ELEPHANT MOON

by John Sweeney

  ‘Sergeant-major, may I remind you that I am the officer in charge,’ said Peach.

  The sergeant-major was a good eighteen inches shorter than Peach, but his eyes flashed with contempt.

  ‘Aye, and it’s my job to tell you that the lads cannot keep this pace up. They fooking want to kill you, which would be a black spot on your career, wouldn’t it, Lieutenant? Being dead and all?’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ The two men stared at each other.

  ‘No, sir, I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that killing your men on some wild-goose chase to rescue some silly totty is conduct unbecoming of an officer. Sit down, lads – we’re having a break.’

  Peach almost hit him. His frustration, and fear, that Gregory was a real danger to Grace, was boiling up inside him. After a moment, he stormed off, running downstream a further two hundred yards, wading up to an islet in the torrent, thick with bamboo. The water was running fast even here, and he had to fight the current to find what he was looking for. On the west corner of the islet, impossible to see from the bank, was a sandy bluff, standing proud of the water. The bamboo – higher than a lamppost – shielded observation from the south, too. It was the perfect hiding place. He hurried back to the men, resting against the mossy rocks.

  ‘We’re moving, and that’s an order.’

  The sergeant-major stayed where he was; the others took their cue from him.

  ‘This is a bad place to stop, Eric,’ Peach said. ‘The Japs will be able to see us from miles off. I’ve found a better resting place a few yards downstream. We’ve got to move. It’s not far.’

  The waters thundered on; the spray from the wet mist soaking everything.

  ‘Fook off, you love-sick bastard.’

  ‘Eric!’ Peach was appalled.

  ‘Only joking, sir. Attention!’ The sergeant-major pulled himself up and motioned with his head for the men to move. With infinite weariness, five stood up and pulled up their packs onto their backs. But two men, furthest from the sergeant and the officer, refused to stir. Barr walked towards them. He kicked one in the leg, and bent over the other and whispered into his ear. Both men struggled up and began to walk.

  Peach led the way, downstream, and stood in the water, waist–deep, ensuring that none of them lost their footing as they fought through the current to the safety of the islet.

  With all of them safe and out of sight of the Japanese above, Peach allowed himself to collapse flat on his back on the sand.

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I threatened to stick a cricket bat up his arse, sir. He’s a Methodist and doesn’t like that sort of talk.’

  ‘Very good, Sergeant-major.’

  ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘No, don’t. I’m sorry, too. I know the men are exhausted.’ Peach shook his head.

  They had grown so used to each other’s thinking that speaking out loud was almost unnecessary.

  ‘Shall we call it a day, Sergeant-major?’

  ‘Surrender, sir?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Japs don’t take prisoners, sir. They’ll just kill us, and they’ll take their time about doing it.’

  ‘Yes. That’s my thinking, too. And it seems a shame, having come all this way, just to give in when we’re almost there.’

  ‘Right.’ Barr glanced uphill, towards the unseen enemy. ‘They can’t see us from up there. As awficers go, you’re not all bad.’

  ‘Eric?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Why did you call me a love-sick bastard?’

  ‘Oh, come on, sir.’

  ‘What makes you say that, Sergeant-major?’

  ‘It’s bleedin’ obvious, sir. Making out them orphans to be the bloody aristocracy. Not blowing up that bridge when you were ordered.’

  ‘One word from you, and I would have blown the bridge then and there.’

  ‘So it was all my fault, then, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant-major, it was.’

  ‘Fook off, sir.’

  ‘If you carry on like that, Sergeant-major, I’ll put you on a charge.’

  Barr started to laugh, a high-pitched giggle, almost girlish.

  ‘There is…’ continued Peach.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘There is one way, we might get across.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘On an elephant.’

  ‘We haven’t got an elephant, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Sergeant-major. I’m suggesting that we borrow one.’

  ‘From who, sir?’

  ‘Emperor Hirohito, Sergeant-major.’

  ‘He might not like that, sir.’

  ‘But what if we ask him nicely, Sergeant-major?’

  ‘That should make all the difference, sir.’

  ‘There’s slightly more to my plan than that, Sergeant-major.’

  ‘I’m all ears, sir.’

  ‘I once met a man in a bar, Sergeant-major. He told me all about the training of an elephant, how they pair up a calf elephant with a teenage boy, of around fourteen or so, and with a bit of luck the two of them make a team for life. So not anyone can ride an elephant. Each animal must have its own dedicated oozie, a man he trusts. So, clever as the Japanese are, they’re not that clever. The elephants we’ve seen them with, they must be ridden by Burmese oozies.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Our best shot is that we try and meet one of the oozies working for the Japs at dead of night, and we offer them a fair passage to India, and gold at the other end of the rainbow, if they will run away from the Japs and give us a lift across this river. What about it, Sergeant-major?’

  ‘You’re the officer. You give the order and we do what you tell us to.’

  ‘You know damn well it doesn’t work like that, Eric. What do you really think?’

  ‘You’ve gone crackers, sir.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Ever gone bonkers, sir? Lost your marbles, sir?’

  ‘No, Sergeant-major. Or, at least, not yet. That time when I was a magistrate and I jailed an officer for crashing into those two Burmese women – that was difficult… War had just broken out and I had applied for a commission. I got a letter back, declining my offer, and someone had scrawled on the envelope, LMF.’

  ‘Lacking Moral Fibre.’

  ‘I was pretty cut up by it, back then. Grace was the first European woman to break the spell. She had no idea that I had been boycotted. She didn’t like me very much, but she didn’t like me because of who I was, which is fair enough, not because of what I had done to stand up for the rule of law.’

  ‘Well, you’re in the army, now, sir.’

  ‘Very funny, Sergeant-major.’ But Peach was aware that he might have been sounding rather pompous. ‘She ran away from me once. We’d gone to the cinema, to see some damnfool show, Bob Hope and Bill Crosby. One of their road movies. At the end of the show, I tried to kiss her and she started hurdling over the cinema seats. I tried to chase after her but I fell over. I felt absolutely frustrated at the time. Everybody was laughing me. Humiliating. Looking back at it now, damn funny.’

  ‘What did she look like, jumping across the seats?’

  ‘Bit like Tipperary Tim winning the Grand National, Sergeant-major. She took those cinema seats like old Tim leaping Becher’s Brook.’

  ‘You’re in love, sir.’

  ‘I prefer it when you’re saying that I’m bonkers.’

  ‘I went bonkers, once.’

  This, from the man he trusted most in the world, came as a shock.

  ‘Raving, I was. Doo-lally.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Family stuff.’

  ‘You’ve got a wife and kids.’

  ‘Aye. I came out here in thirty-eight. Two kids and the missus, safe at home in Leeds. Then along comes the youngest. Born in 1940. Three kids. But I was out here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Peach.

  ‘Aye. When I calmed down, I wrote to her saying: “When I get back to Yor
kshire, I’m going to throttle you with my own bare hands”.’

  ‘I see. Will you?’

  ‘No, not now. Seen too many dead. It’s only a bit of slap’n’tickle that went wrong. That’s what she says. Any road, there’s nowt I can do about it out here. He’s a lad, and all. Name of Jake. I’ve only had the daughters before. Nowt wrong with girls, but…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thing is, sir…’

  ‘Call me Bertie’

  ‘Silly fooking name, Bertie. I’m calling you sir. Thing is…’ Barr struggled to get the words out. ‘If I fooking die out here, she’ll think I died bitter an’ all, and I’m not. I’m not fooking proud of her, but you can’t go through a bloody war and not learn a thing or two about human weakness and all, so if I get killed…’

  ‘Which you are absolutely not going to do.’

  ‘If I do get killed, then will you go and see her, and tell her from me, that she’s a silly whore, but I still love her with all my heart, and I love little Jakey too, and I’m sorry I wrote mean things to her. You’ll do that, won’t you, sir?’

  ‘You’re not going to die.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Of course. What’s her name?’

  ‘Agnes.’

  ‘Do the same for me, Sergeant-major. Tell Grace I forgive her for making me look like a complete idiot.’

  ‘Aye, I will and all.’

  They sat in silence, listening to the river’s roar. After a while it was Peach who broke the spell.

  ‘But if I have gone bonkers,’ he said, ‘then it’s your duty to relieve me of my command. So if I really am mad, then you’re in charge, Sergeant-major. What shall we do?’

  ‘Fook that for a game of soldiers.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Fook it.’ He turned away and raised his voice. ‘Lads, pay attention. The officer says we’re going to borrow an elephant.’

  No moon that night. They’d left the rest of the men on the islet. On their return, the password would be ‘Sheffield Wednesday’, making a change from the usual ‘Leeds United’.

  In pitch dark, Peach and Barr waded across the shallows to the eastern bank, faces blackened with stinking river mud. Each man carried two grenades and one jungle knife. Their rifles would not be much use in the dark and they had precious little ammunition left between all of them. The whole point of this exercise was to ‘borrow’ an elephant or two without disturbing the Japanese.

  The officer and the sergeant-major had had one of their semi-silent discussions about risking both their lives on this foolishness. If the Japanese caught them, the remaining seven last-ditchers would be leaderless. But the soldiers were pretty far gone. If this plan didn’t work, well, that was pretty much it for all of them.

  The two men were well accustomed to the sounds of the jungle at night by now: the sudden, unexplained mechanical bangs and crashes, subtle creaks and inhuman gibbering. But some new sound gripped Peach’s attention. What was that…?

  He sensed the sergeant-major freeze beside him and he flattened his stomach against the ground as best he could. Ear down, he could just make out a patter of soft footfalls, then silence. The silhouette of the sergeant-major remained immobile. Fighting in the jungle – or just staying alive – was as much a matter of patience as anything else.

  The footfalls started again, diminishing with each step. They crawled forward on their bellies, as lightly as they could, until they found what they had been looking for: seven, eight, nine, ten elephants, standing, obelisk-still in a circle, and beyond them they could make out hammocks stretching between trees, a deeper black against the blackness of the night. One of the elephants stirred, shuffling his hobbled legs, uneasy. The beast chirruped, a strange high-pitched sound for such a big animal. Had they been smelt out?

  Peach stiffened as he felt the light brush of a blade of grass against the back of his neck. No, he was wrong about that. This blade was made of steel.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A movement, downstream, something grey coming round the bend.

  Damn and blast and bloody hell. The luck of the bitch. Bloody elephant with its baby in tow, on its neck an oozie and on the back in the basket two boys, including the soft one, a couple of girls and that all-seeing brat Molly.

  Schoolmarm was waiting for them to pass, waiting with a great smile on her lips. Bitch.

  Keeping his breathing nice and shallow, putting the jungle knife down by his side. The whole sodding bunch of them had missed him, so he was pretty confident that he would remain hidden.

  He’d have to wait a bit, then catch up and take his chance later. Just breathe quiet, be still…

  Oh no, fucking hell, damn, damn, damn. Stone him, if the baby elephant didn’t come right up to his hiding place, stick out its sodding trunk and shove the ferns and shrubbery aside, then start to eat his cover, showing him to all and sodding sundry. On seeing him the baby took fright, squeaked like a piglet and ran back to his fat mother, who gave Gregory a nasty look. That was nothing compared to Grace’s reaction. When she saw Gregory revealed in his hiding place, her eyes grew as big as dinner-plates and she screamed – piercingly loud - and skittered over to the far side of the riverbed, placing the big elephant and baby between her and him.

  ‘You!’ Grace shouted at him, pointing her finger at him, hiding in the ferns.

  The Burmese on the elephant’s neck took it all in. Eddie fancied that he’d clocked his dah. Pretty soon, the oozie might have a word with the Havildar, and that could be tricky. The kids, too, especially that brat Molly, stared at him as if he was some bloody creep hiding in the bushes. The baby elephant trumpeted shrilly at him, and then the little bastard had the cheek to suck up a puddle of water through his trunk and squirt it at him. Bloody circus trick. The kids were all laughing at him. Not funny, not funny at all.

  On the surface, the cold hatred that consumed him did not show. Smiling, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, he stood up, bowed from the waist and sauntered off upstream, against the torrent.

  That bastard baby elephant had saved the bitch’s life. But old Eddie Gregory wasn’t finished yet, not by a long chalk.

  He would have to do the teacher, to save his neck. The way she’d pointed the finger at him, screaming ‘You!’ he knew there was no way he could smarm his way out of it. They’d suspect him, but tough. If she ever got to India, she’d start digging, she would be just the type, and then he’d be for it. A woman like Grace, she’d be certain to find out about old Eli and write letters to that bitch Jewess and the two of them would never shut up until he was dangling from a rope. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He’d have to sort her out that very night, once and for all.

  But that wasn’t the only score he wanted to settle. That little fat bastard Baby Elephant had humiliated him too, catching him in the bushes, squirting him, soaking him to the skin. And no one and nothing made a monkey out of Eddie Gregory. What would he do about it?

  Come to think of it, if a tiger – yeah, that would do it nicely – if a tiger attacked the baby elephant in the night, that would make a nice little distraction. Everybody would fuss over the wounded little baby jumbo – he could already hear the children crying, how awful it was, the savage cruelty of the tiger – and while they were all worrying about it, no one would notice if schoolmarm went missing. At least, it would buy him some time. And if Sammy-boy started causing him trouble later, then he’d do him too, and that meant Sergeant Gregory would be the last white man standing, and no one would believe the word of a bunch of niggers and mud-coloured kids against a warrant officer of the British Army. The Havildar, though – he’d have to watch the sodding Sikh, old Cripple Fingers.

  Slowing his pace, his thoughts turned to planning his revenge on the baby elephant.

  Got it. Muscle and mind. When his darling elephant mama wasn’t looking, he’d give Baby Elephant a lovely shoot of bamboo in one hand and he’d stab an eye out with the other. And if it dared squirt him again, he’d do the other eye
too, and then he’d be a blind Baby Elephant and he wouldn’t last five minutes in this shithole of a jungle. That’d teach him.

  He would think of something. If he got the right opportunity he would make sure that the baby would rue the day he humiliated Eddie Gregory. And he began to whistle – ‘Oranges and Lemons’ – over and over again.

  The Havildar’s eyes – ribbed with blood, red-raw and gritted with worry – told their own story. The elephant men had fallen into a trap of their own making. The riverbed was no longer dry, but three foot deep at its shallowest, and when the two banks narrowed closer together, it turned into a furiously fast stream five feet deep against which men struggled and children had to scale the rocks to avoid. Worse, there seemed no end to it, no prospect of them finding a way of climbing out and up into the jungle; worst, a secret no one knew, he couldn’t swim. The water scared him more than he could say.

  What to do? Leave the river and they’d lose another day. But stay in the river, and he might lose a calf or a child. A less courageous man, given his terror of water, would have tried to get out of the river sooner, but the Havildar did not want his personal weakness to impede the operation to get the elephants and people as far away from the Japanese as fast as humanly possible.

  Still, the river was getting deeper all the time. Soon, it might carry away a calf and then the rest of the elephants would panic and that could cause carnage. He clambered up the stony bank, his two and a half fingers scrabbling for handholds, to scan the rocks above him. Upstream, as far as he could see, there was nothing. Downstream on the bank he was standing on, again nothing, just smooth rock, maybe 50 feet high. But on the far bank, 100 yards back, he spotted a fissure in the rock wall, carpeted with vegetation– steep but perhaps just about manageable for the big elephants, leading up to who knew what.