ELEPHANT MOON (11 page)

‘The children won’t mind, I’m sure.’

 ‘I need to plan the crossing, so we don’t mislay the freight.’

Grace was puzzled. ‘Freight?’

‘The bloody children. We’ll start crossing in ten minutes or so, then hike until sundown. The more miles we get between us and the Japanese, the better.’

‘Shouldn’t we cross the river immediately? With the Japanese so close?’

‘You’re on elephant time now. The elephants are not going to swim across that river until they’ve checked it out. No power on earth can change that. We’ll move in ten minutes. Or something like that. First problem is that I need to talk to your lot about elephants. I don’t want anyone squashed. Messy.’

Making light of a desperate situation was one thing, but she could not stop herself from grimacing.

Sam climbed up into the bus, his dog Winston clambering after him and trotting up to Joseph, pale and sickly. The dog treated the boy to a lick. Sam glanced at Joseph, stopped in his tracks and bent down and felt his brow.

‘Ice cold. Malaria.’

‘We haven’t got any quinine.’

‘Havildar Singh!’ The giant Sikh clambered on to the bus, and had to crouch to make sure that his turban wasn’t knocked off by the roof.

‘Quinine for this lad. What’s his name?’

The Havildar took a knapsack from his back and delved in it, taking out a bottle of pills. To her horror, she saw that the Havildar had only a couple of fingers on one hand and only half a finger on the other. Deftly, he used his most crippled hand to flick the pill bottle into the air, catch it and unscrew it.

‘Joseph,’ said Grace. ‘He’s ten, but he looks younger because of his condition. They call him a Mongol.’

‘Hmm. I’m an elephant doctor. Don’t do people. But I know what Little Joe needs. Whack him full of quinine.’

The Havildar sat down next to Joseph and, gently, shifted him upright.

‘Miss,’ said Molly in a whisper that could have been heard back in Rangoon, ‘he’s missing lots of fingers. What happened to his fingers?’

The Havildar turned to Molly and stared at her, saying nothing. She blushed bright red and looked down.

‘Got any chocolate, Havildar?’ asked Sam. ‘These pills are so bloody bitter he’s going to vomit them back up again straightaway, unless we give him something to take away the taste.’

At the mention of the word chocolate the girls turned their heads from the elephants and watched the Havildar pluck out a bar of Cadbury’s, misshapen and squishy in the heat, from his knapsack. A gooey mess, but a luxury, for them, in Upper Burma in the spring of 1942, no words can convey. He scraped off a sludge of chocolate, pressed in a yellow pill,
and said to Joseph, ‘Come on, eat,’ and popped it in his mouth. The boy munched quietly and the Havildar gave him a sip of water.

Ruby whispered to Emily: ‘I’m going to pretend I’ve got malaria, too.’

Sam addressed the bus: ‘Lucky you. You’re all going for a ride on an elephant. In fact, you are all now officially members of the Number One Elephant Company of the Royal Indian Engineers of the Fourteenth Army. That means you’re under orders, under my command. And the number one order of the Number One Elephant Company is… don’t frighten the elephants. No shouting, no running near the elephants, no going under their legs. They can kill. Any breaking of those orders and Havildar Singh will come and chop your head off.’

A mistake. Most of Sam’s audience were around twelve years old, some even younger, and they were all wide-eyed. They had noted that some of the Havildar’s fingers were missing. Fearing that they were all going to start crying, Sam gabbled quickly.

‘Actually, Havildar Singh is a bit of a lambkin. He doesn’t go round chopping people’s heads off. To be honest, he hands out chocolate. If you’re good. But do obey him and the elephant men – they’re called the oozies. Now, which one do you think is the most dangerous of all these elephants?’

Ruby’s hand shot up. ‘That big one, over there.’ She was pointing to the tusker who woke up Grace.

‘Rungdot. He’s killed two men when he was in musht, that’s on heat…oh, never mind, but as far you chaps are concerned he’s not the most dangerous elephant by a long chalk. Any other suggestions?’

Molly shouted out: ‘The little one, the one that soaked you.’

‘Exactly right. That little one there.’

‘What’s his name?’ asked Molly.

‘Well, his oozie calls him “Oomy” which means Fat One. He’s the sweetest little calf, but here’s the problem. You’re not daft enough to play around with Rungdot. But if you get in between Oomy and his mother– the name’s pretty unpronounceable but it means Jewelled One – and he gets scared, he blows his trumpet and his mum will come charging and trample you to death without turning a hair. So, children, watch it with the little ones. Don’t get between them and their mothers. Watch it with the big ones, too. Be wary of the elephants at all times.’

He studied them, hoping that some of his words were sinking in.

 ‘Now you’re going to ride in the baskets on top of the elephants’ backs as they swim across the river. They may squirt you with water, just as little Oomy did to me and the Havildar. They may even swim underwater for a bit. Just hold on tight and pretend you’re riding on a submarine. The wettest children on the wettest elephant will win a prize, once we get to the other side. After that, you’re going to have to walk. All day, every day, for two weeks, maybe longer. So you’re going to have to dump everything that’s silly. You must only take stuff you need and which you can carry on your back. I’m sorry about that, but that’s the way it is. We’re going to split you up into six groups of ten each – Grace can you do that presently – and you’ve got to look after each other, even the ones you don’t like. Especially the ones you don’t like. You’re going to hold on with one hand, hold hands with the next child with the other, and not let go. There are sixty-two bloody children here – and there will be sixty-two of you bloody buggers on the other side of the bank.’

Grace imagined the consternation if Miss Furroughs had been around to hear such language.

‘Any questions?’

‘Will the elephants eat us?’ asked Molly.

‘No, you’re not tasty enough. Let’s go. Last bugger across is the dirty rascal.’

The children started dumping their possessions brought with them all the way from Rangoon. Silk dresses, cheap bracelets, poetry books, Shakespeare’s plays, magazines telling the latest gossip from Hollywood, hair brushes, bangles, boxes, shoes, even a fur stole, a gift from a father, long-gone, were dumped. Grace, too, threw all her precious possessions away, apart from one change of clothes, a book of Tennyson’s poems given to her by Miss Furroughs, her copy of
Moonfleet
, the photograph of her mother, her bee in amber around her neck and the Masonic dagger, her one gift from the Jemadar. She crammed them all in the Jem’s satchel, next to a large buff envelope.

Stepping down from the front step of Hants & Dorset for the last time, she remembered the naked traffic policeman on the day they fled Rangoon, Miss Furroughs snarling at the fat man as he pushed in front of the children at the docks – ‘you horrible little man’ – the Jemadar stamp-stamping the chit for petrol with such intensity that the pompous clerk gave in, and Allu, desperately trying to start the engine as the Zeroes came in over the treetops. Bowing her head, she said her farewell to the bus and all who had gone before and hurried off towards the line of elephants standing parallel to the river.

In baskets shaped like coracles the elephant men stacked guns, ammunition, paraffin oil, food rations, medicine chests. The coracles were to be paddled across first by a platoon of the Chin, not by elephant power, lest one of the great beasts panic and fling the precious valuables into the river.

Grace split up the children into small groups and appointed a leader for each one. Gathering together her own charges - Joseph, Michael, Emily, Ruby and Molly – she went towards the elephant with the long unpronounceable name, who was keeping an eye on her baby, Oomy, now cropping at a knot of elephant grass underfoot with her trunk. She waved at the oozie perched on top of a flattish natural seat immediately behind the elephant’s forehead, his brown legs tucked behind the ears, and he waved back, grinning shyly, pointed to himself
and said ‘Po Net’. It was clear that he didn’t speak a word of English but his gentle, amused patience meant something special to them. The goal? A great cane wicker pannier sat crossways on the elephant’s back, more than ten feet above the ground, high-backed at both ends, the shape of a monster Victorian bath-tub.

‘Looks safe enough,’ said Grace.

‘But it’s so high up, Miss,’ said Molly.

Aware that she would often have to look after the other children, Grace told them that she had to appoint a leader for this group too. Ruby was confident enough, but something made her call out another name.

‘Emily? Would you mind leading this group? That means going up top first, I’m afraid.’

Po Net motioned for Emily to step closer to the elephant’s head. The oozie pressed his right knee firmly against the back of the elephant’s right ear and the beast rotated slowly to the left. Once they were in the correct position, he cried out, ‘Hmit!’ Immediately, the elephant bowed her head and bent her knees, withers still high in the air. ‘Hmit’ was elephant-speak for ‘sit’. The basket was now at a crazy angle, front down, end up, but the nearest edge a mere six feet or so above the ground, yet still too high for Emily to step into. The elephant coiled her trunk so that the tip provided a low step, just a foot off the ground.

The girl hesitated. ‘Go on,’ said Ruby.

‘Go on, Em,’ said Molly.

‘It looks as tall as a house, Miss.’ Emily stepped up on to the trunk and slowly, a magician performing a trick, the elephant lifted her high up so that she was now within arm’s reach of Po Net. He held out his hand and she grasped it and she leapt across the gap between trunk and on to the elephant’s back and with her other hand grabbed the wicker basket which slipped half an inch towards her, then held – and she was in. Peeking from over the lip of the
basket, she waved down at the rest of the girls: ‘Miss, that was amazing’ and Emily wore a smile that could have cut her face in two.

The game was on and they were all desperate to go next. The Havildar sauntered up to help and picked up Michael and almost catapulted the little boy into the basket. He landed in a heap of giggles next to Emily. The Sikh passed up Joseph’s blanket first to Po Net, then stood on tiptoe and passed the boy up to the oozie who gently took him by the armpits and placed him in the basket on the other side of Emily. She started arranging Joseph’s stuff and chatting to him, as if they were on the bus. Throughout, the elephant stood absolutely still. Grace, anxious that something could have gone wrong, studied the scene. The elephant seemed to perfectly understand their anxieties about Joseph and be as calm as possible. That required an intelligence, or an empathy, that astonished her.

Joseph peeped his head over the basket. ‘I’m on the elfunt,’ he said, matter-of-factly, as if he was on a train, and everybody laughed.

Ruby was hoisted up and then it was Molly’s turn. She stepped on the elephant’s trunk and planted a big kiss on her corrugated grey face. The elephant slowly lifted her trunk and Molly ascended to the level of the basket as if she was riding in a lift.

‘What’s her name again?’ asked Molly.

Po Net, craning his neck round at them, made sense of her question and said something Molly judged ridiculously unpronounceable.

‘What did he say her name was?’ whispered Grace.

‘Mother Engine, Miss.’

Grace pulled a face – ‘that can’t be right, Molly’ – but Mother Engine, shortened to just Mother, was the name that stuck. The teacher went up last, heart fluttering because it felt very precarious. She stowed the Jemadar’s satchel in a small wooden box, fixed to the basket.
A squash, but all six of them were just getting comfortable in the basket, making cushions of their spare clothes, when a dreadful rumble came from the elephant’s nether end.

 ‘What’s that pong?’ asked Molly, mock-innocently.

 ‘I am afraid that our elephant may have broken wind,’ Grace replied and Joseph scrunched up his face in an ecstasy of disgust: ‘Mother Engine has done a poo,’ and everyone fell about.

Po Net kicked his feet into the fold of skins behind Mother’s ears and cried out: ‘Htah!’ – ‘Get up!’ – and suddenly the elephant jerked off its fore-knees and the children looked terrified as, inside the basket, they toppled forwards and tottered backwards, and then they were sitting more than twelve feet off the ground.

  ‘Woo,’ Joseph cried out, ‘wobbly elfunt.’

Mother began to plod towards the river, the basket yawing and lurching with every footfall.

‘Oh, my word, I’m getting seasick, Miss,’ said Emily as they rose and plunged, plunged and rose.

 ‘Emily, we’ve got two hundred miles to go. I’m afraid you’d better get used to it.’

Mother shuffled to a halt. Oomy, preoccupied with his breakfast, had almost been forgotten. He lifted his head, made a little toot-toot noise with his trunk, and ran towards his mother. Only when Oomy was by the heels of Mother did she turn her great head and give his back a little pat with her trunk, making him wriggle with pleasure.

Ahead, a long traffic jam of elephants, waiting patiently in line for the order to cross the river. Ruby stood up in the basket, one palm stopping one line of imaginary traffic, the other waving fantasy vehicles on – the naked traffic policeman. Grace wagged a finger at Ruby, who sat down to hoots and catcalls.

Sam, riding on the very last animal at the back of the herd, raised his hand and, at the very front, Rungdot, the biggest, oldest bull, bearing a Siamese wicker basket, loaded with chains, food and other necessities of the elephant camp, led the way down to the river. An oozie rode on his neck, but two more elephant men accompanied his every step on shore, one on either side, carrying bamboo staves, tipped with a sharp iron hook. No one was taking any chances, lest he run amok. Rungdot’s oozie dug in his heels, the two other elephant men climbed up into his basket and the great bull slid down the muddy bank, his forelegs sinking deep into the mud. He struggled, lurching unsteadily, for a second or two and then his legs found bottom and he surged forward into the stream. For the first one hundred yards or so he was tall enough to walk, breasting the current, but soon the river became  deeper, the current faster, and he paddled strongly off towards the other bank, more than one thousand yards away.