The Elephant Keeper Read online

  “Where have you gone?”

  She gave a low, impudent laugh. “I have gone nowhere, I am here, I am waiting.”

  With a sweep of a hand I caught her and held her down. She pleaded with me and cried out for help, no doubt thinking that I was about to harm her, however I clamped my hand over her neck. Once she was still, I explored every inch of her face—her eyes, her lips, her nose, her ears, her chin, her mouth. The image of her familiar features rose in my mind like a dark mirror: yes, surely, there could be no doubt, she was Lizzy. Yet a question remained. I lifted my hand.

  “How did you come to London? What made you leave Harrington?”

  “Please let me go.”

  “I will not harm you, I have told you. But I must know why you left Harrington Hall. Answer me.”

  There was a silence before she spoke. “Why, to find you, Tom,” and putting my hand aside she sat up, and ran her fingers through my hair, “it was so cruel of you to leave me, my heart was a-breaking.”

  At this I yielded, and pulled her to me. She did not smell of the country; it was as if her entire body had drawn into it the city’s smoke-filled, grimy essence; yet, in the dark, I found it easy enough to imagine that we were, not in this mean little garret, but back in the hay-loft, with the swallows chittering in their nests.

  I went away; however, I soon returned, night after night, up the same blind alley, through the same low doorway. The old woman was always in her chair, though for all the notice she took of me I myself might have been a ghost; yet the dog came to know me and, instead of barking, would fawn about my legs, sniffing at the smells of the Menagery and accompanying me up the endless stairs to the garret. Once, as Lizzy and I were lost in passion, it stole into the room and began a frenzy of licking at the soles of my feet. I say Lizzy, for, at every visit, the strength of my desire to make her into Lizzy succeeded more completely. Very soon she began to remember Harrington Hall and Thornhill, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrington and little Joshua, and Bob Brown and Dick Shadwick and even Mr. Gibbons, our venerable school-master at Gillerton, and how she had tricked him into believing that she was a gipsy boy. She remembered everyone and everything. How this happened I cannot say for certain, but I think that, without knowing it, I must have been her tutor. One night, between caresses, I would gently remind her of the thunder-storm, when she took shelter in the cart-house; the next, she would murmur, “O, Tom, do you not remember that thunder-storm, when I was longing for you to kiss me, and you did not?”—“I was still very young,” I found myself answering, “I longed to kiss you, but I was afraid.”—“What were you afraid of?”—“I am not sure…I was afraid that you would be angry.”—“O, Tom, I could never be angry with you.” The succeeding night, I might ask, whether she remembered the day in the hay-loft when we became true lovers, and in due time she would remember that well enough, just as she would remember when I fell off Timothy and broke my elbow, or when the Elephants escaped into Mrs. Harrington’s garden. “Such a night,” she would say, “I thought they would be killed…”—“So did I—you remember the rain?”—“I do…how it poured…” So we carried on. Once, as I lowered myself into her body, she gave a gasp. “Why, it is nearly as big as Timothy’s.”

  How strange this was! I do not think that she was lying, or not lying simply; indeed, I am sure that a part of her truly came to believe that she might be Lizzy Tindall, that she was Lizzy Tindall; as for me, I had no doubts, for beneath her Cockney I allowed myself to hear a Somersetshire accent discovering itself again, and this seemed a kind of proof. It is true that, when I met her in the street, I made no attempt to remove her shawl, which I might have done; indeed, that I always avoided looking at her too closely, for fear of being un-deceived. Yet one night, as we coupled in the impenetrable darkness, my ears seemed to catch the cry of a baby, not very loud but altogether distinct and close by, and when I paused to listen the cry came again, even closer.

  “What is that baby?”

  “What baby, Tom?”

  “I heard a baby—there is a baby in the room!”

  “There is no baby in here. Tom, please, there is no baby in here. It must have been a cat.”

  “A cat?”

  “Or a rat—in the roof—they have their litters—”

  “But there it is again—listen! It is a baby, not a rat!”

  She attempted to pull me to her, to drag me back to the bed, but I was determined to find the baby which, I thought, she had stored in some secret place. As I hunted about, I came upon the stub of a candle, which, having my tinder-box with me, I proceeded to light. She struggled to prevent me, throwing herself forward and clinging to me; at last, however, it was lit. The flame gathered its strength and drew itself up, illuminating the bare cabin of the room with its broken plaster walls and sloping roof and rotten floor, on which the dog lay, mouth hanging open, exposing a tongue marked by inky stains. A ragged curtain hung in a corner. When I swept it aside, there lay not a baby, but a wooden doll, a child’s toy, with flaxen hair and painted lips and eyes. Filled with a strange fear, I turned, and now, as the candle lit Lizzy’s naked body—the flaccid skin of her stomach, the lolling breasts, the harsh lines that hooped her mouth, the trickling blood—for, in our struggle, my arm must have caught her a blow—my fear doubled and redoubled. She was like one of the dead women pulled from the river at Temple Bar. Quickly I blew out the flame, and attacked with a ferocity that made her struggle and cry out, knowing that it was necessary to destroy what the candle had revealed. In this way, I seemed able to return her to being Lizzy.

  When I told Jenny, that I had found Lizzy Tindall, after all these years, living in London, she said, “It is a good story, Tom, it is a good story.” Sensing her doubt, I said, “You will see her soon, Jenny; I will bring her here, to meet you. You will see.”

  At which she looked away, uneasily.

  Lizzy seemed altogether reluctant to come to the Menagery; though I urged her many times she always made excuses: either she was busy, or it was a long way to the Strand, or something else. “The Elephant would like to see you again,” I would say.—“O, the Elephant…there is really an Elephant, is there, Tom?”—“Of course—you remember the Elephant—” She stroked my cheek. “Yes, yes, Tom, I do remember—I remember very well—but I want to be sure, you know, that it is the same Elephant—I would not like to come all the way to the Strand, for a different Elephant—”

  I think that, perhaps, she did not believe in the existence of the Elephant; however, late one hot summer’s afternoon, she appeared wearing a blue silk dress and a jewelled neck-lace. She had an ostrich feather in her hair and a trail of perfume, and her face was thickly daubed with paint. I felt shy and aukward, both because she looked so different and because at that very moment I was applying oil of Turpentine to the bear, in order to kill some of the multitude of fleas which live in his fur, and my hands stank of the oil. I introduced her to Mr. Scott—“Very pleased to meet you, Madam,” he said with a bow, and a blush—whereupon Mr. Cross sprang from his booth at the entrance to the Menagery, shining with sweat and cramming a crooked wig over his balding head (though what am I to talk, for much of my hair, too, is falling out). Having kissed her by the hand, he appointed himself her escorte. “Madam, if you will permit me, I shall be delighted to shew you the Menagery.” Upon which, he led her round the animals, telling one fantastick story after another: how, for instance, at risk to life and limb, he had personally captured the Man-Eater, in a jungle, as it was about to devour another victim. “Appearances are deceptive…if you were to enter the cage now, I can assure you, Madam, there is no doubt, you would be lucky to escape alive.”

  This might have been comical, but I could tell that Lizzy was embarrassed at Mr. Cross’s fawning behaviour, and, in truth, so was I. I had dreamed of the moment when Lizzy and Jenny would see each other again. Now here was Mr. Cross to contend with, getting in the way, holding her arm.

  When we reached the Elephant, as he was embarking on another improbable t
ale, this one about Jenny’s royal ancestry, I wanted to interrupt him, to say that Lizzy had met the Elephant before, years ago, that we came from the same village in the west country; but the words seemed to stick in my throat. Instead, I watched Jenny’s expression (I could not see Lizzy’s, because she was in front of me), eagerly hoping that she would shew some sign of recognition, even of joy, at a familiar face. She did not. Her expression remained impassive.

  “She is very good at playing the drum,” Mr. Cross announced. “She learnt that, in the Indies, at the royal court, where she was brought up a hundred and fifty years ago. Tom, make the Empress play the drum, will you?”

  I signed to her, and Jenny, picking up the stick with her trunk, struck the drum twice: bang bang.

  Mr. Cross was pleased. “There! Have you ever seen an Elephant play the drum before, Madam?”

  “I have not,” said she, turning her face so that she was speaking as much to me as to him. “No, I have not. I have never seen an Elephant in my entire life. It is—she is—a very—a very fine creature.”

  “The Empress is the only Elephant in Europe,” declared Mr. Cross, who led her on to look at the monkie. I followed, my brain burning like a furnace, scarcely able to believe my ears. That she had never seen an Elephant before? We had talked about the Elephants so many times! “Fifteen days at sea,” Mr. Cross was proudly saying. “Fifteen days, Madam, I assure you, before he was washed up on shore, more dead than alive. A true miracle.”

  When Lizzy had seen the animals, she was about to go; but before she did so she gave me her hand. “Farewell, Tom. I am sorry, believe me.” These words, and the tone of open pity in which they were uttered, confounded me entirely, and before I could say a word she was gone, disappearing with a swirl of her dress into the busy street, leaving behind the memory of her perfume. Mr. Cross and Mr. Scott were convulsed with laughter, but I paid them no heed, which served to increase their mirth tenfold. Jenny would not meet my eyes.

  While I was angry with Jenny, and with Mr. Cross and Mr. Scott—and indeed with myself—I was most of all angry with Lizzy. I could not understand why she should have denied herself, and I was determined to make her admit to the truth. That night, after the Menagery had closed, and with Mr. Scott looking after the animals, I walked up to Cow Cross. There was no sign of her where she generally stood, but I went up the alley and the old crone was nodding in her wormy chair, her apron spread with money, and beside her the dog. I climbed the creaking stairs, and called Lizzy’s name, for I had convinced myself that she was there. No reply came, but I seemed to hear a rustle. I doubted; moved forward, arms outstretched; and groping in the darkness, over the bed, my hands closed on the wooden doll. I flung it aside and, in a sudden rage, clattered down the stairs to the old woman. “What is her name? Tell me her name!”—“Whose name, Sir?”—“Up the stairs! Her name! You must know her name!” I took her by the shoulders, meaning to shake the name out of her. “What is her name?”—“Name? I don’t know.”—“Her name!” Coins scattered and fell. “Her name is Lizzy Tindall, is that not so? Tell me her name is Lizzy Tindall!” She shrieked and cackled like a goose. “Why ask, if you know already?” I rushed out.

  That night, and many others, I spent hunting Lizzy round the city. I would first visit the house in Frying Pan Alley, and when that proved fruitless try the stews of Turnmill Street, stopping at each gaggle of whores to inquire whether they knew of a certain Lizzy Tindall; whereupon one of the party, a raddled hag dressed as a dairy-maid, might reply that she knew her very well, why, she had seen her that very afternoon along the Ratcliff Highway, and if I went to such-and-such an address I would be certain to find her. Thence I would hurry, my hopes raised, but no one at that address had ever heard her name, and I would return to the same whores who, at the sight of me, would burst into peals of laughter. “Why, Sir, you have just missed her, she was here not ten minutes ago, asking after you” and now I would be directed to another whore-house, in Long Acre, where some hideous, carbuncled, bandy-legged jade whose withered dugs hung to her waist and whose skin stank of old fish would take my arm and claim to be Lizzy Tindall, or Lizzy Tindall’s twin. Night after night this game repeated itself. The thought that Lizzy was hiding in some nook or cranny, and that I would eventually run her to earth, drove me on, and once when I came to the house in Frying Pan Alley the old woman attempted to prevent me from mounting the stairs, and this convinced me that I had found her at last. I thrust the beldam aside and, seizing her candle, charged up and burst into the room; whereupon a tangle of flesh resolved itself into one spluttering gentleman and three naked beauties, none of whom I recognised. I made my sincere apologies, and withdrew.

  As the summer wore on—I cannot say exactly when, but at some point—the cold truth began to dawn: that she had not been Lizzy Tindall, and had never been, and that the story we had created, and which seemed so real, had been nothing but a sham. Indeed, I had known this all along, or should have done: for my Lizzy, the Lizzy who had helped measure the dimensions of the Elephants as they lay in the yard at Harrington Hall, would by now be twenty years older than the silky, smoky, perfumed creature of the city who had visited the Menagery. Yet in some curious way I had truly believed that she was Lizzy.

  As Mr. Scott says: it is possible to believe and not to believe something at the same time.

  In the weeks after this, I flew into a violent rage, which overwhelmed all my powers of Reason. I became a scoundrel, a villain; no word is strong enough. God forgive me, but every night was the same: it made no difference whom I chose from the armies of whores plying their constant trade, and from these lowly creatures I sought refuge in drink and more drink, so that there were times when, stumbling from tavern to whore-house, and whore-house to tavern, my senses were so befogged and befuddled that I had no idea where I was, or even who I was; had I been asked my name, I would have been lost for a reply. Twice I was robbed in the streets. Somehow I always seemed to find my way back to my bed in the Menagery, or to White Horse Yard, where I would wake in the morning to the first snips of the barber’s scissors. The barber is Mr. Pounce; he is a fat, cheery man who not only cuts hair but also draws teeth, upon request; indeed, he once drew one of mine, which I thought as rotten as those of the Man-Eater, but which, as it turned out, was still well rooted. As he wrenched at my jaws, trying to assert a grip with the forcipes, he grunted with effort, and the sweat sprang on his forehead, while I was in such agonies that I nearly fainted; yet I welcomed the pain, telling myself that it was a punishment for my foul and dissolute way of life and that, once the tooth was out, I would reform my behaviour and become a hermit. My resolution failed; the day saw my rage grow and grow until, by night-fall, it was again an ungovernable force.

  What is there in my nature that brings on these spasms? It would be easy enough to talk of brutish appetites, and of animal spirits, and indeed, I am sure, there was something of the Ooze about my behaviour. It would have been better if I had been chained to a tree and fed nothing but bread and water. But there is something in human depravity which, I think, far exceeds anything to be seen in the behaviour of animals.

  At length I caught a severe infection, which distressed me greatly, and laid me low for several weeks. Thus the storm blew out, and I found myself sailing in calmer waters; indeed, though it may seem strange to say, the city itself seemed a calmer place. The hubbub, the noise, the coming and going of strangers, the eternal procession of chaises and drays and carriages of every kind, all this ceased to bewilder me, and became part and parcel of life. It must have been about then that Mr. Scott first remarked that, if the Menagery stayed here much longer, I would turn into “a true Londoner,” a prophecy he has since repeated several times.

  I wonder. If to be a true Londoner is to think of London as one’s true home, the root of one’s being, I doubt that I ever will think of myself in that way. I am country born and bred, even if the countryside, with its fields and woods, has come to seem a foreign land, another Indies, radian
t with colour but curiously indistinct and uncertain. When did I last catch the call of a cuckow, floating and fading among the snows of the hawthorns? When did I last hear the blind river of a nightingale’s song, bubbling and sobbing in the darkness? And, indeed, if I were to hear a nightingale, would I now be sure that it was a true nightingale, not a man hidden in a bush?

  I tell myself that this is a great city, some say the greatest city that the world has ever known; but it is a hard place to live, for all that. I have never been pinched by the cold as I have in London. That is, the winter when my father died may have been colder; but it did not feel as cold; the reason chiefly being, I believe, that the cold in Somersetshire is a dry, thin cold, which invigorates the senses and draws the vapours out of the land, whereas in London the cold is damp and raw and clogged with infection.—Onion, Sir, your Honour, pray, try this raw onion—it is an excellent foil to the cold, and will infallibly warm any body in a trice. Why, Madam, thank you kindly—I am most grateful—but when it comes to the business of keeping the extremities warm, I should prefer a few sticks of good fire-wood to a barrowful of onions. Yet there is scarcely any fire-wood here. Instead, the city depends on sea-coal, which is a feeble, spluttering, popping, crackling thing, and, besides, not always easy to get, for everyone wants coal in cold weather, and supplies run low. Short of fuel, Mr. Scott and I heat the Menagery by burning the dried dung of the animals. Jenny’s dung seems to burn best, and the smell is far from unpleasant; but the stoves never give off enough heat, and the animals suffer. Bruin the bear has a thick fur, and dozes; and the snake curls into a stone, and Jenny, wrapped in blankets which cover her back and neck, and straw tied in bundles round her legs, stands and endures. Mr. Scott has given Stephen an ancient great coat; it is far too big for him, so that his head almost disappears beneath the collar, but it must provide some warmth. Teeth chattering loudly, and racked by coughs, he huddles in a corner and strokes his withered hand. Meanwhile, the lion moans.