In many ways it is probable that his lack of a formal education was the making of Gerald Durrell. It left his innate, highly original intelligence unfettered and unchannelled, free to roam at will, to explore far and wide, to make connections outside the orthodoxy of the teaching of the time, develop new trajectories of thought and pioneer new lines of progression that could not have emerged, except with difficulty, from an institutionalised mind indoctrinated within the conventions of a traditional education. Gerald believed this himself: ‘I think the set routine of an average school kills the imagination in a child. Whereas the way I was brought up, the imagination was allowed to grow, to blossom. It taught me a lot of things which you’re not normally taught in school and this proved very valuable to me in dealing with animals and as a writer. My eccentric upbringing has been of great value to me.’
By way of example, it was his lack of a conventionally programmed education that enabled him, very early on, to stumble on the matter of declining animal populations (he was particularly struck by the parlous state of the black-footed ferret of the Great Plains of North America). He was barely out of his teens when he began to compile his own ‘rather shaky and amateurish’ version of a Red Data Book of endangered species* – one of the earliest compilations of its sort in the United Kingdom. If he had gone to university to read zoology, he would have come away with a thorough grasp of comparative anatomy and the Linnaean order of species, but it is doubtful if the world at large would ever have had reason to know his name
So Gerald’s adolescence passed. Towards the end of 1942, when the tide of war had just begun to turn in the Allies’ favour – though years of bloody slaughter still remained – he received his call-up papers. Now nearly eighteen, he reported for his army medical in Southampton. First he and his fellows were marshalled – ‘rather like cattle in a slaughter house’ – and told to strip. Then they were each given a beaker and told to pee in it. Gerald had drunk several pints of beer beforehand to make sure he had a full bladder, but unfortunately he had overdone it. The beaker filled up and slopped over. ‘’Ere!’ cried the orderly. ‘Slopped all over the place. I ’opes you ain’t got no infectious bleeding diseases.’ In an unpublished account, Gerald recalled:
My next nerve-shattering encounter was with a small, fat doctor, who looked exactly like one of the less prepossessing garden gnomes. He peered in my mouth, peered in my ears and finally placed a stubby finger on the end of my nose.
‘Follow my finger,’ he said, as he drew it away, so I followed it. I remember wondering at the time what subtle medical trick this was to expose the mechanism of your body.
‘I don’t mean follow my finger,’ he snapped.
‘But you just told me to,’ I said, bewildered.
‘I don’t mean follow my finger, I mean follow my finger,’ he said irritably.
‘But that’s what I was doing,’ I said.
‘I don’t mean follow it with your whole body.’
I was beginning to doubt the mental stability of this man.
‘I can’t follow your finger without my body,’ I explained patiently.
‘I don’t want your whole body, I just want your eyes,’ he snapped.
I began to wonder which lunatic asylum he had escaped from and should I tell the other doctors about his condition. I decided to be patient and calming.
‘But you can’t have my eyes without my body,’ I explained, ‘they’re attached to it, so if you want my eyes you have to have the body too.’
His face went the colour of an old brick wall.
‘Are you an idiot?’ he enquired simmeringly.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ I said placatingly. ‘I just don’t see how you can have my eyes without the body thrown in, as it were.’
‘I don’t want your Goddamed eyes,’ he shouted. ‘All I want you to do is follow my finger.’
‘But I did, sir, and then you got angry.’
‘Follow it with your eyes, you imbecile,’ he bellowed, ‘with your Goddam bloody eyes.’
‘Oh, I see, sir,’ I said, although to tell the truth I didn’t.
I wandered off to the next member of the medical profession, who was a dismal man with greasy hair, and looked somewhat like a failed Maitre d’Hôtel on the verge of suicide. He examined me minutely from stem to stern, humming to himself gently like an unhappy bear sucking its paw. He smelt of cinnamon and his eyes were violet coloured, very striking and beautiful.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘I want to look up your nose, so we’ll draw the curtains and be in the dark.’
Here, I thought to myself, we have another lunatic.
‘Wouldn’t you see it better in daylight, sir?’ I asked.
‘No, no, darkness, because I’ve got to stick something into your mouth,’ he explained.
‘What sort of thing?’ I asked, determined to guard my honour to the last redoubt.
‘A torch,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt, I assure you.’
So the curtains were drawn and a slim pencil torch was inserted in my mouth and switched on.
‘Damn,’ he said, ‘the batteries have gone.’
He removed the torch, which shone as brightly as a bonfire.
‘That’s funny,’ he said and stuck the torch back into my mouth.
‘What,’ he said ominously, ‘have you stuffed up your nose?’
‘Nothing,’ I said truthfully.
‘Well, why can’t I see the light? I can’t see the light,’ he said querulously. ‘I should be able to see your sinuses, but there’s nothing there.’
‘They’ve been mucking about with my nose for years, sir,’ I explained, ‘and it never seems to do any good.’
‘My God!’ he explained. ‘You must go and see a specialist. I’m not taking responsibility for this. Why, your sinuses look like – look like – well, they look like the Black Hole of Calcutta!’
Gerald was sent to see Dr Magillicuddy, a sinus specialist, who stood no nonsense.
Sitting behind a huge desk he read my medical report carefully, darting fierce glances at me from opal-blue eyes.
‘Come over here,’ he said gruffly, his Scottish r’s rolling out of his mouth like bumble bees.
He stuck a torch in my mouth. There was silence for a moment and then he let out a long, marvelling sigh.
‘Hoots, mon,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen sinuses like yours. It’s like gazing at a bit of Edinburgh Castle. If anyone wanted to clean that up they’d have to excavate your skull with a pickaxe.’
He went back to his desk, sat down, laced his fingers and gazed across them at me.
‘Tell me truly, laddie,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to go into the army, navy or air force, do you?’
This was the moment when I realised truth was the only answer.
‘No, sir,’ I said.
‘Are you a coward?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered.
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they’ll