On her way home she stopped at a chemist. And bought a new toothbrush. She had not forgotten to take hers home, nor had she planned to leave it. She did not leave it accidentally-on-purpose, nor had she connived with herself in the bathroom mirror. She had done no grinning at the toothbrush. It was in the same beaker as Richard’s but they were not touching. His was an angle-poised, hard bristle; hers was small-headed and soft. She had left it merely because it had looked just fine in the beaker with Richard’s. Richard was not madly excited to find it there later, but certainly he was happy that it was there. That night, alone but not lonely in their respective beds, they did not think of each other but of themselves. Friday nights and Saturday mornings were to become an institution, not that they knew it then. If waves of contentment can travel, then the vibes from Highgate and those from Notting Hill would have met, crashed and fallen to earth somewhere around Regents Park. Which is precisely where, three days later, Sally and Richard next met.
TEN
With the future of the Zoo uncertain, schools all over London chose it over Hatfield House or Madame Tussaud’s for their annual school outings.
With the future of the Zoo uncertain, a team of architects was consulted over proposals for a building dedicated to research and conservation of endangered species. The idea was to promote the Zoo as a foundation, a trust dedicated to understanding and preserving and improving the future for threatened wildlife. It was to lose its image of merely housing bored tigers and sloping-shouldered eagles in cracked concrete. The hope was, that if seen as environmentally aware and ecologically sympathetic, funding from all sectors would be more readily available. In theory alone, the proposal had been met with great enthusiasm from the public and the government had given it a quiet nod or two already.
The Zoological Society, placed as it is in the outer circle of the Park, affords a sweeping vista. Especially from the wide window from which Richard gazed, plastic beaker of instant coffee in hand, waiting for the first, crucial meeting with his potential clients. He watched nostalgically as a human crocodile of ten-year-olds made its haphazard approach to the main gates, sections of its vertebrae frequently slipping out of alignment. He remembered well the joy of walking hand in hand with a best friend, the despair of having to hold hands tightly with an enemy, the humiliation of holding hands with the most unpopular boy in the class. The crocodile’s nose was black and red, because those were the only colours Diana Lewis wore. Its body was a multicoloured jumble of school children in mufti. Its navy tail caught and captured Richard’s attention.
The tail of the crocodile was Sally Lomax.
‘Good morning, Mr Stonehill, we are sorry to have kept you waiting. Shall we start?’
But I want to see the crocodile!
‘Mr Stonehill?’
I don’t want to be in this stuffy building, I want to find the crocodile and watch its tail swish.
‘Gentlemen, lady, this is Richard Stonehill from Mendle-Brooke Associates.’
‘Good morning,’ said Richard somewhat reluctantly, as he took the head of the table and began unravelling the roll of drawings, crocodiles still foremost in his mind. However, as soon as his design unfurled itself, Richard was totally focused. His personality, his gifted presentation and the skill of the design itself kept his audience rapt. An hour and a half shot by. Had they had the money there and then, they would have pressed cash into his hand and given him carte blanche to start immediately. Reality, however, would impose a minimum two-year wait.
‘I think I’ll just have a wander,’ Richard informed his hosts as everybody shook hands. ‘It’s the crocodiles that fascinate me.’
The children were having a lovely time, especially Marsha and Rajiv who were still holding hands long after the crocodile had disintegrated. Sharp, sweet wafts of dung and straw were filtered by the chill air and were pleasing to the nose. The bellow of the camel was impersonated very well by Marcus who was offered a ride by the keeper. Squeals of delight filled the air as the dromedary lunged and lurched itself up. The children’s zoo proved very popular too; little hands gently petted even littler furries and packed lunches were shared illicitly with the bleating, pleading, pocket-nuzzling deer and goats.
Around Miss Lewis, a band of keen young artists had gathered to sketch the elephants.
It was cold, cold, but clear. Everyone was in a thoroughly good mood.
‘Oh, children, the light’s just perfect! Simply perfect. I’ve brought charcoal and 4B pencils and some waxy crayons. Who wants what?’ The waxy crayons were the first to be snapped up followed sharply by the charcoal. The pencils were the last to go because Miss Lewis forbade erasers – ‘Work through your mistakes, make your errors a part of your design’ was her oft-chanted dictum. Experience had taught Class Five that any child caught smuggling a rubber would have it ceremoniously confiscated and, worse, would have to contend with Miss Lewis’s inconsolable hurt.
With not much more than an ear or tusk completed, the children began to complain of cold toes and numb fingers. Miss Lewis had overcome that problem by investing in a pair of red mittens, the tips of which could be folded back to reveal black, fingerless gloves. She sat on the bench surrounded by the hastily dumped materials of her protégés (off to see the yeuch! spiders and urgh! beetles) and breathed in the coarse, sweet smell of elephant. Wielding a 4B as a conductor might his baton, she began to draw fervently, making any mistake a committed part of the overall design.
Sally, who had just finished a quick chat with the polar bear (he had winked at her, slowly and wisely), contemplated the scamper and flurry of her class, released from the greyness of school and its buildings. She felt a little sad, imagining how the animals too would kick up their heels and squeal with delight if they were turned out into pastures new, let alone to their native habitats. She thought it cruel how the children teased the rhino for being so ugly, the way they grimaced and growled at the motionless lion, chattered and jumped around in front of the chimps and tapped the glass of the aquarium to see if the fish would budge or the clam slam shut. She walked past birds of prey and couldn’t associate the moth-eaten raptors with those she remembered from her childhood holidays, soaring in majestic abandon over the hills near Aunt Celia’s.
Miss Lewis had a hushed audience about her. All over her scarf (black) and her jumper (red) were chunks and furls of wood and lead: ‘Never use a sharpener, gives a ghastly line. Scalpel. That’s the answer. Super edge. Absolutely not, Marcus, only I can use it. Horribly sharp. Trust me.’ The children were wowed into silence by the skill with which Miss Lewis brandished her 4B, the verisimilitude of her drawing. The keeper recognized the sage old face immediately as Bertha. Richard Stonehill had glanced at the picture, greatly impressed. But he looked more intently at what had been the nose of the crocodile; he wondered what her name was and how well she knew Sally. Bertha, with unarguable dignity and grace, nevertheless answered the call of nature with an extremely ripe-smelling and resounding thud. The keeper didn’t smell it at all any more but the children shrieked with delight and bolted away, proclaiming ‘Poo! Poo!’ for the uninformed. Distracted, Miss Lewis looked up momentarily, caught Richard’s eyes, smiled fleetingly and returned her undivided attention to Bertha who was, she decided, the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Richard wandered off in search of a sandwich.
Sally wandered over to Diana.
‘Lunch?’
‘Mmm? Nyet. Iniminit.’ Sally wandered off in search of a sandwich.
Every corner