Fellow Passenger

by Geoffrey Household

  In my perplexity Topaz caressed me with her trunk. She was intolerably motherly—now that she was assured of a supply of toffee-apples. Pearl, on the other hand, had something really solid to offer if only I could guess what it was. Had she, perhaps, been taught some bit of broad comedy by the unknown trainer of whom I reminded her, or worked with the clowns? I petted all I could reach, and apologized to her for stupidity. When again I offered her a toffee-apple she was graciously pleased to shoot it down her maw. We left it at that, reserving judgment about each other.

  Confident that I was just as capable as anyone else of watching the sisterhood sit on tubs, I went in search of Mr Benjafield. He was supervising the complicated rigging of nets and trapezes. The trapeze artists were with him. A couple of Germans they were—Stoffel and Schatz. I don’t wonder that the speakers of that insensitive language feel outlawed from the rest of Europe. Treasure, trésor, joya—all have syllables which lend themselves reasonably to a term of endearment. But schatz, though meaning the same, sounds like a small piece of machinery. It must, I think, be one of the reasons for the peculiar complexes of Germans—that they are continually using words, the meaning of which contradicts the primitive emotional value of the sounds. However, Schatz was a most attractive girl and fascinated by my whiskers.

  ‘I’ll take over your elephant act,’ I told Benjafield.

  ‘What d’ye mean—take it over?’ he shouted. ‘Feed ’em and shovel up after ’em, that’s what I want you for.’

  I replied that of course I would, but that the chap who lived with them ought to show them.

  ‘Tell that to the missus,’ he said.

  It was not irony. It was a simple order, and he returned immediately to tightening up a shiny steel stay.

  Mrs Benjafield, dressed in a sun-top, a pyjama jacket and a smart tweed skirt, was haggling with a couple of farmers. I had learned by this time that if you didn’t interrupt, nothing would ever get said. So I gave her husband’s message.

  ‘There you are, you see!’ she snapped at the farmers. ‘Take it or leave it!’

  What they had to see, I suppose, was that she was inordinately busy. They were stunned into accepting her offer.

  Mrs Benjafield led me straight over to the elephants. I respected that woman. She admitted she knew nothing of their finer points, and that all animals were alike to her. She could manage anything on four legs well enough to get by with a provincial public. But the trouble was that she performed already on the tight-rope, in a stock-whip act with Fred and with the liberty horses. When she appeared with the elephants as well, Benjafields began to look like a one-woman circus.

  I unchained the sisterhood with some misgivings. Topaz, exploring for more sweets, was kind enough to put on a show of affection. They followed us over to the big top, Topaz hanging on to Pearl’s tail. At the entrance to the tent, Pearl put out a forefoot as a stirrup, and Mrs Benjafield hoisted herself up by the ear. I expected Topaz to do the same, but she did not—and I was left to the experience gained in my father’s elephant stables. I said Toffee hai, which sounded reasonably Indian, and pulled Topaz’s ear. She got that, and put out a foot. I found out later that I need not have bothered. Ear pulling was enough.

  Steve and an assistant rolled the tubs into the ring. I folded my arms, looked inscrutable and prayed that I would not fall off. After half a dozen circuits Mrs Benjafield slid down and struck a pose. So did I. Both animals put their forefeet on the tubs, then all their feet, then sat on them with trunks curled up. That was that—bar a bit of showmanship to make it all look harder. The elephants were bored stiff. So was Mrs Benjafield. They would have gone through exactly the same performance whether she shouted ‘Hup!’ or whether she didn’t.

  She asked me if I thought I could take over the act. I replied tactfully that a beard was no substitute for beauty, but if the public would put up with me, so no doubt would the elephants.

  The evening performance, which I watched carefully, revealed nothing more except the legal maximum of Mrs Benjafield who sat on Pearl’s head dressed as a harem beauty. For a hard-working woman in the late thirties she was not at all bad; at any rate the sultan would have had every right to expect a fulsome letter of thanks when he handed her over to one of his more earnest civil servants as a Christmas present. The elephants were also conscious of their duty to the public. Pearl had a red and silver pad on her head, and Topaz a blue and gold. I noticed that they enjoyed applause.

  The Benjafields supplied me with blankets and a pup tent which I pitched alongside the elephant shelter; but after the performance there was no chance at all of getting into it. I had to undress, tether and feed Topaz and Pearl. Steve showed me how to do it, when I explained that our customs in India would probably be impracticable in a travelling circus. After that, Stoffel and Schatz took good German pity on me, and talked to me interminably about the homesickness they assumed I ought to feel. They were trying to show themselves more human than the English; it did not occur to them that the unfeeling English had taken it for granted that I wanted to sleep.

  The sisterhood woke up in excellent form. They were impressed, I think, by the fact that I had pitched my tent alongside their own. I had become a familiar smell. So had they. After an hour’s work with shovel, straw and wheelbarrow, and another hour of grooming, I got an excellent breakfast. No sooner was that down than Benjafield told me to take out the elephants before the ring was wanted for other rehearsals, and see what I could do with them by myself.

  I was in trouble at once. That damned Pearl would not put out her foot for me to mount, so I climbed on to Topaz. She was quite insufferable with girlish pride, and picked up a wisp of straw and repaired her make-up. What surprised me was that Pearl did not seem to mind. She even looked at me as if I had shown a first and quite unexpected flicker of intelligence.

  Round the ring we went, Topaz stepping out and Pearl hanging on to her tail as if the indignity did not bother her at all. They went through their tricks with alacrity, and barely gave me time to say ‘Hup!’ in the proper places.

  That was fine. But when I pulled Topaz’s ear and she put out her foot for me to mount and lead the procession off, Pearl spanked her—a whack with the trunk which could have been heard in Banbury.

  Topaz and I stood about looking guilty. I, at any rate, did not know how to humour this old-maidish temper. I thought that Pearl might consider it her turn to be ridden, so I tried. No, that was not it. I offered her a toffee-apple. She stamped it into the sawdust. She was rocking herself gently from side to side, and her eyes were impatient. I began to think it was a long way to the entrance and started to walk to it, hoping that Pearl would follow, but not too fast. She didn’t even try to follow. She reached out her trunk and detained me, just as she had done in her stall.

  I reminded myself that if these elephants had not been tame as dogs, the Benjafields would not have risked allowing me to rehearse them alone. But what is logic when standing by the forefoot of an exasperated elephant? I retired delicately to her hindquarters and bolted. I heard four ponderous strides. The waistband of my trousers was grabbed from behind, and I was lifted kicking and helpless into the air. Pearl deposited me upon her back, and curled up her trunk in salute. Nervously I placed a toffee-apple in it. She didn’t even try to hold it. I was spoiling the climax of her act. She strode out of the ring, followed submissively by Topaz.

  Once outside, she was all over me, and any toffee apples I chose to produce. When I had surreptitiously lifted my beard, wiped off the sweat and stopped trembling (for I defy anyone to remember that charging elephants possibly mean well), I realized that I was being petted and encouraged. I was quite a clever animal who had understood.

  In fact I had not. But I was prepared to work for anyone who would teach me a trade and ask no questions. So back we went to the ring while it was still empty. There was a spirit of enterprise in the air. The vicar, as it were, had agreed to the si
sterhood’s plans for the church bazaar. We dealt perfunctorily with the tubs, and then Pearl trained us in the remainder of the act. My working hypothesis was that I reminded her of some bearded Indian, genuine or bogus, in her past, and that I was expected to do what he did.

  After bowing to imaginary applause, I tried to mount Topaz. Pearl hauled me away. Infinitely patient, she insisted that I was not to mount Topaz, while half a dozen times I tried other possible moves. At last I got the right one. I had to pretend to grow angry or nervous and run away. She then caught me by the belt, hoisted me on to her noble head and proudly led the procession out. It was the old trick of a favourite animal refusing to leave the ring until given what it wants, and a most spectacular ending to the act. No wonder Pearl had been obstinate. She could never have taught the trick to Mrs Benjafield, for Mrs B. wore nothing by which she could be lifted.

  Back in the elephant shelter, Pearl and I congratulated each other. Topaz showed no resentment. She had learned over the years that mere tender simplicity could not compete with the temperament of Pearl. I made them comfortable—to keep up with their appetites called for a tractor, not a wheelbarrow—and went in search of Mr Benjafield. He was out at the rubbish tip, killing bluebottles with a stock-whip at a range of ten yards. If those he hit were always those he aimed at, he was a remarkable artist.

  ‘What do I get if I keep your elephants and show them?’ I asked.

  ‘Ten a week, and find yourself.’

  ‘Any bonus for a new trick?’

  ‘Depends what,’ he said, massaging a bit of potato off the lash of the whip.

  ‘Good enough for the bills. Is it worth an extra ten quid to you?’

  ‘What’s your opinion of Pearl, son?’

  I guessed the way his mind was running. Pearl, in one of her moods of frustration, might well have shown herself unreliable. He didn’t want any risks with the safety of the public.

  ‘Did she ever show any signs of trying to leave Mrs Benjafield in a state of nature?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ he roared.

  He was no prude, of course. It was just that the absolute respectability of Benjafield’s was an unquestioned first principle.

  ‘Picking at her trunks and that sort of thing,’ I explained, sounding rather like a headmaster.

  ‘She did have some nasty foreign ways before Mrs Benjafield taught her better,’ he admitted shyly.

  ‘Just a complex,’ I said. ‘I’ve cured it. Now how about that bonus?’

  ‘You can have it, if the act’s worth it,’ he replied, ‘and I’m the judge of that. But I’m a fair man. They’ll all tell you.’

  He was a bit doubtful about letting me show the elephants on the three o’clock house that very afternoon, but Mrs Benjafield, who urgently wanted to be rid of them, backed me up. She would be standing by, she said, if anything went wrong. Her husband showed far more confidence when I tried on a few fancy dresses from the circus wardrobe. I was the right colour all over—a genuine foreign colour it appeared to him, though anyone could acquire it on a Mediterranean holiday.

  I chose a pair of acrobats’ trunks and some baggy pants of blue silk to go over them. Round the top I buckled a regular lion-tamer of a belt. Pearl could hoist away on that, if I left it fairly loose, without giving me the sensation of being cut in two.

  When we entered the ring I must admit I suffered from stage fright. The private theatricals which I had been conducting for the last two and a half months were no help at all in facing this goggling circle of white faces. From sheer shyness I hung on to the character of a stern and unbending mahout. Pearl, however, played to the crowd and supplied the comedy. There was a communal gasp from the audience when she chased me and a salvo of relieved clapping when we marched out. Benjafield handed me ten welcome pound notes in the sight of all. He loved a lordly gesture when he had a reasonable excuse to make it.

  In the evening we overdid it. While running away I stepped on the toffee-apple which Pearl had flung from her in pretended contempt, and fell full length in the sawdust. That gave me a moment of complex panic. I was simultaneously afraid that Pearl would step on me and that, if she didn’t, she would swing me aloft before I could recover my indispensable pugaree. A passing thought of Howard-Wolferstan might easily occur to some budding detective among audience or performers if the spotlight picked up the black elastic which held on my beard and whiskers.

  Neither disaster happened. Pearl was sure-footed, and my hat within reach and back on my head before the sawdust cleared. When we were out of the ring, Benjafield relieved his feelings by telling me off good and proper. Gross carelessness in rehearsal. Always watch where your properties fall. And above all never make the women scream. I had not even heard them. Little Schatz told me afterwards that Pearl had missed me by inches. Pearl would. It was her sense of theatre. She could have missed me by a couple of feet if she had wanted to.

  During the following week I relaxed for the first time since my escape from Saxminster courthouse. I thought that I was now set as an elephant trainer, thanks to Pearl. Instead of concentrating on the next six hours and planning ahead for two days at the most, I could dream of a future. Ten elephants. Thirty elephants. Accompany a circus to South America. And freedom.

  It did me good. In fact without this interlude of rest I doubt if I could have carried on. As a dejected rogue I was futile, but as a cheerful rogue I felt in character. That first week of Benjafield’s was a fool’s paradise, yet none the less valuable.

  The circus moved up from Banbury to Rugby. At a halt on the way I was smoking a cigarette in Benjafield’s caravan and chatting peacefully, when he came out with:

  ‘Mind if I ask you something, son?’

  I did not. Fred Benjafield, within his limitations, never talked anything but sense.

  ‘Why do you wear that beard and turban of yours all the time?’

  It was no good trying to bluff him with nonsense about my religion. He knew the beard was false. I murmured something about a disfigurement on my chin.

  ‘Any time you want to take ’em off, son,’ he said, ignoring my wretched excuse, ‘I’d like you to know that in this business we keep our traps tight shut about a performer’s properties.’

  I was never more impressed by the fact that we are all islands, without the least idea of what is really going on in our fellows’ minds. It had astonished me that nobody doubted I was an Indian, or suspected that Pearl and Topaz were the first elephants I had ever handled. Yet the one secret of which I was sure was common knowledge.

  It was natural enough. There was no privacy. I had taken all possible precautions, only washing my face at dead of night in what was left of the elephants’ warm drinking water. But there had been times in daylight when Topaz had disturbed my beard—she was one of those females who can’t help being indiscreet in the display of affection—and times, apart from my accident in the ring, when the pugaree had been knocked half off before I could straighten it.

  So far as Benjafield knew, the false beard was only suspected by himself, his wife and Steve—and all three of them passionately minded their own business. But my safety was hanging on a thread. Mr and Mrs Benjafield never read a newspaper from April to October. They had no time; neither had most of their employees. Over in the fairground, however, the chief occupation during idle mornings was spelling out the police news in the popular press.

  I had to think quickly of some other trade by which I could earn a bare livelihood without the continual risk of exposing a bit of black elastic. In spite of weekly wage and bonus, I had hardly any money. All had gone in providing badly needed comforts and clothes. A means of living almost at once suggested itself, but I had to get it out of Herr Stoffel and spend, I reckoned, at least a week on the job.

  It was not his wife—though that comely young acrobat certainly entered into my plans—but the guitar which he had picked up in Spain. I could not af
ford to buy it, and anyway, he would not part with it for mere money. He was the citron-blooming type of German, always drivelling about the Mediterranean. He had even learned to play a tune or two, but the guitar was only an instrument of blasphemy in his hands. You have to be born to its music. Even my father, who could sing admirably in his second language, could never accompany himself. I, however, have been used from my earliest years to the guitar passing from guest to guest at any informal party, and I can perform as well as my neighbour—perhaps a little better, for in 1942 I held down a job as guitarist at a cabaret in the port of Callao. That did not do any good to Germans, either.

  Schatz at bottom was a complete innocent, without a useful thought beyond new methods of turning herself inside out in mid air; so she could not help a wild and unreal romanticism. The wideness of the world, the lovers who might be at her feet (if only she had time) and the careers she might have followed (if only she had not been superbly good at one) packed her dreams during the two hours of the day—it couldn’t have been more—when she was not engaged in practising or cooking or sleep. Consequently she was drawn to opposites. No human being could come much nearer than she to flight; nothing could be more earthbound than elephants. Stoffel was an extremely serious and worthy young blond with hardly a hair on his body; I—well, I need not emphasize the contrast.

  I fear that Schatz had already begun to show a tendency to become the third female in my care, but my behaviour was impeccable. This unaccustomed and perhaps unnecessary morality was, I must admit, materially affected by the fact that I never could be sure of enough privacy to take off my beard and wash it. So I smelt abominably of elephant. To gather little Schatz into that primeval forest, or to take it off, would have shown a lack not only of principles but common sense.

  After my private decision to leave the circus, I was compelled to give her some encouragement. I told her the story of my life at my father’s court. I explained to her—since it was what she wanted to hear—that the West had got civilization the wrong way up. I treated her as a daughter—an engaging relationship which, provided it is not a fact, may be allowed to develop in any direction the interested parties choose. It was all very hard work, and much of it was carried on while filling wheelbarrows, or up the step-ladder grooming Pearl and Topaz.