Fellow Passenger (22 page)

Back in the elephant shelter, Pearl and I congratulated each other. Topaz showed no resentment. She had learned over the years that mere tender simplicity could not compete with the temperament of Pearl. I made them comfortable - to keep up with their appetites called for a tractor, not a wheelbarrow - and went in search of Mr Benjafield. He was out at the rubbish tip, killing bluebottles with a stock-whip at a range of ten yards. If those he hit were always those he aimed at, he was a remarkable artist.

‘What do I get if I keep your elephants and show them?’ I asked.

‘Ten a week, and find yourself.’

‘Any bonus for a new trick?’

‘Depends what,’ he said, massaging a bit of potato off the lash of the whip.

‘Good enough for the bills. Is it worth an extra ten quid to you?’

‘What’s your opinion of Pearl, son?’

I guessed the way his mind was running. Pearl, in one of her moods of frustration, might well have shown herself unreliable. He didn’t want any risks with the safety of the public.

‘Did she ever show any signs of trying to leave Mrs Benjafield in a state of nature?’I asked.

‘What?’ he roared.

He was no prude, of course. It was just that the absolute respectability of Benjafield’s was an unquestioned first principle.

‘Picking at her trunks and that sort of thing,’ I explained, sounding rather like a headmaster.

‘She did have some nasty foreign ways before Mrs Benjafield taught her better,’ he admitted shyly.

‘Just a complex,’ I said. ‘I’ve cured it. Now how about that bonus?’

‘You can have it, if the act’s worth it,’ he replied, ‘and I’m the judge of that. But I’m a fair man. They’ll all tell you.’

He was a bit doubtful about letting me show the elephants on the three o’clock house that very afternoon, but Mrs Benjafield, who urgently wanted to be rid of them, backed me up. She would be standing by, she said, if anything went wrong. Her husband showed far more confidence when I tried on a few fancy dresses from the circus wardrobe. I was the right colour all over - a genuine foreign colour it appeared to him, though anyone could acquire it on a Mediterranean holiday.

I chose a pair of acrobats’ trunks and some baggy pants of blue silk to go over them. Round the top I buckled a regular lion-tamer of a belt. Pearl could hoist away on that, if I left it fairly loose, without giving me the sensation of being cut in two.

When we entered the ring I must admit I suffered from stage fright. The private theatricals which I had been conducting for the last two and a half months were no help at all in facing this goggling circle of white faces. From sheer shyness I hung on to the character of a stern and unbending mahout. Pearl, however, played to the crowd and supplied the comedy. There was a communal gasp from the audience when she chased me and a salvo of relieved clapping when we marched out. Benjafield handed me ten welcome pound notes in the sight of all. He loved a lordly gesture when he had a reasonable excuse to make it.

In the evening we overdid it. While running away I stepped on the toffee-apple which Pearl had flung from her in pretended contempt, and fell full length in the sawdust. That gave me a moment of complex panic. I was simultaneously afraid that Pearl would step on me and that, if she didn’t, she would swing me aloft before I could recover my indispensable pugaree. A passing thought of Howard-Wolferstan might easily occur to some budding detective among audience or performers if the spotlight picked up the black elastic which held on my beard and whiskers.

Neither disaster happened. Pearl was sure-footed, and my hat within reach and back on my head before the sawdust cleared. When we were out of the ring, Benjafield relieved his feelings by telling me off good and proper. Gross carelessness in rehearsal. Always watch where your properties fall. And above all never make the women scream. I had not even heard them. Little Schatz told me afterwards that Pearl had missed me by inches. Pearl would. It was her sense of theatre. She could have missed me by a couple of feet if she had wanted to.

During the following week I relaxed for the first time since my escape from Saxminster courthouse. I thought that I was now set as an elephant trainer, thanks to Pearl. Instead of concentrating on the next six hours and planning ahead for two days at the most, I could dream of a future. Ten elephants. Thirty elephants. Accompany a circus to South America. And freedom.

It did me good. In fact without this interlude of rest I doubt if I could have carried on. As a dejected rogue I was futile, but as a cheerful rogue I felt in character. That first week of Benjafield’s was a fool’s paradise, yet none the less valuable.

The circus moved up from Banbury to Rugby. At a halt on the way I was smoking a cigarette in Benjafield’s caravan and chatting peacefully, when he came out with:

‘Mind if I ask you something, son?’

I did not. Fred Benjafield, within his limitations, never talked anything but sense.

‘Why do you wear that beard and turban of yours all the time?’

It was no good trying to bluff him with nonsense about my religion. He knew the beard was false. I murmured something about a disfigurement on my chin.

‘Any time you want to take ‘em off, son,’ he said, ignoring my wretched excuse, ‘I’d like you to know that in this business we keep our traps tight shut about a performer’s properties.’

I was never more impressed by the fact that we are all islands, without the least idea of what is really going on in our fellows’ minds. It had astonished me that nobody doubted I was an Indian, or suspected that Pearl and Topaz were the first elephants I had ever handled. Yet the one secret of which I was sure was common knowledge.

It was natural enough. There was no privacy. I had taken all possible precautions, only washing my face at dead of night in what was left of the elephants’ warm drinking water. But there had been times in daylight when Topaz had disturbed my beard - she was one of those females who can’t help being indiscreet in the display of affection - and times, apart from my accident in the ring, when the pugaree had been knocked half off before I could straighten it.

So far as Benjafield knew, the false beard was only suspected by himself, his wife and Steve — and all three of them passionately minded their own business. But my safety was hanging on a thread. Mr and Mrs Benjafield never read a newspaper from April to October. They had no time; neither had most of their employees. Over in the fairground, however, the chief occupation during idle mornings was spelling out the police news in the popular press.

I had to think quickly of some other trade by which I could earn a bare livelihood without the continual risk of exposing a bit of black elastic. In spite of weekly wage and bonus, I had hardly any money. All had gone in providing badly needed comforts and clothes. A means of living almost at once suggested itself, but I had to get it out of Herr Stoffel and spend, I reckoned, at least a week on the job.

It was not his wife - though that comely young acrobat certainly entered into my plans - but the guitar which he had picked up in Spain. I could not afford to buy it, and anyway, he would not part with it for mere money. He was the citron-blooming type of German, always drivelling about the Mediterranean. He had even learned to play a tune or two, but the guitar was only an instrument of blasphemy in his hands. You have to be born to its music. Even my father, who could sing admirably in his second language, could never accompany himself. I, however, have been used from my earliest years to the guitar passing from guest to guest at any informal party, and I can perform as well as my neighbour - perhaps a little better, for in 1942 I held down a job as guitarist at a cabaret in the port of Callao. That did not do any good to Germans, either.

Schatz at bottom was a complete innocent, without a useful thought beyond new methods of turning herself inside out in mid air; so she could not help a wild and unreal romanticism. The wideness of the world, the lovers who might be at her feet (if only she had time) and the careers she might have followed (if only she had not been superbly good at one) packed her dreams during the two hours of the day - it couldn’t have been more - when she was not engaged in practising or cooking or sleep. Consequently she was drawn to opposites. No human being could come much nearer than she to flight; nothing could be more earthbound than elephants. Stoffel was an extremely serious and worthy young blond with hardly a hair on his body; I - well, I need not emphasize the contrast.

I fear that Schatz had already begun to show a tendency to become the third female in my care, but my behaviour was impeccable. This unaccustomed and perhaps unnecessary morality was, I must admit, materially affected by the fact that I never could be sure of enough privacy to take off my beard and wash it. So I smelt abominably of elephant. To gather little Schatz into that primeval forest, or to take it off, would have shown a lack not only of principles but common sense.

After my private decision to leave the circus, I was compelled to give her some encouragement. I told her the story of my life at my father’s court. I explained to her - since it was what she wanted to hear - that the West had got civilization the wrong way up. I treated her as a daughter - an engaging relationship which, provided it is not a fact, may be allowed to develop in any direction the interested parties choose. It was all very hard work, and much of it was carried on while filling wheelbarrows, or up the step-ladder grooming Pearl and Topaz.

While we were at Rugby, Schatz spent far too much time in the elephant lines listening to tales of the gorgeous East. One night she turned up in hardly more than she wore for the public. I kept my mind firmly on the guitar and the sexless good-fellowship of the circus, and explained to her that in India we were easily shocked. She called me St Anthony of the Elephants. It was, as Wellington said, a damned close thing, and, by God, I don’t think it could have been done if Pearl hadn’t been there! Her attitude towards Schatz was much like her treatment of Topaz - friendly but contemptuous. As the flesh and the devil were about to overwhelm me, I took refuge beneath that all-embracing trunk.

When Stoffel complained to Benjafield, I judged that the time was ripe to approach the subject of the guitar. I knew that he had complained because Benjafield had a long and friendly conversation with me in which he pointed out that the morality of circus folk was the highest in all England. I dare say it was. Sixteen hours a day doesn’t leave much time for dalliance.

It was difficult to find an occasion for an interview alone with Stoffel. Either the pair were practising or out shopping together, or Schatz was hanging round the elephants. I had to wait for a morning when, owing to a slight coldness between the pair of them, Schatz did her shopping alone. I called at the caravan and bored Stoffel with conversation. After a while I took down the guitar and began to play. I had never dared to do so while my identity was still mysterious; but now everyone
knew
I was an Indian.

Stoffel, surprised, invited me to sing. I replied that I knew no Spanish, only the tunes.

‘But how?’ he asked.

‘I made a study of Western folk music for the sake of my spiritual development. The tunes which come most easily to me must be those I heard in a former existence.’

Stoffel gave this remark his most serious German consideration. I knew he would.

‘You mean you were a Spaniard in a previous incarnation?’ he asked.

‘I am sure of it.’

‘I do not think the evidence sufficient,’ he said solemnly. ‘Forgive me!’

That was as good an opening as another. I explained that my spiritual development was being hindered by the circus, and that I wanted to leave it. Stoffel did his best to keep a polite dead pan, but hope simply leaped into his normally expressionless face.

‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you could teach Steve to take over your act.’

He thought I took a pride in my craft. I admired that. He had a one-track mind, but it was a kindly track.

‘I could,’ I replied, ‘easily. But I’ve no other way of earning a living on my travels - except music.’

‘Can you play other instruments?’

‘Only the guitar.’

He weighed up the comparative values of his guitar and Schatz. But that is a most unfair way to describe his second’s hesitation. He knew what he must do, and the silence was only one of disappointment. He treasured that guitar. It was a symbol of what he would like to be, never could be and wouldn’t enjoy if he was. But we are all so made that those are the most difficult dreams to surrender. Schatz and her mysterious Faiz Ullah. Stoffel and his useless guitar. I hope, when both had vanished, they found time to pay a little more attention to the reality of each other.

‘I can’t give you its value,’ I said. ‘Only a couple of pounds and an old bicycle.’

Of course Stoffel took it, and I went straight round to see Benjafield. He was hurt. He offered me proper quarters, more money, anything in the way of comfort that the circus could provide. He could not make out why I wanted to leave him.

‘Circus morality,’ I told him magnificently. ‘I do not wish to see two other hearts broken besides my own.’

He patted me on the back and blew his nose. It is astonishing how those tough eggs in the show business can reduce themselves to the intelligence which the public expects of them. Journalists, of course, are the same. Benjafield, with his knowledge of men, could not have believed for a moment that, if I had a heart to break at all, I should talk about it in the terms of a novelette. But the convention was in his blood.