Whistling for the Elephants (23 page)

“‘The
bull advertises his condition with a striding walk showing off his tremendous
size, strength and confidence.”’

Gabriel
grinned at all of us and moved to his truck. He walked led entirely by his
hips. A loose open walk which advertised all that he had to offer. Sweat ran
down his forehead and his arms as he walked. He was just eighteen but a strong
scent of male and grease pervaded the air. If the Army could see him now they
would definitely have to rethink that 4F status.

“‘The
bull’s temporal glands, above and behind his eyes, swell and release a thick
fluid which flows down the side of his head. Everything about him tells you
that the bull is a swaggering male on heat. One bull can produce as much as a litre
of ejaculate. A single jet of elephant sperm from the four-foot-long penis can
provide enough protein to feed a forty-foot-high anthill for a year.”’

For
Helen it was straightforward scientific fact, but everyone was entirely silent
as she looked up. Gabriel leaned against the Jacobson’s logo on his truck,
muscles bulging against muscles. Muscles where there shouldn’t ought to be
muscles. Muscles on top of muscles. He wore breathtakingly tight jeans, a white
T-shirt and a large pair of work boots. He smiled and he sweated. No doubt we
were a strange sight. Five females with their mouths wide open and not
speaking. Instinctively I understood a great deal at that moment. These were
the moist moments in life which Mother always guarded against. Certainly I knew
that it was a bad time for Harry to show up.

The
election was in full swing. You couldn’t drive through town without a
loudspeaker on someone’s car yelling, ‘Stick with Schlick’ or ‘Say hello to
your own Joe’. The whole of Sassaspaneck had become addicted to Styrofoam
boaters. The men wore them at rakish angles proclaiming their Democratic or
Republican fervour. The women were less comfortable with their hats and perched
them on top of carefully constructed coiffures. It made them look less
confident about the whole thing. As if the hat and the political affiliation
had landed when they weren’t looking. Harry swept into the zoo sitting on the
back of a convertible Caddy. Blue balloons trailed from every piece of chrome.
He stood up as the car came to a halt. Football hero Harry liked to be the centre
of female attention. Arriving when everyone’s focus was entirely on young
Gabriel probably didn’t help how it went.

‘Thank
you, thank you. Hello, people.’

The
people said nothing. Harry leaped down, leaving his entourage ready to move out
at a moment’s notice. I didn’t know what he was going to do. The general form
was to shake a lot of hands and then kiss babies. I didn’t think anyone would
really want to shake hands. Perry was out of the question and Gabriel probably
didn’t have the brain to have an opinion. Harry was smiling but he seemed
rather nervous. He looked beyond us to the bonfire.

‘Burning
the place down, eh? Great! Save us a lot of trouble.’

Miss
Strange looked at him. ‘Where are your manners, Harry? Good afternoon.

He
almost blushed. ‘Sure, right, good afternoon. Uh, Miss Strange, have you seen
the plans for the new football stadium? Going to look mighty fine.’

Miss
Strange looked straight at him. ‘Forget it, Harry. You are not building
anything here.’

Harry
smiled and tutted at the same time. ‘It’s over but you won’t let go, will you?
I am talking about building a future for the young people of this town and all
you want to do is cling on to the past. Hanging on till some bastard animal
gets you too.’

Little
Perry grabbed at Harry’s pants and pulled. ‘Balloon,’ he said. Harry ignored
him. He was in full speech mode and would not be swayed.

‘This
place is nothing now but a health hazard. A hazard which the people of Sassaspaneck
will not tolerate. I have therefore been in touch with the county health
authority, who will be sending an inspector. An inspector who will no doubt
find, as I do, that this place is no longer fit to remain open. Can’t even keep
the animals in any more, can you?’

Miss Strange’s
head snapped up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I hear
one of them is missing. I hear there is a salamander gone AWOL.’

I
wanted to die. I knew it was my fault. I had told Harry about the salamander. I
was the traitor in their midst. Everyone was going to hate me.

‘How do
you know that?’ demanded Miss Strange.

‘I told
him,’ I whispered. Harry looked at me triumphantly.

‘It
disappears all the time,’ interrupted Cosmos. ‘It comes back. It’s like, a free
spirit.’

‘Balloon,’
said Perry again, looking at the car.

Harry
smiled a mayoral smile and got back in the car. Sweetheart moved toward her
son.

‘Harry,
your grandson wants a balloon.’ Harry’s smile faltered a little as he leaned
right down to his mother. He spoke in a forced whisper.

‘He is
not my grandson. You are showing me up. You shouldn’t even be here. You don’t
need to be here. Get in the car and come home.’ Sweetheart didn’t move. Harry,
surrounded by his entourage, was getting a little uncomfortable. ‘Look, we can
talk about the boy. Find him some place.’

Sweetheart
looked at her son and stepped back. Perry ran to her and she held him close.
Harry shrugged and stood up in his chariot. He left. As he did a balloon flew
loose from the car and Cosmos caught it. Perry got his balloon. No one
mentioned the inspector coming. We just got on with the work.

That
evening I had to have dinner with Mother and Father, which was in itself quite
unusual. With the General Amherst Restaurant out of action since the fire, we
had no choice but to go to the diner on Palmer, which was not quite so refined.
It was my parents’ wedding anniversary. All I kept thinking was that if it was
my wedding anniversary then I wouldn’t take my kid. Outside the diner, I could
see people driving by with the now-familiar boaters on their heads. The town
was close to excitement.

I had a
lot in my head by then from the zoo and I was desperate to talk. I wanted to
discuss religion and the origins of the world and whether your hair stayed the
same after you were dead. I thought that would interest Mother. She sometimes
had days when she couldn’t do a thing with her hair, and that would be a very
bad day to die on. Mother made me have melon. I think she thought it had
vitamins in it like a vegetable. She also had the melon but that was all. I don’t
think she could really eat in the new eighteen-hour girdle. It didn’t look like
there was room. Besides, she didn’t like the restaurant. She didn’t say
anything but we all knew it wasn’t good enough. When Mother disapproved she
just withdrew. I know now how much the prescription drugs didn’t help with
that, but in those days it was okay. We had a bathroom cabinet full of the
stuff They let Mother slip from us slowly but surely.

As
usual, Father and I carried the can for conversation. He steadily drank
martinis while I was allowed one kids’ cocktail called a Shirley Temple and a
pitcher of water. Father had always taught me and Charles to have suitable
topics for the table but I don’t think any of mine were entirely successful.

‘What
have you been doing with your time, Dorothy?’ my father inquired, his whisper
making it sound as if there might be some intrigue.

‘I’m
helping at the zoo.’

‘Zoo?’

‘Yes.
We’re getting ready for Artemesia.’

‘I see,’
he said, although he didn’t at all. ‘And who is Artemesia?’

‘She
was the first known woman sea captain. She commanded a whole fleet at the
Battle of Marathon and she was so devastating and brilliant that the Athenians
put a huge bounty on her head. She survived the Persian Wars, and I mean
thousands of others died, but then she threw herself off a cliff when she fell
in love with a much younger man and he rejected her. Don’t you think that’s a
shame? I mean just because he was younger than her didn’t mean they couldn’t
fall in love, don’t you think?’

It was
not a good subject. It involved discussing emotions, which is what we did
worst. I had come to realize that it was a British thing. That’s why they go
out in the midday sun. If you lay in a cool room you might have to think about
how you feel. I realized I had lost my parents entirely. Father swallowed hard.

‘I had
a letter from Charles this morning. He is doing very well,’ he segued. I
polished off the melon and took a gulp of my Shirley Temple.

‘How
come Charles goes away to school and I don’t? You know that Plato says that the
state which doesn’t train and educate its women like its men only trains its
right arm. Do you think that’s right?’

‘Who
told you that?’ It was Mother’s only contribution to the festivities.

‘Miss
Strange.’

Father
looked hard at me. ‘Miss Strange? I really think perhaps you shouldn’t go to
that zoo. I really can’t have you coming up with these…’ Father’s voice rose
almost to audible. I think he had had quite a lot of martinis because he lashed
his arm out for emphasis and the jug of water smashed on to the floor. We went
home in silence. Father was thirteenth on my list — the one who broke the water
pitcher.

That
night I stayed up late watching
The Johnny Carson Show
on my own. I
wondered if I could talk Father into colour TV but I didn’t know if he would
see that as a trichromate I needed it. Mother had retired long before, but
Father sat drinking carefully and steadily. It was very refined. For every
drink he would remove the key to the tantalus from his pocket and unlock the
top. Then he would remove the bottle and carefully pour himself a measure. The
bottle then went back and was once more locked into place. It was very neat and
very steady. He had given up on his project. A letter from the British Museum
had put paid to that. It seemed that Elizabeth I had never visited Ickenham. The
ER
signature at the Ickenham Arms had almost certainly belonged to an
Edmund Rossiter, a brush salesman who had passed through in 1598 with a bag of
samples and a flourishing signature. The discovery seemed to have done him in.

When
Carson was finished I put Father to bed. The bottle in the tantalus was empty
but still locked away. He lay staring at the wall. I didn’t change him or
anything. I didn’t like to. I just loosened his tie. He lay there, immaculately
dressed, intoxicated but not in musth. I took his shoes off and took them to
the kitchen to polish. I thought if he had clean shoes in the morning he might
forget about the zoo. He did, but the shoes had nothing to do with it. The next
morning Mother was gone and she didn’t come back.

Chapter
Ten

I was pretty sure that
Mother left because I was so different. I knew I was from the way she used to
look at me. I wasn’t the little girl she had dreamed about. I didn’t want any
of the things she did. I didn’t even like the smells she did. The perfumes and
the powders in her room made me feel like I was drowning. Yet when she had gone
I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed sniffing the air. I looked at myself
in the mirror and willed myself to be like other little girls. With friends my
own age and dolls and a giggling laugh. That’s what Mother wanted. That was why
she left. Because I didn’t laugh right. I tried to talk to Father but he was
slipping from me too. He didn’t want to tell me anything.

‘She’s
gone back to England. You’ll see her there.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t
know.’

‘Is she
not well? Did I say something?’

‘It’s
all right, Dorothy. It will be all right.’

But it
wouldn’t. If she could have gone to a shop to get another daughter I thought
she would have. One in the right shade. Maybe I was a Dixie cup kid. Father
went to work. I was used to being on my own but now it felt strange. Since we
had arrived in America and gone to the house Mother hated, she had spent almost
all her time in her room, but at least I knew where she was. Now I was adrift and
to blame. I didn’t know what to do with myself Even the zoo didn’t seem like a
good idea. I went up to the Burroughs House, the house of love, and let myself
in. I don’t think anyone ever locked anywhere then. The others were all working
out in the field and the place was completely still. The house was huge and
there were plenty of rooms I had never explored. I stood in the vast entrance
hail looking up at the chandelier. What would it be like growing up in such a
place? Mother would have been happy here. She could have swept down the stairs
at night in some elegant gown, ready for some elegant dinner. She wouldn’t even
have had to know where the kitchen was. Father waiting for her in black tie and
tails. Smiling at her. Loving her. Maybe I could have had a grey dress with
pearls, like Phoebe in the painting, and Grace would have loved me. Mother
would have loved me. I looked down at my beloved shorts and T-shirt and knew I
had been a disappointment. Would always be a disappointment.

Beyond
the Polar Room, where Helen and I had first watched spiders spinning emotional
turmoil, lay a set of elaborate double doors. I had never really noticed them
before as they had always been closed. Now the right-hand door stood ajar and
drew me down the room. There were no lights on but the morning sunlight drifted
through the coloured glass from the garden. I stepped across a rainbow and
looked through the open door. Inside was what must have been the largest room
in the house. Acres of wooden floor stretched out under shuttered windows.
There was no furniture but across the ceiling dancers from countries around the
world tripped the light fantastic in a mosaic of painted movement. Thin shafts
of light penetrated the wood shutters, giving the floor an irregular striped pattern
over which moved Joey Amorato. Joey, the dog catcher, was dancing. He was not
an athletic man but he moved over the floor with a ballroom dancer’s grace,
holding an invisible partner close in his arms. It was an elegant soirée for
one. I slid my back down the wall and sat watching. In the half-light, the
brown dog—catcher’s uniform with the embossed name of the town across the back
was the garb of a cavalry officer. Joey’s short, podgy figure was Fred Astaire
and Gene Kelly in one. Soaring music from a string quartet rose as … Joey saw
me and tripped.