower blue welts. His face, with these decorations, framed in gingery-green fur and a white beard, looked like some fierce juju mask from an ancient tribe, whose culinary activities included gently turning their neighbours into pot roasts. However, if Frisky’s front end was impressive, as he grunted and showed his teeth at you, when he swung round he displayed a posterior which almost defied description. Thinly haired in greenish and white hair, he looked as though he had sat down on a newly painted and violently patriotic lavatory seat. The outer rim of his posterior was cornflower blue (as were his genitals) and the inner rim was a virulent sunset scarlet. I had noticed that the women I had taken around before had been more impressed by Frisky’s rear elevation than the front and I had worked out a silly routine, which I now – idiotically – employed. As we approached the cage, Frisky grunted and then swung around to display his sunset rear.
‘Wonderful animal, ma’am,’ I said to the princess. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have a behind like that?’
Behind me, I could hear an insuck of breath and a few despairing squeals, as from dying field mice, which emanated from the entourage. I realized, with deep gloom, that I had said the wrong thing. The princess examined Frisky’s anatomy closely.
‘No,’ she said, decisively, ‘I don’t think I would.’
We walked on.
After she had left, I had several large drinks to steady myself and then faced up to the fact that I had – still sticking to the animal motif – made a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. I had intended to ask the princess if she would become our patron, but what chance now? What princess in her right mind would consider this when the leading figure in the organization had asked her if she would not consider exchanging her own adequate anatomy for that of a mandrill? One could not apologize, the deed was done.
Some weeks later, prodded by everybody, I wrote and asked the princess if she would become our patron. To my incredulity and delight she replied that she would. I am not sure how much he had to do with it, but I took Frisky a packet of Smarties – whose virulent colours so closely resembled his own – as a thank-you gift.
Trail of the Begging Bowl
It has always seemed to me to be simplicity itself to raise money for things which are of doubtful help to our planet. Most conservation organizations run around after funds like a starving dog after a bone, and their laudable object is to try to save something from the debris of the world. But should you want money to buy a nuclear submarine, a jolly little pot of nerve gas, an atom bomb or two, the funds are miraculously forthcoming.
We have suffered, as other altruistic organizations do, from financial anaemia, and one of my major tasks has been to whizz about with the frenetic energy of a Japanese waltzing mouse, trying to raise funds. I have occupied myself with this unpleasant task (for I do not like it and don’t do it well since I have, unfortunately, little of the con man in my makeup) and I have managed to garner riches from quite unexpected places and from astonishing people.
I have had a complete stranger, a Canadian member of the Trust, give me £100,000 for our new Reptile House, just on the strength of saying (when he complained about our old Reptile House) that if he found me the money I would build the best reptile house in the world.
I have had a letter from a schoolboy containing a postal order for fifty pence. He apologized for the smallness of the amount (it was his week’s pocket money) but he hoped it would help.
I had a letter from an old-age pensioner, who enclosed two pounds saying it would have been more but it was difficult to manage on the pension. But she hoped this small contribution would aid our work.
We had a phone call from a lawyer in California, who asked if we were ‘Gerald Durrell’s Stationary Ark’. We said yes, you could call us that. Whereupon he told us that a Mrs Nubel had died and left us $100,000. I had never met her, nor was she a member of the Trust, so we can only conclude that she had read one of my books about our work in Jersey.
One particularly bad winter remains vividly in my mind. It was when I had just sacked my manager and taken over the zoo. As the Yuletide season approached, it brought scant cheer. It might have been the season of festivity for most people, but not for me. It was a time of no tourists and bad weather – not the most spirited of Jersey men would venture out and walk around the zoo in drizzle and howling gales. It was a time when the animals’ appetites increased, when the food bills soared, when you used three times as much electricity as normal to keep your creatures warm. It was a time when the animals became depressed because they had no humans to look at and wonder at. It was a time when you watched a devoted staff, blue-nosed and shivering, tending their charges in three feet of snow and you wondered if you would be able to pay them their next week’s wages. It was, as Shakespeare so lucidly put it, the winter of my discontent, and I put on my coat and made my way down into town to be interviewed by my bank manager.
I have the strong, though possibly paranoid, impression that I spent more time in our bank manager’s office then than I did in the zoo. It was fortunate that our particular bank manager, unlike so many of his flint-hearted species, was a charming, kindly and understanding man. If bank managers go to heaven when they die (and concerning this and the ultimate destination of tax inspectors there is some ecclesiastical argument), our bank manager is surely up on a pink cloud with a fully paid up harp and wings, for on that bleak day he saved my life. We went through the procedure of greeting each other with the gigantic and false bonhomie invariably found in dentists’ waiting rooms, bank managers’ offices and condemned cells. Then we sat down and examined the figures. They were the same figures we had examined ten days previously but our bank manager, with well-simulated surprise, found that they had not changed.
‘Um . . . yes,’ he said, running his fingers up and down the columns of figures as if searching for some error in addition. ‘Yes, it seems as if you are going to be a little short of funds.’
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
‘As I see it,’ he said, looking at the ceiling, ‘you need some funds to see you through the . . . er . . . really bad part of the winter.’
‘Two thousand pounds,’ I said.
He flinched. ‘You can’t, I suppose . . . from any source . . . yes, I see . . . well now, two thousand pounds, yes, a lot of money, and . . . your overdraft with us is now . . . let us see . . . ten thousand pounds; yes, and there is no way in which you can . . . ? Er . . . I see.’ He thought about it. He drew towards him a small pad on which he inscribed a name, address and telephone number. He tore off the slip and pushed it, as if by accident, across the desk towards me. He got up and paced up and down his office.
‘On this island, of course, there are many people who would . . . er . . . help you if they knew your plight,’ he said. ‘I, of course, as a bank manager, as doctors are, am bound by in oath of secrecy. I am in no way allowed to divulge the name, address, telephone number of any client, nor could I divulge the fact that they have substantial assets. It is unfortunate.’
He paused, and sighed deeply with the heavy burden which this oath of secrecy no doubt confers. Then he straightened up and became more cheerful.
‘Come back and see me in a few days when you have got to grips with your problem,’ he said, beaming and wringing my hand.
I went back to the zoo. I am very bad at asking people for money, even if they owe it to me, but this piece of paper presented me with a problem for which there were no textbook rules, and for which I was totally unprepared. What does one say, on a cold, wild night, when one phones a complete stranger to ask him for £2000?
‘Oh, hello, my name’s Durrell and I have a problem’ – which might make him think that one of the gorillas was giving birth and that I thought him a veterinary surgeon of high degree. ‘I’m from the zoo and I have a proposition which I am sure would interest you’ prickles with so many innuendoes and pitf
alls that I discarded it immediately it crossed my mind. ‘Would you like to make a £2000 contribution to my overdraft?’ sounded a mite blunt and smacked of the Mafia. In the end, with damp palms and a voice which kept losing itself in a swamp, I settled for something I considered intriguing but not open to misinterpretation.
‘Um, my name’s Durrell,’ I said to the slow, courteous voice which answered the phone. ‘I . . . er . . . at the zoo. I have been given your name because I have a problem on which I would value your advice.’
‘Well, certainly’ said Mr X. ‘When would you like to see me?’
‘Well, would now be convenient?’ I asked, wise at least in the ways of catching a bird on the wing, but convinced that he would say no.
‘But of course,’ he said. ‘Do you know your way? I shall expect you in half an hour.’
The drive there, through lashing winds, rain falling with brutality, lightning glaring, had all the trappings of a Hollywood drama. All it lacked was Boris Karloff to open the door. Instead, Mr X opened it himself. Tall, with a large, placid face, intelligent eyes and an air of immense charm and general bonhomie – like a big, secure, elderly, freckled retriever – he commiserated with me for being wet, took my coat and made a gesture at the living room in which a television, in vibrant colours, quivered and shone, but with none of the mystery and imagination-stirring qualities of a Dickensian open fire at Christmas.
‘Do come in,’ said Mr X. ‘My father’s in there, watching television.’ His father appeared to be eighty-five years old, but he might have been younger. He certainly looked half the age I felt, so maybe my observation was not accurate.
‘Could we go somewhere private?’ I asked.
‘Why, yes,’ said Mr X, ‘come into my bedroom.’
Thank you,’ I said.
I was ushered into a very small bedroom, which contained an enormous double bed. I had never realized how difficult it was to discuss business of any sort in a small room with a double bed the only place to sit. We both simply sat on the edge of the king-sized bed holding drinks, like a virgin honeymoon couple on their first night.