Whistling for the Elephants (34 page)

Helen
stood up. ‘I think Artemesia and Betsy need to go home. I think they need to go
home to Africa.’

Abe
from the ice—cream parlour stood up, shaking his head.

‘Are
you crazy? Those elephants are the best thing ever happened to this town.
People are coming from all over. This could put us on the map.’

Mr Torchinsky
slowly got to his feet. ‘You know, Abe,’ he said, ‘there is definitely money in
it. We could all make money and God knows that would be nice but I’m a lousy
businessman. Boots and bicycles, there’s money in that, but the elephants have
to go home.

And
that settled it. The whole town chipped in so they could go home, home to the
bush, away from the people. There was a parade when they left. The two of them
leading a great march through town. Everyone whistled and waved flags and Artemesia
set off the cannon on the high-school lawn. Even Mr Paton flapped his wings to
the high-school band. Judith, as stand-in Mayor, made a speech and then
everyone marched off to the railway station. There were flags up everywhere.
Even the funeral parlour was looking bright with flags. As we passed Mr Torchinsky’s
the most wonderful thing happened. A cloud of beautiful plumage rose up from
the glasshouse at the back. Mr Torchinsky had released every one of his birds.
It was a mass melody of thanksgiving as each of Shakespeare’s birds took to the
air and to freedom. The bizarre human grouping stood on the street and watched
with wonder.

Grace
went to Africa with our elephant friends. As she leaned out of the train to say
goodbye she called:

‘Sugar,
I thought of something. Betsy — I didn’t like the name, but there was Betsy
Ross. She sewed the first American flag. It’s okay.’ And it was.

Nature gauges time not in
tens but in thousands of years, and in the great scheme of things what happened
that summer in Sassaspaneck was not earth—shattering. But it changed some
lives. Saying goodbye to Grace was hard. I loved her beyond all measure. She
was not an Et cetera. She belonged to the Emperor. She was first on the list. Any
list. I’m not sure what happened to everyone else. Father sent me back to
England to boarding school. It was a British way of valuing me and it was its
own kind of drowning. I never got back to Sassaspaneck. Helen had a baby. A boy
who was both beautiful and big, which is what you get when a butterfly mates
with a bull elephant. She called him Billy. She and Cosmos closed the zoo and
opened an animal sanctuary and a home for unmarried mothers. At last love came
back to the big house. Judith and Harry divorced and eventually she was elected
Mayor. Troilus fell in love with an emu and went to live in the sanctuary.
Grace slipped into her sleep under the stars in Africa. It was all a long time
ago but I know that we were none of us Et ceteras.

I guess
somewhere in the bush there is an elephant called Betsy who would remember. I
still have my carving of her that Cosmos made all that time ago. Sometimes I
wake in the night clutching it and whistling as if my life depended on it.