“Grandpa? Grandma?” I breathed.
She nodded and went on. “Will’s mother, they said, had been drowned in the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, and his father, their only son, had been killed in the army in Iraq only a short time before. You don’t forget it when people tell you such sad and terrible things. They showed me the leaflet with your photo, Will. When I first saw you, you looked a little different, of course – shorter hair, younger maybe, but quite recognisable. And besides, there aren’t many boys like you, just wandering around the rainforest with an elephant. I knew about the elephant too. They had some hope you must still be alive, because of a story they’d heard more than once while they’d been out here looking for you, a story about an elephant, a beach elephant, that was seen taking off into the jungle as the wave was coming in, with a boy on her back, a boy with fair hair. These two wonderful people had been searching for you for months, all along the coast, and now inland too, dropping off their leaflets everywhere they went, and asking if anyone might possibly have seen you, or heard of you. When they’d gone I couldn’t stop thinking about them, about how determined they were to find you. They had so much love in them for you, so much faith and belief. They never gave up on you. They were willing you to be alive. And you were too, weren’t you?”
“They were really here?” I said. It was so hard for me to take it in.
Dr Geraldine nodded. “I promise you. I’ve still got one of their leaflets in my desk. I’ll show you. So now you know, now you understand, Will. But there’s a whole lot of things I don’t understand. The tsunami was over a year ago now. You’ve been gone all that time, you and that elephant. How on earth did you survive out there? That’s what I want to know. But then maybe you don’t want to talk about it. That’s fine. You don’t need to tell me, not if you don’t want to.”
But I did want to. I don’t know why, but suddenly I wanted to tell her everything. So I did, and as I did, I felt I was living it all again, from that first stampede up the beach into the forest to the day we’d swum across the river and reached her orang-utan orphanage. Dr Geraldine listened in silence all the while, as darkness came down around us. The memories were so vivid to me, and often so painful, that at times I found it difficult to go on. At moments like this she’d squeeze my hand tight. Every time she did so, it reminded me of how a long time ago, a whole lifetime ago it seemed, Mum had done much the same thing, and for much the same sort of reason too. After I’d finished Dr Geraldine asked me no questions, and I was glad of that. I’d said all I wanted to say, and I think she knew it. The two of us sat there for a while, listening to the river running by, to the orchestra of the jungle all around, to Oona groaning and grunting, slapping the river with her trunk.
“Will?” Dr Geraldine said, putting her arm round me. “There’s one more thing I’ve got to tell you. On the leaflet your grandparents left, under the photo of you with your name and your description, there was a telephone number to ring if anyone found you. That first day you arrived I tried it, but either I couldn’t get through, or the number didn’t answer. I don’t know. It’s taken me a long while to find them. But I tracked them down in the end through the Red Cross. I finally spoke to your grandmother and your grandfather only a few days ago, Will. They’d been away, still looking for you all this time. They’d only just got back home. If you could have heard them, Will, the relief and the joy in their voices. It was the best phone call I’ve ever had to make in my life. They’re on their way back out here right now, Will. They’re coming to take you home.”
Elephant’s child
spent the next few days trying to put Grandma and Grandpa out of my mind, trying to forget they were coming, and then feeling guilty about it. I knew it was wrong to feel as I did about them. On the one hand, I really was looking forward to seeing them again. But the trouble was that I couldn’t help thinking they were part of a world I had left behind, that I wanted to forget, and had come to believe I would never see again. What was worse still, was that I knew all too well that they weren’t just coming to see me for a visit. As Dr Geraldine had said, they were coming to take me home, away from Oona, from all the orang-utans, from the jungle. That was the thought I couldn’t stand.
Every morning when I woke up, instead of feeling overjoyed at the thought of this happy reunion with Grandpa and Grandma, as I knew I should have been, I would be hoping that this would not be the day they arrived. I decided there was only one thing for it: I would live every single day I had left in this place to the full, as if it was the last. I was feeling better in myself every day, and so was able to busy myself about the place, filling feeding bottles, cutting up fruit in the kitchens for the orang-utans, helping out with the laundry, fetching and carrying supplies from the jetty, playing with Charlie, Tonk, Bart and the others on the lawn, and at night sometimes sleeping with the little orang-utans and their foster mothers on the floor of the dormitory. I’d often wake to find that either Charlie or Tonk or Bart, all three of them sometimes, had crept over during the night and were lying on me or beside me, snuggled up to me.
The times I loved most now though were when Dr Geraldine took me with her on expeditions into the deepest jungle on the island to see how the older orang-utans were coping with life in the jungle. Oona and Other One always came with us on these long treks, shadowing us all the way. Oona never liked being left out of anything, and where Oona went, Other One went too. When Dr Geraldine said she was getting a crick in her neck with Oona and Other One trailing us all day, I suggested we both hitched a ride on Oona. I knew that Oona would be more than happy to oblige.
Dr Geraldine had ridden an elephant before, she told me, but not for a while, so it took her some time to relax. But the more we rode, the more she was enjoying it. We hardly walked at all after that; Other One was our path-finder or our shadow, sometimes walking, sometimes swinging through the trees above us.
These long rides into the jungle were always silent. Dr Geraldine was very strict about it. We rarely talked, hardly a word. As she had explained to me, it was important that we disrupt the lives of the orang-utans as little as possible. The whole point of the orang-utans’ time in ‘the university of the jungle’ was to persuade them not to rely any more on human contact. So the less they saw and heard of us the better. They had to learn to keep their distance from people for their own safety, to become wild again.
Dr Geraldine had to keep an eye on them, but at the same time remain as unobtrusive as possible. It was, she once told me, the most difficult decision she had to make, to know when the time was right for an orang-utan to be taken from ‘the university’ and released into the reserve. Do it too early, when they weren’t yet ready for it, when they couldn’t cope properly, and she could be condemning them to death. Once out there in the reserve, they were on their own.
In the evenings I would often sit down with Dr Geraldine on the steps of the house after supper, and we’d talk. We talked more and more these days. Other One would be off in the jungle somewhere by this time, up in his sleeping nest. But Oona was never far away of course. “You know something, Will,” Dr Geraldine said to me one evening, “I think I might have to change my mind about that elephant of yours. I have to say that when she first came I thought she was good for nothing except eating herself half silly. But have you noticed how the orang-utans out in the jungle take almost no notice of her? I mean, they’re always a little curious at first, of course they are. She’s a new thing for them – and let’s face it, she’s a big thing too. I don’t know what it is about her, but wherever she goes, that elephant, she radiates a calm and a peace. I’m not imagining that, am I?”
“No,” I said. “You’re not.”
The very next day we had ample proof of that. We were riding up on Oona, through the forest, Other One swinging through the trees above us, when we saw a huge male orang-utan walking towards us on all fours. From the way he was walking, from the way he was looking right at us, rolling his great shoulders as he came, it was obvious he
meant business. He was not looking at all pleased at this intrusion. I thought I might have caught a distant glimpse of a big male like this a while back, crashing about high above us in the canopy, his voice booming through the forest. But this was the first time I’d come face to face with one this big, this close, down on the forest floor. Dr Geraldine put a hand on my shoulder. “This is Ol,” she whispered in my ear. “He’s fine when he’s fine. So we just keep very still. That way we keep him fine.”
It reminded me of the meeting with the tiger all that time ago. Oona stood quite still, and for a while so did the orang-utan. He had huge black cheek-flaps, deep piercing eyes, and a golden beard, like a Viking’s beard, I thought. Oona looked down at him quite unperturbed, then as if he wasn’t there at all, began to browse for food. Meanwhile, the orang-utan was showing no overt signs of aggression, but he was also showing no sign of moving. He seemed to be making it quite clear that he would move when he felt like it and not before, however big this new giant was. He sat down for a while, scratching his ear, and then looked the other way, very deliberately ignoring us, making out he hadn’t a care in the world.
After some minutes of this charade, once he was satisfied everything was as it should be, I suppose, that Oona was neither a threat nor a challenge, that he’d stayed long enough not to lose face, he simply walked off into the trees and was gone. “Oona,” Dr Geraldine whispered, “you’re a star. You did that beautifully, beautifully.”
That same evening, sitting on the end of the jetty, Dr Geraldine told me about how she had discovered Ol several years before, only a couple of months old, sitting next to the charred body of his mother after a jungle fire, burnt, half starved and covered in sores. I remembered then that photograph in the magazine back home, saw again in my head the little orang-utan clinging to the top of the charred tree. It could have been Ol. “He won’t ever go back into the wild,” she went on, her voice catching as she spoke. “He’s too traumatised, even now. He always will be.”
She was turning her face away, so that I couldn’t see she was crying. “Will you look at me?” she said, wiping away her tears. “Crying my stupid eyes out. I ask you, Will, how’s that going to help anyone? It’s not because I feel sorry for myself, I promise you. I’m just angry. I need eyes and ears in the jungle. I need to be out there, to be on the spot, to stop the burning and killing before it happens. And if the worst did happen, then at least I could be there quickly. I could fetch them back. I could save them before it was too late. So many of them die, Will, and there’s no one out there to help them. But I can’t be out in the jungle, and back here at the same time. It makes me so angry that I can do so little.”
“It’s not so little,” I told her. “When you save one of their lives, like you do, I think it’s like saving a whole world each time.” I felt her hand reaching out, holding mine and squeezing it tight.
“We make a fine team, you and I,” she said. “I’m going to miss you when you go. So will everyone here, that elephant most of all.”
“You know I don’t want to go, don’t you?” I told her.
“I know,” she replied. “I’ve got eyes. I’ve got a brain too. I know what you’ve been thinking, Will.”
“What if I asked them if I could stay?” I asked her.
“You could ask, but you’d be breaking their hearts if you did,” she told me. “I can’t tell you what to do, Will. You’ll have to make up your mind for yourself. But I will say this, and it’s maybe something you should think about. Nothing in the world matters to those two grandparents of yours more than you. They’ve lost their son in a war, and their daughter-in-law, your mum, in the tsunami. And they thought they’d lost you too. That’s their whole world, their whole reason for living, gone. I don’t need to tell you of all people what they must have felt like, do I? And then they get a phone call from me to tell them you’re alive after all. You’re right when you say that every one of those little orang-utans is a whole world. And that’s what you are to your grandparents, Will. You’re their whole world. Whatever you do, you mustn’t forget that.”
All that night I lay there trying to reconcile myself to the idea that Dr Geraldine had been right about Grandma and Grandpa, and that I had no choice but to leave with them when they came for me. After all Grandpa and Grandma had done to find me, I couldn’t disappoint them. I had to go back to England, to my old life. But trying to convince myself I was looking forward to it was another matter. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. Of course I did, although I was becoming increasingly nervous about it. And most certainly it wasn’t that I didn’t like the idea of making my home with them back on the farm in Devon – that’s what I presumed would happen. Nowhere could be better. It was simply that I didn’t want to leave this place. I did not want to leave Oona, or Dr Geraldine, or the orang-utans, or the jungle.
It did not make it any easier, as I lay there on my bed, that the music of the jungle seemed to be particularly loud and insistent that night, as if every creature out there was calling to me, begging me to stay. And neither did it help that I could hear Oona outside my window all night, groaning away. She kept reaching in with her trunk to touch me – it was to remind me she was there, I was sure of it. I had no doubt at all that this was her way of asking me not to leave her.
Unable to sleep, I went and sat out on the steps to clear my head. When Oona came wandering over, and stood there looking down at me with the moon in her eye, her trunk exploring my hair, I knew that I couldn’t keep silent, that I’d have to tell her everything, all about Grandpa and Grandma and how they’d been looking for me all this while, that now they were on their way, and that I’d be going home with them. “I don’t want to go, Oona, you know that,” I said. “But I must. It’s like Doctor Geraldine says, I’m all they’ve got. You understand, don’t you? I won’t forget you, Oona, I promise. And I know you’ll never forget me, because elephants never forget anything, do they?” I couldn’t speak any more. My tears wouldn’t let me.
I leaned my head against her trunk and hugged it, hugged her. “Sometimes, Oona,” I told her, “sometimes I really feel like I’m your child, like I’m an elephant’s child.” We stayed together until first light, until we heard Dr Geraldine humming to herself as she got up. Oona wandered off then, looking resigned and disconsolate, no more happy about the idea of the parting to come than I was.
Breakfast that morning was a silent affair. I think we had said all there was to be said the night before, and each of us knew what the other was thinking, so there was no point in talking. I kept reading the poster on the wall. I’d seen it before, but hadn’t taken that much notice of it. Until now, I think I’d been more interested in the collage of photos of orang-utans all around it.
‘When all the trees
have been cut down,
when all the animals
have been hunted,
when all the waters
are polluted,
when all the air is
unsafe to breathe,
only then will you
discover you cannot
eat money.’
(Cree prophecy, North America.)
I was still thinking about that as, later that morning, Dr Geraldine and I were riding out again into the jungle to check on the orang-utans, accompanied as usual by Other One, and this time by Mani and Charlie too. But Oona wasn’t herself, I could feel it right away. She seemed unsettled, more irritated than usual by the flies, and less willing to respond to anything I asked her to do. She paid little attention either to my voice or the pressure of my heel on her neck. She was going to go where she wanted, and at her own pace too, faster, slower, whatever she felt like, and there was nothing I could do about it.
She kept tossing her head, a sure sign she was not happy. And from time to time she would stop suddenly, unexpectedly, and it wasn’t to feed either. She’d just stand there listening. I thought it could be that Ol was shadowing us, following along the trail behind us, or swinging throu
gh the trees, that his invisibility was unnerving her. I kept looking for him, listening for him. Other One was there, plodding along with Mani and Charlie, and they were all calm enough. There was no sign of Ol. I could see no reason at all why Oona should be like this.
When the thunder rattled and echoed about the sky, when the lightning crackled, and the rains came down, I thought that might be enough in itself to explain Oona’s strange behaviour, that she must have felt the storm coming. But when the storm had passed over, she was just as difficult, just as unpredictable, tugging and tearing impatiently at the branches, but never once stopping to feed properly on the move, as she usually did. I came to the conclusion that she wasn’t frightened, that there was nothing to be frightened of. But she was upset, as upset as I’d ever seen her. Dr Geraldine kept asking me what the matter with her was, and I couldn’t tell her. “Maybe she’s unwell,” she said. “Maybe she’s eaten something that didn’t agree with her.”
I was still wondering if she could be right about that, when we reached the river on the far side of the island. It looked to me as if Oona wasn’t going to stop at all, that she was going to wade right in. But she did stop, at the very last moment, and stood there on the bank for a while, gazing out across the river at the jungle on the far side. Then she turned, and began to walk very slowly, reluctantly, back the way we had come. She took her time, not walking so much as meandering, so we didn’t come out of the forest and back to the orphanage until the light was fading. That was when I saw them.
On the steps of Dr Geraldine’s house sat Grandpa and Grandma, a suitcase beside them. Grandpa was wearing the same tweed jacket and flat cap he always wore, and Grandma, dressed in one of her flowery dresses, was fanning herself with her hat. They looked older, smaller, more shrunken than I remembered, and greyer too. Oona stopped where she was when she saw them. She lifted her trunk in the air and tossed her head. I thought for a moment she was going to trumpet at them, but she didn’t. It took a while for me to persuade Oona to let us down. They were coming towards us now across the lawn.
The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) Page 37
