The Elephant's Tale

by Lauren St. John

  Her green eyes met his blue ones in challenge. “Somehow we’re going to find a way to stop you.”

  Something dark and almost savage flitted across Reuben James’s face, but it was gone before Martine could take it in. His customary polished smile replaced it.

  “Is that a fact?” he said. “Well, let me give you a word of advice, young lady. I’m a patient man and a generous one, but I’m only patient and generous to a point. Don’t make the mistake of crossing me.”

  The phone was ringing when Martine walked back into the house. She picked up the receiver in the kitchen. Outside, the wind was heavy with the iron scent of rain, and the back door creaked on its hinges. Battleship-gray clouds scudded over the game reserve.

  “Martine, thank goodness I’ve reached you,” cried Gwyn Thomas. “I’ve been calling and calling but there’s been no reply. I’ve been worried sick. What’s going on there? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” lied Martine. There was no point telling her grandmother about Lurk being charged by the elephant or the burglary or anything else. She’d only freak out and do something drastic like get on the next plane home without having discovered anything at all in England. Sawubona would be more in jeopardy than ever. “Sorry you’ve had trouble getting hold of us. Grace doesn’t like to answer the phone and Ben and I have been out on the reserve a lot, helping Tendai.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that. I was imagining the worst. Has Mr. James been back?”

  “Back and forth, but we can handle him,” Martine replied, and changed the subject. “How’s England? Is it freezing?”

  “And gray,” confirmed her grandmother. “And very wet. I’m staying at a country inn straight out of a werewolf movie, with low beams and hostile locals and its very own Hound of the Baskervilles. The room is so small I have to climb into bed as I come through the door. But that’s not what I called to talk to you about.”

  “The key!” Martine said, remembering. “What was in the safety-deposit box? Did you find a different will?”

  “Not exactly. To be honest, it’s all a bit mysterious and it’s left me questioning my sanity. I’m wracked with guilt about abandoning you, Ben, and Tendai to the mercy of that awful man in order to fly thousands of miles on what appears to be a wild-goose chase. The safety-deposit box contained nothing much of anything, really. Certainly nothing that’s going to help us save Sawubona. Just an envelope.”

  “An envelope? Is there a letter in it?”

  “No, that’s the peculiar part. There were only two items in it: a map of Damaraland in Namibia, and another key. The type that might fit a suitcase lock.”

  “What suitcase?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. The other thing that’s strange is that the envelope is one that belonged to Veronica.”

  “My mum?”

  “I was surprised too,” said Gwyn Thomas. “It has your old Hampshire address on the back in her handwriting. I can’t think what it’s doing in Henry’s safety-deposit box.”

  “Maybe she had something she needed to keep safe?” Into Martine’s mind, unbidden, came the thought: Or maybe she had something to hide.

  “An African tourist map and a key with no address label on it? No, I think it’s more likely that whatever she or Henry put in the box has long since been removed and that the map is just a stray memento from some trip or other. The key might be worth looking into, but without an address, I don’t really know where to start.”

  They talked about things closer to home after that. Gwyn Thomas missed Sawubona and everyone on it and wanted an update on almost every animal on the reserve. That roused Martine’s suspicions immediately. If there was one thing her grandmother couldn’t abide it was wasted money, especially when it came to the telephone, and she was sure the call from England was costing a fortune. And yet every time she tried to say good-bye, her grandmother would find a new way to keep her on the line.

  After five or six minutes of this, Martine said, “Is there something on your mind, Grandmother?”

  “No, of course not. Well, naturally I’m very concerned about the future, but apart from that I’m fine. I should go. I’m sure my phone card is about to run out. They’re a con these cards, an absolute con.”

  Martine carried the phone over to the kitchen window. Through it she could see the length of the garden and all the way down to the water hole on the other side of the game fence, over which a black sky hung low. Six pot-bellied zebras were trotting for cover. Martine said, “Are you afraid of what you might find if you start investigating?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was indignant. “Afraid? Don’t be ridiculous.” There was a pause and then Gwyn Thomas said, “Oh, who am I kidding? Yes, Martine, to be honest, I am scared. I’m scared that the man I loved, the man whose life I shared for forty-two years, might not have been the man I thought he was.”

  There was a rush of wind through the mango trees. Fat drops began to fall, drumming the thatch. The roses bowed their heads as the rain fell faster and faster.

  “My heart tells me that he was a good, kind man who would never have done anything to hurt me, but at the back of my mind is the nagging doubt that you can never truly know another person . . .” The rest of the sentence was drowned out by the rain, which was now coming down in sheets.

  Martine cupped her hand over one ear, straining to hear. The line crackled and hissed. She hit the button that switched it to speakerphone.

  Her grandmother’s disembodied voice burst into the kitchen, echoing around the appliances. “Secrets destroy, Martine. Never keep one. Henry’s secret mission, however noble, might mean the end of Sawubona and everything I’ve ever worked for and love. I have no wish to depress you, but you’re going to have to face the fact that it could also mean the end of the white giraffe.”

  10

  Dinner that night was a subdued affair. Grace cooked and the food was as delicious as ever, but nobody had any appetite. Ben sat racking his brains for a solution to the situation at Sawubona. For years he’d been an outcast, shunned and bullied at school, but Martine, her grandmother, Tendai, and Grace had changed his life. They’d not only welcomed him into their world and accepted him for who he was, with no reservations, they’d helped him to follow his dream of working in nature and with wildlife. Now they needed his help and he was frustrated that he’d so far been unable to think of any way he might provide it.

  Martine pushed her food around her plate, feeling blue. It was difficult to enjoy even a meal such as this—fresh bream caught by Sampson in the game reserve lake, accompanied by roasted cherry tomatoes, sweet potato mash, and African spinach, with a lemon meringue pie to follow. Every meal at Sawubona now had a “Last Supper” tone to it.

  The phone call had left her deeply concerned about her grandmother. She was accustomed to Gwyn Thomas’s feisty confidence, the kind that had allowed her to face down the bulldozer operator without blinking. It distressed her to hear her grandmother sounding so vulnerable and afraid.

  Grace watched her without saying anything, but after the meal she took Martine aside and presented her with a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

  “What’s this for?” Martine asked in surprise.

  Grace smiled. “I been thinkin’ that ya mus’ be runnin’ low on Grace’s special muti. Last night, after ya went away on your giraffe, I went to find some special herbs and some plants for you.”

  Martine hardly knew how to respond. The thoughtfulness of the sangoma touched her to the core.

  Added to which, Grace was right. The traditional remedies Martine kept in her survival kit were almost finished. She’d used the last drop of the medicine Grace laughingly called “Love Potion No. 9,” after a song she’d heard, on the buffalo. Martine wasn’t sure (and didn’t care to know) what the tiny brown bottles of muti contained, but Grace always wrote a detailed list of symptoms they were meant to treat on their labels. And, boy, were they effective.

  She went to
open the brown paper parcel, but Grace stopped her. “Not now,” she said. “There’ll be time enough for that tomorra. Put it away in your survival kit.”

  After the events of the day, sleep was not an option for Martine, particularly since the caracals were sleeping on her bed. Tendai had decided they’d be more effective than any human at guarding the house, and Martine and Ben agreed.

  Unfortunately, it was a sweltering night and the caracals made Martine even hotter. She tossed and turned, her heart aching at the thought of life without Jemmy, who, she was sure, would not understand that she’d been forced to leave him to the mercy of Reuben James and the tourist hordes who would descend on the new White Giraffe Safari Park. He’d feel abandoned and betrayed.

  At 2:30 a.m. she could stand it no longer. She got up, took a quiet shower so as not to wake Ben and Grace, dressed, and went down to her grandmother’s study, followed by the caracals. Tendai had tried to tidy up some of the papers, but the room still looked like a tornado had blown through it. Martine picked through the mess until she found what she was looking for: the logbook for Sawubona’s wildlife. Her grandmother and grandfather had always kept meticulous records of the history of each animal.

  She found Angel easily enough, though the elephant hadn’t had a name back then. Her grandfather had written her entry in bold blue handwriting.

  Female desert elephant, approx 10 yrs old, 22 months pregnant, donated by Reuben James, who rescued her from a zoo in Namibia, extreme case of neglect, v. thin, covered in rope burns and untreated sores, grave concerns for health of her unborn calf.

  It was a tragic story, and one that brought tears to Martine’s eyes. She wondered if she’d misjudged Reuben James. Perhaps his takeover of Sawubona was just that—business. Fair compensation for the non-payment of a debt. Perhaps he genuinely did care for animals and would continue to rescue them when he was running his own safari park. Then she remembered that he was planning to exploit the white giraffe and was angry at him all over again. She was glad he’d saved Angel from the cruel zoo in Namibia, but nothing would make her like him.

  She glanced again at her grandfather’s notes on Angel and a line naming the elephant’s place of birth caught her eye: Damaraland, Namibia.

  For a moment Martine couldn’t think where she’d heard the name before, but then she remembered her grandmother’s call. There’d been nothing in the safety-deposit box, Gwyn Thomas had told her, except a map of Damaraland. It was an odd coincidence. And Grace always said that there was no such thing as a coincidence.

  Martine went over to the bookcase and took down a guidebook on travel in Africa. She flicked through it to the Namibia section. Damaraland was in the north of the country. It was, the book explained, the home of Namibia’s highest mountain, the oldest San etchings in Africa, and the rare and elusive desert-adapted elephant. These were taller than regular African elephants, with long legs capable of carrying them forty-five miles a day. Ordinary elephants drink twenty-five to fifty gallons of water a day, but desert elephants could survive even if they only consumed this amount every three or four days.

  Martine returned the book to the shelf and switched off the lamp. Restless, she went out into the garden to see if she could see Jemmy, taking the caracals with her for protection. She didn’t fancy being hit over the head by any burglars. The white giraffe was not at the water hole. Martine was debating whether to return to the house for the silent whistle she used to call him, when a different glimmer of white caught her eye: Reuben James’s plane.

  At dinner, Ben had mentioned that he’d overheard the pilot saying he had orders to have the aircraft ready at five a.m. He and Reuben James were returning to Namibia, James’s home. They had no plans to return until Christmas Eve, when they officially took over Sawubona. It was the first good news Martine had heard in a week.

  Switching on her flashlight, she went over to the plane. It was a Beechcraft B58. There were six seats and a section for cargo at the back. She walked around to the aircraft’s nose. Its name was on its side in bold red letters: Firebird. Beneath it, so small that you’d only notice it if you were standing right beside it was . . .

  Martine got such a surprise that she dropped the flashlight. It rolled under the wheels and it took a minute for her to find it again. She shined it at the nose of the plane. Beneath the Firebird banner was a four-leaf clover.

  “The four leaves will lead you to the circle,” Grace had told her.

  Martine sat down on the rock near the gate. The caracals milled around her, wanting attention. Reuben James was flying to Namibia, a country that just happened to be northwest of Sawubona, the direction the elephant tusks had been pointing. The map in the safety-deposit box had been of Damaraland, and Damaraland just happened to be the birthplace of Angel.

  A plan started to take shape in Martine’s head. What if she were to hitch a ride with Mr. James and take a look at whatever it was he was up to on his travels? Maybe she could find a bit of dirt on him—some proof that he was a corrupt businessman who’d tricked her grandfather into giving away the game reserve? At the same time, she could try to follow the clues in Grace’s prophecy.

  Other, more sensible thoughts crowded into her mind. Thoughts such as: Are you nuts? You could be killed. You could be sent to jail or a youth offenders’ institute or wherever it is they send eleven-year-olds who stow away on planes to foreign countries. Oh, and if Reuben James doesn’t shoot you, your grandmother will when she discovers what you’ve done.

  But it was no use. If Martine listened to the rational part of her brain, it would mean sitting idly by while James turned Sawubona into a petting zoo for tourists who fancied a ride on a white giraffe. It would mean allowing her grandmother’s home to be snatched away; Ben’s dream of being a tracker to go up in smoke; and Tendai, Sampson, and all the other Sawubona staff to be out on the street with no jobs.

  Worse still, it would mean finding a sign that Grace had told her would lead her to the “truth,” whatever that meant, and ignoring it. For all of those reasons, the brave and crazy part of her was willing to throw caution to the wind.

  Martine decided to submit herself to one final test. Realistically, the only way she’d be able to stow away on the plane would be to do it tonight, under cover of darkness. And she could only do that if the door had been left unlocked. She tried the door.

  It was unlocked.

  Martine exhaled in a rush of breath. So that was decided. She had to do this thing now, whether she wanted to or not. She checked the time again. It was two fifty. She needed to be on board by four a.m. at the latest.

  Ignoring the objections that piled into her mind, she returned to the house. After packing her survival kit, Windbreaker, a spare T-shirt, extra socks and underwear, and her toothbrush into a small backpack, she went down to the kitchen and filled a lunchbox with two cheese and apricot chutney sandwiches and a bottle of water. She left a note on the kitchen table.

  Dear Grace

  I’ve gone to pluck out the thorn. Please take care of Jemmy and the sanctuary animals and do what you can so that my grandmother doesn’t worry.

  I love you all.

  Martine xxx

  As she left the house, shutting the caracals in behind her, she cast a wistful glance at Ben’s bedroom window. She didn’t know how she’d manage without her best friend, but it wasn’t fair to involve him in such an irresponsible scheme.

  Clicking the door shut behind her, she sprinted for the gate. There she paused and listened. Apart from the night creatures, there wasn’t a sound. Heart pounding, she climbed into the plane and lay down behind the boxes in the hold, a tarpaulin covering her. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been.

  She was settling down for a nap, using her backpack for a pillow, when she heard a noise. She tensed. It was highly unlikely that Reuben James was making preparations to leave at three forty-five a.m., which meant that someone—with her luck it would be Lurk—had spotted her getting onto the plane. And that was a disaster
.

  The door hissed open. Martine shrank into her dark corner, trying not to breathe. Terror paralyzed her. The seconds ticked by. Her chest began to burn with lack of oxygen.

  Just when she thought she’d either have to breathe or explode, the tarpaulin lifted. Ben grinned down at her. He was dressed and carrying the small khaki pack he took with him when he was tracking. Martine was still spluttering for words when he crawled in beside her.

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you go on your own, did you?” he said.

  11

  Martine had a cramp. It had started in her foot and spread up her calf and now she had to bite down on her sweatshirt to stop from crying out. She was also freezing, starving, and thirsty, and somehow her cold, hunger, and dry mouth were made that much worse by the knowledge that her Windbreaker, sandwiches, and the bottle of water were within touching distance, only she couldn’t get to them. Not without attracting the attention of the pilot or Reuben James. Not without risking discovery.

  She huddled closer to Ben and managed to straighten her leg enough to ease the pain. They’d been flying for close to three hours. At 4:30 a gust of cold air had alerted them to the opening of the plane door and the lights had flicked on. It had seemed impossible she and Ben wouldn’t be caught, but the pilot merely slung a couple of suitcases on top of them and started up the engines. Minutes later, they heard Reuben James’s shouted greeting. Another box was piled into the cargo area and then they were bumping down the makeshift runway and taking off into the unknown.

  And now what?

  That was the question that had occupied Martine’s mind for the best part of the journey. As usual, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Now that she’d had time to reflect on her actions, regret had been added to the list of emotions she’d experienced over the past few days. She and Ben were about to enter a foreign country without passports. Without anyone knowing where they were. Without a plan. And without money. She had a handful of loose change with her, but it was hardly enough for a hamburger. How on earth would they ever get back to Sawubona?