Only once during our association did I see him look really regal, and that was when Jill came into season. With his mane standing out, Albert strode about the cage uttering heartrending ‘Urrrghs’ to himself and striking attitudes expressive of nobility and firmness of character. Pliny, I am sure, would have loved him. While Albert was following Jill round the cage I delved once more into Pliny to see what he had to say about the love life of the lion. The first reference I found was not very flattering:
. . . these Lionesses are very letcherous, and this is the cause that the Lions are so fell and cruell. This, Afffricke knoweth best, and seeth most: and especially in time of great drought, when for want of water a number of wild beasts resort by troups to those few rivers that be there, and meet together. And Hereupon it is, that so many strange beasts, of a mixt and mungrell kind are there bred, whiles the males either pelforce, or for pleasure, leape and cover the females of all sorts.
I never saw Nan and Jill behaving in a lecherous manner normally, and when in season they seemed more bored than anything else by Albert’s attention. Pliny goes on to say:
The Lion knoweth by sent and smell of the Pard, when the Lionesse his mate hath laied false, and suffered herselfe to be covered by him: and presently with all his might and main runneth upon her for to chastise and punish her.
Certainly, Nan and Jill had no chance of playing Albert false, since they were locked in the cage with him. But I do feel that Albert would have been a strict husband, and I should hate to have been his wife if I had been flirting with a Pard and he had caught me.
Why visitors looked furtively at each other and giggled when Albert performed an act of procreation, with great dignity and complete lack of embarrassment in the middle of a clearing, was a source of bewilderment to me. They would have been doubly disgusted if they had known that it was his daughter, Jill, who was participating in the orgy. Incest.
Joe was also afflicted with this curious shyness when he came across an example of coition and would, in fact, carefully avoid any cages in which he knew such dreadful acts were taking place. Jesse, on the other hand, possessed no such reticence. In a hoarse voice he would shout libellous encouragement to the animals while the crowd shuffled and dispersed around him. Jesse was a past master at the art of making a crowd disappear like a puff of smoke.
‘How he can do it, I don’t know,’ Joe would confide in me when we were safely in the sexless harbour of ‘The Haven’. ‘I go hot and cold all over, honest I do. Only yesterday I went along by the lions and there he was talking to ’em all, young girls and everything, and old Albert was there with Jill, plain as hell. I don’t know how he does it. I couldn’t, not for a hundred pounds.’
He would purse his lips and look very sad, as though he were really refusing the money. Poor Joe, his life was not worth living when any of the animals were in season.
Apart from his cavalier attitude towards the facts of life, Jesse was possessed of a curious power that won the grudging envy of both Joe and myself. As a dowser can feel water in the bones of his hand and make a hazel twig twitch over a hidden spring, as a truffle hound can scent the delicious fungus though it lurks ever so deeply below ground; so Jesse was capable, by some strange wizardry, of spotting a tip. He would stand just outside ‘The Haven’, sucking his teeth and surveying the passing throng of visitors; suddenly, he would stiffen, his frost-white eyebrows would quiver, he would crack his teeth together with a small, satisfied snap; ‘There’s two bob,’ he would say and start to stalk his prey with all the cunning of one of the great cats in his charge. Try as we would, Joe and I could never see any difference between the people that Jesse got into conversation with and the people that we got into conversation with, but Jesse had an unerring instinct and could estimate before his attack the precise amount of money that he was going to extract from the person concerned. He would have made a splendid pirate.
‘Don’t know how he does it, the old bugger,’ said Joe to me. ‘Look, the other day he says to me, “You try your luck, Joe. There’s a good ’un just going up by the polars – that chap in the trilby. He’s good for five bob.” Well, I went up and spent half an hour with the bloke, told him all sorts of things. I was as nice as pie with him, honest, and all I got out of him was a bleeding Woodbine.’
I am afraid that, after a time, I got rather bored with Albert and his females. They lacked the personality that the other animals on the section possessed. Also, they refused to be friendly in any way whatsoever and so you could not really get to know them. I found Pliny’s imaginary lions and lion stories much more interesting than the live specimens we looked after. I do not know if Albert realised that I had little affection for him, but he suddenly seemed to take an intense dislike to me and made noisy and alarming attempts to slaughter me whenever I went near the cage. He nearly succeeded, too.
One day Joe decided that we would clean out the drains alongside the lion cage so that I would have something to remember when I moved to another section. We went along there, armed with a hose, forks, brushes and other implements, and after a time managed to get Albert and company into the traps. Then, while Joe wielded the hose, whistling merrily, I climbed inside the barrier rail and worked my way along, cleaning all the accumulated debris out of the drain. I had to get close to accomplish this, and that was the reason that Albert had to be trapped up, for the bars in the cage were quite wide enough for him to get his paw through but those on the trap were closer together. We were getting along fine, when I came to the bit of drain that ran alongside the traps where Albert was simmering with rage. Joe had been squirting the hose about with gay abandon and everything was dripping with water. As I stood up to reach for a broom my foot slipped and I fell against the side of the trap. It was fortunate that the bars on it were no wider or Albert would have had me by the shoulder. As it was, he lost no time in springing at me with a triumphant snarl and trying to get his paw between the bars to dig his claws into me. He managed to get only a small part of his toes through but he got one claw firmly hooked in the sleeve of my coat. Joe, uttering a yelp of alarm and obviously under the impression that I was being mauled, turned the hose in our direction. He meant, of course, to squirt the water in Albert’s face and make him release me. However, in his excitement he misjudged and just as I had torn myself free of Albert’s claw and was leaping away, I received the full jet of the hose in my face and was sent reeling and spluttering back against the trap. Albert had another attempt at hooking me and failed; Joe squirted the hose again and hit me between the eyes. I got away from the traps and climbed over the barrier rail, dripping water.
‘Whose side are you supposed to be on?’ I asked Joe.
‘Sorry,’ he said contritely, ‘but I thought the old swine had got you.’
‘You certainly gave him every opportunity to do so,’ I said bitterly, mopping myself with an inadequate handkerchief.
Twice a week it was my duty during the long summer evenings to stay on the section after Jesse and Joe had left to make sure that no members of the public displayed their intelligence by climbing a barrier rail or throwing bottles at the animals. I found these evenings very pleasant. I was lord of all I surveyed; I would sit in ‘The Haven’ over a strong cup of tea, trying to make sense of my hurried notes and get them into some sort of order. Gradually, outside, the shadows would lengthen across the turf and the last little clusters of people would move towards the main gate. It was very quiet when the crowds had gone, and the wallabies would hop cautiously from the shelter of the elder bushes where they had been driven during the day by shouting hordes of little boys. Albert would give a few husky ‘Arooms’ to get his voice in trim for the night’s concert, and you would hear quite clearly the splash and splish of the polar bears lounging in their pool.
My last duty before leaving was to walk the length of the section to see that everything was all right. The wallabies would be scattered over the turf, feeding quietly, soothed by the sudden hush that followed the retreating visit
ors. The tigress Ranee would be glad to have the door of her den opened, for the great cement pit in which she lived was now in shadow and cold to the paws. Paul, her son, would be already asleep in his bed of straw. Farther along, across the downs, the racoon-like dogs would be curled up tightly in their little wooden hutches while next to them the Arctic foxes flitted like pale shadows among the bushes. Ahead of me, down the path, the wallabies would scatter in fright, bouncing and crashing through the undergrowth. The lions would be lying in the long grass by the edge of their pool; Albert, sunk in his mane, meditating as usual, while beside him Nan and Jill would sleep, with bulging stomachs. There would be wallabies everywhere, rocking slowly across the turf, dragging their heavy tails behind them. Flocks of magpies would flap and chuck in the treetops. In the tiger dell Jum and his mate would be drowsing while around their cage the bushes would crack and rustle with wallabies. Wallabies, wallabies, wallabies everywhere; and in the gloom of the elder spinneys you could hear their rabbit-like teeth rasping the bark from the trees. Having assured myself that all was right with the section and spurred on by the thought of the especially enormous tea that Mrs Bailey always gave me when I was on late night duty, I would take my leave. On the way out there was always the empty bottle to pick up or the scrap of sandwich paper.
3. A Triumph of Tigers
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
Belloc, ‘The Tiger’
On arriving in the morning the sunshine would be barely warm but it would give a brittle gold burnish to the leaves and grass, and in its clear light you could see and hear the park coming awake. Among the lurching shapes of the elders, with trails of mist still entangled in their branches, droves of wallabies would squat in this quiet morning sun, plump bodies flaccid, their fur furrowed with dew. Clearly, echoing across the paddocks, would come the strident ‘help . . . help!’ of a peacock, dragging its coloured tail through the pine woods. The zebras, as you passed, would throw up their heads and snort great fountains of steam at you and take nervous, prancing steps in the wet grass. Turn on to the gravel path that led to the section, and the polar bears would point quivering black noses at you from between the bars of their cage, sniffing in anguished anticipation at the rich smell of the loaves under your arm. Jesse and Joe would walk on to the hut while I went down into the tiger pit. The iron gate would clatter, shaking a thousand vibrating echoes from the walls of the cement dungeons, and I would go inside to do the first jobs of the day.
The tigers would wake and greet me with pink-mouthed, misty yawns, lying there luxuriously in their beds of yellow, rustling straw. Then they would stretch elegantly – long, curved-back, stiff-tailed, nose-quivering stretches – before padding across their dens to peer at me through the barred doors. In this pit lived two of our four tigers, Paul and Ranee, who were mother and son. But Paul cherished no affection for his parent, so they had to sleep in separate dens and they were let out into the pit in turn. My first job in the morning was to let Ranee out of her den into the pit; I would pull back the heavy sliding door and close it again when she had slouched out into the sunlight. Then I would spend an illegal five minutes feeding her son on strips of meat.
Paul was the largest and the finest of the tigers. He had such a languid perfection of movement and such a placid temperament that it was hard to believe that Ranee was really his mother. He moved silently and unhurriedly on his great pincushion paws; his mother moved just as silently but in a quick, nervous, jerky way that was unpleasantly suggestive of her ability to catch you unawares. I am quite sure that she spent most of her spare time trying to evolve a successful method of killing us. She had a savage streak in her which showed in her unblinking green eyes. Paul would take meat from my hand with an air of quiet dignity and great gentleness; his mother would gulp at it ferociously and, if given the chance, take your hand as well. With Paul you got the impression that your hand, even if offered, would be considered an inferior object and, as such, ignored. It was a comforting thought, even if incorrect.
During these morning talks I had with him, Paul was so avuncular that it was only with difficulty that I remembered he could be dangerous if he wanted to be; he would curve his huge head against the bars and let me scratch his ears, purring loudly, so that he seemed more like a giant domestic cat than the popular conception of a bloodthirsty tiger. He would accept my gifts of meat with a regal condescension and, having eaten them, would lie down and lick his paws while I would squat enraptured and gaze at him. At such close quarters he was fascinating to watch. Every inch of his richly coloured body was beautifully proportioned and its movements were liquid and graceful. His head was massive, very broad between the ears, and the ruff round his chin was evenly curved and of the palest saffron colour, across his bright hide the stripes sprawled like black flames. Perhaps the most beautiful part of him was his eyes: large and almond-shaped, set slanting in his face, like sea-polished pebbles of leaf green.
Usually my morning talk with Paul was cut short by Jesse, who would want to know where the so-and-so I had got to with his spade.
Fetching this spade was the excuse I used every morning to spend a little time with the tigers. This implement was an essential part of Jesse’s routine; with it he would disappear among the trees for his early morning catharsis, without which a day’s work would be unthinkable.
When Jesse had returned from his communication with nature we would set to work and clean the tiger pit. First, Ranee would be locked up in her den again while we went into the pit with brushes and buckets, scrubbed down the concrete and collected the bones from yesterday’s dinner. Then Ranee and Paul would be let out, in turn, so that we could clean their dens and give them fresh beds. When we let them back into their dens they would both perform a most curious action. They would walk straight to their straw beds, sniffing about them, and then they would stand in the centre of the bed and proceed to knead and pad the straw with their paws. Their ears would be laid back and their eyes, half-closed, would be dreamy and thoughtful. Then, rising suddenly, they would urinate copiously and accurately into the middle of their clean beds. This done, they would relax and spend the rest of the morning dozing, sometimes licking their paws and then yawning ponderously. I think that when they entered their dens and found fresh straw beds, clean sawdust on the floor, and their own strong odour temporarily downed by the smell of the disinfectant we splashed on the walls and floor, they wished to prove to themselves (and any chance visitors) that the dens were part of their territory. To do this they injected the straw with their own pungent smell again. Then, having, as it were, hoisted the flag, they could settle down and await feeding time.
When we had cleaned the pit, the three of us would retire to ‘The Haven’ for a light snack. In the gloomy interior we would perch on our creaking chairs and examine each other’s food packets with interest. Jesse, his sandwich held in a large red hand, would eat slowly and methodically but with complete lack of interest. Joe would gallop through his food, talking jovially to me with his mouth full, punctuating his remarks with bursts of his curious husky laughter.
He is the only person I have ever met whose laugh could be accurately written as ‘He . . . he . . . he’. Jesse would remain gloomily silent; when he had finished his food he would gaze vacantly out of the window, sucking his teeth. Then, with reptilian slowness, he would light his pipe and suck and squeak and bubble over it while Joe and I discussed the weather, fishing, the best way to skin a rabbit, or the comparative merits of the three blondes whose portraits adorned the wall above Joe’s chair. Presently we would rise and make our way out of the hut to finish the next job on the list, the cleaning of the polar bear cage. Outside ‘The Haven’, in the tangled web of elder branches, magpies would chuck suspiciously as we appeared and Joe would give a tremendous, boisterous shout that would burst them from among the leaves like chattering piebald arrows.
The meat would be delivered early in the day – great bloodstained haunches covered with green splot
ches of dye to denote that they were unfit for human consumption. From two-thirty to three we would be busy hacking these joints down to size, stacking them in buckets and deciding which particular animals should have any titbits like heart or liver. Then at three o’clock the feeding would commence.
We always started with the tiger dell (known to us as the bottom tigers) which was the farthermost point of the section. Here, in a great cage like the lions’, filled with tangled undergrowth, lived Jum and Maurena, who were in no way related to Paul and Ranee in the pit. Two of us would set out bearing buckets containing the meat. Invariably we would be followed by a crowd of small urchins and a sprinkling of adults who had appeared, apparently, from nowhere. The children would scutter round us uttering shrill exclamations, asking questions, pushing and jumping in their eagerness to view the gory joints from the best positions.
‘Cor! Look at the meat . . . Alf . . . Alf . . . look at the meat!’
‘Wot’s the fork for, mister – ?’
‘Coo! Bet they won’t half eat that.’
‘Wot kind of meat is it, mister?’