Whistling for the Elephants (25 page)

‘Hello,
my old friend,’ she said quietly to the giant beast. ‘Have you got a new home?’
She spoke gently to the four hundred pounds of muscle. Through the bars the
bright colour of Rajan’s coat stood out. He was stunning. Billie moved to
unlock the door. John suddenly became nervous. He had never been nervous
before, but Billie had never been his wife before.

‘Don’t
you need your whip?’ he called.

Billie
smiled at him. ‘You have to balance fear and respect, John. A beaten child has
only fear.’ Then, just as she was about to open the door, she leaned toward her
new husband and whispered, ‘I’m pregnant.’

Before
John could say a word, Billie stepped into the cage and locked the door behind
her. She faced the tiger square on as Rajan padded as far from her as possible.
Billie moved slowly, reaching her hand out gently toward the top of its head.
She had done this a hundred times. The drunken crowd was completely silent.
This slender bride in white matched against one of Nature’s furies. It was good
entertainment, till the tiger spoiled it. He must have wound the muscles in his
legs like the spring in Mlle Zazel’s cannon. One minute he was standing there
and the next he was on Billie. Grace was the only person who moved. Without
thinking she was in the cage and on the back of the tiger. Somehow, by surprise
or luck, she managed to release Billie from its grasp. Blood ran from Billie’s
arm, a scarlet cloak across her white wedding wear. Finally John was able to
move, and he pulled his wife from the cage, but now the tiger turned to Grace.
Grace inched her way round the cage toward the door. The tiger was playing with
her. At first it seemed it was going to let her go. Then, as she approached the
door, it reached out with one massive paw. The rip into her flesh started at
the top of the right side of her head. It tore through her skin, from her hair
down her temple and across her cheek. The destruction had no end as the claws
reached her shoulder and then down, shredding, tearing, slicing, destroying her
right arm and hand. The right side of Grace’s body pulled for ever down and
down. A single shot from Captain Bogardus finished the horror. The tiger was
dead.

As
the tiger slumped to the floor Phoebe rose in her chair, trying to reach
Grace. As she did so her body pitched forward and then back. For a moment
Phoebe moved like a dancer. She was beautiful, poised between dropping and
recovery, between balance and uncontrolled falling. An arc of death. Then,
finally, she slumped into young Harry’s arms and she was gone.

Joey sat completely still
in the empty room as the people of the past moved around us. At last I asked
him:

‘How
come you were there, Joey?’

‘I was
Harry’s best friend.’

Chapter
Eleven

Joey and I parted in the
house with some awkwardness. I don’t know who was more embarrassed by the unexpected
encounter. To be honest it had probably been a little too intimate for both of
us. He went off to look for Miss Strange and get ‘dog details’ while I went to
find the others. I was pretty sure Joey and I could rely on each other never to
mention our conversation again.

It had
been a revelation, though. Miss Strange was Grace. She had been beautiful. She
had turned from Grace to Strange. I thought about seeing her in the ice-cream
store and I wanted to die right then and there. I had no place on any list of
any kind.

When I
arrived at the field everyone was busy getting ready for Artemesia. Something
extraordinary was in the air. Happiness was filling the place, and it seemed to
be contagious because it wasn’t just the humans. The sun shone under the
clearest blue sky and as soon as I came in the gate I knew things were good.
Right at the entrance Girling the Gorilla greeted everyone with his particular
song. It was a happy sound, somewhere between dog whining and human singing. He
would munch on an apple and when Cosmos came to feed him he put his arm round
her and sang even louder. Sweetheart and Perry couldn’t stop laughing at the bonobo
chimps. They played endless solitary games of blind man’s bluff. The small
chimps would cover their eyes with a leaf, or their fingers or arm, and stagger
about the climbing frame.

I knew
then that I never wanted to leave there. This was my family now. This was where
I would find my rainbow bridge. I tried to put Mother out of my mind. She wasn’t
well. I couldn’t bear to be in the house. There was a new quiet. A silent drowning.
I just stayed at the zoo where we were busy. We were getting on with the job.
Doing what women do best — working by instinct. Cosmos said it was the best
way.

‘There’s
a lot more to instinct like, than men think, you know,’ she explained to anyone
who would listen. ‘Women’s intuition is like, excellent. I mean, imagine you’re
in space, okay?, and this like, meteorite or whatever is coming at you, then
your problem is A, the meteorite, right? Now the answer to getting out of the
way may be D, but you don’t have time to go A then B then C therefore D. What
you need is the intuition which tells you D right away.’ Cosmos said it was a
special strength in women. Anyhow, it was that summer.

We
worked all day preparing and digging the holes for the new enclosure. Around
lunch, Gabriel arrived with the Jacobson’s tow-truck. He had come most days. He
would lash three or four of the metal rails together and haul them over the
field. There we put them in upright about every two foot or so. Gabriel didn’t
say much but we couldn’t have done it without him. We needed that much brutal
strength on our side. He worked for a while without a word and then, as he
turned to go, he just said the one word, ‘Welding,’ and was gone. Not one of
the world’s great communicators. We didn’t pay that much attention to him
because a strange thing had started to happen.

Women,
other women from the town, had begun turning up. Now you have to remember the Sassaspaneck
Zoo wasn’t exactly the local hotspot. But Harry talked about the zoo all the
time in his electioneering and I guess it put the place in people’s minds. Or
maybe they just heard about our building work. I don’t know. Anyhow, at first
there was just a couple of onlookers and then gradually more and more women
came. Usually around lunchtime. Some would bring sandwiches and just sit and
watch us work. Cosmos said we were becoming the zoo’s most successful exhibit.
But soon others were helping out a little or getting drinks for the workers. No
one said anything about it but the workforce just kind of grew. I think after
a while everyone had heard about the elephant coming, and all those women who
normally sat home or went to the store wanted to see. There was Hubert Thomas’s
wife Ingrid, and Doreen Angelletta whose husband Tony ran the pizza parlour,
and even Mrs Torchinsky stopped her coffin-polishing to come over. I don’t know
why. Maybe it was just something so out of the ordinary. The whole town must
have been getting dusty because no one seemed to be home doing housework any
more. Ganesh was providing for us big-time.

Perry
was in heaven. He was such a cute kid. He’d been hidden out at the big house
and at the zoo, so no one in town had really met him before. He was kind of a
clown and made all the women laugh all the time. All day he raced around from
one new game to another. Then he would suddenly plump down on the lap of one of
the women and go straight to sleep. They loved him but there was never any talk
about his grandparents or his mom. Me and Perry were about the only kids in
town. Everyone old enough had gone to camp. Maybe we were a novelty.

Time
was running out so we worked even harder. Miss Strange was in charge although
no one ever said so. No one said much of anything. We worked when she worked
and stopped when she did. This curious half-woman led the way. Artemesia was
due on the Tuesday and it was Sunday when Joey and I had had our talk. It was
that same evening that Aunt Bonnie and Judith pitched up. They hadn’t come to
help. Judith looked real thin. Thin like Aunt Bonnie, not corset-thin. She was
dressed as coordinated as ever but somehow it wasn’t working. She still had
insanely high heels on but her mountain of hair had suffered something of an
avalanche down one side. Everything about her looked a little untucked. Miss
Strange kind of started when she saw Judith. Aunt Bonnie was sort of leading
her. It sure didn’t look like she wanted to be here. Miss Strange moved forward
and I thought for a minute she was going to kiss Judith hello but she didn’t.

‘You haven’t
been,’ she said quietly. Troilus, the widowed goose, began making little
whimpering noises. I don’t think he wanted the distraction from his grief. It
should have been his moment.

‘I can’t
drive. Really, I can’t drive.’ Judith never looked at Miss Strange. She just
kept looking at the ground. This was not the Welcome Wagon woman I had first
met. She didn’t have any bounce in her at all. I doubted she would ever carry a
green cake again.

‘I
drove her over. She’s a little shaky.’ Aunt Bonnie dragged the life out of a
cigarette and looked at the morose goose. I don’t think she was much for
animals but it’s not often you look at a goose and think instantly of therapy
rather than stuffing. Aunt Bonnie looked away and rather stiffly patted Judith
on the arm. She talked to her like one of her kids late with a book report.

‘Go on.
Get it over with.’

Judith
looked everywhere except at Miss Strange. I had got so used to Miss Strange’s
face that I never noticed it any more. That’s just how she was. Now Judith seemed
to make all of us look at the disfigured right side just because she wouldn’t.
It was horrible. Judith obviously had a short speech prepared but her heart
wasn’t in it. She just said it like she had learned it for school.

‘Harry
asked me to come. He will win, you know. He wants the stadium. The town needs a
stadium.’

Miss
Strange wasn’t taking any nonsense. ‘That’s not why Harry wants to close the
zoo and you know it.’

Judith
was beginning to falter. ‘Everyone will vote for him and you’ll have to go. If you
can’t do it for the town then at least do it … for the family. I still own
the land.’

‘You
and Helen own the land. This is your history, Judith. What are you doing?
Honey, I …’ It would be a stretch to call Miss Strange soft, but she did have
kind of a soft look on her face with Judith. She moved toward her as Sweetheart
strolled over from the house with Perry on her hip. Judith looked up at her
grandson for a second and then trailed off with:

‘You
can’t win.

There
was no conviction in her voice. The other women from town had started to arrive
for the day and everyone stood around looking at her. After she finished
speaking there was silence. Troilus took the moment to shuffle forward. Whether
he wanted sympathy or simply couldn’t stand any more from some unseen injury,
he chose to put his head on Judith’s knee. Apart from his whimpering it was
very quiet.

Aunt
Bonnie dragged on her Virginia Slim. You could hear the air sucking through’
the menthol. Troilus sobbed. Finally Aunt Bonnie asked, ‘What’s wrong with the
goose?’ Miss Strange didn’t say so I volunteered.

‘A dog
killed its mate. It’s … sad.’ I looked at Miss Strange. I didn’t know if that
was okay. If a goose could be sad. It didn’t matter because Judith burst into
tears. Then all the women did what women do. They cooed and clucked and someone
went to make iced tea. Miss Strange and Cosmos kind of stood on the outside of
it all then they went back to work in the field. Judith could hardly contain
herself She was worse than the goose. They howled together. Sappho, the orangutan,
who had been sitting in a corner, looked away in disgust. It was then that Joey
arrived at the field in his full dog-catcher regalia. Judith saw him show up
and howled even louder. I felt sorry for him. He was obviously having a day of
females crying.

‘I came
about the dog,’ he said. The women all looked at him. ‘Miss Strange called me.’
Judith sobbed on. Troilus, having found a soul mate in sorrow, hung over Judith’s
knee, abject with grief Joey shuffled his small feet on the ground, stepping
first toward Judith and then away.

‘Oh
God, Judith, don’t cry. I’ll get the dog. No goose-killing dog is going to last
in this neighbourhood. Judith!’ Joey ineffectually reached out a plump arm
toward woman and bird and I saw then that he had it — the rainbow bridge, for
Judith. I think everyone saw it because suddenly everyone was very busy with
their work. Mortified by his day, Joey began frantically pacing out the yard.
He paused for a moment in his deliberation, gave a kind of contained nod in
Judith’s direction and turned to me.

‘Are
you able to tell me when exactly this crime had its perpetration? Do you have
any leads as to possible dog species involvement?’

They
were probably good questions but I wasn’t the person to answer them. I had no
idea.

‘Don’t
you worry, young woman.’ He came quite close to patting me on the head but
stopped in time for both of us. ‘I’ll get the varmint,’ and I was sure he
would. Troilus had not allowed anyone near the body of his deceased partner,
but he made way for Joey’s official examination. Joey examined the neck for teethmarks
and checked everywhere for footprints. He was very thorough. All the time
Judith sat watching him with Troilus draped inconsolably across her knee.