The Elephant Keeper Page 18

  July 29th

  Today I prepare Jenny to run against Mr. Partridge’s thorough-bred. I wash her, and brush her, and I allow her to eat only a little. Over her back I spread a green and claret cloth, his Lordship’s colours. She is in a merry mood, but I still do not know whether she will run. Will you run? I ask her.—I expect so, Tom, she says calmly. Even so, I am not sure whether she will run.

  At noon, I ride her out of the Elephant House and toward the lime avenue. A large crowd has gathered, for all of his Lordship’s servants—gardeners, woodmen, grooms, maids, pages—have been given permission to watch the race. There are cheers and shouts. Among the maids, I notice Fat Ellie. Her face, full and blotchy as the moon, seems to stare at me. Poll is standing at her side.

  His Lordship is sat in his bath-chair, in the shade of a lime tree, attended by her Ladyship, Lord and Lady Seely, Miss Singleton, and several other ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Singleton detaches himself from this little contingent. “I am counting on you, Tom Page. How is the Elephant?”—“Very well, Sir,” I reply.

  It is a warm day. Mr. Partridge has already trotted his horse to the start of the race, by the lake. This horse is a creature thin as a toast-rack, and twitching with nerves; at the mere sight of the Elephant it frets and chafes, and as we draw closer it bucks wildly. Mr. Partridge is wearing spurs, and carrying a heavy whip. He curses the horse, and hauls so hard on the reins that its head is forced up, its eyes widened by fear. I remember Ellie’s bulging eyes, forced open by Mr. Singleton.

  Over the next couple of minutes the toast-rack becomes more and more agitated. It breaks into a thick sweat; its mouth is bleeding. Mr. Partridge wrenches its head to face the course. “Come; let us begin,” he says impatiently. A horn is to be blown by one of the pages, to start the race. He is about to raise it to his lips when Jenny’s tail stiffens, and the usual copious stream pours forth; she follows up with a further thudding evacuation, the smell of which is enough to send the horse into a frenzy. The page gives a blast on his horn, and Mr. Partridge digs in his spurs. The horse rears upwards, flings him to the ground, and careers in altogether the wrong direction. Thus Jenny strides triumphant down the lime avenue.

  At the end of the course I ride up to his Lordship, in his bath-chair. He struggles to speak to me, but the right side of his mouth is twisted or frozen, and although some sounds come out, I cannot understand them as words. It is painful to watch him struggle so. His feet, which rest on cushions, are bare, and for the first time I see his gouty toe, very red and swollen, and covered in bumps. He is not wearing a wig, and the shadows of the leaves flicker uncertainly on his grey hair. When Jenny, unbidden, stretches out her trunk and takes his hand, his eyes seem to meet mine, and I feel sure that I shall never have as good a master again.

  August 10th

  The days slip by. The weather is hot and heavy, with no wind. For two evenings now we have heard distant thunder, but there has been no rain. Mr. Sanders has left Easton, while Mr. Church has returned from Horsham and, unlocking at last the secrets of his heart, has proposed marriage to Miss Singleton. She has refused him. There has been general astonishment, but it seems that delay has proved fatal to his chances, her affections having transferred themselves to the person of Mr. Huntly. It matters very little, for his Lordship has had another fit, this more serious than the first. He has been bled and cupped many times, but is no longer able to make any sounds at all; to communicate his wishes, he can flutter one of his hands, no more. He lies a-bed, eyes open, staring at the flies on the ceiling, while the maids tip-toe past his bed-chamber, and talk in whispers. The doctors come and go.

  The lake is a glass; the air ripples in the heat. The park is pale as paper. The deer stay in the shade, their little tails twitching. In the fields beyond the park the farmers will be soon beginning the harvest; they will be harvesting, too, in the fields of Northamptonshire, around Langley. When shall I see Timothy again?

  I find Susan. I ask whether she may be able to do me a small favour. “Why, it will depend on the favour,” she says, with a quick smile, whereupon I tell her that there is a letter on the Toad’s desk, with a crimson seal, that I am very anxious to see. “A letter about what?”—“The Elephant’s brother.”—“A brother? O—you mean another Elephant. And you would like me to steal the letter? What will I have in return?” I offer her three guineas, and she laughs. “Three guineas!”

  I laugh too. “Tom,” she says, “I will do it for a kiss.” So I give her a kiss, and she says that she will look for the letter tonight. I thank her very much.

  EVENING. MORE THUNDER. The storm draws closer, the sky darkens with high, towering clouds. As Jenny and I wait in the Elephant House she grows restless. It is only thunder, I tell her. It will not hurt you—I do not like thunder, she says, when will Susan have the letter?—Not yet, not yet. It is too early. There is another clap of thunder, and as it dies away I see from her expression that she is listening. What is it?—Someone is coming. I can hear nothing, but the hearing of Elephants is much more acute than that of humans. Jenny, are you certain?—I am certain, Tom. Someone is coming. I listen: perhaps Susan has the letter already.

  It is Mr. Singleton. If I am startled to see him, I am much more alarmed at the sight of little Alice King by his side. He greets me: “Ah, Tom, you know Alice, I am sure. We have come for a ride on the Elephant.”—“Sir, if you please,” Alice says, “I should be getting back home, it is late, my father will be wondering where I am.”—“Well then,” he replies, “the Elephant will carry you home. Tom, put on the howdar, if you will.” Her eyes watch him doubtfully. “I assure you, Alice, there is nothing to fear. You will enjoy a ride on the howdar. You will be like a beautiful Indian princess. Is that not so, Tom?”

  I say nothing, but at the thought that I am again destined to serve as his accomplice a wave of abhorrence rises within me. As I strap on the howdar I think of Susan: You could have done something. I tighten the girth and glance at Jenny. What should I do?—You must stop him, she says.—How?—I do not know. You must do something.

  They climb aboard. I do not strap on the ladder, but Mr Singleton notices. “Tom, you have forgot the ladder.”—“Yes, Sir.”

  Scarcely have we left the yard before he remarks that it is a shame to have such a short ride, would she not like to see the Obelisk? “I would, Sir, but my parents will be anxious,” she answers. “I would prefer to go home, Sir, if it’s the same to you.” He replies in a pleasant voice that it is not all the same to him; that, when he has such a beautiful companion, with such perfect looks, the looks of an Indian princess, he can on no account agree to take her straight home, it would be a sin against Nature. “Have you ever heard the story of the Princess and the Tyger?”

  “No, Sir,” says she.

  “Well, I shall tell you it, if you like. It is a story from the Indies. Steer for the temple, Tom. Well, the Princess, who was the most beautiful Princess in the whole of the Indies, was walking alone one day, through the jungles—you know what a jungle is? it is an Indian word for a thick forest—when she met a ferocious Tyger. It was the biggest Tyger that she had ever seen, and it sprang out and roared at her. She turned to run—however, the Tyger could run much faster than the Princess, and soon he caught her. He was about to eat her, for he was very hungry, when he understood how beautiful she was, and indeed he felt himself falling in love with her. He agreed not to kill her, on condition that she would kiss him, ten times, as he directed. The Princess was a little frightened, but thought to herself, if I do not kiss him, what will happen? I will be killed and eaten. So she said: ‘Where do I kiss you first?’—‘Why, on the cheek,’ said the Tyger, and she kissed him on his whiskery cheek. Then she asked where she should kiss him next, and he told her, on the mouth, and she kissed him on the mouth. What do you think of the story? How do you think it ends?”

  “I do not know, Sir. How did they understand each other?”

  “The Tyger could speak human, I suppose,” he answers, a trifle imp
atiently. “Or the Princess could speak Tyger. It is of no great importance. The fact is, they did indeed understand each other very well, just as you understand me, you know. But, let us pretend,” he continues, “that you are the Princess, and I am the Tyger, and that I have caught you, like so”—turning my head, I see him lean toward her, putting a hand round her waist—“and am about to eat you up. So you must kiss me, is that agreed, my pretty one, starting with the cheek.” He offers her his cheek, which she kisses. “And now on the lips, if you please.”

  “I should prefer not to, Sir.”

  “Why, it is merely a make-believe. And it will help us to discover how the story ends—though I am sure that it will end with the Princess falling in love with the Tyger. Is that not how all the best stories end? D-v-l take it, Tom—where are we going? Did you not hear me? Steer for the temple.”

  “Sir,” I say, “I think it may be coming on to rain.” This is true enough: the thunder has become louder and more persistent.

  “Well then,” he replies, “the temple will be an excellent place in which to shelter.”

  I ignore him. I press hard on Jenny’s head, ordering her to go faster; she responds at once, putting on her best pace. “What the d-v-l! Are you deaf? I tell you, steer for the temple!” He curses me, and strikes out several times, but at the speed we are travelling there is little he can do. Alice clings to the sides of the howdar like a passenger in a rough sea, while Mr. Singleton continues to shout and rant. “Stop the Elephant! D—n you! If you do not stop you will be discharged!”

  We are rushing along the drive and through the park gates. Ahead of us lies the safety of Easton village.

  I stop the Elephant by Alice’s little cottage and jump down. Her father, Robert, is by the door; I lift Alice down and hand her into his safe keeping. Mr. Singleton has also dismounted. He faces me. “Give me that thing—I shall ride this beast back myself.” He reaches for the ankus, which is as usual hanging on a leather string round my neck. “Let me have that.”—“Sir, I cannot allow you to have it.”—“Indeed?” he says with a sneer, and grabs it so hard that the string snaps. With a back-stroke he flings it into my face, catching my nose and knocking me to the ground. “I shall see you discharged in the morning. I am sure we shall have no difficulty in finding another Elephant keeper.”

  So saying, he clambers on to the howdar and brings the ankus down on Jenny’s skull like a hammer. “Walk, d—n you!” She shakes her head. “Walk! Walk!” He hammers furiously. On a sudden, she strides away.

  I shout at Robert to keep Alice within doors, and then I run after Jenny and Mr. Singleton. Darkness has fallen, and in the gloom I soon lose sight of them. When I arrive at the Elephant House, I find it empty. My nose is strangely benumbed; I touch it with my fingers and feel warm blood and broken bone. I stand under the arch-way, reflecting on my fate. In the morning I will be summoned to Mr. Bridge’s room, and discharged from his Lordship’s service. I will be parted from Jenny, and she will be left alone. I will never see her again. Our story is at an end.

  By now the storm is very nearly overhead and the rain has begun to fall. The lightning continues, and as each flash holds the park in a blue glare, my eyes travel from the temple to the lake, and along the lime avenue, and back and forth. Then the flash fades, and the thunder breaks. In the space between two of these thunder-claps I seem to hear a shrill, high-pitched trumpeting sound, very like a scream, not unlike the angry roars that Timothy sometimes used to make when he had the Ooze. I listen, staring in the dark. The rain is falling in a torrent. A second scream pierces the night, and judging that it comes from somewhere near the temple, I start in that direction. Yet my ears have deceived me, for when I reach the temple neither Jenny nor Mr. Singleton is there. Where, I wonder, has he taken her? Or where has she taken him?

  I run back to the Elephant House. My nose has now begun to sing with pain; I walk up and down, trying to compose myself, trying to quell my anxiety. The minutes pass; the storm is moving on, leaving behind a heavy darkness; I hear nothing. Again, I set out to find her. I walk down the lime avenue to the Obelisk; I walk back, calling her name. Then I see her standing in long grass, a black shape by the edge of the lake. At my approach, she raises her head. Although the howdar is still on her back, there is no sign of Mr. Singleton. Her trunk curls round my shoulder, and breathes against my ear. “Where is he?” I ask. “What has happened?” Her eyes are hollows of darkness. “Jenny,” I repeat. “Where is he? Has he gone? Let us go back to the Elephant House.”

  Instead, she uses her trunk to coax me round the lake. I let her lead, and follow until she stops. We are near the Cascade. Her head hangs, and her entire body seems to tremble. She will not take another step. “What is it? Jenny?” Her trunk nudges me onward. I am beginning to guess, and yet, even so, I do not see Mr. Singleton until I stumble upon him. He is half-way down the slope which leads to the pool. In the darkness, all I can make out are indistinct patches of pale light marked by his cravat and breeches. “Sir? Mr. Singleton?” He makes no sound, or none I can hear above the roar of the water. We are so close as to be within range of the drifting spray. Bending down, stretching out an uncertain hand to the patch of dark above the cravat, my fingers close upon something as soft and wet as clay, in the form of his nose, or rather, the two nostrils. From this touch I recoil, before forcing myself to feel again, whereupon I touch his lips, and my fingers, brushing against and moving the bottom lip, seem to enter his mouth. My fingers are already sticky with my own blood, but this circumstance fills me with more terror than I can easily describe, for even as a boy I never liked to touch dead things, out of a superstitious fear that, in some strange manner, that which killed them might kill me. The body of a murdered man would bleed afresh if it were approached by the murderer, or so my mother used to say. While I dread Mr. Singleton in the state of death, I dread even more the thought that at any moment he may stir and spring to life, reaching up with his arms and pulling me upon him in a deadly embrace.

  I take his boots and drag him some way up the slope, after which I unbutton his shirt and slide a hand inside, laying it flat on his chest. The skin is still warm, and I think that I feel the flutter of a heart-beat; but here I am mistaken, for it is my own heart beating through my hand. “Jenny,” I say. “What happened? Did you kill him? Did he fall off or did you kill him?”

  Her ears are wide, her face an inky blot. She will not reply, and yet I seem to know how Mr. Singleton died: either he fell off, or she knocked him off with her trunk, and as he lay on the ground, she knelt and crushed his chest. Is that not how Elephants execute condemned men in the Indies? But now Jenny coils her trunk round my body, swings me through the night air and places me on the back of her neck. Her trunk presents me with the cold metal of the ankus, which must have been lying somewhere in the grass. What does this mean? That she accepts my right to own the ankus, to be her keeper? Or that she is admitting to the murder and asking for punishment?

  Whatever the reason, she is striding away, not back to the Elephant House, but past the pine-wood and on to the Obelisk. The air pours by, I have never known her move at such a speed. Once we reach the Obelisk, she continues at the same headlong pace into the darkness of the woods.

  The deeper we go, the deeper the darkness grows. As we crash through the trees it is all I can do to stay on her neck, for she pays no heed to branches. I shout at her to stop, but she does not hear, and I have to shout again and again before she draws to a halt. Her body heaves beneath me. “Jenny, where are we going?” She charges on.

  The woods thin. She slows. She finds a winding track which brings us into pale meadows. The heavens have cleared, the sky is a fisherman’s net of stars holed by black clouds. A herd of sleeping cows rises in panic and rushes through a sudden blast of moon, and the same moon lights the silver body of a river, edged by willows. Jenny topples down its crumbling banks, enters its molten body, and joins the current, following each twist and curve. Sometimes it narrows, and we are wading
through deep pools; sometimes it grows broader, and we splash over tongues of gleaming shingle. Again I ask her where we are going, and now she replies that she does not know. Soon, however, I hear a long murmuring sound, something like the wind in the pines, and the air begins to smell fresh and salty. We are on a pale shore, sprinkled with frills of seaweed. Drifts of shells crack under Jenny’s feet.

  I dismount. At the land’s edge the waves come in and break, one after the other; lines of dark flowers opening into a sudden white blossom, bursting into cascades of petals which slide to our feet, dark and white, and vanish.

  Jenny waves her trunk, questing. “Tom, what lake is this?”

  “This is not a lake, but the sea.”

  “What is the sea?”

  What is the sea? Is the sea a strange kind of land in flux? Or is the land a kind of sea that has set like wax?

  “It is a house for fishes and eels,” I answer. “As the land is a house for men and Elephants.”

  “I remember this smell,” she says. “It was on the ship that brought me and Timothy to this country.”

  Amid the sounds of the breaking waves I hear a cry, a wail that fades into nothing; it seems to come from inside my head. We are alone, Jenny and Tom, the Elephant and her keeper, with the land behind us and the sea in front. We are the only beings in the world, Man and Elephant. Two misshapen creatures, with arms, legs, appendages, prottuberances.

  “Do you remember the voyage?” I ask.