Dry Storeroom No. 1 Read Online Free

original BM at Bloomsbury when the natural history collections had become so large as to require separate accommodation. The divorce from the mother institution was slow and legalistic. Formal separation from Bloomsbury did not happen until an Act of Parliament of 16 August 1965. The old BM title nonetheless had a magisterial presence that could not be instantly erased. My colleagues would call me up to make a date to “come to the BM” as if that were the only way in which it could be referred to. At conferences, I would still describe myself as belonging to the British Museum—after all, there were other natural history museums all over the place but only one BM, which housed collections made by Sir Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin. However, since the public at large referred to it as the Natural History Museum, in 1990 that finally became its official title. Farewell to the BM, with the finality of the end of the gold sovereign or the landau carriage. Even so, some of my more senior colleagues still sneakily find themselves talking about “finding time to call in at the BM….”
    So there I was in my official premises, surrounded by the collections upon which I was to work and to which I was supposed to add. My contract had specified only that I “should undertake work upon the fossil Arthropoda,” which left me free to roam through hundreds of millions of years. It might as well have said: “Amuse yourself—for money.” But I did have a boss to whom I was accountable. As I have mentioned, the head of department in a British national museum is called the Keeper. This may call up an image of a man in braces mucking out a gorilla cage, or it may have connotations of somebody jangling keys and going around inspecting security locks. It is, however, rather a grand title, one that entitles the bearer to an entry in
Who’s Who.
My boss, the Keeper of Palaeontology, was H. W. Ball—Harold William. Above a certain level in the hierarchy one was allowed to call him “Bill” otherwise, it was always “Dr. Ball.” He had the room directly above me, a place of leather-topped desks and filing cabinets. He was guarded by the kind of devoted secretary who exists mostly in the pages of spy novels, like the prim Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond thrillers. She was called Miss Belcher. She was an unmarried lady who lived with and cared for her mother; in the Palaeontology Department she was omniscient. Some years later, I discovered that her Christian name was Phoebe, but I would have no more dreamed of addressing her by that name than I would of addressing the Queen as “Lizzie.” She occupied an anteroom through which one had to pass to access the presence of the Keeper; and she always called him that, just as she always called me “Dr. Fortey” until she retired. She regarded such access as a rare and precious commodity, and an audience was a privilege to be awarded reluctantly. In fact, one usually went to see the Keeper because one was summoned. Few employees dropped in for a chinwag.
    Occasionally, the summons was for doing something naughty. It was easy to anticipate these occasions. Normally, Dr. Ball gestured towards a chair, beaming, and said something like: “Sit ye down, dear boy.” He had a slightly polished-up, satisfied air, like the head boy of a posh school. On the other hand, if you had transgressed one of the rules, you earned a particular stare that P. G. Wodehouse described as “basilisk” when emanating from one of Bertie Wooster’s more terrifying aunts. Once I was ticked off for the key offence—leaving them displayed to the world upon my desk. Then there was a diary infringement. The diary was a hangover from the early days of the Museum, being a little book into which the employee was supposed to write his activities, morning and afternoon, and which was collected every month and signed off by the head of department. It was a very tedious bit of bureaucracy, and nobody on the shop floor took