So we set to work. And I have to say here and now that rancour was not one of the football supporter’s vices. She kept her lame dogs out of my way in her room and turned herself into a kind of sloe-eyed helpmeet out of the Old Testament, constantly at my side. We staggered about with drawers and specimen boxes, we sorted, we classified. We turned out rusty tins labelled ‘Henderson’s Breast Developer’ or ‘Colman’s Original Mustard’ and found now a valuable effigy, now a collection of mouldering pupae which crumbled at our touch. And always, even at the end of the most gruelling day, covered in dust and tottering with exhaustion, her demented enthusiasm remained undimmed.
Three weeks after my arrival she knocked at the door of my office as I sat in solitary state, drinking my coffee with the cyst.
‘Uncle Laszlo’s finished the ichthyosaurus. He was wondering if you’d like to see it?’
I followed her into her room. The old man had on his hat and coat; scrupulously he was getting ready to leave now that his task was done. I thought how tired he looked, how old.
The ichthyosaurus took up two trestle tables and so far as I could see he had made a flawless job of it.
‘Thank you. That will make a most valuable exhibit.’
Uncle Laszlo took up his briefcase. ‘There are some pterosaur bones in the cupboard in Mr Bigger’s room,’ he said. ‘I think they are complete. If they could be assembled, they would make an interesting comparison.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked sharply.
‘That it is a pterosaur, I am sure. That it is complete, I cannot say.’
‘Well, you’d better find out,’ I said.
Uncle Laszlo looked at me and then quietly he took off his hat and coat. After all, he did not look so very old. It was only when a sort of sigh spread around the room and Flossie lurched radiantly towards me with the second cup of coffee that I realised what I had done.
After that things went downhill rapidly. Flossie appeared next day carrying a swathe of wild silk, priceless stuff the colour of the sea. ‘Mrs Rahman’s father-in-law sent it from Quittah. Would you mind terribly if we used it to display the Abyssinian pottery on?’
I said no, I didn’t mind. Gradually it turned out that I didn’t mind Brian, on leave from his pavement, wiring the display cases for concealed lighting, or Matt repainting the frieze in the main hall. Mrs Rahman moving on from the Hartington Egg Collection to the Kashmiri dried ferns was another thing I
didn’t apparently mind too much. As for Flossie putting in a fourteen-hour day, that had always been all right with me.
Soon I abandoned not only my principles but the cyst, taking coffee with the rest of them in Flossie’s room and giving them the benefit of my views on Leboyer, the political situation in Afghanistan and the efficiency of Yoga in licking drugs. It got so that when Flossie vanished one morning, obeying her sixth sense, and came back with a tragically widowed Brigadier, it was I who gave him the Madagascan ivories to sort.
I began to be hopeful. The Havelock, like a woman who is loved, began to glow, to shine.
‘They can’t close us, Paul, we’re so beautiful,’’ said Flossie, gazing entranced at her newly mounted shrunken head. And removing a mother-of-pearl coconut scraper from her tangled hair, I was inclined to agree.
My happiness was the greater because Vivian, for the first time since our marriage, was taking an interest in my work. ‘I was thinking, Paul, if the Havelock is in trouble financially we ought to get going on the social side a bit. Have some fund-raising parties and things? I’d need some new clothes, of course…’
Gratefully I made over my salary cheque and Vivian, looking unbelievably stunning, sallied forth in search of American philanthropists, captains of industry and eminent scientists who might interest themselves in the Havelock and its fate.
I had it all sorted out in my mind, of course. Sir Godfrey and his Commission were due on February the twelfth. A week before that I was going to clear out the volunteers, give Flossie a holiday (I saw no way of making that girl into anything that remotely resembled the curator of a natural history museum) and only Mr Biggers, myself and the staid secretary would be there to present accounts and conduct them on a formal tour.
But there I had reckoned without my wife. She had managed — heaven knows how — to get hold of Sir Godfrey socially and to interest him in the Havelock and me.
We were having our coffee break when we heard the sound of purposeful footsteps approaching the director’s office, halting and then returning. Then came a knock on the door and a jovial, booming voice — ‘Ah, Bellingham, there you are! We’ve come to look in a bit early, as you see. Thought we might get your case through quicker that way.’
I don’t know what I had expected from the chairman of the Natural History Commission. Hardly the Flash Gordon profile, the craggy jaw, the Bermuda tan. Flanked by three steely-eyed, grey-suited experts, Sir Godfrey advanced into the room. As he did so his jovial expression became more fixed, his craggy jaw tightened a little.
On a camp-bed by the window Mrs Rahman was doing her ante-natal breathing, something we insisted upon. Matt, who was deeply into Yoga, was demonstrating the ‘Cobra’ to Uncle Laszlo. Brian, in the manner of tramps since time immemorial, was stuffing his boots with newspaper…
Sir Godfrey came to a halt. He had to since Flossie, who had been on her hands and knees labelling specimens, now reared up in his path. I moved forward to remove a Rhodesian leg ornament which had got caught behind her ear, thought better of it and shook hands with Sir Godfrey.
‘Your staff, I take it?’ said Sir Godfrey, surveying the room. ‘Perhaps you’ll introduce me.’
I introduced him. What else could I do?
I must say he was straight with me. Biggers and I showed him round and he asked intelligent questions while his posse took notes. Then we went to my office.
‘Look, Bellingham, before we go any further there’s one thing I want to make quite clear. Every one of these peculiar volunteers must go and go for good. It’s absolutely out of the question that we could award a grant to a place run like… a jumble sale. You must know quite well that your exhibits are not insured for handling by unauthorised persons. And what about the medical question? Suppose that extraordinarily pregnant lady should be taken ill and her husband sue you? Or the old man have a fit? You must be as aware as I am of these considerations?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am.’
‘Good. Then I have your word that all these people will be removed immediately?’
‘No,’ I said.
A flush spread over Sir Godfrey’s handsome face.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know exactly how you feel because I felt the same when I first came here. But I find I no longer care to go along with the way things are run nowadays. Friendly old people’s homes closed and the residents turned adrift because the fire escape’s two inches too narrow. People losing their jobs because they’re too old or too young or haven’t passed some arbitrary exam. All the goodwill of ordinary people going to waste. Havelock was a tea merchant. Everything he collected, he brought in during his spare time. This museum was built by amateurs and it’s only because I’ve had the help of other amateurs that I’ve been able to run it. If they go, I go.’