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 Richard turned, every enclosure he went to see, he felt sure he would finally come across Sally. His adrenal glands were in overdrive and he had demolished the sandwich in seconds without tasting it. Now it sat in his throat in a stodgy lump and felt as if it further protruded his Adam’s apple. Swallow as he might, he could not shift it an inch lower nor soften it at all. A drink was a possible solution.
The kiosk was a round structure with only one serving hatch. As Sally bought her cheese and pickle sandwich and carton of Ribena and walked away anticlockwise, Richard came from the other direction and exited clockwise. But there was no Chaplinesque crash and they each remained oblivious to the tantalizing proximity of the other. Sally had already disappeared behind the pandas and was wondering what bamboo tasted like.
Richard went to the reptile house to look at the crocodiles.
Are those Sally’s kids?
‘What time did Miss Lomax say we were to meet at the penguins?’
Yes, they are.
‘Two o’clock. Ten minutes’ time.’
The penguins, two o’clock, nine minutes’ time. As he stared at the crocodile, it flickered its eye shut, opened it again and stared back at Richard. He found it rather disconcerting and decided to arrive early at the penguins to ensure the best possible view. As he approached he could see Sally from the back, a posse of children surrounding her. They held her hands and all hopped from foot to foot – whether this was a bid to keep warm or an imitation of the penguins was not altogether clear.
They seem to like her, she’s probably their favourite teacher. Lenient, no doubt, but commanding respect and obedience.
Richard was puzzled at just how nervous he was, hands clammy and the sandwich had reappeared to pester his Adam’s apple. The contents of the butterfly house had taken residence deep in his stomach and the sawdust of the possums’ cage appeared to be in his mouth. As he approached he could hear her voice.
‘Ooh, wouldn’t you love to take one home with you?’ she cooed to her entourage. Richard was within a couple of yards of her. He could now see just how enthralled she was by her flippered friends. Up she was on tiptoes, bouncing, as she marvelled at their clumsy acrobatics.
She’s quite wonderful. Enchanting.
He walked past and around the penguin pool and took position on the opposite side. He stared at Sally but Sally was rapt. And anyway, Richard was the last person she was expecting to see at London Zoo on a Thursday lunchtime.
The penguins seemed to like their enclosure. Richard did too. A hilly maze of steps and slopes in blue and white, just like the Arctic, surrounding a generous pool of cold water. He would make few changes to it. Perhaps a bridge. Deepen the pool. A few hidey-holes in the side. New surfacing. The penguins never seemed to tire of running up and down and around in a complicated and irrational route to the water into which they joyfully tumbled. Natural entertainers, the bigger their audience, the more comic their antics. An audience and feeding time was the best possible combination; clapping and laughter encouraged them to catch their fish in the most elaborate fashion. And there was a fair-sized audience at two o’clock. But Richard saw only Sally. And he soaked up what he saw.
She watched one penguin in particular, slightly smaller than the others, his tuxedo glossy, his shirt snowy, his walk pompous and assertive. A fish had been thrown into the centre of the pool and two penguins, positioned on a ridge above it, looked at the water and shifted from leg to leg. Sally’s pal hurried along the ridge and barged into one who crashed into the other. Both fell in while he stood, shifting from side to side, proudly smacking himself with his flippers. He then belly-flopped into the water and surfaced almost immediately with the fish while his two comrades splashed about, thoroughly disoriented. Sally was thrilled and clapped energetically while jumping up and down on the spot, cheering. She had her hands splayed and ridged, bashing them together enthusiastically, her smile wide, her jaws well apart, her lips forced back to reveal every tooth in her mouth.
And then she saw Richard.
And she brought her hands together in one final clap. Her mouth was still open but the corners had dropped. She stood paralysed with her hands still rigid, as if in prayer. Richard beamed a broad grin in her direction. The penguins were satiated and dozed on their stomachs, heads and legs suspended. Richard waved his roll of drawings at Sally, Diana saw him and then turned to Sally who was still praying. Ah ha!
