The Runaways, page 7
Tara and Harvey headed over to the easel that the lady had left, but there was no food there.
Tara picked up one of the paintbrushes with her nimble trunk and dabbed paint on top of the lady’s painting of a rabbit wearing clothes.
But by the time Beatrix had come back with the village policeman, Tara and Harvey had travelled on through the meadow and on to the next farm.
The maize growing in the field was almost as tall as Tara and much taller than Harvey. The little elephant had never tasted it before so she did what all elephants do with something new: she touched it with her trunk and then put her trunk in her mouth.
Once she knew it tasted good Tara headed into the field, with Harvey trotting behind her. She broke corn stalks as she ate the corn, which helped Harvey to spot the mice that were in the fields, and so he got to eat too. But the corn wasn’t enough for Tara. She had to have her mother’s milk. Nothing could replace that and she was getting weaker all the time.
At the end of the field there was a gap in the dry-stone wall and a sloping bank that led down to a river. They wandered down to it. The water looked cool and inviting and Tara waded into it as Harvey crunched through the shell of his first freshwater pearl mussel and watched as a brown trout darted past.
The two animals slept in the sunshine on the riverbank before heading on across another wildflower-covered meadow and out on to a country lane with grass growing down the middle of it.
A curious black-and-white calf came running over to the dry-stone wall as soon as she saw Tara and Harvey on the lane behind it. The calf’s mother called to her to come back, but the calf was far too interested in Tara to listen to her. Tara put her trunk over the wall to touch her, and the calf led them along the wall to a rickety wooden gate, which she poked her head through so she could sniff at Harvey. Harvey sniffed back in greeting and wagged his tail.
Tara, Shanti and Harvey were all used to opening doors and gates as part of their circus act and it was no problem at all for Tara to lift up the frayed string that was the only thing keeping this gate shut. She gave the gate a push to open it, whereupon it promptly fell flat on the grass.
Once Tara and Harvey were in the field all the cows and their calves came over. Eventually, when they’d all sniffed and been sniffed at, the cows went back to eating grass and Tara joined them.
It was dusk by the time the farmer came to bring in the cows and he was tired out. Running the farm was too much for an old man and he was dreading the winter. Last year had been terrible. But he had to keep the farm going so his sons had somewhere to return to after the war. They were fighting for their country and he was determined to fight to keep the farm going for them. Only his back ached so much he could hardly straighten it, his head ached, his arms ached, his hands ached and his fingers were twisted with arthritis.
‘Come in now, Maisie. Bring ’em in, girl,’ he shouted.
And Maisie led the cows and the calves across the field to the cow shed just like she did every night, while the farmer went to check on the gate.
‘I’ll have to fix this,’ he said, and he groaned as he tried to lift it up.
He was very surprised when it suddenly became light as a feather, and even more surprised, as well as scared, when he saw that an elephant was helping him to lift it and put it back in place.
‘What – what?’ he cried, rubbing his eyes. He’d only ever seen a picture of one before, and he let go of the gate and hurried back to his cottage.
Tara followed the cows and calves as they made their way across the field. Harvey came running out of the bushes, where he’d been munching on a large rat, to follow her.
The cows were eating hay in the shed and Tara ate some too before she found a wheelbarrow full of carrots and ate those instead. There was a tin bathtub full of water for the cows and Tara had a long drink before settling down for the night with the cows and the chickens and farm cats.
The chickens perched on the rafters and the cats stayed clear of Harvey. But the cows and calves lay down together on the straw bedding and Tara made a sad little sound and went to join them. She missed her mum and called out to her using the special elephant call, but Shanti didn’t reply.
Maisie licked her with her large pink tongue and Tara lay next to her with Harvey close by.
In the morning Maisie led the cows and calves back out to the field again. Tara and Harvey followed her until they came to the farmer’s vegetable garden. There they stopped so Tara could pull up and eat a few cabbages and parsnips while Harvey tried unsuccessfully to catch a toad and had to settle for a worm instead.
The little elephant didn’t like the geese that squawked at her and made Harvey bark as they headed after the cows to the field. But she didn’t mind the chickens with their funny way of running to catch up with her.
The chickens really liked the baby elephant and followed her about in a little flock wherever she went in the field. The cows and calves cropped the grass by wrapping their muscular tongues round it and pulling it out, but the way Tara ate grass was to loosen it by kicking at the soil with her forefoot. Then she lifted the green grass along with the white roots in her trunk to her mouth. Every time she pulled up the grass by its roots the chickens rushed to the spot where she’d been so they could peck at the ground that she’d softened for insects and worms that had been disturbed.
It was late in the afternoon when Tara heard some music playing across the valley. Curious, she and Harvey went to investigate it.
In Mr Morrison’s house, there was a shiny black grand piano in the conservatory, and as the early evening was so warm the conservatory doors had been opened wide.
‘Mr Elgar might be playing this tonight after dinner,’ Gwen, the young parlourmaid, said to herself as she dusted the piano, excited that the famous composer was visiting her master’s house. But for now there was only her in the conservatory, and she’d been taught to play a little by the choir mistress at Chapel.
Gwen sat on the piano stool and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. No one came to see what she was doing, so she played one tune and then another. Tara and Harvey found a hiding place among the trees that edged the garden and watched. But when she started to play Edward Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’, one of the circus tunes, Tara gave a squee and came out of hiding.
Gwen was so caught up in the music she was playing and trying to remember all the notes that she didn’t hear the noise, and for a few seconds she was completely unaware of the little elephant standing at the conservatory doors. She might have made it successfully all the way to the end of the piece had not Tara shuffled forward and plonked her trunk down on the piano keys.
Gwen let out a little squeak, but was too terrified to move.
An elephant. An actual real-life elephant was standing next to her in the conservatory!
Tara plonked her trunk on the notes some more – bang-bang-bang-bang-bang – and then she looked at Gwen and plonked her trunk down again. Then she gave the girl a gentle push.
Gwen was sure the little elephant wanted her to play some more and so recovering from her surprise, she did. But not Elgar – one of Scott Joplin’s ragtime dances this time, and Tara nodded her head along with the rhythm until she decided to join in too. Plonk-plonk-plonk. Then Gwen played another Elgar piece.
‘What’s all that racket?’ An angry voice came from the hall beyond. It was her employer, Mr Morrison. ‘Our visitors are trying to get away from the noise of London and certainly don’t want to be confronted with it here.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Gwen said, jumping up as Mr Morrison and Mr and Mrs Elgar entered the conservatory, closely followed by the butler. ‘I can play it perfectly. Only –’
Mr Elgar gasped when he saw Tara.
‘What on earth is an elephant doing here?’
‘It’s … playing the piano. It isn’t doing any harm,’ Gwen squeaked helplessly. She felt slightly hysterical.
Tara wiggled her trunk round beside Gwen so she could bash the piano keys once more. Plonk-plonk-plonk.
But the butler thought the elephant was doing a lot of harm so he clanged the dinner gong and shouted at Tara, and she ran off, followed by Harvey who had been hovering outside the door.
‘It wasn’t doing any harm,’ said Gwen again, but when she saw the butler glowering she hurried off back to the kitchen.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Mrs Elgar, laughing.
‘We must inform the Buttermere authorities immediately,’ Mr Elgar said.
Mr Morrison sent a footman to the police station, and he took the dinner gong with him in case there were any more elephants about that needed to be frightened away.
Half an hour later Gwen was sent for and had to go through the whole incident for the village policeman.
‘It joined in with ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ first, sir,’ said Gwen to Mr Elgar.
‘And played the piano with its trunk you say?’ asked the policeman as he wrote it all down in his notebook.
‘Well I wouldn’t exactly call it playing, sir,’ said Gwen. ‘It was more like “plonking”.’
‘But you can play?’ Mr Elgar asked her, smiling, and Gwen told him how she’d been taught.
‘The Elgar Elephant,’ said Mr Elgar. ‘I like the sound of that. Perhaps it should have its own “Little Elephant” tune,’ and everyone laughed.
Tara and Harvey headed onwards into the Lake District under a clear starry night and finally fell asleep on some clumps of forest moss close to a bubbling brook.
Around them, the night-time forest animals came out and Harvey listened to their rustles and snuffles as he drifted off to sleep. There was another sound that he listened for now. A sound that often came from Tara. The low elephant call she repeatedly made to her mother. But Shanti never answered her.
Chapter 13
Letters from home arrived at the Front within a day or so of being sent, and Albert had not even fully settled in when he received a letter from the ringmaster.
I’m sorry to inform you that Tara and Harvey have run away together and I can only conclude that the worst must have happened …
He ran to find his sergeant.
‘I have to go home, sir,’ he said. ‘Tara’s life depends on it. I have to help find her. She’s still just a baby.’
But when Sergeant Cromer learnt that Tara was an elephant he told Albert in no uncertain terms that he absolutely could not go home and he would be court martialled, and probably shot, if he tried to do so without permission.
‘There’s a war going on you know, lad. This isn’t a picnic.’
Albert worried about the elephants all day and at night he couldn’t sleep for worrying. He couldn’t understand why Harvey and Tara had run away together. Why wasn’t Tara with her mum? She was too young to be separated from her. And what was she doing with Harvey? And why wasn’t Harvey with the ringmaster? The elephant and dog shouldn’t even be with each other, let alone have run away together.
It just didn’t make sense.
As the sun rose across the desert Albert wrote to Shanti’s new owner and then he wrote to the ringmaster, although he didn’t expect to get a letter back from him. He’d felt that he had been badly let down by the ringmaster, whom he’d trusted completely. Badly let down indeed.
At Forest View Farm, Shanti pushed her head through the special leather harness Mr Hodges the blacksmith had made for her and he tightened the buckles. ‘You’ll be able to use this for all sorts of jobs from cart work to logging, and of course bracken bashing,’ he told Mr Jones, AJ and Yolanda.
Just about every farm in the area had asked if Shanti could help them with bracken bashing. But Daisy and Simon had asked first so their farm was the first to have its overgrown bracken squashed by an elephant.
‘But how will you teach Shanti to pull the bracken basher?’ AJ asked.
‘With lots of apples, carrots and bread,’ his dad told him. ‘In Ceylon the elephants helped with the forest logging work. I might see if Shanti can help with that, too.’
‘How could an elephant help?’ AJ asked. Then he grinned. ‘Did they chop down the trees?’ He laughed as he imagined Shanti with a giant-sized axe. But then he stopped laughing because Shanti with a giant-sized axe would be very dangerous indeed.
‘They lifted the logs and sometimes carried the felled trees back to the camp,’ Mr Jones told him.
‘Mr Soames said we need lots more logs to reinforce the trenches,’ Yolanda said.
Mr Jones nodded. ‘The elephants in Ceylon had a trainer, known as a mahout, on their backs to show them the way.’
‘But we don’t have a mahout to help Shanti,’ Yolanda said.
‘No, so we’ll see how Shanti takes to bracken bashing, hay meadow ploughing and forest work. If she likes it, all well and good, but if she doesn’t she can still be very useful pulling a cart and transporting heavy things for people around the village.’
‘And pushing your wheelchair, Dad,’ said AJ.
‘Indeed, I bet I’m the only man in England to have a wheelchair-pushing elephant. Maybe even the only man in the whole world to have one,’ said Mr Jones.
Mr Hodges attached the bracken-bashing bladed roller to Shanti’s harness so she could drag it along behind her to crush and flatten the tough plant stems.
‘This way, Shanti, this way,’ AJ said, holding out a carrot to show her the way she needed to go.
Bracken bashing was an easy job for the elephant, especially with carrots and windfall apples to coax her along. The fronds of the high bracken scratched softly at her legs as she waded through it.
‘That’s it, Shanti. Good elephant!’ Mr Jones called from the path.
Two hours later the job was done and the invasive bracken had been flattened. They headed to the river so Shanti could cool off and have a bath. The people were hot too, and the children went swimming in the river with Shanti while Simon and Daisy’s mum sat on the riverbank with Mr Jones.
‘She’s made such a difference,’ Daisy’s mum said. ‘Now the plants that were struggling beneath the bracken will have a chance to grow.’
‘Shanti could help with the ploughing too,’ Yolanda shouted from the river. ‘Couldn’t she, Dad?’
‘She certainly could,’ said Mr Jones as Shanti squirted water over herself with her trunk and the children got soaked too.
‘Yeew!’ Daisy squealed and laughed.
The next moment the children were splashing Shanti with water and she was squirting them back.
‘I’m so glad Stony Oakhill got to have its own village elephant,’ Simon said, his eyes shining, when the children finally came out of the river and lay on the riverbank to dry while Shanti pulled up grass with her trunk and ate it.
While they were there, Shanti made her elephant call.
‘She’s calling out to Tara, isn’t she?’ Yolanda whispered to her dad.
And Mr Jones nodded. ‘If either one of you were lost I would never stop calling until I found you,’ he said.
Shanti wasn’t the only one trying to find Tara. Constable Kean was looking for her too. He visited Gwen and saw the piano that the little elephant had played, heard about how Beatrix Potter had seen her one morning, and listened as a farmer told him about his crushed maize.
‘Looked like a herd of elephants had gone through it, not just one young one. Left a few footprints in the mud. Come on, I’ll show you.’
Constable Kean went to see the footprints. They definitely looked as if an elephant had made them.
‘If it isn’t an elephant, I don’t know what kind of beast it could be,’ the farmer said. ‘You don’t think it could be the Vampire Dog of Ennerdale come back, do you?’
Constable Kean shook his head. The stripy backed Vampire or Girt Dog of Ennerdale had been killed more than a hundred years ago, but people were still thinking they’d spotted it. Girt Dogs and Zeppelins – people were always reporting seeing one or the other of them, but there never seemed much evidence for the sightings when he went to investigate. He wished people would get out and look for the little elephant instead.
The local newspaper’s piece had come out on the day after they’d learnt about Tara and it had immediately been reprinted in the evening edition of the national newspapers. It was just the sort of story they were looking for to lighten the sombre times and they added a cartoon strip of Tara peeping out of one of the windows of Buckingham Palace and at Brighton Pier and on top of the Albert Memorial.
‘That’s my elephant!’ Albert told the other men in the camel corps, when the newspaper was delivered to them, as he went to clean up the camel droppings. But the truth was he wanted Tara to be found very soon. He wanted her to be safe and well-fed and back with her mum before it was too late.
In America the escapologist and illusionist Harry Houdini read about Tara’s plight over his morning coffee. Just about everyone who read a newspaper now knew the little elephant’s name. He smiled at the cartoon strip showing a missing Tara hiding in different famous landmarks.
‘You’d have imagined it would be almost impossible to hide an elephant,’ he said to himself. ‘Unless it was done as an illusion trick of course …’ He started making notes, wondering how a disappearing elephant trick might work.
‘Maybe it wouldn’t be impossible after all,’ he said, looking at his notes an hour later, and taking a swig of his now stone-cold coffee.
Chapter 14
Sheep were wary of Tara, although they watched her when she wasn’t too close. But the six saddleback piglets on a farm not far from the railway track at Keswick weren’t the least bit frightened and came running over and squealing as soon as they saw her. Harvey wagged his tail, but the pigs had seen dogs before – Tara was the one they were interested in. The piglets’ mother broke into a trot as she followed them and Tara made her happy squee trumpet noise as the piglets squealed excitedly.
The little pink-and-black piglets and their mother had a field with trees at one end, a dry sty to sleep in, and a boggy pond for mud baths. Tara headed straight over to the pond with the piglets trotting along beside her. As soon as they realized where their visitor was headed they all wanted to join in and raced to be first.
