Whistling for the Elephants (24 page)

‘Sorry.
I’m sorry. Geez,’ he said, stopping in the middle of the room. ‘I came for Miss
Strange. She called me… about a dog. I came about a dog. Something with a
goose. There was no one here.’

‘They’re
all up at the field. There’s an elephant coming,’ I said. We stood looking at
each other. I don’t know who felt more awkward. ‘I liked to see you dance,’ I
said.

Joey
blushed furiously. He was mortified.

‘Oh,
that’s not dancing. Not real dancing. I don’t. This place ain’t for people like
me.’ Joey was very embarrassed. I think he thought the only answer was to go
grown-up.

It was
what he did with everybody. There was a streak of officialdom in him which came
out all the time. I don’t think Joey knew how to just be himself He was a town
official through and through. He pulled his belly in above his belt and marched
heavily over toward the wall where I was sitting.

‘What
are you doing here, anyhow? You shouldn’t be here on your own. Does your mother
know you’re here?’ I half expected him to whip out a notebook and take down a
statement.

‘My
mother left,’ I said. This stopped him for a moment.

‘Left?
Like departed?’ I nodded. ‘Yes, well, that ain’t good. That ain’t good at all.’
He paused. ‘Sorry, kid. She was a beautiful woman,’ he added, as if she were
dead. Small particles of dust drifted in the strips of light. ‘I came about a
dog,’ he repeated before falling into another awkward silence. Maybe the
mention of the dog reminded me of the sad goose, I don’t know. Whatever it was,
I burst into tears. I don’t know which one of us was more embarrassed. Joey
looked away and then slid down the wall to sit beside me on the floor. We didn’t
touch but he sat close as though he meant to comfort me.

‘She
left your dad, huh?’

I hadn’t
thought about that. I supposed perhaps she had. I had only thought about Mother
leaving me. Maybe it was the anniversary dinner. The food hadn’t been anywhere
near good enough but also I had talked too much. No one in our family ever
talked that much or about such things, life and death and that. But maybe she
hadn’t just left me.

‘It
could just be temporary. Your mother might just be getting some air.’ We sat
for a long time in silence. I didn’t think Mother was getting air. I don’t
think she really approved of the stuff After a while Joey cleared his throat. ‘I
read that sometimes couples, good couples, couples that were meant, get a
rainbow bridge between them. Sometimes it’s an instant one, from the minute
they meet, and sometimes it kind of grows. I mean something invisible. I never
had that. Do you think your folks did?’

I
thought for a minute. I didn’t think so. I liked the idea of it but I was sure
Mother and Father never had it. Harry and Judith didn’t have it, and I didn’t
ever remember seeing Uncle Eddie look at Aunt Bonnie that way. I wiped my nose
on my sleeve.

‘I don’t
think so.’

‘No. It’s
rare, real rare. Mr Burroughs thought he had it with Billie but I don’t know.
You couldn’t tell with Billie. I don’t think it counts unless both people feel
it. They had a wedding like it was there but I don’t know.’

‘Did
you know Billie then?’

‘Sure.’

‘Did
you ever see that rainbow thing?’ I asked.

‘You
don’t see it. You kind of feel it. You been to the pool here in the house?’ I
shook my head. ‘Fantastic piece of work. Lots of Indian stuff Sometimes they
used to let us swim there after school. Grace always took Phoebe. There was
nothing of Phoebe. Even I could have lifted her and I was little when I was a
kid.’ Joey was quite little now but I didn’t say anything.

‘Grace
used to pick her up in her arms and carefully carry her down the marble steps
into the water. Phoebe would move her arms and legs while Grace lapped the
water on to Phoebe’s shoulders. There was this picture of an ocean on the ceiling
and Phoebe would stretch out flat, staring up at it.’

The indoor pool was
new. It was to be the last building John Junior added to the Burroughs House.
As with every architectural detail, the marble room was beautiful, if a little
overwhelming. It owed its inspiration to the Raj. All around in minute mosaic
detail, the god Vishnu floated on the cosmic ocean, dreaming his cosmic dreams.
Grace liked this room best of all, for here Phoebe was free.

She
lifted her weak friend into her arms and carefully carried her down the marble
steps into the water. She laid her gently on the surface and watched Phoebe
take new life. Phoebe’s frail and unsure frame became usable and strong. Phoebe
stared up at the cosmic ocean above her head.

‘Look,
Grace, we are not in our world. We are somewhere else. We are free,’ mouthed
Phoebe to the Indian god.

Grace
placed both her hands under Phoebe’s back and began to slowly swirl her in the
water. Billie watched from the side in silence. It was a display of tenderness
such as she had never been subject to. This was love. Not lust or sensible
arrangement or reproduction or any of the other reasons why the men and women
she knew clubbed together, but honest love. It hurt to watch it. For those
three it was to be a final quiet moment. Not that anyone could have predicted
it. Not that anyone would have taken the time.

They
still felt like winners. Winners for ever. When they got back to the main house
they heard the news that Milton was dead. He had made one deal too far. It took
all the steady part of their lives away. Milton might have been a crook but he
had been a sensible one. Now the kids had no parent to tell them off when they
went over the top. John didn’t know he couldn’t manage by himself He wasn’t
grown-up enough. Sweetheart tried but it was too big a job and maybe it was too
late.

Joey sighed. ‘I remember
watching Grace and Phoebe in the water. Billie didn’t swim but sometimes she
would watch from the side in silence. I think maybe she was jealous. Maybe we
all were. But that was that thing, that rainbow bridge.’

‘Did
you go to the wedding? Billie and John Junior’s?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.
I mean, I was just a kid but I danced with Billie and Grace and Sweetheart. I
was only eight. What a party. Mr Burroughs, he never did nothing small. The
shows he did. I think that summer it was the big Joan of Arc stuff They had
like a thousand performers, hundreds of soldiers on horses, forty elephants and
a real fire at the end. When they took it to London they needed
four
ocean
liners. That was something because P. T Barnum only needed three for his and he
was some showman. Anyway, lots of the acts came. It was a heck of a party.
Even the elephants got dressed up. What the hell were they called?’ Joey sat
and thought.

Ellen and Toto, Grace’s
elephant couple, had been given new costumes for the event. They were dressed
as bride and groom. Ellen had a full veil and a bunch of roses while Toto wore
a bow tie, a silk-lined cape and a top hat. Grace didn’t like it.

She
thought it was wrong to dress them up like that, but it made Phoebe smile. John
had bought an orchestromelchor for the occasion. It was a huge musical
instrument which on its own could give the full effect of an orchestra for five
miles.

‘I
think they won’t like the music. It’s very loud. I don’t want it to upset them.’
Grace fretted over the elephants all day. No one else did. Everyone else was
too drunk. It really was a day of carnival without end. Two hundred and fifty
people turned up and six hundred bottles of champagne went down. The guest list
was quite extraordinary. Quite a lot of John’s shows had closed ahead of paper.
This meant they returned to Sassaspaneck before the end of their posted season.
John didn’t mind the losses. He was busy organizing the biggest show ever, to
blow Barnum out of the water.

The
Flying Vazquez Family arrived to add their dimension to Jeanne d’Arc’s demise.
They drove around in a converted potato truck, yet somehow they looked like
glamour. Italian-looking boys who hardly took a breath before they had rigged a
rehearsal harness up in the trees by the bird house. Here they spent their
hours on the triple somersault. Endless shouts of ‘Hup, hup, hey!’ as the
youngest Vazquez swung back and forth, up to sixty miles per hour, before
flipping three times and flinging himself out into the arms of his oldest
brother.

As
Grace carried Phoebe to the ceremony, physical perfection was spinning over
their heads. It was the strangest mix of people. Midgets, giants and the Fiji
Cannibals headed for the temporary altar built on the lawn. Mabel Willebrandt,
the Deputy Attorney General for the last eight years, was there. She had caused
a great scandal when she adopted a baby girl after she got divorced. Then there
was Lord Delamere, a man happy to take someone else’s money.

‘I
am telling you, ostriches have been my downfall,’ he announced to Captain Adam
H. Bogardus, Champion Wing Shot of America. ‘I was just on the verge of making
a fortune out of the wretched birds’ feathers for hats when motoring took off
Absolutely scattered the chances of feathers as finance.’

It
was a time of peacocks and champagne. Of lingering looks between men and their
best friends’ wives. So many people being spoiled and badly behaved. Africa
loomed large in much conversation as the tamer of John’s menagerie wandered
about for the ceremony.

‘Do
you remember Denis Finch Hatton? I heard a marvellous story about him the other
day. There he was, deep in bush, hundreds of miles from anywhere, when he saw a
sweaty native running after him with a cleft stick. The boy only had a telegram
for him. It had come all the way from London in relays. Anyway, old Denis read
the telegram and it said, ‘Do you know Gervase Pippin—Linpole’s address?” Do
you know what he sent back as an answer? “Yes.” Isn’t that brilliant?’

John
was like a small child. Heady with excitement. Only Sweetheart kept cool and
got everything going. She stayed sober for Harry because Harry needed her.

‘You
must start the ceremony now, John,’ she counselled.

‘Yes,
yes, I will, but look at this. Look at this wedding present.’ He stood in front
of a small table made from a curious wood. ‘It’s not wood at all.’ He whispered
his delight like a small boy with a dirty magazine. ‘It’s made entirely from
coprolites. Do you know what they are? Fossilized saurian faeces.’ His voice
boomed out his appreciation. ‘It’s a table made from old shit and no one will
know. Isn’t that perfect? Isn’t it the most perfect thing? And look at these
—
candlesticks made from the vertebrae of an ichthyosaurus.’

Everything
was about wonder. About the extremes of experience, of human and of animal
life. On that day you could have searched the ends of the earth for a rarer
experience. It was unreal and it could not survive. Mine Yucca, the Female
Hercules
—
the Strongest Woman on Earth,
Handsome, Modest and Genteel, in the Costume of the Parlour She Performs Feats
of Strength Never Attempted by Any Other Man or Woman
—
carried Billie
on a carved chair out to the lawn. She looked like a white goddess emerging
from the house. She had on her tiger-training uniform but everything was in
white linen
—
the pants, the shirt, her neat tie
—
and all
finished off with knee-high white leather boots. It was Billie’s own way of
dressing for a wedding.

John
looked more sombre in his dark suit, but his waistcoat was white silk with
buttons made from the bones of an alligator. The orchestromelchor struck up as
Ellen and Toto took up their places either side of the altar. As the priest
began his rites Billie looked to Grace, but she was too busy making sure the
animals were okay. She still thought the music was too loud. It wasn’t actually
the music which caused the commotion. It was Mlle Zazel, the Human Cannonball.
She was supposed to perform as the climax to the wedding vows. She had her trick
down to a fine art. She was a small woman who stood on a circular platform
within the tube of her cannon. The bottom of the small circle was attached to a
heavy spring. As the tension in the spring was released, a light gunpowder
charge was set off and she would sail off to land in a large net some seven
fret away. Unfortunately, that day some wag had interfered with the quantity of
gunpowder.

As
the ceremony concluded, John kissed Billie and Mlle Zazel flew over their heads
with no apparent intention of stopping. She narrowly missed joining the Vazquez
Family on a permanent basis and continued on over to the conservatory. It was
the loud crash of glass which finally sent Ellen and Toto running off in
separate directions. Grace, unsure who to follow, seemed to set off in both
ways at once. John laughed and laughed, sure and confident in his domain. The
animal world was his to command. With Billie secured to his side, he felt very
powerful. More cocktails were gulped as the crowd moved to see his final gift
to Billie.

Rajan,
her beloved Rajan, stood in the most magnificent new, round enclosure. It was
the perfect setting for this most perfect of Bengal tigers. His massive striped
head stared out at the wedding party from behind the bars. Grace, having ushered
Ellen and Toto to their own enclosure, pushed Phoebe to the front of the crowd
so she could see. Billie, immaculate in her white, stepped up to the cage door.