Elephants and Castles

by John Patrick

The early weeks were painfully awkward. Morris had lived alone in the house for many a year and he was nervous about exposing his life and idiosyncrasies to someone new. As for Monica, her experiences with men had left her feeling just as insecure. She self-consciously went about trying to impress Morris, whilst quietly expecting to be told to pack her bags and go at any minute. The only time she relaxed in those early days was after Morris went to bed, when she could finally pull out the hidden bottle of white wine and get quietly drunk in front of late night television.

  Morris admitted that he didn't find children easy. He wasn't sure why. As kept telling Monica, he'd been one himself not so very long ago. But today's children seemed, well, different. For reasons Morris couldn't understand, Elvis didn't get excited about repairing second-hand televisions, he showed no passion for stamps or rare insects and didn't seem to understand that his model train set was not a toy to be played with. So when they were occasionally forced to be alone together, the time was punctuated by long embarrassing silences and uncomfortable shuffling in the chair. It wasn't that Morris disliked Elvis, he didn't. In fact he actually quite enjoyed having him around. But he saw him a bit like the iPhone that Monica had bought him for Christmas. He liked having one, but he wasn't quite sure what he should be doing with it.

  For young Elvis, moving to the big old house was like moving to an enormous London castle. It was older than he could comprehend and seemed to be filled with hidden passageways, secret staircases and a vast dark attic. In the daylight he loved to explore and imagine the people who had lived there through the ages, and at night he hid under his covers.

  Elvis couldn't really remember anything odd happening in the early months in London, not in the house at least. Outside was different. School was a shock; it was vast and seemed to have kids from every corner of the globe. Even so, Elvis spent his recess and lunch break sitting on the edge of the playground on his own. In class he sat next to Radislaw, a new arrival from Eastern Europe. Radislaw was very generous with his kabanos, but his English was limited to a handful of words, and as Elvis discovered, it takes more than cured meat snacks to forge a friendship. The seat in front was occupied by Amelia Evans. Every time Elvis lost concentration and looked up, he saw the side of her pretty face, her golden shoulder length hair, her coy smile and self-conscious giggle. He lost concentration every few minutes. He vowed that one day he'd speak to her.

  At first nothing much was said about Elvis's crutch, or his limp or scars; they were politely ignored, rather like a fart at a dinner party. But it wasn't long before the muttered remarks and sniggers started. As the days went by the muttering became less discrete and turned into shouts and name calling. Elvis did his best to ignore them, to laugh them off and hide the hurt; but it didn't help. One group of boys was especially cruel. It wasn't just the unimaginative shouts of 'spastic' and 'freak' that hurt. They began to steal Elvis's crutch and throw it across the yard or use it to as a bat to play cricket. As Elvis walked the school corridors the same boys would try to kick his crutch from under him. Elvis was wise to their tricks but he didn't always see them coming. At times he'd end up on his back, looking up at a ring of laughing faces. But Elvis wasn't one to complain. He didn't want to draw more attention to himself, so he said nothing about it at home, and as long as no one brought it up at school, the teachers seemed happy enough to look the other way.

  For six long months there was nobody at school that Elvis could describe as a friend. That finally changed when Alan Singh arrived. Until recently, Alan's father had been a busy pharmacist running his own thriving business. Sadly though, greed had clouded his judgement and he had been disgraced on prime time television, caught bottling tap water and selling it as homeopathic medicine. No one had suspected anything until a disgruntled employee blew the whistle, secretly filming him topping up the pretty little bottles from a tap at the back of his shop. The scandal made great television and his face made the front cover of the Evening Standard. He paid a heavy price. Within weeks he was permanently struck from the Register of Pharmacists and shortly after that, he was prosecuted for fraud. Along with his pride, he lost his business, his Jaguar, his five bedroomed home and Alan lost his place at private school. All of this made Alan was a prime target for the bullies. Like Elvis, Alan spent recess time sitting alone on the edge of the playground.

  Elvis's first conversation with Alan happened one lunchtime. Elvis's crutch had been stolen again and this time thrown on to the roof of the bike shed. Class was about to restart and Elvis was desperate to get it back without causing a fuss. He was trying but failing to climb up onto the roof to get it when Alan appeared. Alan quickly wriggled up a post and onto the roof of the bike shed. Elvis's gratitude was mixed with embarrassment at not being able to get it for himself. He thanked Alan with a grimace. But Alan had been seen. Within seconds, Alan and Elvis were surrounded. A hand grabbed Elvis's crutch and tried to pull it away again. But Elvis wasn't alone anymore and he wasn't going to give it up without a fight. He tugged back. Alan tried to help but was pushed away and given a smack on his ear for his trouble. Elvis saw red. He was used to being picked on but this boy had come to his aid. He ripped his crutch free, pulled it back and swung it like a baseball bat. It crashed into the back of a boy's head and launched him face first into the bike racks.

  Alan and Elvis finished that lunchtime battered and bruised. The next day they were hauled before the headmaster, after a parent complained about a vicious assault on her son in the bike sheds. The pair of them was given detention for a week. Elvis and Alan didn't mind, that helped seal their friendship and sent a message that they were no longer a pushover. Elvis's crutch wasn't stolen again, though the teasing continued for them both. But at least neither of them was alone now.

  Elvis decided to invite Alan around to his house. Elvis had never brought a friend home before, and felt as nervous as if he'd been asking a girl out on a first date. Monica was excited too. She'd never quite managed to organise a sleep over or birthday party for her son. She'd often promised that one day, when he had some friends, she'd have a huge party. But the truth was that as a single parent in Bolton, she'd been ashamed of her grotty little flat and she hadn't been able to afford the parties that the other parents lavished on their kids. He did get rare invites to other children's birthdays, but for one reason or another, Monica never quite managed to get him there. But now, in London, things were different, and at last he was bringing someone home. Monica tidied the house, hid away the empty wine bottles and got rid of the dirty clothes. She'd heard Elvis talk about Alan before but she'd never met him. He sounded like a nice boy. Her little Elvis finally had a friend.

  She was a little shocked when Alan turned out to be Asian. It wasn't, when she thought about it afterwards, that she had anything against people of Asian descent; she didn't. Rather that she had never spoken to one, not properly. Sure, she had spent most of her life living around people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, buying food from them, being driven on buses by them, and she couldn't begin to count how many eminent Asian doctors had advised her on Elvis's injuries over the years. But that was different. Conversation was always polite but limited to the necessary, to the price of her groceries, to why she had underpaid her bus fare or why Elvis needed another head scan. When she thought about it she'd never actually sat down and had a cup of coffee with anyone of a different skin tone, never had a joke or talked about last night's television. Not because she'd avoided it, rather it just didn't seem right – what could she possibly have in common with them to talk about? Now Alan was here, and it seemed that the most shocking thing about him was how disarmingly normal he was. He spoke with a London accent, wore normal clothes and seemed interested in exactly the same things as every other thirteen year old boy. So how was she supposed to treat him? She wasn't sure, so she decided to be careful and just wait and see. She wasn't about to jeopardise Elvis's one and only friend by saying the wrong thing.

  Elvis and Alan became good friends. Alan was am
ongst the third generation of his family born in London and showed Elvis the ropes. He taught him how to ride the bus and tube, where to go to hang around in video arcades, which parts of town were safe and which to avoid. He helped him with his school work and listened with interest to Elvis's stories of life in Lancashire and his trips to hospital. Elvis talked about his operations, his physiotherapy and learning to walk. But he wouldn't talk about how it had all happened and Alan learnt not to ask.

  Chapter 3