The Elephant Girl(7)

When she’d finished eating, she leaned back and watched a group of boys of different ages washing an elephant in the murky water. The boys, wearing only shorts, were lithe and tanned with bright white teeth and reminded her of the cricket boys on the beach.

The elephant was a young female if the way it only reached up to the shoulder of one of the older boys was anything to go by. Helen could still see remnants of decorative paint on the front of its head and trunk, an intricate design of swirls, circles and stars in turquoise, red and white. Unfazed by the chattering boys around her, the elephant dipped her trunk in the water, raised it over her head and emptied it over her back, splashing herself and the boys as they scrubbed her sides and legs vigorously with palm-sized stones.

It wasn’t an uncommon sight in India, but it was a peaceful scenario. Sighing contentedly in the pleasant shade from the tree, she closed her eyes and dozed off.

A high-pitched trumpeting pulled her out of her slumber, and she sat up, disorientated. Then she remembered where she was: the coach stop by the river. She lifted her hand to rub her eyes and knocked over the rest of her Coke which she’d left on the bench beside her. The liquid hissed and bubbled before soaking into the ground.

The boys had rinsed the decorations off the elephant and were joined by another young handler shepherding a baby elephant forward with a twig. Trumpeting again, the calf made his way into the river on long clumsy legs and headed straight for his mother, where he drank from her teat.

There were sighs of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and ‘isn’t he just adorable?’ from other travellers nearby as they watched.

The spectacle held Helen’s attention. Somewhere, inside her, a dull ache throbbed.

When the calf had had his fill, the handlers gently guided him forward and began to wash him in full view of the spectators, while another boy walked among the tourists collecting coins in an old condensed milk tin.

‘Please, for baby?’ he said, over and over again, with pleading large eyes. A gross manipulation, as the animals looked well-fed, but no one seemed to mind.

The mother elephant had curled her trunk around that of her calf, almost as if they were holding hands, and the small, black eyes of the formidable beast held an expression of utmost gentleness.

Stirred by a sudden, vague memory, Helen hardly noticed the smiling young boy in front of her rattling his tin, but dropped a few rupees in it like the others had done. He quickly moved to his next victim while Helen kept her eyes on the elephants.

‘You like elephants?’

She turned to find the coach driver leaning against the tree behind her. He was a squat man with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and red-black teeth from chewing paan, made from betel nut, lime paste, spices and sometimes a dash of opium. Grinning widely at Helen, he now displayed his teeth in all their discoloured glory. It looked like blood.

‘They are supposed to be very clever, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘They have good memory.’ He nodded enthusiastically and pointed to the young men who were now preparing to round up the two elephants. ‘They are reghawan. What you say? Good handlers. They use love. A balwan is cruel, and elephants remember.’

He continued talking about elephants, a subject he seemed to know a lot about. Helen wasn’t really listening. The young men had ushered the animals out of the water and were heading back to where they’d come from. She watched the baby follow on his mother’s heels, faithfully and trustingly, on unsteady legs, occasionally chivvied forward by the boy with the stick if it fell too far behind.

The pain caught her off guard.

Mother and child.

Tears welled up in her eyes as the elephants and their handlers disappeared behind a group of silver trees, a cloud of dust the only evidence they’d been there in the first place.

‘Are you okay, lady?’ The coach driver patted her arm.

‘What?’

‘You’re crying.’

Helen brought her hands to her face. She hadn’t realised she’d cried for real, and she quickly brushed the tears away and wiped her hands on her jeans. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’

Eighteen hours later she stumbled into Mumbai airport still wondering why Aggie needed her to come back to England so urgently that she would use the dirtiest, most rotten trick there was.

It was obvious that sending Sweetman to Goa with the message that Fay had been released from prison was pure manipulation. Aggie knew nothing else would get Helen to come back, not even the threat of being cut off without a penny. And it worked.

But it wasn’t Aggie’s motives which kept her awake for the entire coach journey. That bitch Fay was free, and when Helen found her, she was going to show her what hell on earth was like.