by Paul Gallico
She had been given work to do, and Jackdaw Williams had acquiesced in this. He himself was engaged in trying out routines with the three clowns and otherwise practising his juggling endlessly. It had been some time since he had presented a juggling act and, a perfectionist at his business, he would not tolerate the dropped ball or the missed catch.
It was understood that when they took to the road Rose would don a red coat and peaked circus jockey cap and make herself useful selling programmes, seating people in the star-backs, and dispensing sweets and drinks as well. But she had also been assigned to dress the Liberty act presented by Fred Deeter, and this called for rehearsal. Clad in a spangled evening gown dug out of Sam Marvel’s costume locker, her job would be to carry a whip and point to Deeter to milk applause at the end of each routine of the Liberty horses. This necessitated considerable agility and the learning of where she must be and when, not only to avoid being trampled underfoot but to make the best presentation of the trainer.
At first she spent most of her time trying to get out of the way of the horses, and since she had never had any physical training of any kind, she found this arduous and difficult, though she was not at all afraid of them. Deeter, who had never worked with anyone who was not of the circus, was impatient with her, shouting at her time and time again, “No, no, no! For Christ’s sake, sister, not there! Get your ass over here when they wheel!”
Yet he was pleased to have her. She was young and, if not a great beauty, had a certain appeal; and people would think that she was his girl, which flattered him. A kid dressing up an act like that could coax twice as much applause out of an audience as when he worked alone.
This with her housekeeping duties took up no more than three hours of her day. Thus, whenever Toby worked out in the ring with the family or by himself, leaping and bounding from ground to horse as he practised the turns and twists of voltige with his favourite mare, Sally, or in the time he devoted each day to putting Judy through her routine and getting her accustomed to her music cues, Rose managed to be there.
There was a tumble of props at one end of the rehearsal enclosure assembled there to be painted when the time drew near for departure—tubs, teeterboards, cradles, pedestals, paraphernalia—and in this Rose nestled herself to look upon this boy her heart desired, weave her dreams about him, and experience for the first time the pangs of another kind of hunger—love.
Toby was aware of her, for when he worked, whether in practise or performance, he would take note of all his surroundings, where everything was and what was going on, even to a loudly coloured hat or costume in the audience, so that some sudden movement or object intruding itself would not distract him and mar his timing. Rose was half concealed in the welter of gear, yet out of the corner of his eye Toby saw the blue of her cloth coat, her shapeless beret, and sometimes the floodlights picked up the red-gold of hair.
At first he was stimulated by her presence, for she was someone new, young, and attractive, and the family had not yet had time to loose the full impact of its disapproval. He was then not yet certain of who or what she was or her background, and boyishly he showed off, swaggering and adding little grace notes to his leaps, pirouettes and somersaults. But later, when he knew more about her and became aware of the intensity of his craving for her, her presence infuriated him. Yet she was so quiet and at such distance from him that he had no excuse for complaining or telling her to get out.
What was she doing there? Why was she watching him day in and day out? Flaunting? This was the word which rang through his young and unhappy head, put there by his elders.
Didn’t she have enough with that stinking, hairy clown with his drooping dog’s eyes and dirty ways? Did she want him too? Did she want to catch and dirty him likewise? Was she trying to make him want her? Then she had succeeded.
But he didn’t dare because he was young and inexperienced and didn’t know how to go about it. Maybe if he went over to her when he was finished and spoke to her, within a few minutes she might go with him into the copse behind the beast barn. But what if she wouldn’t, or if she did and Jackdaw should catch them? It was not the beating Toby feared—he could take care of himself—but the humiliation and the sullying. Then why was she sitting there showing herself? He tried not to look there, and because it was an effort which distracted him, he took a fall or two, and this made him even angrier with her. How terrible it was to hate her by day and by night love her and lie with her in his imagination.
One day after Toby finished his work-out, he wiped the sweat from his face, shoulders, arms, and hands with a towel and brushed the sawdust which had clung to his singlet when he had taken a fall which he had turned quickly into two roll-over somersaults. His mother and father were occupied changing the rosin-backs preparatory to drilling the two girls in what was described in the programme as their “Gracious and Graceful Duet on Horseback.” He strolled over in the direction of the exit from the building but managed to go the long way around to bring him past the clutter of props where Rose was sitting on a teeterboard, her hands in her lap, her head cocked slightly to one side. He wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing there, to tell her to stop watching him, to keep away while he was working, to get lost.
But when he passed close by her he could think of nothing to say but only pause and stand there for an instant, trying to look through the clothes she wore to the naked, wanton form concealed beneath.
Rose smiled at him: “You were wonderful. I never seen anything like it.”
She spoke so softly and shyly that Toby was startled out of his thoughts. She had talked just like any other girl, like any of the gajos who came around after the performance.
Rose asked, “Do you mind if I watch you?”
This made him aware of what had been in his thoughts. He replied, “Yes. Why don’t you go and watch Jackdaw Williams?”
The girl remained unoffended and chose to regard it as a straight question calling for an equally straight answer. She said, “Jackdaw doesn’t like me to watch him.”
“Do you do everything Jackdaw tells you?”
She smiled at him again as though he were being gay and friendly with her instead of sour and probing. “Not everything,” she replied.
“Will you go out with me tonight?” The boy put the question bluntly and almost rudely.
The girl reflected a moment and then shook her head.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Jackdaw wouldn’t like it. He likes me to be there when he is.”
Toby chose to pick up the nastier meaning and snorted, “Sure. Why wouldn’t he! Don’t you ever get a night off?”
Rose shook her head.
Toby said, “I thought you didn’t do everything he said?”
“I keep house for him,” Rose said with a kind of childish pride, as though that explained everything.
“Well,” said Toby, “I don’t like to be watched either.” He turned and strode off, and as he did so he heard a clatter behind him as though the girl had moved and some of the props had shifted. He turned about to see that she was standing looking after him.
She called, “Toby!” He waited, and she came walking slowly towards him and looked up into his face with the inquiring gaze of someone very young, timid and innocent. “Did you really want me to go out with you tonight?” she asked.
Toby’s heart began to hammer then and the straining tension made itself felt again, but now he was disturbed and frightened for he couldn’t make her out. Curtly he replied, “No. I just wanted to see what you would say.”
He was glad and at the same time surprised to see that this had hurt her, for she drew her breath in quickly in a kind of gasp, as though some kind of unexpected sharp pain had smitten her, before the little smile returned to the corners of her mouth and, nodding as though she understood, she turned away.
She was not there to watch him the following day or the next. It worried him almost as much, and he kept looking over to the corner whe
re the props were stacked and once came so close to misjudging his distance that his father snarled at him angrily, “What are you trying to do? Break your bloody neck?” The third day, when he stole a look over into the corner she was there again. It both pleased and angered him into putting on a brilliant work-out, at the conclusion of which he threw his backward somersault from the lead horse over the second and landing on the rump of the third far too early in the season, bringing another reprimand from his father: “Who the hell are you trying to show off to? We know you think you’re the bloody star. Save that stuff until it’s wanted.”
There was later a morning of cloudless sunshine over the winter quarters following an all-night rain that had been drumming on the roofs of the living wagons of the troupe. The blue skies and the first fitful warmth brought everyone forth in cheerful mood to hang out washing, sip their cups of coffee on the steps of their caravans, and exchange gossip.
Mr. Albert had given Judy her morning feed of hay and she was feeling good, grumbling and regurgitating contentedly. She had eaten most of it and the remainder she was scattering over her back.
Like all the animals on the lot, she was in love with Mr. Albert who fussed over her, petted and spoiled her dreadfully. Mr. Albert’s behaviour towards his charges varied directly in inverse ratio to their size. The bigger the beast the more he felt it wanted cosseting, cuddling, sympathy, and loving. In the two years since he had been feeding and looking after her, Mr. Albert had just about managed to convince Judy that she was two inches long and an inch wide by an inch high and could be held cupped in the hollow of his hand. She understood his talk and tried her best to convey to him by squeaks and gurgles and grunts and caresses of the tip of her trunk and gentle blowings the extent of her affection for him.
Judy was an Indian elephant of average size. She was some forty-five years of age and had been with one circus or another for twenty-five of them. Her tusks had been cut and capped. Her mud-coloured hide was criss-crossed with tens of thousands of wrinkles and covered with short, bristly hairs. Her eyes were small, alert, and incredibly knowing. Behind them lay the accumulated experience of almost half a century of dealing with the vagaries, sometimes unfathomable, of the two-legged animal.
She was acutely aware of the compass of her world: food, work, pleasure, travel, goodies, friends, enemies, and was able to reason within its limits. The twelve minutes of her performance in the ring with Toby was the least of her worries. She had been well trained in her youth and had more numbers and tricks stored away in her memory than most of her kind. Her major concern was the comfort of her body, inside and outside: coaxing sweets out of spectators, keeping free of insects or flies, pleasuring the nerve ends of her skin by scratching, and keeping awake to any opportunity of carrying on her vendetta against anything that wore skirts.
Since she had been turned over to Toby for presentation, they had moved her from where she had formerly been picketed and relocated her not far from the big living wagon of the Walters family with its three tiers of bunks. She was staked out here, her left front foot and right hind foot chained in the usual manner which permitted her the rhythmic side to side “rocking the cradle” sway in which she delighted. Elephants are nervous and jumpy creatures and do not like to be left alone. A side light was left burning always on the caravan and Judy was content when she knew that Toby was inside. Mr. Albert still fed and watered her, and the love affair between the two was in no manner diminished, but it was Toby who looked after her now, groomed her, fussed over her, and saw that everything was right and comfortable.
On this particular morning he was raking the furrows of her thick hide to clear it of dirt and foreign matter, a species of grooming which particularly delighted Judy. Harry Walters was in the doorway of the wagon on his second cup of coffee. The two boys, Jacko and Ted, were playing cards on the bottom step. A washing line was strung up from their roof to that of the next van and Ma Walters, aided by the two girls, Lilian and Angela, were stringing up the family’s costumes and underclothes.
Rose suddenly appeared, splashing through the pools of muddy water which had collected on the tober. She was wearing black gum boots which came half way up her legs, a dark green skirt belted at the waist and a white cotton blouse, the half sleeves of which showed the mass of freckles on the white skin of her arms. She wore no hat and her hair in a short bob fell free about her face. She was glowing with the sudden change in the weather, the blue skies and the sunshine.
There was a stiffening among the Walters at her appearance, but she was too engaged with the delight of living at that particular moment to be aware of it. If she had at any time acquired any inkling of the contempt in which she was held by these people she gave no sign of it.
She came up fearlessly to the elephant, unseen by Toby who was working on the far side, reached up and patted the beast and said in astonishment, “Oh, it’s prickly! I thought it was made of rubber.” And she smiled sunnily at the Walters group.
Harry Walters, looking down with his coffee cup in his hand said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get away from that elephant.” And then to make time with Ma, he added for her benefit, “We don’t want you around here anyway.”
Toby saw Rose standing, her cheek-bones not more than an inch away from the club-like, sawn-off tusks and the long, loose trunk which could strike with the speed of a cobra and the force of a trip hammer. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Get out of there! Get away from there! Do you hear? Do you want to get hurt?”
Rose remained standing where she was and deliberately leaned her cheek against the rough corrugated skin of the elephant’s trunk. “What’s the matter with you all?” she cried. “And why should I get out? It’s not your elephant. It belongs to Mr. Marvel. And besides, look, she loves me.”
Catastrophe quivered for a moment in the mid-March morning air. They all by now knew the reputation of the elephant and her potentialities for dealing out death. A blow from the tusk could crush her skull; one lash of the trunk would cave in her ribs. None of them wanted to see her die or injured, yet all, with the exception of Toby, did no more than stare, paralysed.
Toby had caught the glitter in Judy’s eye. He seized Rose roughly by the arm and pulled her out of range of the squirming trunk, though not wholly out of danger if the elephant chose to make one gigantic surge against her chains and charge.
The ginger in Rose’s colouring was not there for nothing. Her cheeks flushed and she jerked her arm away from Toby’s clasp and stamped her foot. “Lemme go! I wasn’t hurting your old elephant. What’s the matter with all of you? What are you staring at?”
It was Judy who chose to throw the switch that turned the scene from high drama and impending tragedy to low comedy.
The secret of why she hated women, why when one approached her closely her impulse was to stamp upon, batter or destroy her, remained locked in the soft grey matter within her broad skull. Perhaps during her early days of captivity in India, some sadistic female had amused herself by torturing her in some sensitive part. But it so happened that morning that Judy was feeling good.
Her belly was full of sweet hay and Mr. Albert had dropped by a handful of fresh carrots which she loved. After months of shivering, the first sunshine had warmed her back, and furthermore, Toby had been pleasuring her nerves by scratching her skin with the end of a fine-toothed rake. The presence of the girl who had stood close to her, touched her, laid her cheek against hers, had reawakened all of the old memories and antagonisms and the desire to injure, but the graces of the day and the good things that had been happening to her transmuted her anger into whimsy.
Elephants are capable of a kind of twinkling humour. One sees it in their eyes sometimes and in the things they do, a kind of conscious enjoyment of absurdity. At Judy’s feet was a slight depression wherein had gathered a large pool of dirty water from the incessant rain of the night before. Into this pool Judy now dipped her trunk, sucked up what must have been a gallon or more, and then ai
ming her proboscis, as stiff and straight as any rifle, at Rose, blew it out at her in one explosive gust that caught her full in the face and covered her from head to foot.
Her hair was filled with it, her eyes half blinded, her cheeks streaked, her white blouse sodden and muddied, her skirt drenched, and she stood there momentarily stunned by the suddenness of the onslaught, to be greeted with roars of laughter, whoops and gales of it bursting from the members of the Walters family. And even Toby could not forbear a grin, though it was as much relief that events had taken this bizarre turn instead of something more serious, as at the sorry figure she cut.
But the laughter of the Walters, and particularly the women, was less amused than it was derisive, scornful, and filled with satisfaction and malice. Harry Walters was slapping his sides; the two boys were shouting; and Ma Walters chose the moment to spill over some of her accumulated venom. She came forward, her fat arms akimbo.
“That’s it, you little tramp,” she said. “Now you’ve got what you deserve. Dirt! That’s what you are—dirt all over! Now get out of here!”
Toby said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, Ma!” He was still nervously shaken by the nearness of the thing or he would never have spoken to his mother as he did. But he was also momentarily touched by the forlorn ridiculousness of the drenched girl, sneezing, coughing, trying to rub the mud out of her eyes, and he felt impelled to shout at her too. “Don’t you understand, you bloody little fool? You might’ve been killed!”
There was then nothing for Rose to do but weep hot and miserable tears of anger and frustration. She had an adequate supply of gutter language and curses that she could have loosed upon them, but this did not seem to be an answer to what had happened. She was too thoroughly sullied and humiliated. She was not capable at that moment of conscious ratiocination, yet it seemed as though when she had tried to step across the line of demarcation into the glowing cleanliness, the shining youth and health of Toby and his family, she had been hurled back into the squalor from which she had come. Thus she had only tears to give, and shedding them she turned and walked away.
