Fellow Passenger (21 page)

‘Well, what do you keep them for?’

‘Haven’t I told you?’ he stormed at me. ’Because the bloody public wants elephants.’

‘I’ll have a look at them,’ I said. ‘I used to play around in the elephant stables as a boy.’

He detailed the groom, whose name was Steve, to show me the elephants. It was Steve’s business to feed them, and Mrs Benjafield used to show them.

‘There y’are!’ said Steve. ‘That one’s Pearl, and that one’s Topaz.’

He strolled off and left me to it. There is a terrifying ruthlessness in the circus. You either can or you can’t, and they want to find out at once.

Pearl and Topaz were small elephants, about seven feet high at the shoulder; but the two uncompromising backsides which faced me seemed the biggest chunks of flesh I had seen since the death of my great aunt - not, of course, that she had ever revealed herself to me so unashamedly, but my head, as a small boy, was on a comparable level.

They were in a canvas shelter, like the horses, and both tethered by a fore-leg. Pearl was on the left. I pushed my way between her ribs and the canvas, and told her to get over. She got over, and examined my whiskers and turban with her left eye. She was not impressed. She filled her trunk from a bucket of water and squirted it down her throat. I understood her perfectly. The next trunk load was going to be for me if I didn’t get out of there. She expressed her opinion of me still more forcibly as I passed behind her to talk to Topaz.

Topaz received me with a squeal of joy. She was much stupider than Pearl. She thought I was the real goods straight from Lahore, and at once investigated my trousers with her trunk. My experience of the Americas suggested that this was not indelicacy, but a search for something which a former trainer used to keep in his sash. If I were wearing the
faja
or sash and had some bulky treat for my riding animal, it would be there that I should put it.

One could not, I perceived, treat elephants as horses. They were too placid and too intelligent. Yet I had no intimate knowledge of any other animal. It seemed best, therefore, to count on sex rather than zoology and to put my trust in their immense and undoubted femininity.

It is a poor excuse when calling on maiden ladies to say that the shops were shut, so I strolled out into the fairground, which was waiting for the evening and meanwhile doing a desultory business with a few holiday-makers and a lot of children. It seemed to me that toffee-apples were likely to be popular with elephants. One could even present them in a vast box tied up with blue ribbon.

I tried to bargain with the stall-holder for her spoiled, or yesterday’s, toffee-apples. She didn’t ‘ave none spoiled, and yesterday’s was kept ‘ygienic and good as new. She was perfectly well aware that I was trying to get a job with the circus - news travelled from end to end of the community in about thirty seconds - and when I got it,
if I
got it, I could have toffee-apples at the trade rate. I did not tell her I wanted them for the elephants, thinking it best to keep my secrets as an animal trainer to myself, so I paid the full price and removed the sticks.

I returned to Pearl and Topaz with five toffee-apples in my pocket and one in the waistband of my trousers. They had decided during my absence that I was no conceivable use to the sisterhood. At last, by offering my navel to Topaz with the abandon of an oriental dancer, I managed to persuade her into trying again. She removed the toffee-apple, ate it, and promptly discovered the rest. I allowed her two, and moved over to Pearl, followed by the weavings of an affectionate trunk.

Pearl had regarded this undignified flirtation with contempt. She paid not the slightest attention to me, and I was compelled to lay a toffee-apple at her feet. She picked it up and dropped it daintily into Topaz’s straw, Topaz wasn’t proud. She ate it.

I could not believe that Pearl did not like toffee-apples. Plainly she was just sulking, so I sulked, too, and turned to go. I was half-way between the sisterhood when the finger of a trunk closed upon the back of my collar and gently persuaded me back. I assumed it belonged to Topaz. I discovered, when deposited in front of her, that it belonged to Pearl. I patted her trunk, said it was time to go now, and decidedly went.

No use. I was popped back again at the tea-table. I reminded myself firmly that if she meant mischief she would not be so oddly formal about it. We stared at each other. Pearl’s expressive eyes were not malicious. She was not even laughing at me. She was plain disappointed. ‘Here am I,’ she almost said, ‘a fitting companion for an intelligent person, but I still find that gentlemen prefer Topazes.’

In my perplexity Topaz caressed me with her trunk. She was intolerably motherly - now that she was assured of a supply of toffee-apples. Pearl, on the other hand, had something really solid to offer if only I could guess what it was. Had she, perhaps, been taught some bit of broad comedy by the unknown trainer of whom I reminded her, or worked with the clowns? I petted all I could reach, and apologized to her for stupidity. When again I offered her a toffee-apple she was graciously pleased to shoot it down her maw. We left it at that, reserving judgment about each other.

Confident that I was just as capable as anyone else of watching the sisterhood sit on tubs, I went in search of Mr Benjafield. He was supervising the complicated rigging of nets and trapezes. The trapeze artists were with him. A couple of Germans they were - Stoffel and Schatz. I don’t wonder that the speakers of that insensitive language feel outlawed from the rest of Europe.
Treasure, tresor, joya
- all have syllables which lend themselves reasonably to a term of endearment. But
schatz
, though meaning the same, sounds like a small piece of machinery. It must, I think, be one of the reasons for the peculiar complexes of Germans - that they are continually using words, the meaning of which contradicts the primitive emotional value of the sounds. However, Schatz was a most attractive girl and fascinated by my whiskers.

‘I’ll take over your elephant act,’ I told Benjafield.

‘What d’ye mean - take it over?’ he shouted. ‘Feed ‘em and shovel up after ‘em, that’s what I want you for.’

I replied that of course I would, but that the chap who lived with them ought to show them.

‘Tell that to the missus,’ he said.

It was not irony. It was a simple order, and he returned immediately to tightening up a shiny steel stay.

Mrs Benjafield, dressed in a sun-top, a pyjama jacket and a smart tweed skirt, was haggling with a couple of farmers. I had learned by this time that if you didn’t interrupt, nothing would ever get said. So I gave her husband’s message.

‘There you are, you see!’ she snapped at the farmers. ‘Take it or leave it!’

What they had to see, I suppose, was that she was inordinately busy. They were stunned into accepting her offer.

Mrs Benjafield led me straight over to the elephants. I respected that woman. She admitted she knew nothing of their finer points, and that all animals were alike to her. She could manage anything on four legs well enough to get by with a provincial public. But the trouble was that she performed already on the tight-rope, in a stock-whip act with Fred and with the liberty horses. When she appeared with the elephants as well, Benjafields began to look like a one-woman circus.

I unchained the sisterhood with some misgivings. Topaz, exploring for more sweets, was kind enough to put on a show of affection. They followed us over to the big top, Topaz hanging on to Pearl’s tail. At the entrance to the tent, Pearl put out a forefoot as a stirrup, and Mrs Benjafield hoisted herself up by the ear. I expected Topaz to do the same, but she did not - and I was left to the experience gained in my father’s elephant stables. I said
Toffee hai,
which sounded reasonably Indian, and pulled Topaz’s ear. She got that, and put out a foot. I found out later that I need not have bothered. Ear pulling was enough.

Steve and an assistant rolled the tubs into the ring. I folded my arms, looked inscrutable and prayed that I would not fall off. After half a dozen circuits Mrs Benjafield slid down and struck a pose. So did I. Both animals put their forefeet on the tubs, then all their feet, then sat on them with trunks curled up. That was that - bar a bit of showmanship to make it all look harder. The elephants were bored stiff. So was Mrs Benjafield. They would have gone through exactly the same performance whether she shouted ‘Hup!’ or whether she didn’t.

She asked me if I thought I could take over the act. I replied tactfully that a beard was no substitute for beauty, but if the public would put up with me, so no doubt would the elephants.

The evening performance, which I watched carefully, revealed nothing more except the legal maximum of Mrs Benjafield who sat on Pearl’s head dressed as a harem beauty. For a hard-working woman in the late thirties she was not at all bad; at any rate the sultan would have had every right to expect a fulsome letter of thanks when he handed her over to one of his more earnest civil servants as a Christmas present. The elephants were also conscious of their duty to the public. Pearl had a red and silver pad on her head, and Topaz a blue and gold. I noticed that they enjoyed applause.

The Benjafields supplied me with blankets and a pup tent which I pitched alongside the elephant shelter; but after the performance there was no chance at all of getting into it. I had to undress, tether and feed Topaz and Pearl. Steve showed me how to do it, when I explained that our customs in India would probably be impracticable in a travelling circus. After that, Stoffel and Schatz took good German pity on me, and talked to me interminably about the homesickness they assumed I ought to feel. They were trying to show themselves more human than the English; it did not occur to them that the unfeeling English had taken it for granted that I wanted to sleep.

The sisterhood woke up in excellent form. They were impressed, I think, by the fact that I had pitched my tent alongside their own. I had become a familiar smell. So had they. After an hour’s work with shovel, straw and wheelbarrow, and another hour of grooming, I got an excellent breakfast. No sooner was that down than Benjafield told me to take out the elephants before the ring was wanted for other rehearsals, and see what I could do with them by myself.

I was in trouble at once. That damned Pearl would not put out her foot for me to mount, so I climbed on to Topaz. She was quite insufferable with girlish pride, and picked up a wisp of straw and repaired her make-up. What surprised me was that Pearl did not seem to mind. She even looked at me as if I had shown a first and quite unexpected flicker of intelligence.

Round the ring we went, Topaz stepping out and Pearl hanging on to her tail as if the indignity did not bother her at all. They went through their tricks with alacrity, and barely gave me time to say ‘Hup!’ in the proper places.

That was fine. But when I pulled Topaz’s ear and she put out her foot for me to mount and lead the procession off, Pearl spanked her - a whack with the trunk which could have been heard in Banbury.

Topaz and I stood about looking guilty. I, at any rate, did not know how to humour this old-maidish temper. I thought that Pearl might consider it her turn to be ridden, so I tried. No, that was not it. I offered her a toffee-apple. She stamped it into the sawdust. She was rocking herself gently from side to side, and her eyes were impatient. I began to think it was a long way to the entrance and started to walk to it, hoping that Pearl would follow, but not too fast. She didn’t even try to follow. She reached out her trunk and detained me, just as she had done in her stall.

I reminded myself that if these elephants had not been tame as dogs, the Benjafields would not have risked allowing me to rehearse them alone. But what is logic when standing by the forefoot of an exasperated elephant? I retired delicately to her hindquarters and bolted. I heard four ponderous strides. The waistband of my trousers was grabbed from behind, and I was lifted kicking and helpless into the air. Pearl deposited me upon her back, and curled up her trunk in salute. Nervously I placed a toffee-apple in it. She didn’t even try to hold it. I was spoiling the climax of her act. She strode out of the ring, followed submissively by Topaz.

Once outside, she was all over me, and any toffee apples I chose to produce. When I had surreptitiously lifted my beard, wiped off the sweat and stopped trembling (for I defy anyone to remember that charging elephants possibly mean well), I realized that I was being petted and encouraged. I was quite a clever animal who had understood.

In fact I had not. But I was prepared to work for anyone who would teach me a trade and ask no questions. So back we went to the ring while it was still empty. There was a spirit of enterprise in the air. The vicar, as it were, had agreed to the sisterhood’s plans for the church bazaar. We dealt perfunctorily with the tubs, and then Pearl trained us in the remainder of the act. My working hypothesis was that I reminded her of some bearded Indian, genuine or bogus, in her past, and that I was expected to do what he did.

After bowing to imaginary applause, I tried to mount Topaz. Pearl hauled me away. Infinitely patient, she insisted that I was not to mount Topaz, while half a dozen times I tried other possible moves. At last I got the right one. I had to pretend to grow angry or nervous and run away. She then caught me by the belt, hoisted me on to her noble head and proudly led the procession out. It was the old trick of a favourite animal refusing to leave the ring until given what it wants, and a most spectacular ending to the act. No wonder Pearl had been obstinate. She could never have taught the trick to Mrs Benjafield, for Mrs B. wore nothing by which she could be lifted.